Thursday, December 26, 2013

Trebisacce by the Sea 2001


Trebisacce by the Sea    

 by Bonnie Willson Camo      September 9, 2001


I grew up living life through books

Till Goddess blessed me with his looks.

Tall dark straniere swept me away

Shared my life up to this day

Forty two years of woes and joys

(lots of both from raising boys)

My horoscope said I’d live abroad,

(But astrology is rather odd)


Trebisacce by the sea

Now I hear you calling me

Pole beans on bamboo teepees

at Bon-Sante B&B

Brick oven baking tasty loaves

To dip in oil from our olive groves

Solar panels on the roof

Pecorino on the hoof


Blessed be! A man who cooks!

Never even needs cook books

Even sails and catches fish

Serves it up - a tasty dish

With roasted vegetables to savor

Home-grown herbs enhance the flavor.


Trebisacce by the sea

Now I hear you calling me

Ginestre – yellow winter bloom

Takes away all cold and gloom
[note - this was written 2 days before 9-11]

Thursday, December 5, 2013

Heavy Metal Brain Damage


Bonnie Camo MD    Natural Medicine & Homeopathy      Trebisacce, Italy

 

                Heavy Metal Brain Damage

 

Lead poisoning is thought to have led to the downfall of the Roman Empire.  The ancient Roman water pipes were made of up to 99.3% lead, according to Dr. K-G Wenzel in The Earth’s Gift to Medicine.  I actually saw the remains of some of these lead pipes on a recent visit to Pompeii, the Roman city buried by the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD.  The upper classes also used lead-containing glazes on their ceramic drinking vessels. It seems probable that lead was a factor in the rise and fall of insane, murderous emperors like Nero and Caligula. 

 

Several decades ago, Dr. William Walsh, former head of the Argonne National Laboratory near Chicago, analyzed hair samples from inmates in the California prison system.  He found high levels of lead, a known neurotoxin, in all serial killers and mass murderers tested.  Serial killers are generally considered sociopaths, people who lack a conscience and empathy, and kill methodically and with premeditation.  Mass murderers, on the other hand, seem normal until they suddenly snap under extreme stress, go temporarily insane and shoot everybody in a McDonald’s, or a school, for instance.  Dr. Walsh found both types high in cadmium as well as lead, and low in zinc.  The mass murderers also tended to have high copper.  Walsh later went on to found the Pfeiffer Treatment Center (PTC), named after my mentor, Dr. Carl Pfeiffer, with whom he collaborated.  The PTC tests and treats people for heavy metals, vitamin and mineral deficiencies and other imbalances related to mental and physical illnesses.

 

Zinc deficiency is common in the general public in the US and in the Middle East.  Dr. Pfeiffer speculated that this could be a factor in the “warlike, violent nature” of these areas.  Dr. Walsh was on the Phil Donohue television show many years ago, and was asked which was more important in producing violent behavior, heredity or environment.  He answered that it was a combination of  “a bad chemistry and a bad childhood”.   It is interesting to note that the crime rate in the US went down sharply eighteen years after Roe versus Wade legalized abortion in 1973, according to Freakonomics, by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner.  Apparently many women who want an abortion realize that they do not have the emotional or financial resources necessary to raise a healthy child. Another reason for the decrease in crime may be the removal of lead from gasoline.  According to the EPA, blood lead levels declined by 37% in association with a 50% drop in the use of leaded gasoline between 1976 and 1980.

 

Low zinc is associated with anger, hostility and verbal abuse, according to The Crazy Makers, by Carol Simontacchi, perhaps because low zinc allows lead and cadmium to rise.  Many brain enzymes require zinc for activation. 

 

One of the main sources of cadmium toxicity is tobacco smoking.  Cadmium is thought to contribute to emphysema.  Smoking also depletes vitamin C, which is needed to help prevent cancer and, along with zinc, to help excretion of heavy metals.  Other sources of cadmium are refined foods, which have a low zinc to cadmium ratio, and old galvanized water pipes, made with zinc that was contaminated with cadmium.  Newer water pipes made of copper seemed like a good substitute, but copper levels can go too high, especially with acidic well water.   Greenish-blue stains in the sink and tub are a warning sign of high copper levels. 

 

Copper, unlike lead and cadmium, is an essential mineral, but excessive amounts can lead to hypertension, depression, hyperactivity, headaches and other disorders.  Many commercial multivitamins have too much copper.  Chocolate is also quite high in copper.  Two milligrams is considered the daily requirement, but this does not take into consideration the copper that is being absorbed from food and water. 

