Pertussis and Vitamin C

Well, this week I'm a-dither again over pertussis.  Omaha has a high incidence at the current time, including cases at schools within a mile of our home.  Our family has been blessed, yet a third time, with exceptional health care providers who are interested and open to alternatives to allopathic (standard Western pharmeceutical) treatment of health issues. 

I was freaking out this week because my kids all contracted some really nasty virus involving spiking fevers and a whooping  cough.  But not whooping cough.  Thank the Lord.

Anyhoo, I came across this article:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC536087/pdf/canmedaj00183-0060.pdf

Naturally, this article will be received by many with great skepticism.  However, I am very interested in medical journals from about 1880 through about 1940 because they represent the end of the accumulation of alternative medical wisdom in Western medicine.  At the time, of course, it wasn't alternative, and most medicines were made in-house by 'chemists', aka pharmacists.  Most medicines were made from natural substances, aka plants.  While ascorbic acid is not (the subject of the article), neither is ascorbic acid a pharmeceutical.

Unfortunately, in the thirties and forties, medicine became big business, homeopathic information was yanked from medical textbooks, and pharmacists became pill dispensers instead of pill MAKERs.  In the 1970s, Adelle Davis (nutritionist, writer and medical researcher), tried to find out why a reputable study on vitamion C for the common cold was refused publication, she was told by the editor of a big-time medical journal that he'd be run out of business if he dared print information on a cheap, readily available treatment for the common cold.

Personally, I have used the technique described in the article (I thought I made up the term "Vitamin C loading", but maybe not?).  It's a fascinating phenomenon.  On a regular day my body only absorbs about 3 grams of Vitamin C, but as soon as I'm ill I can take 10-12 grams before reaching tolerance.  (As described in the article, you find out how much your body can absorb by noting when your bowels get loose, then you back off a gram or two the next day.)

Once, when I was pregnant with Rosie, I had a terrible virus and my temperature kept creeping up till it was hanging out around 104- not a pretty picture with a 20 week old baby in utero.  Under my doctor and midwife's directions, I took 25 grams of Vitamin C per day for 5 days straight to fight the infection.  It also kept that fever down in a safer range.  If you think this all sounds like nonsense, go ahead, take 12 grams of Vitamin C and see what happens!  Then take 12 grams of Vitamin C when you have a cold and see what heppens.  (Actually, don't do that.  You need to have a small amount of Vitamin C supplemented every day when you feel fine for it to work well without messing up your system when you are sick.)

If this still all sounds ridiculous to you, consider that many mammals, rats for one, make their own Vitamin C.  They don't need to get it from thier diet.  When rats are stressed or sick, they make about 20 times more Vitamin C as usual.  Don't take my word for any of this, though.  By all means, find somewhere to read about it for yourself.

And ya, google is fine.  I recently had a doctor friend confide in me that he uses google about equally as he uses the books lining his office wall.  Go figure.

Ok, that was longer than intended.  I'm off to bottle a fresh quart of elderberry syrup for my scratchy little throats upstairs.


Half the modern drugs could well be thrown out the window except that the birds might eat them.  ~Martin H. Fischer, Fischerisms

In the 1960s, people took acid to make the world weird.  Now the world is weird, and people take Prozac to make it normal.  ~Author Unknown

I don't like people who take drugs.  Customs agents, for example.  ~Author Unknown

Pertussis: An Unbiased Look

While I never intended to write a series on vaccines, I have been studying the subject intensely, as I do every 3 years (i.e. when I am pregnant).  Pertussis is, for me, one of the most worrisome diseases one can vaccinate against.  There have been outbreaks all over the country, it seems, over the past few years, and we saw one of our dear friends' 2-year-old go through it a few years back.

