HTH Newsletter Vol. 12, #1

Hearts ‘n Healing...

I got a special gift from my wife this morning-- a beautiful collage of bald eagle photos,  taken near Lake Shetek, Murray County Minnesota in the past months.   Rare until the last few years on our prairie, they’re becoming more common, even though we have no large rivers nearby.  It’s attached for you, with her compliments.   The other special gift received over the past several days was my rapid recovery from a pesky cold-- the kind I am NOT supposed to get, as a “healer”.  When I admitted this to a client yesterday, he smiled and said, “It’s no wonder, because you’re exposed to “sick” people all the time!”  My colleague Master Wu, wise beyond his years, expects me to get sick twice a year, when the seasons change.  Usually a round or two of Qigong fixes it, which helped this time also.  In this particular case I awoke Saturday morning with nausea and a spinning head, suggesting an inner ear infection.  I took my Nanosilver Complex (pretty much) religiously during the week (1/2 tsp 3x daily, under the tongue), and continued to sleep on my earthing sheet to reduce inflammation.  The whole thing gradually went away, so I felt I was among the living once more a week after it had started.  The nice part about using the Nanosilver approach is that Nanosilver apparently works on bacteria, viruses, fungi--about anything that’s out there, without known side effects.  We’re stocking it now.  

Fixing The Plumbing...

Got a call from an old friend and client a couple of weeks ago.  Fred (pseudo name) called; seems he’d been to see his cardiology specialist because of angina (periodic chest pains).  The cardiologist gave him an Rx for nitroglycerin (also used as an explosive), told  him to take it whenever he had chest pains, and come back in three months!  Fred decided that he wanted something that got at the root of the problem a little better, so we began to work together.  My favorite approach is to use an oral chelation material, DetoxMax Plus by BioImmune, which not only removes heavy metals (we use it often for mercury toxicity) but also does “Reverse Cholesterol Transport”, meaning that it gradually removes soft cholesterol deposits in the arteries at the same time.  Because of his chest pain, we also put him on a good magnesium supplement (magnesium chelate), and another supplement “ATP Option”, which provides D-ribose to boost heart strength.  We then added a supplement of special “defibrinizing” enzymes known to dissolve the fibrin in the cholesterol deposits.  (In the obstructive mass in the arteries, the fibrin acts like “re-bar” in concrete, making it stronger.  Removal of the fibrin helps to further clean out obstructions to the smooth blood flow.)  Finally, we gave him the “piece de resistance”-- an earthing sheet to reduce the systemic inflammation by electrically grounding the body during sleep.  My guess is that we’ll have the tubes pretty much ready to go again at a cost of a thousand dollars or so.  It will take a little time, but I expect Fred has already begun to feel better, and this should continue.  Open heart surgery is more expensive, and a whole lot more risky, in my judgement.  

Belly Fat Fix

Rachel returned to work with us once again a month ago; she’d been out west with her family for a year or so, now coming back to do her superb massage therapy.  (She seems to be the only massage therapist for miles around who knows how to do “manual lymph drainage”, and is the regular staff person now for one of our clients with fibromyalgia.  She’s good...)  When I had last seen her more than a year ago, there was a bit more of her, for she was fresh from welcoming their latest arrival into the world.  Now, that tummy was just GONE, and she looked fantastic.  I timidly inquired as to just HOW she’d accomplished that, and how the battle had gone.  What I learned was how critical to good health it is to banish the belly fat, especially, and how easy it is to do if it’s approached right.  Rachel said she just went on her special diet, and the weight dropped off-- no cravings, no problems, she just came back to her original svelte form.  Rachel is now helping others drop their belly fat.  If you would like her to work with you, give us a call and we will send you the particulars.  It is not expensive, and the best part is that it’s easy to do.  Call  (507) 629 3900 for details.  Belly fat seems to be the most dangerous fat for the body to be carrying, because belly fat also means “organ fat”....

