Participants: Agatha Thrash (Host), Don Miller
Series Code: HYTH
Program Code: HYTH000201
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00:01 There are many diseases in our day which are
00:03 not recorded in history, so we can call these 00:07 Modern Society Diseases. 00:09 Of course everybody knows there have been a number of 00:12 infectious diseases that have arisen in the last 00:15 twenty five years or so. 00:17 But there are many other diseases as well 00:20 that are new on the scene. 00:24 We want to discuss a few of these in this program 00:27 so we hope you will join us for this discussion. 00:49 Welcome to Help Yourself To Health 00:50 with Dr. Agatha Thrash of Uchee Pines Institute, 00:54 And now here is your host Dr. Thrash. 00:57 The food for the body 00:59 and the food for the mind 01:01 are similarly quite effective in shaping who we are. 01:05 Of course the food for the body 01:07 must be as good as we can possibly make it 01:10 and we should not discount the fact 01:12 that food for the brain should be just as carefully 01:16 chosen, as is food for the body. 01:18 So that means that, the thoughts that we have 01:21 the reactions that we make toward other people 01:26 just what we do with our lives when we are alone. 01:30 All of these things are things that can influence 01:34 the way that we think. 01:35 There is a disease called Schizophrenia. 01:38 It has many different forms. 01:41 It can be catatonic, it can be simple, 01:44 it can be hebephrenic, a number of different names 01:48 that the psychiatrists put on 01:51 this topic of Schizophrenia. 01:54 Generally the symptoms are, 01:57 that the person may be withdrawn 01:59 they don't quite have a sense of reality 02:04 and just where they are, and where they are themselves 02:07 positioned not only emotionally and mentally 02:10 but also to some degree, in their physical world as well 02:14 so they are not fully in touch with reality. 02:18 They may have habits of being alone. 02:22 They may at times do destructive acts. 02:25 They tend to have a flattened affect 02:29 that is they don't generally have emotions 02:33 that you would expect at the right time. 02:36 If they do express an emotion, it is often 02:40 either improper or out of place. 02:42 So this describes to some degree, what Schizophrenia is. 02:47 We don't have anything that exactly fits that 02:52 in ancient history. 02:54 Some people point to the King Saul in the Bible 02:58 as being an example of Schizophrenia, 03:02 but I think that he was mainly depressed and angry, 03:08 and this made his strange reactions, because he was still 03:12 quite functional in his position, 03:15 and people with Schizophrenia 03:17 are often non-functional. 03:20 There is a so called walking type of Schizophrenia 03:24 that requires just a little medication, and the person 03:28 can carry on quite well. 03:29 But for the most part people with Schizophrenia 03:33 are really quite sick with their disease. 03:38 Now the negativism they show often makes them 03:42 not good companions, 03:44 and people often don't enjoy being around them 03:47 they don't enjoy having them in their home. 03:50 Sometimes poor woman will decide, if I were just 03:55 to marry this man who shows some mild signs of 04:01 Schizophrenia, I could just straighten him out very nicely. 04:04 But she marries him and the stresses of marriage 04:08 precipitate a full blown crisis, 04:11 and he has to be hospitalized 04:13 sometimes for quite a long time. 04:15 So we need to know that marriage to a person with 04:20 a mental illness, is not the cure, it is often 04:25 the thing that causes the disease to become extremely 04:29 difficult to handle. 04:30 With Schizophrenia approximately three out of 04:35 every hundred in our western population will have 04:39 Schizophrenia. 04:40 So is there a way that we can handle this so that we 04:43 can treat it with success? 04:46 And the answer is Yes, 04:48 we can treat some of these cases 04:50 so that they are quite successful. 04:52 We have a young man who came to us from a large 04:56 Catholic family in Florida. 04:58 He was a fine young man, very strong and very handsome 05:04 young man, but he was definitely mentally ill. 05:07 He was about 24 years old, at the time that he came 05:10 to Uchee Pines for treatment, 05:12 and at that time he had been in the hospital 05:17 since he was 18. 