Dr. Kate’s Blog

 John Hopkins Update
 
 AFTER YEARS OF TELLING PEOPLE CHEMOTHERAPY IS THE ONLY WAY TO TRY (‘TRY’, BEING THE KEY WORD) TO ELIMINATE CANCER, JOHNS HOPKINS IS FINALLY STARTING TO TELL YOU THERE IS AN ALTERNATIVE WAY.
 
 Cancer Update from Johns   Hopkins :
 
 1. Every person has cancer cells in the body. These cancer cells do not show up in the standard tests until they have multiplied to a few billion.
 
 
  When doctors tell cancer patients that there are no more cancer cells in their bodies after treatment, it just means the tests are unable to detect the cancer cells because they have not reached the detectable size.
 
 2. Cancer cells occur between six to more than 10 times in a person’s lifetime.
 
 3  When the person’s immune system is strong the cancer cells will be destroyed and prevented from multiplying and forming tumors.
 
 4. When a person has cancer it indicates the person has multiple nutritional deficiencies. These could be due to genetic, environmental, food and lifestyle factors.
 
 5. To overcome the multiple nutritional deficiencies, changing diet and including supplements will strengthen the immune system.
 
 6. Chemotherapy involves poisoning the rapidly-growing cancer cells and also destroys rapidly-growing healthy cells in the bone marrow, gastrointestinal tract etc, and can cause organ damage, like liver, kidneys, heart, lungs etc.
 
 7. Radiation while destroying cancer cells also burns, scars and damages healthy cells, tissues and organs.
 
 8. Initial treatment with chemotherapy and radiation will often reduce tumor size. However prolonged use of chemotherapy and radiation do not result in more tumor destruction.

 9. When the body has too much toxic burden from chemotherapy and radiation the immune system is either compromised or destroyed, hence the person can succumb to various kinds of infections and complications.
 
 10. Chemotherapy and radiation can cause cancer cells to mutate and become resistant and difficult to destroy.Surgery can also cause cancer cells to spread to other sites.
 
 11. An effective way to battle cancer is to starve the cancer cells by not feeding it with the foods it needs to multiply.

 *CANCER CELLS FEED ON:

 a. Sugar is a cancer-feeder. By cutting off sugar it cuts off one important food supply to the cancer cells. Sugar substitutes likeNutraSweet, Equal, Spoonful, etc are made with Aspartame and it is harmful . A better natural substitute would be Manuka honey or molasses, but only in very small amounts.
 
  Table salt has a chemical added to make it white in color. Better alternative is Bragg’s aminos or sea salt.
 
 b. Milk causes the body to produce mucus, especially in the gastro-intestinal tract. Cancer feeds on mucus. By cutting off milk and substituting with unsweetened soy milk cancer cells  are being starved..
 
 c. Cancer cells thrive in an acid environment. A meat-based diet is acidic and it is best to eat fish, and a little chicken rather than beef or pork.
 
   Meat also contains livestock antibiotics, growth hormones and parasites, which are all harmful, especially to people with cancer.
 
 d. A diet made of 80% fresh vegetables and juice, whole grains, seeds, nuts and a little fruits help put the body into an alkaline environment. About 20% can be from cooked food including beans.
 

  Fresh vegetable juices provide live enzymes that are easily absorbed and reach down to cellular levels within 15 minutes to nourish and enhance growth of healthy cells. To obtain live enzymes for building healthy cells, drink fresh vegetable juice(most vegetables including bean sprouts) and eat some raw vegetables 2 or 3 times a day. Enzymes are destroyed at temperatures of 104 degrees F (40 degrees C).
 
 e. Avoid coffee, tea, and chocolate, which have high caffeine. Green tea is a better alternative and has cancer fighting properties.
 
  Water-best to drink purified water, or filtered, to avoid known toxins and heavy metals in tap water. Distilled water is acidic, avoid it.

 12. Meat protein is difficult to digest and requires a lot of digestive enzymes. Undigested meat remaining in the intestines becomes putrefied and leads to more toxic buildup.
 
 13. Cancer cell walls have a tough protein covering. By refraining from or eating less meat it frees more enzymes to attack the protein walls of cancer cells and allows the body’s killer cells to destroy the cancer cells.
 