Pipestone Women’s Expo

If you live near Pipestone MN, come join me at the Pipestone Women’s Expo, to be held on Saturday morning, February 18, 9am to 1 pm, at Peace United Methodist Church, 500 7th Street SE, Pipestone , ph. # 507 825 4518.  Find the intersection of US 75 and MN 30, then go about 3 blocks west.  Peace United Methodist Church is very close to where MN 23 turns off to head SW toward Sioux Falls.  Lots of display tables, plus invited speakers:  Speakers include Marjean Ossefoort, 9:15 (Financial Health);  Elizabeth McCabe, 9:55 (Reiki); Dr. Angie Miller, 10:35 (How to Stay Young the First 100 Years); Theresa Stangle & Debbie Reinert, 11:15 (Most Important Exercise for Women of all Ages); Charles Reinert ND, PhD, 11:55 (EFT & Earthing); Dr. Michael Lastine, 12:35 (Nutrition).  

(FYI:  EFT is a powerful but gentle tool for healing emotional and physical issues; Earthing is an antiinflammatory method for better sleep, chronic pain.)  

Natural & (Un)natural medicines

A week ago, one of the local new MDs wrote an explanatory article in the Tracy paper about the intricacies involved in prescribing “just the right dose” of just the right Rx to patients.  Bottom Line:  It ain’t easy, especially when the patient is already on many other Rx meds as a result of previous visits to medical colleagues.  In the spirit of speaking about “choices” that are available in treating health conditions, I prepared a couple of short articles which express my own philosophy in recommending what WE do here at HTH.  The first is printed here; the sequel is attached by pdf to read at your leisure:

I enjoyed the article last week by ____MD, as he explained the intricacies in prescribing medicines in the treatment of health conditions.  We both being engaged in the same sort of profession, albeit from different training and skills, Dr. ____‘s article induced me to write a few words about how we practice “natural medicine” at Helping To Heal.  With similar caution and care, but also a bit different.  I have been “practicing” natural medicine healthcare for the last 11 years in Tracy, then having retired from being a physics professor at SMSU in Marshall.  In the course of study leading to the ND (doctor of naturopathy), one of my first assignments was to read Health and Healing (1983), by Dr. Andrew Weil, well known MD and author of many books on the integration (“joining”) of allopathic and naturopathic methods.  One of the concepts to which my attention was drawn was that of the relative safety of natural medicines compared to prescriptive medicines.  One measure of this is called the therapeutic ratio, which is the ratio, one might say, of the minimum dose of a medicine strong enough to harm, to the minimum dose of the same medicine strong enough to help.  In theory, the larger this gap between “what’s enough to help” and “what’s enough to harm”, the safer the medicine .  If water were considered a medicine, then the minimum amount to affect a patient might be, say, a 4 oz glass of it.  The minimum amount to cause harm might  be a quart of it or more.  The therapeutic ratio then becomes something like 32:4 or a ratio of 8.  For other substances such as Tylenol, the therapeutic ratio might be far smaller.  As a rule, substances which occur naturally tend to have a larger therapeutic ratio than those which are “designed” by a pharmaceutical laboratory.  The human body tends to be more tolerant of those substances which have been around for a long time, (such as water), than it is of those substances which the body may see as containing "foreign" molecules which have not been a part of Nature for the past 40,000 years or so.  This therapeutic ratio probably helps to account for the demonstrated safety of natural medicines.  As reported recently by the Association of Poison Control Centers, in 19 of the past 27 years, there was not a single fatality as a result of folks taking vitamins.  (e.g. see http://www.aapcc.org/dnn/NPDSPoisonData/NPDSAnnualreports.aspx)  This is great for those of us who recommend vitamins-- it keeps our liability insurance premiums very low!  