05:18 This young man was given a treatment of various 05:23 herbal things, a completely plant based diet, 05:27 and hard labor. 05:28 We also did some very good hydrotherapy for him 05:32 and within about six or eight months he was very well. 05:37 Not completely well, but he was so well that 05:40 he began to communicate with his family. 05:43 They came to visit him several times. 05:46 We felt that it was not safe yet for him to go home 05:50 that his being better was still so fresh and new 05:54 that perhaps he should stay in the program 05:56 at our Institute for a full year. 05:59 So at the end of the year he did hard farm labor, 06:03 many hours every day. 06:05 We think that was very good for him. 06:07 The totally plant based diet was good for him, 06:10 and the hydrotherapy, we gave him 06:12 A long slow hydrotherapy such as a neutral bath. 06:19 We sometimes gave him a wet sheet pack 06:22 which is quite a comfortable treatment, he enjoyed that 06:26 and made improvements with this hydrotherapy. 06:30 And at the end of the year he was sent home 06:34 not maybe as completely mentally balanced 06:38 as someone else, 06:39 but certainly well enough to function is society. 06:42 He got a small job, he married, 06:45 and I understand he now is raising another family 06:51 in his Catholic tradition in Florida. 06:55 There was a time when mental institutions 06:59 in the United States were using hydrotherapy 07:02 quite extensively, for Schizophrenia, 07:04 and for depression, and one psychiatrist who was with 07:10 The Veterans Administration Hospital 07:13 was accused of "empting the hospital. " 07:17 He got all of his patients well, and sent them home 07:20 and he enjoyed that kind of reputation, because they often 07:25 sent him some rather serious cases of Schizophrenia. 07:30 Now the kind of herbs that we use are just general herbs 07:36 for the brain or for the mind 07:39 one of those is St. John's Wort. 07:41 Now you may have heard that St. John's Wort is no good 07:45 for depression or for any kind of mental illness. 07:49 A man by the name of Shelton did a large study 07:53 and published that, I think it was in 2003 07:57 or 2004, and he concluded that in the end of his study 08:02 that there was no benefit in St. John's Wort. 08:05 No more benefit than in a placebo. 08:09 When I saw that study published 08:12 in a prominent medical journal 08:16 I thought there must be something wrong 08:18 with this research, because we have had some very good 08:22 results at Uchee Pines Institute, with St. John's Wort. 08:26 So I investigated a little bit, I found out that 08:30 Pfizer a prominent drug company in United States 08:34 funded the research. 08:36 Immediately some red flags went up 08:38 and I thought Pfizer is the manufacturer of Zoloft 08:44 A very commonly used anti-depressant agent 08:49 available in drug stores all over. 08:53 So I thought that was one big red flag 08:57 I thought here is something to be suspicious about. 09:01 Then the second thing that I was suspicious about 09:06 that there were five very large studies done on 09:10 St. John's Wort, showing to be effective 09:14 using very carefully structured research projects 09:19 and those researchers discovered that St. John's Wort 09:24 was really quite effective. 09:25 So I wondered if these two things might be sufficient 09:31 to make it so that I should just 09:33 just discount this study altogether, but as I read 09:37 some reviews done by some 09:39 researchers in the field of agriculture 09:41 and botanicals, at The Department of Agriculture 09:47 in Washington. 09:48 I found out that there were some other things as well 09:52 One was that they virtually told the patients 09:56 that they were giving them 09:58 something that was ineffectual 10:00 because they instituted very strong anti-suicidal 10:05 programs to let the patients know that, 10:08 if they felt suicidal just let them know 10:11 and they would help them with something 10:15 that would affect their mental brightness. 