Sometimes I get so upset when I read what my learned colleagues write about in mainstream publications.?? Some of this is simply criminal.

For example, I was on the Medscape website recently and read an article that was submitted for CME (Continuing Medical Education).?? This is what they quiz doctors to keep them “up to date”, so to speak.

The article was under the section for specialists of thyroid diseases.?? Now, I consider myself somewhat of an expert in the area of thyroid problems, namely that most of the world’s population over a certain age suffers from hypothyroidism because of a dietary insufficiency of iodine.

Of course, most of my colleagues don’t think so.?? They just don’t think at all.?? They never learned about nutrition or dietary deficiencies in medical school – because we were not taught anything about it.?? Well, maybe we had a one hour lecture on nutrition back in my second year of medical training. Otherwise, doctors look down on anyone preaching about good nutrition or the lack of essential minerals in the soils and toxins in the food supply.?? Mainstream medicine is absolutely clueless on this count.

Anyway, the CME article I was reading was discussing the problems of prescribing an incredibly toxic medication called amiodarone, which is used for controlling heart rhythm problems.?? Admittedly, amiodarone is used as a last-ditch effort when the somewhat “safer” prescriptions fail.?? The death rate with amiodarone is high.

One of the issues the article was discussing was the common problem of hypothyroidism caused by amiodarone.?? Possibly 40% of people develop an under active thyroid.

Their theory for this was that amiodarone contains a lot of iodine bound to the molecule that essentiall poisons the electrical status of cell membranes.?? They thought that an abundance of iodine somehow caused the thyroid to malfunction.?? They even have some elaborate mechanism named after three researches with funny names to describe this effect.

Nothing could be further from the truth.?? Intuitively, their theory is completely wrong.?? Actually, since most people are already deficient in iodine (the World Health Organization says that nearly three quarters of the planet is deficient in iodine), these people are already prone to hypothyroidism.?? (The thyroid requires iodine to function properly.?? Without sufficient iodine, the thyroid just doesn’t work well).

The real intuitive reason why amiodarone kills thyroid glands is because the iodine bound molecule is preferentially concentrated in the thyroid gland.?? Then there is an abundance of this electrical membrance killing drug that literally kills off the normal electrical functioning of the cells within the thyroid.?? This is not rocket science.

But what really caught my attention was the fact that about 6 – 8% of people who were studied with amiodarone already had HYPERthyroidism – which is an over active thyroid.?? Remember that these people have abnormal heart rhythms.

Keep in mind that an over active thyroid can actually cause abnormal heart rhythms.?? Did anyone ask these doctors about correcting the over active thyroid before starting them on such a toxic drug like amiodarone??? Or are the drug companies so desparate about maintaining sales that they will kill just to achieve the bottom line?

No wonder I have such a low opinion of my colleagues in mainstream medicine.

Andrew Jones, M.D.

Medical Director, Women’s Health Institute of Texas

www.AndrewJonesMD.com

Last week, The Science Daily published a new study showing that women who experience early menopause appear to have more than twice the risk of having a heart attack, stroke or other cardiovascular disease event later in life than do women who do not go through early menopause.

The study defined early menopause as beginning symptoms before the age of 46, either surgically or naturally.?? Using their definition of early menopause puts a huge proportion of women at risk of cardiovascular diseases.

Putting this in perspective, what this study tells us is what we have intuitively known for some time:?? Hormones are important, and when they start declining, your body declines.?? Heart attacks, strokes and other cardiovascular diseases are the inevitable results of a body in decline.

Menopause is caused by falling estrogen and progesterone levels.?? The results are a cessation of periods and??loss of fertility.?? Symptoms are the classic triad of hot flashes, night sweats and vaginal dryness.?? For detailed menopause information go to:?? www.1-menopause.com .

Declining hormones are not unique to women.?? It is even more pronounced in men.?? Just look at a man over 40 and you see his muscles sag, belly gets bigger, hair grows in the wrong places and stops growing in the right places, not to mention his memory goes flat and begins to struggle with impotence.?? A man with declining levels of testosterone is not a pretty sight.

But all is not lost.?? It is very simple to replace declining hormones with supplemental human (bio-identical) hormones.?? We have the ability to turn back the clock and make women (and men) younger – and live longer, healthier lives.

