SURVIVING HEALTHCARE

To understand this book, you only need to remember a few bio-identical hormone names— estradiol, progesterone, testosterone, and thyroids, which include porcine, T4, and T3 . If you read outside sources, you must learn others. Return to this reference chapter as needed.  Hormones work by attaching to receptor molecules in the human body, and since the natural ones are identical or nearly identical...

Menopause information is everywhere—some good, some bad, and all of it confusing. Many authorities call this unpleasant syndrome “natural” and recommend ignoring it. But hormones greatly improve women’s health and menopause symptoms.  June is 49 : She started estradiol, progesterone, and testosterone eight weeks ago: Hey, doing well on my hormones. About two months in now. My energy is up, as is m...

Estradiol has the most dramatic effects of any hormone. Its benefits include: ✪ Helps the heart more than other hormones.  ✪ Decreases the risks of cataracts, vaginal atrophy, and macular degeneration of the retina .  ✪ Reduces the chances of stroke, diabetes, colon cancer, Alzheimer’s, memory problems, and osteoporosis.   ✪ Cures hot flashes and improves sexuality.  From the Los Angeles Times , 1...

Estradiol has the most dramatic effects of any hormone. Its benefits include: ✪ Helps the heart more than other hormones.  ✪ Decreases the risks of cataracts, vaginal atrophy, and macular degeneration of the retina .  ✪ Reduces the chances of stroke, diabetes, colon cancer, Alzheimer’s, memory problems, and osteoporosis.   ✪ Cures hot flashes and improves sexuality.  From the Los Angeles Times , 1...

Men need testosterone. The benefits are enormous and the risks almost nonexistent. To learn how the bad press was contrived, read the Killing Testosterone With Fake News chapter later.  Steven is an 82-year-old retired CEO of a major media company: I had lost all strength, and I was sitting in a wheelchair in a Palm Springs nursing home. The staff had to lift me in and out of bed. I was inches fro...

Which replacements do men and women sense the most? Many women feel distinct improvements when they use thyroid, estrogen, testosterone, or progesterone. Some have dramatic responses to vitamin D. For men, testosterone is the most noticeable and some feel better with HGH. A few older men improve when they only take DHEA. See Appendix A and B for dosing and blood testing information about each horm...

Cui Bono, the Latin phrase meaning “who benefits,” says the motive for an act or crime lies with the person who has something to gain. Only twenty percent of our senior women and even fewer men take hormones. Outside Europe and the US, usage is rare. How is this possible? The “bio-identical” or “human” forms of these drugs are not promoted because they can rarely be patented to make the big money....

Testosterone is claimed to cause prostate cancer, heart disease, and stroke. This is all false. In 1990, Congress made testosterone and other anabolic steroids class III controlled substances. The penalties for selling and even possessing them became felonies like those for cocaine. At the Senate hearings, representatives for the FDA, DEA, the National Institute on Drug Abuse, and even the America...

The human growth hormone (HGH) story is a variation of the others. The punch line is that if it was economical and unrestricted, it might be the most valuable hormone of all. It is likely the safest. Steven is a gay 72-year-old cosmetic surgeon who practices in West Los Angeles. He hangs out with a string of young, good-looking partners. Steven used testosterone, DHEA, and vitamin D for six months...

Lance Armstrong beat the French at their national sports: drugging, lying, and cycling.* US federal prosecutors tried to fine him $100 million. Their goal was to boost their careers by destroying people, and a superstar turned villain was a perfect candidate. They spent tens of millions of taxpayer dollars and settled for $5 million—an abject loss.  Whatever you think of Armstrong, the French, pro...

Thyroid “quarterbacks” the entire metabolism. It regulates and activates many body processes and is essential for energy and weight control. Borderline low or “hypothyroid” conditions are common, under-treated, and seven times more likely in women. Treatment is safe and should be general primary care rather than being stashed in a subspecialty.  Judy is 40 years old: When I was 35, I started getti...

Randy’s words from a website about Armour porcine thyroid: I, too, was doing great on Armour. No more. They put me on levothyroxine [synthetic T4] and Cytomel [synthetic T3] . I felt awful, so depressed... Drugmakers fake and suppress their studies. Knoll Pharmaceuticals, the Synthroid maker, hid one showing that their drug was no better than the other thyroids. Knoll paid more than $100 million t...