Note that this is a pro-vaccination bulletin, which outlines the problems with current pertussis vaccines:
http://www.dor.kaiser.org/external/news/press_releases/Waning_and_Less_Effective_Acellular_Whooping_Cough_Vaccines_Likely_Contributed_to_the_2010_California_Whooping_Cough_Outbreak/


"Be careful about reading health books.  You may die of a misprint." 
~Mark Twain

A Few More Tidbits on Vaccines

Ok, well, I should have known I was openeing a can of worms just by typing the words "childhood vaccines."

PLEASE, dear readers, let me reiterate that I AM A MOM trying to make the best decisions for my family, NOT A HEALCARE PROFESSIONAL nor an INFECTIOUS DISEASE EXPERT!!!  My info is not always the MOSTest up-to-date-est stuff out there, because I do not spend evenings pouring over medical journals.  Well, not every evening.

Anyhoo, all my books are loaned out, but I would like to quote from a few online articles.  Feel free to take them with a grain- or 2 or 12- of salt.  And I wish you the best on your journey as a parent and health-care consumer :).

"Dr. Walter Orenstein, Director, CDC National Immunization Program, who will have a great deal to say about recommending chicken pox vaccine for all children, described being kept up for several nights with his five-year-old during a bout of chicken pox, admitting, "It's that kind of problem that the vaccine would eliminate rather than serious disease (6)."

"Dr. Arthur Lavin, Department of Pediatrics, St. Luke's Medical Center in Cleveland, Ohio wrote in The Lancet (17) of "three concerns ... (he) believe(s) argue strongly against die licensure of varicella vaccine for healthy children."

• chicken pox "is not major in the sense of disease mortality or morbidity. In childhood, mortality is very low, and morbidity is usually minor ... Therefore, if healthy children were fully vaccinated it is unclear in what significant way the health of the children or the economic health of their families would be improved."
• Routine chicken pox vaccination in healthy children might pose a "grave danger of advancing the age of onset of chicken pox into adulthood." After bemoaning adults' poor compliance with vaccine recommendations, e.g., influenzae vaccine, Dr. Lavin asks, "What makes the proponents of universal varicella immunization believe that adults who may be susceptible to varicella as a result of their efforts would protect themselves with a booster dose (of chicken pox vaccine)?"
• Dr. Lavin has deep concerns "about injecting millions of young children with a mutant strain of herpes virus. As is well known, herpes viral DNA insinuates itself into the human genome for the lifetime of a host .... Although the risk of a deleterious effect on the human genome from an injected mutant herpetic viral genome is remote, the application of this risk to hundreds of millions of hosts increases the chance that we will see some adverse effect".

Dr. Lavin concludes:
"Humanity has been well served through efforts that have eliminated smallpox and nearly eradicated poliomyelitis and measles. However, not all infections demand these interventions (emphasis added). The Varicella immunization Program may be too much of a good thing. Until we actually know the duration of immunity and the risks involved in injecting mutated hepatic DNA into the host genome, I argue strongly against licensing this vaccine for use in all children."

"It appears that chicken pox vaccine will be mandated by law, not to benefit healthy children, but to save time and money for their parents with jobs outside the home, to protect children with cancer from catching chicken pox from other children, or for parental convenience so that parents will not have to stay up for two or three nights caring for their children with chicken pox
But, as Dr. Lavin states above (17), what price might society pay for this convenience?
By Kristine M. Severyn, R.Ph., Ph.D. "

---

http://www.all.org/article/index/id/MjUyNg

"Flu seasons are unpredictable and can be severe. It is estimated that, on average, approximately 5% to 20% of U.S. residents get the flu, and more than 200,000 people are hospitalized for flu-related complications each year. Over a period of 30 years, between 1976 and 2006, estimates of flu-associated deaths in the United States range from a low of about 3,000 to a high of about 49,000 people."

http://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/qa/disease.htm

Um, how many people died of varicella in 1994 (before the vaccine)? About 100-105.

On a side note, do you know that vomiting is called the flu, but usually isn't?  The flu is that awful, shakey, weak thing you get, maybe with a cough. 