This is not rocket science.?? It is simple, straight-forward with everything to gain and almost nothing to lose.?? Just give women their estrogen and progesterone back and give men their testosterone.??

All supplemental hormones MUST be bio-identical.?? The synthetic, look-alike hormones that the big drug companies make, like Premarin, Provera and the like are not human.?? Don’t take them.

Instead, ask for human (bio-identical) hormones.?? If your doctor looks at you funny and starts dismissing bio-identical hormones and wants to prescribe you an anti-depressant or some big drug company variation of a hormone wannabe, then run as far as you can away from that office.?? Find another source for bio-identical hormones.

A good source of bio-identical hormones (and you don’t even need a prescription) is Natural Living ( www.1-Natural-Living.com ).?? They make bio-identical progesterone cream and capsules, as well as bio-identical estrogen cream.??

I think every woman over 40 should be on supplemental progesterone.?? If she has menopausal symptoms mentioned above, then she should be on some estrogen, too.??

Every man over 40 should be on supplemental testosterone.?? Unfortunately, testosterone has become so politicized that even possession of it without a prescription has become criminalized.?? Good luck finding a doctor to prescribe bio-identical testosterone.?? A weak substitute is DHEA, but he has to take a ton of it and it gets expensive pretty quick.

At least the women can get their progesterone and estrogen easily and without much expense.?? Natural Living’s human estrogen runs about 75 cents a day for most menopausal women wanting to get rid of their hot flashes and night sweats.

Getting back to the headline for this article, it is pretty easy to reverse menopause and resurrect your hormones back to young woman levels.?? This also means you can substantially reduce the risk for heart attacks and strokes by supplementing with bio-identical hormones.

Forget mainstream medicine.?? They will kill you – literally.?? Find bio-identical sources of hormones and sympathetic doctors or knowledgeable others who will guide you.

Andrew Jones, M.D.

Medical Director, Women’s Health Institute of Texas

www.AndrewJonesMD.com

www.Migraine-Headaches-Information.com

www.PMScure.com

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CNN reported earlier this month a new study about Vitamin D use and pregnancy.?? Researchers from the Medical University of South Carolina and the Cleveland Clinic state that pregnant women should take a minimum of 4000 IU (International Units) a day to reduce the risk of preterm labor.

Previous guidelines of 400 IU/day are out the window.????

Actually, these recommendations are still too low.?? Keep in mind that the usual recommendations for the average adult is now 5000 IU/day and sometimes 10,000 IU for large sized adults.?? Why should pregnant women take less?

The reason why these researchers are so screwed up is that they are starting from a base of 400 IU, rather than 5000 IU. So when they say an increase of 10 fold they go from 400 IU to 4000 IU.

Hello!?? Everyone else is already at 5000 IU (plus).

??It is time for even the “researchers” to catch up.

Don’t be surprised next month when the new recommendation for pregnant women goes up to 10,000 or more IU.?? I am not saying that it will, but the speed of revelations about Vitamin D is dizzying.?? Almost daily a new report gets published about the benefits of Vitamin D.

Big Pharma will not be happy.

Andrew Jones, M.D.

Medical Director, Women’s Health Institute of Texas

www.AndrewJonesMD.com

www.Migraine-Headaches-Information.com

The big drug companies are so out of touch with the origins of migraine headaches (at least the kind tied to menstrual migraines) that all they can do is dust off old drugs and give them new names.

The latest is by MAP Pharmaceuticals.?? In their recycle bin, they took an old migraine drug ergotamine (or dihydroergotamine (DHE)), created a new method of administrtation (nasal spray), and presto! got a new drug they call LEVADEX.

Levadex is now is Stage 3 of trials.?? MAP is getting excited about launching this new/old drug on the population.?? Nasal spray.?? Intravenous.?? Same old thing.

Whoopee.

For those that can remember the bad old days when ergotamine was the only drug hospitals had against severe migraine headaches that they infused it intravenously.?? Sure it helped, but it played havoc with your blood pressure.????Quite a??few people ended up with strokes, heart attacks, dead feet and lost some kidneys.?? But that was all they had in those days.

DHE was dangerous 40 years ago and is still dangerous today.?? Of course, the drug companies won’t go near any natural remedy for migraines.?? Bad for business.?? Gotta keep those billion-dollar triptans going. At least the triptans (Imitrex, Maxalt, Zomig, Amerge, etc.) are not as dangerous.?? Just expensive and people never get out of the migraine cycle.