 

The epidemic of autism appears to coincide with increased vaccinations containing mercury, aluminum and other toxic substances.  High levels of toxins and heavy metals in the environment, and a  genetic inability to detoxify, contribute to autism and other disorders affecting the brain, like attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), schizophrenia, and even sociopathy.

Monday, May 20, 2013

Prevent Breast Cancer


Bonnie Camo MD    Natural Medicine & Homeopathy      Trebisacce, Italy

                       

                                    Breast Cancer Can Be Prevented

 

Angelina Jolie's recent decision to undergo a 'prophylactic' double mastectomy due to her BRCA status, was her choice, but those who may wish to follow in her footsteps should be aware that there are other options.

 

According to breast surgeon Susan Love of UCLA, at least 30 percent of tumors found on mammograms would go away if you did absolutely nothing.   These tumors appear to be destined to stop growing on their own, shrink, and even go away completely.  Your immune system is always on the alert, removing most cancer cells that develop before they are able to multiply. One way to strengthen your immune system is to minimize your exposure to mammograms and other sources of ionizing radiation.

 

You can strengthen your immune system by good diet and lifestyle choices. First optimize your vitamin D3 level.  Vitamin D is actually able to enter cancer cells and trigger apoptosis, or cancer cell death. JoEllen Welsh, a researcher with the State University of New York at Albany, injected vitamin D into human breast cancer cells, killing half of them within days.  Vitamin D was as effective as breast cancer drugs like Tamoxifen, without the side effects and at a cost of pennies.  If you’ve been diagnosed with breast cancer you should have your D level checked and maintain a level of at least 70 ng/ml.

 

Vitamin A also plays a role in preventing breast cancer; your best sources are organic egg yolks, raw milk and butter, and beef and chicken liver from organically raised, grass pastured animals.  However, commercial red meat may be a serious risk factor for breast cancer.  When animal protein is cooked, especially at high heat, like frying, carcinogens are formed.  Saturated animal fat is converted into a carcinogen by bacteria in your large intestine.  Animal fat is also the storage site for all the pesticides on the food the animal ate, as well as the antibiotics, hormones, and growth stimulants the animals were given.  Grilling meat adds additional carcinogens. 

Fruits and vegetables are “virtual anticancer pharmacies.”  Phytochemicals in plants have many ways of protecting you from cancer.  Carotenoids which give color to red, orange and yellow fruits and vegetables are potent antioxidants and block different steps in development of cancer.  All cruciferous vegetables, like broccoli, cabbage and kale, contain indole-3 carbinole, which stops breast cancer cells from growing, and converts estrogen into a non-cancer-promoting form.  Broccoli also contains sulforaphane, which promotes liver enzymes which destroy carcinogens and move them out of the body.  Of course, all these fruits and vegetables should be organic, so you are not introducing more carcinogenic pesticides into your body. 

 

A powerful anticancer spice is turmeric, the brilliant yellow-orange root used in curries and in Ayurvedic and Chinese medicine for over five thousand years.   Turmeric is one of the most potent tumor-inhibiting foods,  

destroys toxins in the liver, is a powerful anti-inflammatory and antioxidant, and prevents DNA mutations that lead to cancer. 

 

Herbs like black cohosh, artemisinin, and kelp have anticancer properties.  Green tea is the number one anticancer beverage, full of anti-inflammatories and antioxidants, such as polyphenols like ECGC.  Raw cannabis and “hemp oil” (not to be confused with hempseed oil, which is highly nutritious, but not known to be a cancer cure) both look very promising, for those who live in places where they are legal.

 

Avoid all forms of sugar, cancer’s favorite food, as well as artificial sweeteners.  Stevia is a safe sweetener.

Good sleep is essential to good health.  During sleep the mind/body is repaired and purified.  In darkness the pineal gland produces melatonin, which promotes natural sleep and is a powerful cancer preventer.  The best melatonin production occurs when you go to bed by 10 pm and get up by 6 am.

 

Exercise lowers your risk of breast cancer, in part by helping prevent obesity which increases your risk.  Aerobic exercise causes the brain to produce healing neuropeptides which reduce stress and prevent depression. 

 

The list of natural prevention methods should include not wearing bras. There's lots of evidence for bras impeding the blood and lymph flow that keeps tissues healthy, as documented in Dressed to Kill by Sydney Ross Singer and Soma Grismaijer.