Robert L. Morgan, NP, who practiced in the Houston area, contributed this chapter (edited by the first author). He attracted patients who failed elsewhere.  Texas is the tenth most obese state, and we are pitifully overweight. I have been fighting this for over 30 years, and I have been losing. Against my efforts stand big Food, doctors, big Pharma, and meddling government. This cabal wittingly or...

PREFACE If you do not know by now that corporations have disfigured healthcare, you have been living under a rock. For example, hormone therapy is claimed to be hazardous, but a century’s science and experience prove its value. When these natural substances are low or absent, replacing them may be the safest and most effective treatment we have. In contrast, drugs are foreign substances that cause...

I am now retired, but I spent the last thirty years in private practice performing cosmetic surgery and sometimes assisting with my patients’ medical care. Most of the women I worked with who were over 50 years old suffered from poor sleep, fatigue, hot flashes, muscle wasting, and irritability. They were all looking for a way to feel better and a lot were taking antidepressants. Many thought that...

Medicine has become a pseudo-religion; our patients must be gently encouraged into apostasy and renunciation...   [We have all] been enslaved by the medical–industrial complex, and it is time we rebelled. Society needs to reach a new accommodation with old age and death. Seamus O’Mahony, Can Medicine Be Cured  (2019) Here is the silver lining: when you better understand your fragile life and the l...

How modern psychiatry developed: A few decades ago, psychiatrists were losing their status. Then, the fabrication of new diagnoses along with the invention of medications to treat them saved them economically. First the antidepressants, and then the newer antipsychotics came to the rescue. This moved the specialty into the medical mainstream because the psychiatrists were the only ones who purport...

The medical profession is being bought by the pharmaceutical industry, not only in terms of the practice of medicine, but also in terms of teaching and research. The academic institutions of this country are allowing themselves to be the paid agents of the pharmaceutical industry .  Arnold Relman, MD, former editor NEJM (2002) I wrote about a thousand Prozac-type SSRI prescriptions over my career,...

Introduction. By 2019, opioids were killing approximately 50,000 US citizens a year, up from 8,000 in 1999. This is more deaths than firearms (33,000), breast cancer (41,000), HIV (15,000), or motor vehicle accidents (37,000). In 2018-2019, the total fatalities exceeded our combined combat deaths in Iraq, Vietnam, and Afghanistan. Until recently, prescription rather than street opioids caused the...

We used to have a name for sufferers of ADHD. We called them boys. Anonymous Background: For opioids, the deaths, addiction, and social destruction are the drug industry’s fault—there is no controversy. There is now an anemic effort to fine and sometimes imprison a handful of people who were partly responsible for the death of more individuals than most wars.  There is no consensus, however, for t...

We have allowed our patent drugmakers to gouge us so thoroughly that we can no longer afford their products. The result is that ninety percent of America’s medications are now generics. Until recently, I believed that these were practically equivalent to the brand names, but it stunned me to learn I was wrong.  Generics are not exact copies of trade-name drugs. The manufacturers do not have the or...

Drug World is a shocking place. We must face this unpleasant reality if we do not want to surrender our health to corporate marketers. Few doctors understand and fewer admit that our system is nearly anarchy. Inside the Pharma companies, the denial is even deeper. They have hundreds of thousands of nice, well-meaning, and even idealistic people. Peter Rost explains in his book Whistleblower (2006)...

Most physicians view psychiatrists as somewhat feral animals. We suspect—with some justification—that many of their ideas are hot air. Unlike any other specialty, psychiatrists take care of people with normal labs and radiologic tests. They keep only patients with purely subjective problems. Psychiatrists pass patients who have “organic” issues such as thyroid disease to others. These are the ones...

I want to sell drugs to everyone. I want to sell drugs to healthy people. I want drugs to sell like chewing gum . Henry Gadsden, former CEO of Merck, which developed some of the first medications that patients needed to take indefinitely, including the statin Mevacor (lovastatin) (1976) We expect hucksterism about the benefits of cars, clothes, and beauty treatments. But it surprises us when it co...

We overpay the big pharmaceutical corporations for their drugs with tax and insurance funds, and then they use the money to carpet-bomb the Internet and media with marketing. They hijack legitimate advocacy groups and charities into this process with massive donations. They create some of these organizations out of whole cloth to promote sales.  Direct-to-consumer ads blanket the media. These are...