SURVIVING HEALTHCARE

If you already know a lot and want to cut to the chase, see HERE.Butchered by “Healthcare,” my book about healthcare corruption, took me three years to research and write. Even with this background, it was September 2021 before I understood Covid, the vaccine frauds, and why therapies were being hidden. So I am not critical of people who don’t get it yet. My mission is to explain the scene for those who do not have my training.  The following is well understood in hospitals, even by janitors:1)    Kids should NOT get the vaccine because it kills far more of them than covid (over 100 x more). 2)   Pregnant women should NOT get the shot. Some studies show that it kills 80 percent of their babies.3)   There have been 128 studies that have concluded that once you get C19 you can’t get it again, even the new variants (and about half US citizens have already been infected.) The vax confers no immunity and many vaccinated still die from covid. 4)   Of those in the hospitals with C19, 60% in the US, 80% in the UK, 90% in Israel have already been vaxed.FOR THE FULL NOTES, CLICK HERE: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1GYAA5bAEwgl1We6K8A9A7wDBK4ocD_34fXVpMhar5nE/edit?usp=sharingSupport the show

Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.Eric HofferUrology’s approach to this disease has undergone an embarrassing outing. The specialty traditionally recommends that the surgeon draw blood for prostate-specific antigen (PSA). The urologists also insert their finger into the patient's rectum to feel for prostate lumps.If the blood test is high, or the surgeon feels nodules, they stick a large needle repeatedly through the rectum into the prostate to get tissue samples. If the biopsy shows cancer, urologists recommend perilous surgeries or other alarming therapies. This system has been discredited because it never improved survival rates for early disease.  The cancer is present but inactive in most men over 50. Only about twelve percent of men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer during their lives, and their five-year relative survival rate for this cancer after it is diagnosed (the percent with the disease who are alive compared to matched controls) is 97.8 percent. Ignoring it in the early stages produces the same results as treatment, but without the horrific surgical complications. The commonly performed operation, a radical prostatectomy, causes death in 1/200. Compromised or ruined sexuality and uncontrollable urination requiring diapers are common, often for the rest of a man’s life.Some patients already have metastatic cancer before surgery. In these cases, it kills the patient even though he has suffered through the grisly procedure and recovery. The PSA test is unreliable. It increases with any irritation of the gland due to factors such as infection or even bicycle riding. Antibiotics or anti-inflammatories are the treatments, not surgery. The vast majority of these tumors grow so slowly that death occurs from something else before the disease becomes an issue. PSA is little help to identify aggressive cancers that would be fatal. Here is a little math: The USPSTF (US Preventive Services Task Force) did a large-scale analysis of the research literature. They concluded that for every 1,000 men ages 55 to 69 who had their PSA checked every one to four years for a decade, it would save one man from prostate cancer. The number needed to test is 1000, over 10,000 patient-years, and who knows how many tests, possibly 50,000. Even if you believe these small numbers are meaningful, the cost-benefit ratio is terrible. False-positive PSAs lead to biopsies, which have complications just like the true positives. Men with biopsies that show cancer get surgery or other treatments. The harms resulting from these interventions include erectile dysfunction, urinary incontinence, serious cardiovascular events, deep vein thrombosis, pulmonary embolism, and occasionally death. Checking PSA in asymptomatic men produces no improvement in survival. The American Veterans Administration “PIVOT” trial compared surgery versus observation for localized prostate cancer over 13 years. There was no statistically or clinically significant difference in either all-cause (absolute survival) or even disease-specific mortality (relative survival). Prostate removal surgery is a net harm.A Scandinavian study looked at 695 men with prostate cancer. They were divided into two groups. One had radical prostatectomy surgery, the other “watchful waiting.” With the surgery, the men were half as likely to die of the cancer (relative death rate). Their overall death rates from all causes (absolute deaths) at five and ten years were identical to those who did notSupport the show