When our patients come to see us in our little clinic on 3rd Street, it’s not uncommon for them to bring a plastic grocery bag of the meds they’re currently taking.  When they do, we immediately worry about unforeseen interactions among the many inhabitants of the bag.   Possible interactions between TWO medicines can often be found in the Physicians Desk Reference.  It is less likely that interactions among THREE meds will be available, and once we get beyond three, there are so many possibilities that, chances are, the research has not even been done!  So, beyond alluding to the possibility that some of the presenting symptoms could actually result from drug interactions, there is  not much we can do or say.  

But could there also be interactions among natural medicines taken concurrently? Yes, sometimes, but the wide therapeutic (“safety”) ratio makes this possibility less worrisome.    (Article continued as an attached pdf.)

All the best-- stay safe, stay warm, sleep grounded and love your friends, neighbors and kids...

Charles & the HTH group

Thoughts for Growing In The New Year...

HTH newsletter Vol. 11, #12

December 31, 2011

Dear friends;

 Lois and I took a long walk on Saturday, ‘cuz we didn’t know how many days we had left to walk on bare ground without (to us) the fuss and bother of snow.  Minnesota’s Lake Shetek is only a few miles from our farm home, and Lois uses it as a locale for her wildlife pictures.  We drove down there, saw a few deer (not all had been shot by hunters), and decided to walk over to Loon Island.  Loon is one of several respectably sized islands within Lake Shetek, and most are connected by rock causeways from the island to the land.  These were constructed by a WPA camp of a few hundred guys established nearby during the depression.  They also constructed the bathhouse, a picnic shelter or two, and some of the roads of the area.  The construction of the Keeley Island causeway was interrupted by WWII-- the labor force was needed for more important jobs elsewhere.  I’m not old enough to remember FDR and the depression, but I’m grateful that he found some kind of work for the guys at that time.  That feeling of satisfaction that comes from meaningful work is very important.

 A few days ago, we had our annual Christmas celebration.  (We postponed twice last winter, due to snow and storms; darned near just gave up on the whole business and rescheduled to mid July!)  And as usual, my wife and I were were debating ‘what to buy‘ for the grandkids.  I ALWAYS turn toward books, and I found a few around the topic of “What I’m going to be when I grow up” .  There were firemen, and carpenters, doctors and nurses, writers and musicians, and, and..... I especially liked those with the flavor of, “I can BE anything that I WANT to be”, for I still believe that, even in our present day chaotic lives.   But should we also raise the question, “What should I be DOING as I GROW, in order that when I become an adult, I will be in a position to DO what I wish to do??”  Are there various kinds of TRAINING that I can engage in, to make myself more capable in later years?  Here’s my take on it, from where I am now:

 1.  Become a good friend of BOOKS.  A book that’s worth the paper it’s printed on, has likely involved the blood, sweat and tears of the author for at least a year, often much longer, so in spending the few bucks to purchase it , one gets the benefit of much of the author’s serious thinking and channeling over that period of time-- a very good “deal” for many writers.  (My favorite author is Richard Bach, of Jonathan Livingston Seagull and Illusions fame.  A close second is Mark Twain, and his forgotten classic,  The War Prayer:  On the front inside cover of the dust jacket of War Prayer are the lines,  “...Behind its every supplication sounds a savage war cry.  Eloquent prayers for victory in the name of “an ever-merciful and benignant Father” ask (H)im to “Help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells” and “help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire........ New weapons, new tactics, new policies come and go; men--and women--are left with death, destruction and, presumably unquestioning devotion to flag and country.  Twain sums up his comment on the divine messenger who is sent to reveal the hidden intent of the war prayer: ‘It was believed afterward that the man was a lunatic, because there was no sense in what he said.”  It was first published in 1923, for as Twain relates in his introduction, “....To Dan Beard, who dropped in to see him, Clemens read the “War Prayer,” stating that he had read it to his daughter Jean, and others, who had told him he must not print it, for it would be regarded as sacrilege.   ‘Still, you are going to publish it, are you not?’  Clemens, pacing up and down the room in his dressing-gown and slippers, shook his head.  ‘No,’ he said, ‘I have told the whole truth in that, and only dead men can tell the truth in this world.  It can be published after I am dead...’ ”