10:19 Well that would essentially tell me 10:21 if I were on that program 10:23 that the test agent is something that is not effective 10:27 either it's the placebo, or its an agent 10:30 they don't expect to be very effective. 10:33 Then the fact that the researchers did not compare 10:39 St. John's Wort with Zoloft 10:42 was also very interesting 10:44 why did they not set up the double blinded study 10:47 with three agents, the placebo, the herb, and their own Zoloft. 10:53 That was the thing that had been recommended 10:56 by all of the researchers who had done research 10:59 on St. John's Wort prior to that. 11:01 So as with many studies that have been done 11:05 using herbal remedies, or herbal substances 11:10 I have flawed the study 11:13 because it was not properly structured, 11:16 and this one I think we can also flaw, 11:19 you may feel quite free to use St. John's Wort 11:24 in any kind of emotional or mental disorder 11:27 and expect that you will get some benefit. 11:30 Now in addition to St. John's Wort 11:33 I usually use something like Ginkgo which increases 11:39 the blood flow to the central nervous system 11:41 and can be very effective that way. 11:44 Furthermore if the person has some dominant symptom 11:49 like, they are excited or anxious, or irritated, 11:54 or nervous, I will usually give something like catnip, 11:59 or skullcap, or valerian root that tends to be calming 12:04 to these individuals. 12:06 So armed with this kind of information 12:12 I hope that you can feel that you can be of benefit 12:16 to those who have some kind mental or emotional difficulty 12:20 who are among your friends or family. 12:24 Now we have a number of other problems 12:27 in our modern health scene. 12:32 One of those is bio-accumulation 12:35 and bio-magnification. 12:37 Those are very big words, and Dr. Miller 12:41 what do those big words mean? 12:43 There very simple, as a matter of fact, 12:45 if you live where we live down there on the 12:47 Chattahoochee River you will find that this is a major topic 12:50 they don't these words 12:52 but the problem we have living near the 12:54 Chattahoochee River, although we don't have it 12:56 those in Columbus do, is up river 12:58 it goes to the city of Atlanta. 13:00 Now Atlanta likes to dump some of their sewage 13:04 into the Chattahoochee River. 13:05 See the old mindset used to be that dilution 13:10 was the solution to pollution. 13:11 You put a certain amount of a pollutant, 13:15 in a large amount of water or air, or land 13:18 and it will dilute out no problem. 13:21 Trouble is we're finding toxic levels of raw sewage 13:25 in the water now a hundred miles south in the 13:29 city of Columbus Georgia. 13:30 That's what we might call bio-accumulation, 13:32 basically at the first atrophic level 13:35 we start having pollutants accumulating 13:38 wherever that might be. 13:39 Now as we have that problem 13:41 we have the people down there on the banks of the river 13:44 fishing for fish, who are living in this polluted water. 13:48 Well sometimes you've got in that water 13:49 or always in that water, you've got little plankton 13:52 that are living off of the water and the sunshine 13:55 and they will be absorbing into the little organisms 13:58 a certain amount of the toxins coming down from upstream. 14:02 You will have some herbivorous fish 14:04 which will eat this plankton and it will further accumulate 14:08 or magnify, this is where we have bio-magnification 14:12 in its little body, then we have a big old bass 14:15 a carnivorous fish eating that little herbivorous fish 14:18 it will magnify more it its body and then the fisherman 14:22 catches this bass, very proud of himself 14:24 goes home, filets it, fries it, and eats it 14:27 not knowing that he is getting a huge amount of the toxins 14:31 that came from upstream. 14:32 Now there are various things that we have in our society 14:37 that are giving us great problems with this problem 14:39 of bio-magnification, and bio-accumulation 14:42 we see this in our food chain. 