We of course, have a different philosophy when it comes to treating migraines (or any other “female” problem). We look at the cause (usually hormonally based) and try to find a natural solution.?? Find what the body is deficient in and replace it with what the body needs.?? Then let your body do the remainder.?? No more migraines.

But that is bad for big drug company business.

Andrew Jones, M.D.

Medical Director, Women’s Health Institute of Texas

www.AndrewJonesMD.com

www.Migraine-Headaches-Information.com

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Vitamin D continues to be in the news.?? A recent Reuters article reports about a Finnish study in the American Journal of Epidemiology about a 27 year study on men and their death rates from heart attacks and strokes.

Of the original 600 men in the study, nearly 500 of them died over the ensuing 27 years.?? What the authors noted was that those men with the lowest Vitamin D levels had twice the likelihood of dying from heart attacks and strokes.

Something else the authors noted was that the entire population of the study had “substantially lower” Vitamin D levels then expected.

This correlates with other researchers from the Mayo Clinic??who basically state that 93% of people overall are deficient in Vitamin D.?? There is a very good reference website on Vitamin D that can be found at www.1-VitaminD.com .

Over the last two or three years, we have really learned a great deal more about Vitamin D.?? It is not your simple vitamin that is activated in sunlight and helps out calcium levels and your bones.?? In fact, sunlight really may not have much to do with Vitamin D at all.?? Consider that in one study in sun-drenched??Saudi Arabia, 83% of people had low Vitamin D levels.??

We now know that Vitamin D greatly influences inflammation in the body.?? It is one of the most anti-infllammatory mechanisms known (and makes a great anti-inflammatory pain pill – especially in combination with omega 3 fatty acids (fish oil)).

Inflammation determines everything.?? Heart disease is nothing more than chronic infllammation.?? Cancers are the end result of long standing inflammation.??

Stated quite simply, if your body is inflamed, you get sick.?? Sick people get heart disease, strokes, cancers – and – become more prone to getting hormonal problems like migraine headaches.?? Yes, for those of you who didn’t read my book, migraines are a hormonal problem.

So whether you have migraines or not, load up yourself and your family with tons of Vitamin D.?? The recommended daily intake keeps going up, depending on who you ask.?? The days of 400 International Units of Vitamin D daily are long gone.?? Now we at 5000 IU’s daily for minimum recommendations.?? Even the American Pediatric Society (which is about as mainstream as you can get) is recommending 400 IU’s in newborn babies in their first 24 hours of life.

Vitamin D deficiency is pandemic, universal and almost everyone doesn’t have enough.?? Go to www.1-VitaminD.com and get up to speed with the proper recommendations.?? It’s cheap, so you can’t complain about cost (about $6/month).

Andrew Jones, M.D.

Medical Director, Women’s Health Institute of Texas

www.AndrewJonesMD.com

www.Migraine-Headaches-Information.com

According to researchers in a recently published article in the British Medical Journal the answer is “maybe” a small increased incidence of strokes in women who have migraines with aura.

But other commentators think that the association with oral contraceptives is the reason for the increased stroke risk (and other cardiovascular events).?? I am in the camp that says that birth control pills cause the strokes, the heart problems AND the migraines – aura or no aura.

What is worse is that once a woman starts birth control pills – even for a short time – she may have permanent effects from it.

Why??? The synthetic, chemically altered hormones in the birth control pills poison the ovaries.?? This is just anecdotal observation over the last 20 years show that about half of women do fine with oral contraceptives.?? This means that the other half do not.?? And they are the ones who show up in doctors’ offices with “female problems”.

Most doctors just dismiss these “female problems” with a paternalistic prescription for anti-depressives – well, you know the drill, that is why you are on this website.

Many, if not most, of these women can be helped by natural (bio-identical) hormones.?? This is what your body needs and??is not getting enough on its own.?? So we supplement these hormones, along with some other supplements – and get decent results.?? It is not always perfect, but if your migraines get 80% better, no one is complaining.

So mainsteam medicine is coming around to the fact that birth control pills may have something to do with migraines.?? Good for them.?? Now they have another 20 years before they catch up with the rest of us.

Andrew Jones, M.D.