"The decline in protective antibody against the flu that occurs after vaccination or after flu infection may be influenced by several factors, including a person’s age, the antigen used in the vaccine, and the person’s health situation (for example, chronic health conditions that weaken the immune system may have an impact).
This decline in protective antibody has the potential to leave some people more vulnerable to infection, illness and possibly serious complications from the same influenza viruses a year after being vaccinated or infected."
http://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/qa/disease.htm

Get the vaccine and be sure your immunity to the same flu strain will be lower later- or 'risk' getting (OR NOT GETTING) it that year.  It truly is your decision.  You get to choose the risk with which you feel more comfortable.  For now.  Until yearly flu shots are mandated by the federal government.  Enjoy your freedom while you've got it, folks.

Innocent until proven guilty?

Works for people, but did you know your government extends this concept even to synthetic drugs?

That's the American way when it comes to pharmeceuticals, and it creates a BIG cloud of confusion and doubt around vaccines.  Is this method really in the best interest of children whose organs and bosy systems are growing so fast?  In the U.S., drugs- do I even need to list exaples?- do not need to be proven safe before being administered to thousands, even millions of people, and won't be pulled from the shelves until LOTS of people have been hurt by them. 

Eli Lilly's August 1993 Prozac 20 Consumer Product Information pamphlet:

"There can be no such thing as absolute safety with prescription medicines. Individual patients sometimes react differently to the same dose of the same medicine and it is possible that some unwanted side effects will not be known until a medicine has been widely prescribed for a number of years."

(Editing to note, I never intended to publish this post with mercury info.  A draft of this post accidentally went live.  While some shots do contain mercury, they are very few now.  Aluminum is a far greater concern at this point than mercury.  You can learn more about mercury in vaccines at http://www.askdrsears.com/ and at http://www.mothering.com/.)

And because I've received enough questions on this to make me dread opening my inbox, let me state for the record that we'd like to keep our family's medical choices a private affair.  I'm not out to scare anyone, or sway anyone's opinions on their healthcare choices, but to ENCOURAGE INFORMED DECISIONS for families.  Because the way childhood vaccines are presented by many family practice doctors and pediatricians is, we feel, enethical.  And if your doctor has ever threatened to 'fire' you (or actually done so), PLEASE educate them on the policy of the AAP and the AAFP; both organizations discourage pediatricians and family practice doctors from "kicking out" patients who choose not to vaccinate, to delay vaccinations, or who wish to create their own schedules or who wish to use only single-disease vaccines.  (Go to the websites of the AAP or the AAFP to read about their policies.)

AND ANOTHER SIDE NOTE:  I find it really ironic how the medical community wants to turn Dr. Bob Sears into a villain!  Do you know that Dr. Bob and the other Dr.s Sears ARE PRO-VACCINE?  I've had a personal conversation with him and I've heard him speak on the subject in person.  He advocates a different schedule of immunization, but he advocates immunization!  He wants vaccines given one-by-one so- gasp- you could actually figure out which one caused a reaction, should your child experience one!  Inconvenient for pediatricians?  Yes.  Villainous?  No. 

How many vaccines are recommended at 12 months?  Your child could potentially receive 9 different vaccines at 12 months of age, looking at the CDC schedule.  If your child has a reaction, how will you know which vaccine caused it?  You won't.

That darned doctor telling those darned parents they can make informed decisions about their children's healthcare!  How dare he inconvenience us like that!  That's how all the attacks on Dr. Bob come across to me! 

"I drive way too fast to worry about cholesterol."  ~Author Unknown

(My version:  "We eat way to much McD's to worry about vaccine safety!")

Think about your constitutional rights:

http://www.thedoctorwithin.com/vaccines/end-of-vaccine-exemptions-in-california/

More on working with doctors who want to 'fire' you :):

http://mytwohats.com/2012/02/29/why-i-wont-fire-vaccine-hesitant-families/#more-484