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, 1999: I could live without my husband, children, or cats. But I could never live without my beloved estrogen. Who should use estrogen and how much? Menopausal women and sometimes men transitioning to women are prescribed estrogen. Men with prostate cancer are also occasionally treated with it. Women in menopause should start at 1.5 milligrams in the morning, then increase to 2 to 2.5 milligrams. This brings blood levels up to about 70 pg/ml, which protects the heart and other organs. We believe this is safe because young, healthy women have estrogen levels in the hundreds during parts of their cycle. Premarin, the horse estrogen, was the first treatment for menopause. It has many beneficial effects, but it causes a slight increase in blood clotting. This makes it obsolete for long-term use. Estradiol, the primary bio-identical type, is safer. Every study on it—KEEPS, EPAT, WEST, CORA, DANISH, and ELITE (those academics love acronyms)—found no increase in blood clotting. Although the estradiol transdermal patch may provide the best relief of hot flashes and does not cause blood clots, it does not protect against heart disease. In contrast, both types of oral estrogen protect the heart. This was proven in many studies, including the CORA, ELITE, WEST, and DANISH. Since many medical authorities think that oral estradiol and oral Premarin are the same things with the same risks, they often recommend using the patch if there are concerns about blood clotting. Doctors should instead prescribe brand name, generic, or compounded oral estradiol. These are safe and protect against heart disease and stroke. Doctors are usually hesitant to prescribe oral estrogens for sick patients or those with heart risk factors such as smoking, obesity, or a family history. They use the patch for them if they recommend hormones at all. However, as I describe in the Be Careful Whom You Trust chapter, these are precisely the patients who need cardiac protection the most. In nearly every situation, their risk to reward ratio favors the oral type. We should accept the minor hazard of blood clotting to protect their hearts. Dr. Rouzier describes these issues in a well-referenced article.Surgeons and anesthesiologists have many responsibilities, and they rarely read the confusing estrogen studies closely. Since blood clots after surgery are such a hazard, most of them tell their patients to stop all replacement before surgery. Some gynecologists are adamant about this. Estradiol is available as generic, compounded, or patented varieties. Hormone doctors mostly recommend a compounding pharmacy's product because generics are less predictable and the patent type is too expensive if not paid for by insurance. Brand names from foreign sources made by major manufacturers are often affordable and of excellent quality. Estradiol patches such as Vivelle Dot (twice a week) or Climara (once a week) may relieve menopause symptoms better than the oral forms. The higher dose of .1 mg a day works best. To help the transdermal patch stick, patients scrub the area with alcohol before they apply it. The device sometimes causes skin irritaSupport the show

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 to those made by our glands, they fit like the real thing. Manufactured medicines are foreign substances never found in the body’s ecosystem that are made from animals or chemicals. These do not match as closely as the bio-identicals, do not work as well, and have side effects. They are still useful in a few circumstances but should never be taken long-term. I call them “counterfeit” or “fake” to help you sort out the issues. For example, progesterone is bio-identical. In contrast, Provera is a synthetic progesterone imitation. It raises the chances of migraines, weight gain, heart disease, breast cancer, depression, and irregular bleeding. Pregnant women taking it get more miscarriages and their babies have more congenital disabilities. Drugmakers invent sexy copyrighted brand names for their profitable patented compounds. This allows patients to harass doctors by saying, “I saw an ad for…” Pharma also creates chemical names that are hard to pronounce and remember. The brand Celebrex, for example, is the chemical celecoxib—try saying that one. The advantage for the manufacturer is that when medications go off-patent and are sold as generics, the chemical is more difficult to recall than the recognizable brand. The drugmakers use the names to confuse. Progestin, progestogen, and Provera, the artificial ones, sound like natural progesterone. And Premarin, the horse-urine estrogen (this name was from PRegnant MAre’s uRINe), gets mixed up with Provera, the synthetic progesterone. These strategies work, so the doctors are just as bewildered as you are:✪ Many journal articles make no distinction between bio-identical progesterone and progestins/progestogens such as Provera. They call both of these progesterone, which implies there is little difference. ✪ Likewise, medical articles call many related substances estrogens, which is accurate but fools both doctors and patients into thinking that they are all alike. Technically, estrogens include bio-identical estradiol, the counterfeits such as Premarin, and the other relatively weak human estrogens, estrone and estriol. These last two are bio-identical but are almost inactive and cause some health issues. ✪ Hormone replacement therapy (HRT) sometimes refers to treatment with bio-identicals and sometimes to treatment with the counterfeits!Support the show