 2.  Study physics and mathematics:  Physics is our best understanding of the “rules of how the universe operates”, and mathematics is the language by which physics seems oft best expressed.  You will learn to think more clearly, become more focussed in your thinking, by the study of these disciplines.  Yes, history is also important, for it can provide a record of those human efforts that worked and those which did not.  A history book written by a NON-American author can at times be more truthful.  A basic course in economics can be helpful, though as the saying goes, “In a room with a dozen economists, there are likely to be at least TWO dozen competing economic theories.  Economics without psychology (the economics of peoples’ thinking) may not be very helpful.  

 3.  If you have the gift of music (most children do, until they become older..), by all means develop it; music will bring you joy and peace.  The practice of music (yes, practice helps) develops coordination and helps to enlarge the areas of the brain involved in motor skills.  (Ask any clarinetist or pianist if they are also good keyboard people.) 

 4.  Learn something about nutrition-- do not bother much with the “pyramids” of nutrition; they are biased by agricultural and corporate interests, and do not seem to have helped the overall health of the nation very much, at least judging by health costs nationally.  A good place to start is Nutrition and Physical Degeneration by dentist Weston Price.  In his many sorties to investigate “primitive cultures” globally, Dr. Price “discovered” that when the nutrition is correct, there may be VERY LITTLE disease, or crime for that matter.  (Go to www.ppnf.org to purchase a copy of his thick book.  You’ll get the gist of it very quickly:  A diet RICH in vitamins and minerals, from natural sources, will tend to protect you from disease.)

 5.  Value exercise-- not necessarily so much that you wear out the joints (I’m not a great fan of marathons), but the kind of exercise that one might imagine was a part of the culture of primitive man.  

 6.  Learn and daily do, some of the healthful practices of antiquity.  Some are like calisthenics for the brain as well as the body, and can help to eliminate the ‘monkey‘ in the brain (lack of focus).   I happen to meditate--I learned “TM” back in 1975, and have done it ever since.  I also like yoga and I like Tai Chi.  If a practice has been around for a few hundred years, chances are it has merit to it.  Most of these are easily learned for a few hundred dollars or less, and cost nothing to do on a daily basis.  They also tend to be “anti-aging”.  They can be very helpful for children also, especially the squirrelly ones, and perhaps especially the kids low in self esteem because of body build, family status and such.  There is another excellent (and more modern) practice which I learned years ago, called “Image Streaming”  (17,100,000 Google hits for this one)  When teaching at SMSU years ago, we did some of the first research on this technique, and although “IQ” is a tough thing to measure, I concluded that an hour or so of this gentle, fun, “imagery” practice can actually increase general intelligence by an IQ point, perhaps more.  (See http://grasshopperx.com/research/dr-charles-p-reinert’s-study-on-image-streaming-and-iq/ )  In my work with Image Streaming, I also satisfied myself that it certainly increases creativity-- when I was doing it on a daily basis with my physics classes at SMSU in Marshall, I found that after a month or so of consistent practice, 20 minutes daily,  my “intuitive flashes” would come  so often that I scarcely had time to tend to them.  If you aspire to help  your child to get scholarships and high achievements without getting all bent out of shape with continuous studying, you could do well by teaching him/her to do Image Streaming.  Image Streaming is also cathartic-- it can be helpful in clearing intense emotions from the mind, as may happen due to an automobile accident or a military experience.  Be a bit careful with whom you do Image Streaming, however (I.S. is best done with a partner in the beginning), for you just may fall in love with your I.S. partner!  