14:44 I read a book some years ago by a veterinarian 14:47 and basically the way they were feeding the chickens 14:50 is, the conveyor belt goes in front of chickens 14:53 with their food, and another conveyor belt behind them 14:56 picks up their waste, and it gets to the one end 14:59 and they mix the waste with more food, 15:01 and more growth hormones, 15:03 and goes right back through again 15:04 and so, the animal eats over and over again, 15:07 this more and more concentrated levels of these nutrients 15:10 or these growth hormones, 15:12 which are going to cause a huge problem 15:14 in their particular bodies and so we need 15:16 to stay away from this. 15:17 A really good example in the 1950's of this problem 15:21 before we really recognized it as a problem. 15:24 You see back during World War II 15:25 in the South Pacific during World War II 15:28 there was a big problem with Malaria. 15:30 Well the scientists got together and came up 15:32 with a very good insecticide 15:35 to kill the mosquitoes. 15:36 That insecticide is called DDT. 15:38 In the 1950's they were having a Malaria breakout 15:42 in the country of Borneo 15:44 and so the world health organization 15:46 had airplanes fly over and spray the whole are with DDT. 15:51 It worked like a charm, see the people were dying 15:54 of Malaria, now they killed the mosquitoes 15:57 and Malaria fell, that's the good news. 16:00 The bad news is, besides the Malaria falling 16:02 the roofs started falling. 16:04 You see the DDT, was killing the little parasitic 16:07 wasps that flew around there 16:09 and the parasitic wasps would kill 16:11 the thatch eating caterpillars. 16:14 Well now the thatch eating caterpillars were thriving 16:16 and so they were eating the thatch 16:18 and causing the roofs to fall in. 16:20 But the other insects that were being killed 16:22 were falling to the ground and being eaten by the geckos, 16:24 and start to magnify in the bodies, and the cats 16:27 would eat the geckos, because they are easy prey now 16:31 accumulate in their bodies to the point where 16:33 they would die of the DDT overdose 16:35 and then the rats started to thrive 16:38 and they started to be threatened with Typhus 16:39 and the Plague. 16:40 So what the World Health Organization had to do 16:43 is fly over airplane, and parachute cats down 16:46 to this area of Borneo, because 16:50 Bio-accumulation and Bio-magnification 16:53 so upset the eco-system, that they had to somehow 16:57 try to get back in there and restore it 16:59 into the proper levels. 17:00 and so we see this a lot in our societies today 17:04 as we see our oceans. 17:06 I remember a number of years ago 17:07 when Jacques Cousteau died, within a month 17:11 they had written his memoirs, or published his memoirs 17:14 and he said within 20 years the oceans will be dead 17:17 Now there not dead yet, but they are dying 17:20 you go to the deepest rifts of the oceans, 17:23 and pull up any living organisms you will find 17:26 significant amounts of different toxins 17:28 and one of them which will be DDT. 17:31 As we consume these products, as we consume products 17:36 especially animal products, which seem to store the toxins 17:41 or accumulate these toxins and magnify the toxins 17:43 in their bodies. 17:44 If we eat those animals, we ourselves are getting 17:47 a massive dose. 17:48 It is better to buy the fruits, vegetables, whole grains, 17:51 nuts, and seeds, wash them off and eat them. 17:54 You may be getting a small amount of pollutants but 17:58 no where near the amount 17:59 that you are going to get from eating animal products 18:02 that accumulate them and magnify them 18:03 and so I think Dr. Thrash 18:04 that we should just stay away from these things. 18:07 Dr. Miller I understood that in this country 18:09 the DDT had been outlawed. 18:11 It has been outlawed in this, 18:13 of course it has been replaced with DDD 18:15 and what we did when we were no longer producing 18:18 DDT for ourselves, we start selling it overseas 18:21 and we get much of our exotic produce from overseas 18:24 and so we are going to get the residues from there 18:26 plus a fish that grows over here 18:28 swims a thousand miles over here 18:31 or they catch the fish over there, 18:33 we're going to get it one way or the other. 18:34 Yes, I can see how that would certainly be true. 18:37 Another problem that we have in modern times is Aids. 18:42 Aids are auto-immune deficiency disorder 18:46 is a very serious problem in some countries of Africa. 