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 American Medical Association all testified that these medications were safe and had important medical uses. But grandstanding about sports use prevailed. Anabolic steroids became the first Schedule III drugs without euphoric or consciousness-altering properties. In 2016, the Food and Drug Administration tightened the regulatory pressure by slapping a “black box warning” on testosterone. It claimed that the hormone caused strokes and heart disease. From then on, they only sanctioned its use for patients with genetic, cancerous, traumatic, or chemotherapy-related damage to the testicles or brain. The FDA also alleged that it should only be used for men with blood levels below 300 ng/dl, confirmed on at least two occasions. In their eyes, other applications were illegitimate. Two clumsily concocted articles supported this stance. But Mark Richards, MD, and Abraham Morgentaler, MD, debunked these with letters to the journals demanding their retraction. Morgentaler is the Harvard physician representing the Androgen Study Group, and Richards is a practicing hormone specialist. Both physicians also wrote letters to the FDA. Dr. Rouzier wrote a review of this issue as well. All this was ignored. Richards’ well-referenced article tells the entire story. He writes that low, not high testosterone is the major risk for heart disease. And according to a comprehensive Mayo Clinic review, testosterone decreases the chance of dying of heart disease.What about prostate cancer? Dozens of studies show no relationship to testosterone, and men with higher levels have a reduced risk. The medical literature says testosterone supplementation is healthy. The Mayo Clinic’s International Expert Consensus Resolution statement ratifies this view. A review in the Journal of the Endocrine Society (2019) describes the hormone as an anti-inflammatory.Testosterone converts to estrogen in the body. This not only suppresses prostate cancer but has been used to treat it. In addition, prostate cancer is much more common Support the show

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 getting depressed and was chronically exhausted. I was losing my hair and felt cold all the time. I was constipated, grumpy, and had no interest in sex. I had to direct my kids from the couch because I didn’t have the energy to chase them around. All my doctors insisted my tests were normal, and that I was a hypochondriac. They finally gave me pork thyroid. After a month, my energy went from a two to a nine out of ten, and I got my husband back.Treatment benefits: Thyroid supplementation for appropriate patients protects against heart disease, diabetes, and memory loss. It improves hair, nails, and skin. Balancing the thyroid improves menopause symptoms, and studies have shown lower death rates for treated people. When thyroid is low, people get fat, tired, inactive, disinterested in sex, and are more likely to develop heart disease. Erectile dysfunction is more frequent. Other symptoms include dry skin, hair loss, insomnia, brittle nails, constipation, bone and joint pain, poor concentration, trouble getting started in the morning, and cold extremities with cold intolerance. Untreated hypothyroid patients often have medical problems including depression and coronary artery disease. Vertebral fractures are more likely, especially over 50 years old. Hypertension, premature births, rheumatoid arthritis, and metabolic syndrome have all been linked to low thyroid conditions. Two kinds of bio-identical thyroid hormones are used for replacement, and both are vital for health. T3 has three iodine molecules and T4 has four. Desiccated pork thyroid has both types along with a few inconsequential pig thyroids. According to hormone doctors, it is the most bio-identical thyroid medication available. Physicians have used this inexpensive drug since the late 19th century. Endocrinologists and other mainstream doctors mainly prescribe pure T4 made in the lab, which was until 2004 a patented drug. T4 converts to T3 in the body, and they believe that this creates adequate T3. But it does not work well for everyone, especially women over 40. Since T3 is far more active than T4, people who cannot convert properly have poor results when they take only T4.For these patients, endocrinologists prefer to add synthetic T3 to the synthetic T4 instead of using the pork type, which contains both in one pill. When carefully dosed, these manufactured medications work fine, but they may not be as well absorbed as the other one. They are useful for people with a pig allergy and for Jewish or Muslim people who are not supposed to eat pigs.T3 is stronger and shorter-acting than T4, so patients sense its effects sooner than T4. Since getting patients to return for follow-up is sometimes difficult, using a drug containing T3 may help them understand the process is worthwhile. Since the thyroid’s effects are long-lasting, the medication should be adjusted about once a month.  Endocrinologists train for three years in internal medicine after four years of medical school, then spend a felSupport the show