Monday, January 21, 2013

Epidemic of Madness


Bonnie Camo MD,  Natural Medicine & Homeopathy, Trebisacce, Italy

 

                                 Epidemic of  Madness

The Government Accounting Office (GAO) reported in June 2008 that one out of every sixteen young adults in the United States was seriously mentally ill.  It has recently been estimated by investigative journalist and health science writer Robert Whitaker that twenty percent of Americans now are considered mentally ill.  Part of this rise is based on definition. Psychiatry keeps expanding diagnostic criteria, trying to throw everybody into some category of mental illness so they can sell more drugs. Children who are not sitting quietly enough in school are said to have attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.  People who are grieving after losing a loved one are diagnosed with depression, turning a temporary and appropriate emotion into a mental illness label and a life-long drug dependency.

I recently read two of Whitaker’s books, Mad in America, and Anatomy of an Epidemic, which describe how psychiatric drugs cause or aggravate the very brain disorders they are alleged to cure.  Mr. Whitaker became interested in this subject when he learned that schizophrenics in underdeveloped countries like India, Nigeria, and Colombia, had much better outcomes than those in developed countries like the US, England and Denmark.  What is the difference?  The mentally ill in poor countries, if given any psychiatric drugs at all, received them in much lower dosages than in the rich, developed countries.  Going back to old records, he found that before the advent of neuroleptics, the majority of schizophrenics having their first episode recovered on their own in six months to a year.

As an MD practicing alternative medicine in New Jersey for thirty years, I successfully treated thousands of psychiatric patients with orthomolecular psychiatry (correcting nutritional imbalances as determined by blood and hair tests) and homeopathy.  I found depression to be one of the easiest things to treat with homeopathy.  The hard part was weaning people off the antidepressants psychiatrists had put them on.  It is interesting that the PDR (Physicians’ Desk Reference) tells doctors how to put patients on drugs, but not how to take them off.  I guess they assume (and it is a self-fulfilling prophecy) that they will be on these drugs forever. Psychiatrists and pharmaceutical companies falsely claim that psychiatric drugs are correcting brain neurotransmitter abnormalities and need to be taken for life “like insulin for diabetics”. 

Drs. Abram Hoffer and Humphrey Osmond of Saskatchewan, Canada, did the first double blind controlled studies in the field of psychiatry sixty years ago using niacin (vitamin B3) and vitamin C.  On these nutrients, most acute schizophrenics were cured and able to get a job and pay taxes (Hoffer's criterion for a successful cure). This was before Thorazine, the first “antipsychotic“ drug, was patented in 1954.  These “neuroleptics” actually create a drug-induced brain pathology by blocking the neurotransmitter dopamine, thus shutting down many higher brain functions. In fact, when first introduced, psychiatrists themselves considered these drugs virtually indistinguishable from a "chemical lobotomy," which they thought was a good thing.

Neuroleptics also block dopamine in the basal ganglia, which coordinate body movements, resulting in an incurable movement disorder known as tardive dyskinesia (TD), resembling Parkinson’s disease, in up to 60% of patients treated.  Unknown to conventional psychiatrists, TD can be prevented by certain vitamins.  (Contrary to psychiatric propaganda, the new “atypical” antipsychotics cause as much or more TD as the old drugs, in addition to many new side effects, like intractable weight gain and diabetes.)

According to Eva Edelman, Natural Healing for Schizophrenia, “Psychiatric drugs have the potential to induce a supersensitivity psychosis in the world’s sanest human, forcing the individual into a lifelong drug dependency.”   Blocked dopamine synapses become hypersensitive, so when the drug is withdrawn, paranoia and hallucinations become worse than ever. The natural psychosis has become a “tranquilizer psychosis”, as Dr. Hoffer called it.

 

This drug-induced hypersensitivy is made use of by pharmaceutical companies in designing studies to show their drug is better than placebo.  Patients are suddenly deprived of their accustomed drug, become massively psychotic, and then are given the new drug (same as the old drug), or placebo.  Naturally, just as with heroin, a fix of the addictive drug will relieve the withdrawal psychosis better than a placebo!  Drug companies have been fined millions of dollars for conducting false studies, but to them this is just a business expense.

In the wake of recent mass shootings in Aurora, Colorado and  Sandy Hook elementary school in Newton, Connecticut, it is interesting to note that virtually all mass murderers in the US, going back to Columbine, have been on, or recently withdrawn from, SSRI antidepressants or other psychiatric drugs.  “Violence and other potentially criminal behavior caused by prescription drugs are medicine’s best kept secret,” says Dr. David Healy, a world-renowned psychiatrist who has written extensively about the lack of data in evidence-based medicine, including in his latest book, Pharmageddon.


There is no evidence for modern psychiatry's claim that pathological biochemical imbalances in the brain cause mental illness.  But treating people with these new wonder drugs is what creates pathological imbalances, causing the epidemic of mental illness.