18:50 There are very few adults alive in cities. 18:55 The major people who are there are just children 18:58 under 20 years of age. 19:01 So it can be a most serious problem. 19:04 Is there something that we can do that can help 19:08 with the disease after it has already developed 19:11 or when it develops in children who have a lifestyle 19:18 that is not conducive to the disease 19:20 but never the less, they get it from their parents. 19:23 Yes there a number of thing that we can do 19:25 we had a man who had full blown Aids, 19:29 was in the hospital with pneumocystis pneumonia 19:33 in France, we never did see the patient, 19:36 but he called, his family called urgently 19:40 requesting that we take him at our institute. 19:43 They realized that there were no drugs 19:47 and standard medicine at that time that were effective, 19:49 and they wanted to try some simple remedies 19:53 and felt that we were the best place possible for him to get, 19:58 that they knew of for him to get this treatment. 20:01 The family were quite well to do and they were willing to 20:05 fly him in an ambulance plane 20:06 all the way to Uchee Pines 20:09 so that we could treat him. 20:11 We explained to them that 20:14 we don't take Aids patients 20:17 because of the way that we are set up with students 20:20 and the like, and the fact that our situation 20:23 is not such that we can have an infectious patient 20:27 in with our other patients. 20:29 So we said we can't take him here, 20:33 but we will do what we can to try to help you 20:36 to treat him there. 20:37 So we them all the things that we would do 20:41 the herbs that we would use, 20:43 the various hydrotherapy measures that we would use 20:47 the kind of diet for the man, 20:49 and the outcome of it was that in a few months 20:54 his lymph nodes had gone down, 20:58 and he was feeling much better 21:01 eventually after almost a year he went back to work again 21:06 and he lived on for several more years. 21:08 Then the time came when he decided that he did not like 21:14 staying on the routine that we had given him 21:16 he did not like being in the lifestyle 21:19 that we felt would be the most conducive to good health 21:22 and so he went back into his old lifestyle 21:24 with drinking and carousing 21:27 and the things that he had been prone to do beforehand 21:31 and within about six months he was dead. 21:34 Now was he going to die anyway? 21:36 We don't know that, but, we do know 21:38 that he did have a good response. 21:41 We had another man in California 21:43 almost the same scene, including the fact 21:46 that he went back into the old lifestyle 21:49 and was dead in just a few months 21:51 after he returned to it. 21:53 So these two patients that we have had 21:55 that we have not taken to Uchee Pines 21:57 but have treated them through the families 22:00 this has nerved us to feel that the simple remedies 22:05 can be quite effective in at least forestalling 22:09 the immediate outcome of a full blown case of Aids. 22:13 and making that disease regress into a HIV positive state 22:18 but without the full blown Aids. 22:21 Now some refinements of what we did 22:24 we gave fever treatments 22:26 in which we brought the fever of the person 22:30 up to 104, at first they were not able to take 22:34 that high level of raising the body temperature 22:38 but as time progressed, they were able to take 22:42 the heat treatments, so that the mouth temperature 22:46 went up to 104. 22:48 This is done every day for five days 22:51 then a rest of two days 22:52 they repeat this three times for three weeks 22:56 and then take a rest of a week 22:58 then the series is repeated, 23:01 another rest of a week 23:03 the series is repeated a third time 23:05 and this time a rest for a month. 23:08 This kind of treatment with a fever 23:10 is carried on for a full year. 23:14 A plant based diet is the most effective 23:19 to boost the effectiveness of the immune system 23:21 and a number of herbs are also very good. 23:25 Garlic is very good, it is also anti-microbial 23:29 and for any benefit that it might be for the retrovirus 23:33 we use that as well. 23:35 We use ashwaganda, the golden seal, 23:41 the Echinacea, all of these are know to boost 23:44 the effectiveness of the immune system 23:46 and to help the person get in full control 23:49 of their disease if that is possible. 