 7.  If it works for you, learn to take a daily nap.  Twenty minutes of a deep, calming “nap” can work wonders for energy, prevent unnecessary aging, provide insight into problems, and keep you healthy.  I grew up with a father who was not very healthy-- heart problems and lung problems, part genetic and part environmental-- whenever Dad finished his noon dinner (yes, it was called “dinner’ in those days, not lunch), he would lie down on the daybed for a 20 minute nap.  Since he was the one who directed my efforts on the farm when I was young, there was nothing for me to do during that time than to take a nap myself!  

 8.  Avoid, as much as you possibly can, all OTC and prescription meds.  Dr. Jonathan V. Wright MD, a family physician who leans toward natural therapies, has a word for these chemicals-- he calls them “alien molecules”, for this reason:  In order to receive a US patent for a medicine, it is necessary (US patent law) that the molecule be at least SLIGHTLY different from what is available in nature, that is, it must be slightly different from anything that has been around for the past 40,000 years.  In such a case, it’s fair to call the critter an “alien molecule”-- not naturally present on Earth-- that’s what an alien molecule is!  Now, as it happens, our understanding of the human body is that IT has not changed much in the last 40,000 years.  So, when our own biochemistry encounters a molecule that has been made in a chemical factory, it tends to not know just what to do with it-- basically treats it as a toxin.  Too many toxins invariably leads to trouble in the body.   Get your medicines from food insofar as possible, and this should be food of good quality, not necessarily the shrunken fruits and veggies we see on the shelves of SW Minnesota in the middle of February.  With intensive agriculture as it’s practiced nowadays, even the “good quality” food may be seriously lacking in vitamins and minerals.  As we know from the work of Dr. Weston Price, the way to be really healthy and avoid degenerative disease seems to be to have far more of these vitamins and minerals than is called for by current US minimum standards.  

 9.  Bring as much laughter, love and healthy spirituality (not necessarily religion)  into your life as possible.  I’m currently acting as a kind of health advisor for an 80 year young lady from near Fairmont.  She has been given lung cancer as her current challenge, and we’re attempting to help her boost her resistance to cancer as much as possible.  One of the recommendations of the Johns Hopkins University in combating cancer (if you don’t have this list, call us and we’ll send you a copy) recognizes that cancer is really a mind/body/spirit disease, and as such, a positive attitude, laughter, warm relationships are vital.  I’m reminded of a Harvard University study involving (I think) first year medical students.  Two groups were formed; one group of students was asked to view a video of the story of Mother Teresa.  The second group spent the same time viewing a historical documentary of no special spirituality.  When the groups were separately tested for their immune response, it was found that the “Mother Teresa” group had significantly higher immune response than the control group.  Remarkably, when the groups were tested once again just before graduation, one could STILL detect a more robust immune response with the Mother Teresa group, even though they had not seen the movie for 4 years!  Google “Mother Teresa Study” and you may find more on this very enlightening experiment...

 10.  Maintain a healthy respect for spirituality in your life.  My personal understanding at this time of my own life is...

 a.  We have free will, to pretty much live our lives as we see fit.  Help is available when it is asked for.  You may or may not get the help you think you need, just as when we asked for the ‘answer’ to a difficult mathematics problem in school, the professor seldom just handed us the answer,  though s/he probably DID give us what we needed for our growth....

 b.  We may have had some “pre birth” responsibility for the overall design of this “Life Play” that each of us seems to be living.  Google “Helen Wambach Life Before Life” for some of the publications by this remarkable psychology professor, who it is said did some of the most credible work on “life before life”, using hypnosis and hundreds of subjects.  I have her book in our HTH library-- published in the 1970’s, and well done, by my estimation.  At the very least, if you wonder “Why Me?” as you walk through your life, consider the possibility that there were important lessons you needed to learn, so you might well have played a role in “selecting your classes” before you enrolled in the latest round of “Life University...”

 c.  It could just be that the “only” way we will get out of this really SERIOUS environmental crisis is with a complete, COLLECTIVE, change of attitude about ourselves, and about the planet.  It’s not at all clear that politics is going to do it, certainly not the politics which is currently being “practiced” in the U.S. at this time.  Lots of luck to all of us if we think that.  

