PROTECT YOURSELF AND YOUR FAMILY FROM CORONAVIRUS (& THE FLU VIRUS, TOO!)

In my opinion, there is an enormous amount of unnecessary panic regarding the Wuhan virus. I am in a high risk group, but I am not really worried about it, because I haven’t had a cold or the flu in years. This, after almost dying from London flu in 1968. I was terribly ill for 12 weeks. Since then, I have become a chiropractic physician, a Diplomate of the American Board of Chiropractic Internists and an herbalist.

Therefore, I would like to share with you what my 35 years of clinical experience have taught me.

The first and most important thing to know is that coronavirus is a single-stranded RNA virus, which is encapsulated. This last point is critical. Research has demonstrated that properly extracted St. John’s Wort (SJW) is a potent anti-viral, active against encapsulated viruses. For details regarding the research see this article, which I wrote several years ago when I lived at the epicenter of the West Nile Virus in So. California. Patients in my practice had excellent results; no one died and I don’t believe anyone got sick. You will notice that not only is SJW active against West Nile Virus, it also treats shingles, herpes and the common flu.

In fact, I have used SJW for years to treat shingles. If started early enough, it will eliminate the lesions in 48 hours. Long-standing cases take a little longer.

Why is this important? Because there is NO readily available, effective anti-viral pharmaceutical. This became apparent to me when I developed shingles due to exposure to a patient who had recently been vaccinated. I was taking acyclovir, but it really hadn’t done much to arrest the advance of the lesions, or (more importantly to me) alleviate the symptom of intense itching that made it very hard to function. In the midst of my attack, the Australian representative of MediHerb visited my office. She had two SJW tablets with her, which she immediately gave to me to take. Within ten minutes all of the itching was gone! Needless to say, I ordered a bottle and took the whole thing. By the time I was finished, all of the lesions had dried up and gone away; and, I had not had another episode of itching the entire time. (By the way, I consider the shingles vaccine to be very dangerous. It is a live virus vaccine and can transmit the disease. But that’s another story – for another time, perhaps.)

The only form of SJW that I use or recommend is made by MediHerb, which is a pharmaceutical house in Australia. Ground up leaves have no activity. Nor do American manufacturers preserve the anti-viral fraction effectively.

So, to protect yourself and your family, how do you take this product. For prevention 2 SJW morning and evening. If you have symptoms that concern you, increase to 2 tablets, three times per day. For children, use their body weight in the following formula to calculate how much they need:

Body weight = x/4 tabs

150 lbs

where x is the amount for the child. If symptomatic, use 6, instead of 4.

In addition, to boost your immune system, I recommend one of 2 products: Echinacea Premium or Thymunose. Both of these items boost and regulate the immune system. Thymunose is a mushroom extract that has immune enhancing effects. It is also about one-half the price of Echinacea. Both come in bottles of 120 tablets. Again, the dose for prevention is 1 tablet morning and evening. If symptomatic, double that.

Basically, I am providing this information as a tool that you can utilize if you are seriously concerned about the virus. Personally, I think one of the benefits is protection against flu, which kills far more people every year than coronavirus. If you need to order, please either call me at 626-303-3162 or email me at frontoffice@RichardsFamilyHealth.com. I will be happy to order and provide you with what you need. Take care. Don’t panic. Panic doesn’t serve any purpose.

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Let’s Talk Flu Vaccine

If you’ve been listening to the news, I am sure you have seen the PR campaign promoting flu vaccine. The message is: “You owe it to friends and family to get the vaccine. You need to protect them.” “Thousands of people die every year from being unvaccinated.”

The newest push is for the “senior vaccine.” It’s supposedly “better” for seniors.

There are major problems with all of this and I would like to share the unreported truths with you and give you much safer options than the vaccines.

First of all, let’s address the issue of the number of people who die due to influenza.  In 2005, Peter Doshi, a Harvard graduate student, published an analysis in the British Medical Journal entitled “Are US flu death figures more PR than science?” In this article, he points out that the quoted statistics conflate flu deaths with flu-related deaths, which are quite different. Most of what are called “flu-related deaths” are actually from pneumonia. And, it isn’t viral pneumonia either. It’s a secondary bacterial pneumonia not directly caused by the flu. { BMJ 2005;331:1412}

To quote his article: “[The CDC claims that] influenza and pneumonia took 62,034 lives in 2001; 61,777 of which were attributable to pneumonia and 257 to flu; and in only 18 cases was the flu virus positively identified.” (emphasis added)

Please note: This article was published in the British Medical Journal, not in America. His follow-up article in 2013 was also published in the BMJ. Apparently, the American medical journals simply weren’t interested.