Medical Director, Women’s Health Institute of Texas

www.Migraine-Headaches-Information.com

www.AndrewJonesMD.com

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The headline in the November issue of Pediatrics describes a pandemic of Vitamin D deficiency among American children. Actually, it is even worse than the headline says.

The American Academy of Pediatrics says that a blood level of 50 nmol/L of Vitamin D is severely deficient, whereas a level of 75 nmol/L is only mildly deficient.

The National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey examined 5000 children from 2001 to 2006 and based on this data, estimated that 6 million American children were likely to??be severely Vitamin D deficient.?? That was the good news.

The bad news is that two-thirds of children, an estimated 24 million kids were estimated to be only moderately deficient.?? It was even higher in hispanic kids (80%), nearly all black kids (92%) and “only” 59% of white kids were deficient.

Vitamin D is now being shown to be increasingly important in a long list of health issues.?? Deficiency, beginning at such a young age, cannot be good.

Dr. Michael F. Holick, professor of medicine, physiology and biophysics and director of the Vitamin D, Skin and Bone Research Laboratory at the Boston University School of Medicine, said that “we estimate that vitamin D deficiency is the most common medical condition in the world.”

“Children should take vitamin D supplements and be less afraid of sensible sun exposure,” Holick said.

Holick would prefer to see the safe upper limit of vitamin D raised. “What I would recommend is that in the first year of life, it should be raised to 5,000 IU per day and for children over the age of 1 and all adults, 10,000 IU a day,” he said.

A good reference site for Vitamin D is www.1-VitaminD.com .

Andrew Jones, M.D.

Medical Director, Women’s Health Institute of Texas

www.AndrewJonesMD.com

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For those of you who sincerely believe that the FDA is looking out for the consumer’s best interests – think again. The FDA is nothing more than a bunch of scoundrels closely allied with the big drug companies that keep them in existence.

People taking Armour Thyroid and similar dessicated thyroid hormone prescriptions have been experiencing shortages of for the last year.?? It seems that the manufacturers have been shutting down production in anticipation of rumors that the FDA was about to ban the drug and require them to spend hundreds of millions of dollars and delay many years to go through a new drug application (NDA).

A few months ago, Time-Caps lab, a huge manufacturer of generic Armour thyroid, received a ban letter from the FDA telling them that their drug needed an NDA and that they??must “cease and desist” production.?? They have posted the letter on the internet for the world to see and the wording also indicates the strategy of the FDA to shut down ALL similar thyroid hormone products (Armour, Nature-Throid, Wes-Throid).

Armour thyroid has been around since around 1890 and everyone thought it was “grandfathered” in prior to the passage of the FDA Act in 1934.?? In 2000, however, the FDA had a change of direction and decided that they would require every drug in America to have an NDA.?? It took a number of years to get around to Armour but the Gestapo has arrived in full force.

Regardless of the politics and big money involved, about a million people take Armour thyroid or similar brands in America.?? Millions more take Synthroid and other similar synthetic brands. Synthroid is a lousy drug and barely helps people with thyroid deficiencies.?? Armour thyroid works like a champ.

So what does this have to do with migraine headaches??? Most people with migraines, in my observation, have symptoms consistent with thyroid deficiencies.?? Many of my customers need to take either iodine or thyroid or both, as a result.?? My book that you can download off this website gives directions in detail on how to manage your migraines in the face of low thyroid.

Now that the FDA has disrupted supply of a great drug that benefitted a million people, we are in a bind. My first reaction is to tell people to storm and pillage the FDA, but that is not going to happen anytime soon.??

The easiest alternative is to take iodine in sufficient doses – as long as your Armour dose was a haf-grain or less (30mg).?? For higher doses of Armour, there is a dietary supplement called Raw Thyroid that, albeit weaker than Armour, does more or less the same thing as Armour.

You can access Raw Thyroid here:

http://doctor.rejuvenation-science.com/andrewjones1/

For many people, they will need a combination of iodine and Raw Thyroidl.

In the meantime, if you can locate any kind of Armour, order as much as you can, stock up and begin hoarding. The street value of Armour thyroid will be our next black market – thanks to our thoughtful and people-loving FDA.

A good reference on how to manage iodine for low thyroid conditions is www.1-Thyroid.com .

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Andrew Jones, M.D.