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 unwittingly caused the international obesity crisis. They subsidize sugary corn products, oppose fat consumption, and have cold-shouldered effective treatments including diet pills and thyroid hormone. I have had minor victories patient-by-patient, and these have cost me years of struggle.No one is sure about the cause of the obesity pandemic. But the national directive to decrease dietary fat came out at about the time we got really overweight. This is not a coincidence—it is a cause. Other theories went as far afield as blaming bacteria in the intestine, but for me, walking into any grocery store or convenience mart makes it obvious that the core problem is corporate food production. Who can resist the tastes, the color, the packaging, and the marketing? Everything is sweet, fat, and salty.  To put the obesity disaster into context, compare us with people in Korea and Japan. Americans who travel there are shocked—everyone looks fit! You can see their back and leg muscles through the clothes. Food habits must be more powerful than corporate influences. Even within the US, obesity rates vary from 23 percent in Colorado to 37 percent in Arkansas. These cultural differences must be a clue to causes. The corporations are making us fat as well. Many antidepressants, diabetic medications, and synthetic hormones cause weight gain. Paid-up doctors and direct advertising force-feed us these drugs and others. The Food and Drug Administration’s function is to oversee both industries, but big Food and big Pharma control it with funding. Since the FDA is incompetent as well as compromised, it does many wrong things, and all this makes us fatter. (See Born With a Junk Food Deficiency, 2012, for more.) The result is many of us have an addiction to food as powerful as others have to opioids. The morbidly obese die just like drug overdoses. I have no prayer of getting rid of marketing or food packaging. Individual patients’ cooperation limits my ability to get take them off harmful medications. So I do what I can with diet pills, which suppress appetite and aid weight loss. There is a catch. Patients gain the weight back unless their metabolism is normal or made normal using hormone supplementation. Thyroid deficiency is epidemic, and testosterone levels have been falling in our entire population. The decline of these two contributes to obesity. Replacing them for deficient people is the most effective way to keep weight off long-term, but most doctors ignore this.Hormone replacement can kick off a gradual weight loss that continues for a decade. It works without other prescriptions, but some patients benefit from using diet pills. These are not ideal solutions, but our lives are being threatened. My program works—many of my patients have sustained a healthy weight for years. The drug industry dictates the beliefs of traditionally trained doctors, and I have had an uphill battle against them. They vilify thyroid for weight loss and claim it is not the “standard of care.” They push expensive medications and oppose simple solutions. I have suffered complaints to the medical board and have been threatened with lawsSupport the show

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 to consumers after the ensuing class-action lawsuit settled in 2000. Later, the pharmaceutical companies sponsored over ten bogus studies that purported to show porcine thyroid was no improvement over T4. Each trial used only 1/2 grain of the pork thyroid (30 mg), even though the proper dose is one to two grains (60-120 mg) or more (about the same as .075 to .15 mg of T4). Each study concluded that the tiny dose of pig thyroid did not work. With these doses, of course, it could never work. This type of false comparison is a routine strategy used by drugmakers to get FDA approval or to run down a competitor. For more, see Ben Goldacre’s Bad Pharma (2012) and my FDA chapter here.There have been claims that the porcine thyroid manufacturing is faulty, and that this makes it inferior to Synthroid, the branded T4. However, Synthroid was recalled ten times between 1991 and 1997. This involved over 100 million tablets. The FDA requires T4 to fall within 5% of its stated potency, but most samples analyzed had far less active ingredient and some had none. Because many patients need thyroid to survive, there were hospitalizations. In 2001, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued a warning that they might pull Synthroid from the market. There were also two recalls in 2012-13 involving issues with potency, stability, and manufacturing. See Mary Shomon’s website for references, including the FDA letter documenting the story. This link is offline and may have been suppressed by special interests. I had to search for it on the Wayback Machine internet archive (archive.org). Physicians have used porcine thyroid for over a century. It was first approved by the FDA in 1939. In Thailand, it is an over-the-counter supplement. I could find only three recalls for this desiccated pig thyroid, including one started by the manufacturer in 2020 for a 13 percent drop in potency. This might have gone unnoticed, but since thyroid strength is critical, they were doing the right thing.T4 has been available since 1927 without a formal FDA evaluation. It was given “grandfather” status in 1938 because it was assumed to be equivalent to porcine thyroid, which was considered the “gold standard.” The Synthroid brand finally passed a perfunctory FDA review in Support the show