In his second article, he points out that in 2013, 130 million doses of vaccine were sold in the U.S. (up from 90 million in 1990). Of course, there are 315 American residents. If vaccination were so vital, this shortage could be called “medical malpractice.” In that same article he points out that mandatory vaccination laws are popping up all over the U.S. because so many people don’t want the shot.

So, now, let’s examine just how effective the vaccine is; then, I’ll talk about side effects. Finally, I’ll share natural alternatives to protect your immune system. [By the way, I haven’t had the flu in more than a decade, despite treating many patients with influenza, so I am confident the protocol works!]

In the face of aggressive PR campaigns to “get your flu shot,” you may think the flu vaccine is the ultimate solution. “What’s not advertised, however, is just how lackluster the vaccine is. The most commonly used flu shots protect no more than 60% of people who receive them; some years, effectiveness plunges to as low as 1%.” {Science Mag}

So, what is going on? Seasonally, manufacturers produce a vaccine against the strains of flu they expect to circulate that year. This is an “educated guess;” actually, it’s a crapshoot. No one can accurately predict what strains may pop up. An additional problem has been uncovered by more modern genetic testing.

For decades, tests suggested the flu vaccine worked extremely well. However, a better genetic test polymerase chain reaction (PCR), revealed many infections in vaccinated people who would have previously been deemed protected. {Med J Aust} The actual efficacy proved to be between 60% (high) and 10% (low).

Another study conducted in British Columbia suggested that the problems with the vaccine arise in the production process. For years, it was assumed that mutations in the virus caused the vaccine to be ineffective. However, Danuta Skowronski, an epidemiologist at he BC Center for Disease Control in Vancouver, Canada  blames mutations during the culture of the vaccine. The most common vaccine contains an “inactivated” virus, which manufacturers grow in chicken eggs. As Skowronski’s team first reported in 2014, the virus can mutate while it is growing in chicken eggs, resulting in a vaccine that is unable to block circulating strains.

Again, please note that ALL of this information is being researched and published in foreign countries. Access to information in the U.S. is controlled by the pharmaceutical companies.

So, in an effort to boost efficacy, Big Pharma has come up with a “senior” vaccine, which is a “high dose” vaccine that contains four times the antigens of the regular vaccine. The theory is that the extra antigens will boost your immune response and provide extra protection. {source)

However, this increased potency is not without cost. Very common side effects include: myalgia; headaches; tenderness, redness, itching and swelling at the injection site; abnormal crying, malaise and fever; runny nose and nasal congestion; upper respiratory infection; vomiting, nausea and diarrhea; loss of appetite; and irritability. Some of these occur at the rate of 78%!

Merely common side effects include: hemorrhage, chest tightness, chills, shivering, back pain, migraine, sore throat, cough, oropharyngeal pain, rhinorrhea, wheezing, nasopharyngitis, infection and flu-like illness. {source: www.drugs.com re Fluzone} Please tell me how this is different from actually having the flu?!?

Recently, one of my long-time clients had the senior vaccine. She wanted to see her newborn niece. (You are probably aware of the new tactic; family members must receive vaccines in order to visit newborns.) She had a severe reaction, including the central nervous system effects. I recommended she return to her primary care doctor and inform the doctor of the reaction, so it could be noted in her medical records. The M.D. took swift action and specified that my patient should never have any flu vaccine again.

Standard flu vaccine is also a problem. It comes with unrevealed side effects, including: soreness, redness and/or swelling from the shot; headache; fever, nausea and muscle aches. There are also severe allergic reactions, which include: difficulty breathing, hoarseness or wheezing, swelling around the eyes or lips, hives, paleness, weakness, fast heart rate and dizziness.  More seriously, is Guillain-Barre´ Syndrome (GBS), which results in progressive paralysis of the motor nerves, including the nerves that control the muscles of respiration. This information comes from the CDC.

What I found shocking was the extent to which the impact of this life-threatening condition is being minimized. I clearly remember 1976, when the swine flu virus paralyzed 565 infants with GBS; hundreds more suffered major side effects. Eventually the U.S. government paid out $400 million in damages to victims’ families when it was proven that the government had foreknowledge of the risks. {Source: Coulter H, Fisher B, A Shot in the Dark, Avery 1991}

The facts of the case are as follows: The federal agency, the Division of Biologic Standards, is in charge of vaccine safety. Just before the vaccine was released, one of their top research scientists, J. Anthony Morris, was fired by the agency for warning the public that there was no evidence that a swine flu “epidemic” was coming and also that the vaccine had serious side effects. {Ibid}