23:52 So we know that there is 23:55 benefit for the person with Aids 23:57 whether we can ever see a person cured 24:00 is a matter for research. 24:03 Now another problem that we're having in our age 24:08 is that of zoonoses, 24:11 we have several that are known today to be 24:15 associated with the animal kingdom 24:18 and Dr. Miller is going to talk with you about that now. 24:21 Of course it is interesting that is zoonosis are peculiar 24:25 to the animal kingdom basically a zoonotic disease 24:28 is a disease that is transmissible from an animal 24:30 to the human. 24:31 Let me just read off a little list as Dr. Thrash 24:34 has been talking, I just decided to write down 24:36 a small list, and think about what all these have in common: 24:39 SARS, Aids, West Nile Virus Ebola, E-coli, monkey pox, 24:44 flu, worms, lymes, Creutzfeldt-Jakobs 24:48 and we could go on and on. 24:50 As a matter of fact I was on the internet 24:51 the other day, and I was looking up diseases acquired 24:54 from animals. 24:55 I've got a long list from horses, 24:57 a long list from cows, 24:58 a long list from sheep and goats, 25:00 a long list of course from rodents, 25:02 a long list from rabbits, hares, and pikas, 25:05 cats, dogs, mans best friend. 25:10 We see a large amount of new diseases 25:13 coming from this basically melting pot of disease sump 25:18 that we have. 25:19 Matter of fact I read an article 25:20 not long ago saying that, probably at least 25:23 75% of all new diseases are coming from the animal kingdom. 25:28 Where do are flu come from? 25:30 Our flu come from that little melting pot 25:33 of diseases over there in the 25:34 China and Hong Kong area where you have got 25:36 ducks, chickens and pigs, and humans and drugs 25:40 drugs all living in close proximity. 25:42 They are growing these super strains of bugs, 25:45 and that's why we get all these different strains of bugs 25:47 the Hong Kong flu, the swine flu, 25:50 the Avian flu, all these different things 25:52 are coming into our systems. 25:54 I was in Siberia a couple of years ago 25:57 just after this big SARS thing came out, 26:00 and one of the doctors in the seminar 26:03 that we were teaching there. 26:04 She said you know it's interesting 26:06 I just came from a symposium before I 26:09 came here to this seminar, way over 26:11 there in Eastern Russia and they were talking about SARS. 26:16 There was something interesting 26:17 they found out about Sars. 26:19 Vegetarians either do not get it, or get 26:22 very mild cases of the SARS. 26:25 I thought well that's a pretty nice reason 26:28 to become a vegetarian, because SARS was 26:30 a really scary thing over there. 26:32 We find that lifestyle and the Aids, 26:34 and many of these diseases, if just take care of ourselves... 26:37 We are living in a time when I believe 26:40 the whole animal kingdom is diseased, 26:43 and we need to be as much as possible 26:45 putting some type of a barrier between animals and ourselves. 26:48 Especially don't eat the things, 26:51 and if you have an animal in your environment, 26:53 make sure that animal is healthy. 26:55 You are finding today that animals have 26:58 the same diseases as humans: 27:00 Diabetes, cancer, coronary heart disease 27:03 they all have the same thing because, they're 27:07 eating like we are eating, and we are starting 27:10 to get diseases passing between the species. 27:13 This is a dangerous thing Dr. Thrash 27:15 So I think that zoonotic diseases need 27:17 to be studied a little bit more carefully. 27:19 Yes, and interestingly also some of the 27:21 same things that we found in humans, 27:24 will help them, will also help animals. 27:26 So veterinarians, I have a friend who is 27:29 a veterinarian who comes to me often, 27:31 and has some little pet that she is 27:35 really working at diligently, and asks 27:37 me how I would treat a human if they had that same disorder. 27:44 So while we can't claim to cure a lot of diseases 27:50 that are Modern Society Diseases, 27:53 we can try to understand them 27:55 and protect ourselves from them. |
Revised 2014-12-17