 14. Some supplements build up the immune system (IP6, Flor-ssence, Essiac, anti-oxidants, vitamins, minerals, EFAs etc.) to enable the bodies own killer cells to destroy cancer cells.
  Other supplements like vitamin E are known to cause apoptosis, or programmed cell death, the body’s normal method of disposing of damaged, unwanted, or unneeded cells.
 
 15. Cancer is a disease of the mind, body, and spirit.. A proactive and positive spirit will help the cancer warrior be a survivor.
  Anger, lack of forgiveness, and bitterness, put the body into a stressful and acidic environment. Learn to have a loving and forgiving spirit. Learn to relax and enjoy life.
 
 16. Cancer cells cannot thrive in an oxygenated environment. Exercising daily, and deep breathing help to get more oxygen down to the cellular level.
  Oxygen therapy is another means employed to destroy cancer cells.
 
 1. No plastic containers in micro.

 2. No water bottles in freezer..

 3. No plastic wrap in microwave.

 Johns Hopkins has recently sent this out in its newsletters. This information is being circulated at Walter Reed Army Medical Center as well.
  Dioxin chemicals cause cancer, especially breast cancer. Dioxins are highly poisonous to the cells of our bodies. Don’t freeze yourplastic bottles with water in them as this releases dioxins from the plastic.
  Recently, Dr. Edward Fujimoto, Wellness Program Manager at Castle Hospital , was on a TV program to explain this health hazard. He talked about dioxins and how bad they are for us. He said that we should not be heating our food in the microwave using plastic containers. This especially applies to foods that contain fat. He said that the combination of fat, high heat, and plastics releases dioxin into the food and ultimately into the cells of the body.
  Instead, he recommends using glass, such as Corning Ware, Pyrex or ceramic containers for heating food. You get the same results, only without the dioxin. So such things as TV dinners, instant ramen and soups, etc., should be removed from the container and heated in something else. Paper isn’t bad but you don’t know what is in the paper. It’s just safer to use tempered glass,   Corning Ware, etc.
  He reminded us that a while ago some of the fast food restaurants moved away from the foam containers to paper. The dioxin problem is one of the reasons.

Also, he pointed out that plastic wrap, such as Saran, is just as dangerous when placed over foods to be cooked in the microwave. As the food is nuked, the high heat causes poisonous toxins to actually melt out of the plastic wrap and drip into the food. Cover food with a paper towel instead.
  This is an article that should be sent to anyone important in your life.
 

My comments: I am so happy to hear this from mainstream medicine. As a wellness practitioner we have been speaking of this for years.  Our message is getting through!  Having lost two friends to cancer in their 40′s that waited on the western medicine treatments, I still think those options should be done first, along with what this article recommends. Both modalities/perspectives need to work together. Please take the advice given here. Cancer is about toxicity, and the immune system. Those are the primary root causes.  We can make a difference in our own health! 
 

This is a very personal blog because my Mom recently was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. My Mom has a doctorate in education that she earned after we lost our father. She has been a wonderful role model and inspiration for me.  As a grant writer she wrote million dollar grants for community colleges all over the country. She was the president of a local chapter of the United Way. She was a Dean at Mount Wachusett Community College. She was the valedictorian of her class at Gloucester High School.  Needless to say I am quite proud to be her daughter, and I am doing everything I can to support her brain health. I used to call her while in Chiropractic school which is a very grueling program of study; and she would   say remember this: “obstacles are what you see when you take your eye off the goal”. After I got off the phone, (I was in my early twenties, and all of my friends were going out doing fun things), I would hit the books and push on. In a way she was helping me re-frame my experience and re-wire my brain. In those times neuroplasticity was not well understood yet, but she was already using it.