However, there is an even more serious effect — one that is being not only ignored, but ridiculed by the CDC. The gentleman who revealed this adverse effect, Dr. Hugh Fudenburg, has impeccable credentials in immunology. He published some 850 peer-reviewed papers (the gold standard in medicine). He was a professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, and an associate professor of immunology at the University of California, Berkeley. He also was the editor of the peer-reviewed journal Clinical Immunology and Immunopathology for 15 years, as well as serving on the World Health Organization’s expert committee on immunology for 20 years. Now, however, he is being demonized for making the following public at the first National Vaccine Information Center International Conference on Vaccination and Vaccine Risks. “If an individual had 5 consecutive flu shots between 1970 and 1980, the chance of Alzheimer’s Disease was 10 times greater than for those . . . getting no shots.” If you Google his name, you will immediately see the attacks against him. Such is the cost of opposing established medical dogma.

So, what is a person to do? Since Medi-Herb’s St. John’s Wort (SJW) is the specific for all encapsulated viruses, it is effective against the influenza virus. For more information, you can read my prior article on St. John’s Wort.

For prevention, the dose is 2 tablets, twice a day, of SJW. They are best taken approximately 12 hours apart. At the first sign of a symptom, increase to 2 tablets, 3 times per day.

To improve your resistance to bacterial pneumonia, you have 2 choices; either Echinacea Premium or Thymunose. (Thymunose is slightly less expensive.) The dose is 1 tablet, morning and evening, of either. Increase the dose to 2 tablets each time if you start feeling ill.

Side effects of this protocol include: alleviation of mild to moderate depression; alleviation of symptoms of SAD (seasonal affective disorder); protection against other encapsulated viruses, including the entire herpes family – oral and genital herpes, shingles, Epstein Barr and cytomegalovirus; also West Nile Virus. Thymunose and/or Echinacea Premium provide protection against secondary bacterial infections by boosting the efficiency of your immune system.

So, it’s really your choice: Take the risk of the toxic pharmaceutical approach; or choose botanicals that provide a host of additional benefits unavailable from the vaccine.

I have stocked up on both SJW and Thymunose, so feel free to place an order if you want to be protected from influenza. You can reach me at frontoffice@RichardsFamilyHealth.com.

Zika Virus is Spreading – Are You Concerned?

The recent information about information about zika virus is very alarming. I would like to bring you up to date about the dangers and a natural solution.

First of all, here in California, we are susceptible, because the vector, the tiger mosquito is endemic here. The map below indicates reported cases. (data from Scientific American) The darker the color, the greater the number of cases. Specifically, here in California 6 cases have been reported (2 from 2015 and the rest from 2013 and 2014). The problem is that, with the prevalence of the mosquito in this area, an infected person can be bitten and pass the virus to others.

author: Amanda Montanez ‏@unamandita

In addition to birth defects in pregnant women, the CDC lists the following symptoms in adults from the zika virus:

• No symptoms at all
• Fever, rash, joint pain and conjunctivitis (red eyes) are the most common symptoms in people who have any symptoms at all
• Other common symptoms: muscle pain and headache
• Rare, but serious, symptoms include Guillain-Barre syndrome, a paralyzing neurological disorder which it is possible to recover from

The following information is also from the CDC. The incubation period is unknown, but is probably a few days to a week. The danger is that during the first week of the infection, if you get bitten by a mosquito, that mosquito can then pass the virus to the next people it bites.

The CDC reports the distribution of zika in the U.S. on the following map. There have been a total of 354 cases reported in the U.S. currently, primarily travel related.

This is, of course, an epidemiologist’s nightmare. I remember when I was attending USC in the late 1960’s. Our bacteriology professor had worked for the World Health Organization and was very concerned about Vietnamese malaria coming to the U.S. with returning servicemen. The problem with the Vietnamese strain was that it did not respond to synthetic quinine products; only the natural extract would do. And, the U.S. had just sold off all of its natural stores, now that a synthesized pharmaceutical was available! Fortunately, that scenario never developed, but we are now in the midst of a similar, and far worse, one.

However, there is good news! It turns out that zika is an encapsulated, RNA virus, much like West Nile Virus. Therefore, it too is susceptible to medical grade St. John’s Wort from Medi-Herb. Read my prior article here on my blog regarding the efficacy of St. John’s Wort for a variety of viral diseases. Please remember: the over the counter preparations don’t work, because they aren’t extracted properly and don’t preserve the anti-viral compound.

The dose is 2 tablets, 3 times per day, for a week to 10 days. Prophylaxis (prevention) is 2, 2 times per day. I take it regularly due to my susceptibility to shingles. I always have some on hand, so don’t hesitate to call if you need it.