Women’s Health Insitute of Texas

www.migraine-headaches-information.com

www.AndrewJonesMD.com

A lot has been written about various foods that can trigger migraine headaches.?? A few days ago, Yahoo news carried yet another article about citrus from tangerines causing migraines in a young woman.

The article goes on to discuss various other “known” food triggers of migraines: Aged cheese and cheeses containing tyramine, along with salted, cured, processed and canned foods that are high in tyramine.?? Alcohol, especially red wine, whiskey and champagne have been identified as triggers.

Finally, they list some “surprise” triggers like: peanuts and peanut butter, potato chips, pizza, fresh fruits like kiwi, plums and raspberries and bread and crackers.

I have no doubt that people experience a migraine when eating certain foods. Understandably these are considered “triggers” and then smart avoidance helps minimize the next migraine.

My point is that there is an underlying mechanism behind the triggers.?? Remove what is lurking behind the scenes and then you can enjoy whatever food you want (althought you can still dispense with the potato chips and crackers – they are worthless foods).

It is our theory that hormones, or rather, the deficiency of certain hormones, largely are the cause of migraines in most people, especially women.?? Correct the underlying deficiency and the migraines go away.?? Not exactly rocket science, but most doctors scoff at the simplicity of this.

Don’t let a simple idea (that mostly works in practice) deter you.?? Correct the deficiencies, the migraines disappear and you get your life (and favorite foods) back.

Andrew Jones, M.D.

Senior Medical Advisor to the Women’s Health Institute

www.AndrewJonesMD.com

www.Migraine-Headaches-Information.com

Every now and then, you read something that just turns your perceptions upside down.?? Since medical school, it was drummed into me that the diagnosis of cancer – any cancer – was an event of epic proportion.

The diagnosis triggered a waterfall of procedures and aggressive treatment in a race against time.

However, I subscribe to The Douglass Report (something I highly recommend you subscribe to, as well) in which, Dr. Douglass discusses that “many cancers will disappear on their own”.?? I just about dropped the newsletter when I read that.

He quotes Dr. Michael Greenough, who says, “At any given, time, everyone has within them between 100 to 10,000 cancer cells. Under normal conditions, when the immune system is strong, these cells are destroyed.”

Then he cites a report published last year in the Archives of Internal Medicine that says that as many as 25 percent of breast cancers will go away on their own if they are not treated.”

Wow.?? Let that one sink in.

No one ever told me that and I bet that if you went to a thousand doctors, all one thousand of them would tell you to aggressively treat the diagnosis (I would have put myself in that same category a week ago).

This has major implications when it comes to performing biopsies on suspected masses. It is well known in the surgical world that if you pass a needle through many layers of tissue and subsequently penetrate a tumor mass, that there is a likelihood of spreading the tumor cells through the needle track.?? After that, the cat is out of the bag.

Even if you remove the original organ where the tumor mass previously resided, those few cells that escaped in the needle track ended up in other places of the body that can show up a few years later as a metastases.

I am not advocating ignoring suspicious masses, but this is something to seriously think about.

As a natural health doctor, I firmly believe that cancers are a manifestation of an immune-monitoring deficiency – a lapse by the body to perform its natural functions.?? That lapse was likely caused by a deficiency of some sort.?? Correct the deficiency and the immune function returns and presto – the cancer is eradicated.

Of course, my mainstream colleagues would scream bloody murder at that type of theory. They happily poison people with the latest chemotherapy protocol that I have rarely seen any results of cure or improved lifestyle (or improved life span).?? It is a big business and follow the money…

Being very knowledgable in this business, I doubt I will ever get cancer (thanks to large doses of proteases with nattokinase and digestive enzymes as dietary supplements) but then again, you should see my list of supplements.?? Perhaps someday, I will publish my own personal supplements list that I take.

At a minimum, everyone on the planet (except for some folks in Japan) is deficient in iodine, magnesium, vitamin D and omega 3 fatty acids (fish oil).?? Those four areas should be supplemented.?? I recommend this for my migraine sufferers as well.

Women with symptoms of migraines are also deficient in certain hormones and should supplement those.?? My book will describe exactly what to take.

Andrew Jones, M.D.

Medical Director, Women’s Health Institute of Texas

www.AndrewJonesMD.com

www.Migraine-Headaches-Information.com

www.PMScure.com