My Mom endured a lot, she had six children that were all born within a ten year spread. My Dad had earned his doctorate at Harvard and had big ideas to change the world. He wanted to apply all of the things he learned and researched in his program. In doing so he ran into quite a lot of opposition. He wanted to support eliminating racism with busing, he wanted to implement regional schools so that kids had more access to art, sports, and music. He tried to change the way kids were taught. Because of  this he was perceived as a threat; and was fired every three years.  My Mom stood by his side and supported him. He would have loved Barack Obama. Mom learned a lot about the politics of our school systems by listening to my Dad when he came home from school committee meetings. My Dad had grown tired of jobs that did not allow him to fulfill his visionary dreams.  He became headmaster at American International School in New Delhi India. All eight of us moved there; the oldest kid being 17, and the youngest (myself) being 7. We adapted well, and Dad began to settle, and slow down;  his spirit began healing from all of the job trauma he had gone through. On June 9th,  37  years ago, he was suddenly killed from a car accident. Needless to say we all moved back to the states overnight. My mom managed to keep it together as best she could, amidst our whole family being in shock and grief. We had no community to support us, since we had moved to a new place: Amherst Massachusetts. We moved there so that Mom could start her doctoral program. Today I think; ” how did she do that? Wow!”

Soon after my fathers death a University of  Massachusetts professor that taught a class my Mom was in; started an affair with my very vulnerable Mom. He was still married to another woman at the time and had three kids. He had none of the boundaries or integrity that my father had. Under the guise of helping our family; (in such a vulnerable state) he took the opportunity manipulate us. My Mother was blinded by his narcissism and her own vulnerability; and they married shortly after they met. After a few years he began having an affair with my Mom’s boss and good “friend “who was quite a bit younger. This woman was also a single mother. He soon left my Mom for this person. Gladly I have not seen him since. I watched my Mom get crushed again by loss, and this time betrayal.  My stepfather was  a pedophile, he reasoned his inappropriate behavior with his over-intellectualizing; which negatively affected  my family.   To this day he continues to have no remorse for the pain and suffering he has caused my  family. I needed to say this because my voice was never heard publicly about this. His career, and social standing were never influenced by his damaging actions.  I think it is important to bring these dark facts into the light.

Needless to say my Mom suffered a lot of trauma. I think this has influenced her brain today. I have been reading: The Brain that changes itself; a book written by Dr. Doige. It talks about the neuroplasticity of the brain and how neurons that fire together wire together. The brain changes from its environment. This can be good and this can be bad. We can change our brains with our thought patterns, but we cannot erase what happened. Trauma has a high impact on our brain, especially when we are younger and our brains are more “plastic”.  So, to circle back around, I think what my family endured imprinted all of us for life. However, those imprints have been re-wired by those of us who chose  to work with the trauma. Some of the positive tools and resources my family has incorporated knowingly or unknowingly are: sports, art, studying healing arts, pets, and higher education, understanding the neurophysiology of trauma, and seeing helpful practitioners. Others in my family have resorted to more negative tools such as: drugs, alcohol,emotional shut down, and denial. These negative imprints have been perpetuated in my life in some relationships. I did not always know when a person was  trustworthy or not.   I am learning day by day to re-wire myself in each moment.  Each moment we can choose how to be with what is. That is empowering!  This is what changes your brain. Re-wiring ourselves is possible.  My next blog will cover nutritional information about brain health.

Did you know that I provide gentle non-invasive treatment for health issues such as disk herniation, stenosis of the spine, facet syndrome, sciatica, leg pain, whiplash, headache, arm pain, and neck pain? Twenty years ago in Chiropractic College I learned a technique that uses a special traction table; then after graduation I took a seminar with Jim Cox, D.C. the man who developed flexion-distraction. This table is different from other traction tables because it works very specifically in the area of spinal involvement. As the practitioner I apply gentle pressure on the joint above the area of spinal causation and push down the end of the table tractioning  the specific segment. This treatment is safe for all ages, including people that are osteoporotic. It  is one of the most well researched chiropractic techniques. Studies have shown that flexion-distraction allows a decrease in disc pressure; it also has been shown to increase in disc height, and in increase in the space between the vertebrae where the nerve exits the spine by 28%. Research also compared flexion-distraction to physical therapy; the results showed that  flexion-distraction  did significantly better for low back conditions that were: chronic/severe, chronic/acute ; and patients with radiating nerve pain stemming from the spine. The goal of treatments is of course reduction of pain, but also to restore  function of the spine.