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. But they work better and are safer than other medications such as statins, antidepressants, many cancer treatments, and the proprietary imitation hormones made by big Pharma. These industry cash cows are supported and protected, while in contrast, natural hormones are defamed and restricted. Chasing profits has ruined science. To explain, here is how the Women's Health Initiative study (WHI) was hijacked by its own authors and sabotaged patient care. This huge National Institutes of Health trial (published in 2002) examined 160,000 women aged 59 to 79. It found an increase in breast cancer for patients taking both Premarin, the horse urine estrogen, and Provera, the patented synthetic progesterone. But those who took only Premarin had a decrease in breast cancer. This proved Provera was responsible, and other trials confirmed it. The WHI should have ended this medication’s use for long-term applications, but it did not.The WHI took 11 years, and by that time it was complete, the two drugs it examined were obsolete. But the study statisticians claimed they uncovered critical dangers, and the authors sensationalized and embellished their threadbare findings. Medical academics buffed their reputations by declaring that they, too, could see the emperor’s clothes. The media joined the parade—baloney sells advertising—and the public soon believed that all female hormones were killers. This “man bites dog” story still terrifies everyone. Once a bell is rung, it cannot be unrung. In the public and medical eye, hormones were branded with cancer, dementia, and other problems. One reviewer wrote that the study authors were “overselling hysteria.” John Goldman, MD, wrote in Medscape, “[The study] has undermined the credibility of the research and the medical community as a whole.” Abraham Morgentaler, MD, and others (Harvard) explained how the panic was generated:The (WHI)… reported increased risk of adverse events of only 19 events per 10,000 person-years of exposure for the estrogen–progesterone arm [Premarin-Provera] compared with placebo. This means that if one woman in every generation of a family used estrogen–progesterone for 10 years, it would take 50 generations, or about 1,000 years, to see one extra adverse event in that family. The result may have been statistically significant, but they were clinically meaningless.Avrum Bluming and Carol Tavris described the study’s statistical trickery and atrocious sensationalism in Estrogen Matters (2018), a superb book about the science and politics. One of the WHI’s principal investigators, Rossouw, had an agenda to “change the thinking about hormones.” Six years before the WHI was published, he wrote it was time to put “the brakes on that bandwagon,” referring to the growing support for estrogen replacement. And so the WHI authors ignored their colleagues’ advice and rushed to publication before completing the study. This spawned thousands of meritless lawsuits. Bluming and Tavris cited follow-up trials showing that estrogen decreases the chance of breast cancer, heart disease, colon Support the show

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 from being snuffed out. Then my doctor started coming in every week and giving me testosterone shots. In six weeks, I stood up and walked out of there, back into my life. (Note: this can also work for women.)Men’s symptoms: Starting around thirty years old, testosterone blood levels fall about a percent a year. Muscular strength, sexuality, and energy levels slowly decrease. Recovery from exercise gets slower, and some men notice reduced intellectual capabilities. Bone density falls, but fractures are less common in men than women since men start higher. Atrial fibrillation and stroke are more common with low testosterone levels. Skin problems, heart disease, hot flashes, dental issues, and irritability increase as testosterone declines. Some of these disorders must be treated early or they are irreversible. Sam is a beloved 83-year-old physician: I was about to give up. I just had a knee replacement, and I have osteoporosis. The author sent me some cream testosterone as a gift, and now I think I'm going to live fifteen more years! I can't thank him enough, and I'm indebted to him forever for his kindness. I’m doing well, much better than I ever expected.Testosterone has many benefits. Using it gradually improves health over at least a decade. Testosterone supplementation has the following effects:✪ Strength increases, cholesterol falls, and weight loss is progressive. ✪ Sexuality improves—morning erections return, for example. ✪ Heart disease risks decline. ✪ Diabetes and migraine headaches get better and are sometimes cured. ✪ Testosterone supplementation decreases anxiety and improves mood.Testosterone levels also relate to health:✪ Older men with higher testosterone levels had better results on intellectual testing.✪ Lower levels were associated with earlier death in men. They correlated also with coronary disease.Testosterone transforms into estrogen in both men and women. This “female” hormone helps sexuality in either sex and protects the heart better than any other hormone. Sometimes estrogen blood levels do not rise to those of younger men even with aggressive testosterone supplementation. So a few physicians are starting to prescribe estradiol for men. This will vastly improve cholesterol numbers.Testosterone has a few side effects. Hair loss and hair growth can happen but are of no consequence compared to the benefits. Acne is rarely a significant Support the show