 Happy and gracious New Year to you and yours!

May we all learn what we need to learn to sustain us during 2012.    

Charles Reinert & the HTH staff  

PS:  Have you heard of "MRSA"?  The abbreviation is usually applied to a particular "bug" which is highly resistant to antibiotics.  We had an opportunity to work with a MRSA patient over the past couple of months, and we seemed to have solved her problem, with a few hundred dollars of supplements.  Her lab tests indicated "no evidence of MRSA", so she is qualified to work fully with her nursing patients.  

PPS:  We continue to have seemingly great response with the "earthing" pads and sheets.  Folks are sleeping better, and those who have chronic pain (many!) report that chronic pain is lessened, sometimes vastly so.  We're stocking the new 10" x 27" pads and the 36" x 84" earthing 'half sheets' at our clinic, for immediate shipment.  A number have gone out as Christmas gifts....

BTW:  Don't take these writings as 'medical advice' for solving any health problems using medicine.  Human health is complex, and don't rely on any one source, licensed or not, for all your answers.  

Organ Regeneration with Natural Therapies?

Several weeks ago, a lady called with an unusual problem:  She had had her thyroid surgically removed (cancer, probably), and with the loss of her thyroid function, she had ALSO lost the function of her parathyroid glands.  The parthyroid glands are ensconced WITHIN the thyroid, and few surgeons have the skills to remove the thyroid without quashing the function of the parathyroid glands.  So, she had essentially no parathyroid function left, and this can wreak havoc on the strength of one's bones.  She asked us:  "With your energy skills, can you regenerate my parathyroid function?"  

 Is regeneration possible, even in principle?  Here's the way we thought about it:  Various scientists have written about what is called "Phantom Pain"-- it happens with amputees.  The doc cuts the leg off above the knee, say, and the patient continues to have problems with pain and sensation from where the lower leg is supposed to be.  It is said that sometimes they will even experience discomfort when another person walks by the amputee in such a way that s/he "bumps" the phantom limb in passing.  British biologist Dr. Rupert Sheldrake and others have written about this phenomenon.  (See www.sheldrake.org for more on him.)  

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Like Walkin' On The Beach III

November 29, 2011:  More on Earthing!

OK, ok, ok!  Will the Old Guy ever stop blabbering about "earthing" and what it can do?  As an old physicist, I keep searching for 'simple' answers to complex problems.  Sometimes I find 'em, sometimes I don't.  As readers of this blog may know, I first encountered the concept of "earthing" near the beginning of August, 2011.  I purchased a conducting pad from the Earthing people and began to sleep on it.  Since that time, my sleeping pattern changed quickly from "restless/bathroom break in the middle of the night/no dreams" to "calm, relaxed sleeping/virtually no nighttime bathroom breaks".  Simply put, I have slept exceedingly well for this nearly 4 months.  One night was interrupted because of an argument with my wife, but beyond that, the sleep has been exquisite.  My view is that when the quality of sleep is good, darned near everything else in one's life ALSO tends to go well.  I am fortunate to be free from chronic pain, though I did have a somewhat enlarged prostate at the beginning of the 4 month period.  That has nearly disappeared.

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Like Walkin' On The Beach, Part II.....

This is my second blog about our experience with "earthing", the principle of electrically "grounding" the body for the purpose of reducing pain, sleeping better and such.  At this moment of writing (October 5, 2011), I have been using my earthing pad for exactly two months.  Am I sleeping more soundly and restfully?  YES, YES, YES.  Do I have less pain?  That answer is ALSO a YES.  (For the record, I didn't have much pain before I began using the pad, just a little shoulder and upper arm discomfort which bugged me when I tried to sleep.  That disappeared shortly after I began using the pad, and has not returned.)  By now, I've received a few testimonials from others.  

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