The other good news is that if my patients do not get 50% better within 4 weeks  I refer them to a Physiatrist, Orthopedist, or Neurologist. I do not treat beyond 12 visits if my patients are not 50% better. If there is no improvement then we start to take the next steps and change the treatment plan. The patients treatment plan is constantly being adjusted to their response in function and pain changes.

Once my patients have stabilized I then recommend  core strengthening work and refer to Pilates instructors, Physical Therapists, and other practitioners who use the Swiss Ball exercises.

I have a new table arriving in my New York location in the next couple of weeks, so come on in and give it a try. The motion is passive on your part and great for your spinal health! 

Tinnitus has many causes . Traditional EENT allopathic doctors are looking for pathology. When they don’t find anything and your ears are still ringing there are other options. The good news is that you do not have a pathology and it is treatable. In most cases non- disease related tinnitus is caused by a somatic dysfunction. They call this somaosensory tinnitus.  Your body is a continuous kinetic chain. Places as far away as the sacroiliac joint can affect the ears. These complex relationships in the body are considered when patients come in to see me. Areas of the body that are pertinent  include the cranium, temporo-mandibular joint, spine, pelvis, and the bite. Issues in all of these areas can cause tinnitus; some more directly then others. Oftentimes these relationships of structure are coupled with a stress response that manifests as a involuntary tension in the nervous system. By working with the body through chiropractic, cranial work, and body-mind awareness; one can diminish if not eliminate tinnitus. Here are some of the causes related to tinnitus that can be addressed with conservative care:

1) History of orthodontics/ braces

2) Grinding and/or clenching the teeth

3) Poor bite alignment

4) Poor posture; particularly forward head bending

5) Multiple sites of muscle tension in the head and neck

6) Stress, anxiety, depression, and anger….grrrrrr

7) Whiplash; recently or a long time ago that did not recover well

Large chronic doses of antibiotics and some other medications

9) Joint dysfunction of the jaw, spine, and sacroiliac joints

10) Cranial bone imbalances; particularly relating to the temporal bone which contains the inner ear.

How does I treat this?

Sometimes having a dentist check the teeth for wear and tear, and grinding at night and treating with a mouth guard really helps. In most cases this is only one piece of the puzzle. Another thing to check is the bite. Now this can actually change with cranial  work , and adjustments.  The bite is off for many  different reasons; and by all means do not have your teeth ground down as the first option of treatment! This should be the last resort if done at all.  Patients often have more than one issue that brought the tinnitus on.  By approaching the body holistically I can help bring the system back into balance.  Holistically  means looking at structure, stress awareness, nutrition, and energetics of the body. Treatments may include muscle work, gentle manipulation, and cranial work. It may take some time for the symptoms to subside because usually people have had tinnitus for months even years  before getting help, because they do not know their treatment options.  Their first stop is with medical doctors who did not find pathology,  and did not know other treatment options to recommend.

When stress, and trauma occur we have a choice about  how to work with it. Not many people know this, and feel victimized by stress. Learning to resource oneself through cranial work can help bring us  to understanding these options. Focusing on health instead of always focusing on the problem is the path to take. When we learn to listen to our body, it responds in amazing ways; ways we could not imagine. The body has a wisdom deeper than any doctor you will know.

Craniosacral teaches the body to relax from the inside out. One gets a sense of calm and centeredness with craniosacral therapy. This work can be taken into your daily life, noticing your body, and acknowledging its signals of stress. When someone comes to see me for treatment I do not “fix” them. We work as a team, both treating the condition. The patient with body and stress awareness, and me with imbalances that present themselves.

Adjustments and muscle work help lessen the “noise” in the central nervous system. they also help restore mobility and lessen muscle tension.

Oddly enough in applied kinesiology and Chinese medicine the hearing is related to the kidneys. These are organs that are taxed when we get stressed. Supporting these organs by referring to an acupuncturist,  making dietary changes, and taking supplements is very important sometimes. The body will show where it needs support, and there is nothing wrong with getting support through health  issues. It is most important to be patient with tinnitus. It can take some time, and getting stressed about how long it is taking only feeds the stress. Feed the health not the stress.