Discovering a dental abscess using the Hair Tissue Mineral Analysis

Copper and iron are in balance.  No evidence of infection,
although there are other health issues.

In my article "Are you being bugged by parasites?" I described how the Hair Tissue Mineral Analysis can be used to detect infections in the body, usually parasites, rotten gums or a dental abscess.

In this followup article, I present the case of a fit man in his 50's (Myself).

When looking at the hair tissue mineral analysis charts to the right, keep an eye on the relationship between Cu (copper) and Fe (iron) which I have high-lighted with a red line.

While other health issues are improving, note the slight increase
in iron relative to copper.  Not significant but worth keeping an
eye on.

When there is a chronic infection, the immune system attempts to starve the invaders of life-giving iron.  It does this by shifting iron from the circulation and into storage in the bones and even the joints.

The down-side of taking iron out of the circulation is the infected person will tend to suffer aches, pains and fatigue. Sometimes they may be diagnosed as suffering "infectious anaemia".

In my case, I was generally in very good health, although aware of a problem with bad breath.

Iron has shot up relative to copper.  I was off to see my
brother (A dentist) who discovered a puss-filled abscess
deep in the back of my mouth -Yuck!

Two weeks after the abscess down the side of one of my back teeth was discovered and treated, I rode the ride of my life in the Huka Challenge Mountain Bike Relay Race.  With my partner, Alofa, we won the race outright and currently hold the team's race record.

I put this amazing gain in performance down to the freeing up of iron stores for oxygen transport and storage.

No more evidence of an infection and I am feeling great.

I have a sneaking suspicion that things may not be 100% at the moment, so I did another Hair Tissue Analysis on myself last week.  I'll have those results in about three weeks from now and will publish an update.

Although there is a slight difference, iron and copper are fine but I
am keeping a close eye on them and am much more diligent
with dental care.

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About this website

The advice in these articles is given freely without promise or obligation.  Its all about giving you and your family the tools and information to take control of your health and fitness.

Scrubbing away the bugs

Leading antibacterial cleaners claim to kill 99 percent of the bacteria on the surfaces where it is applied. What do you suppose happens to the other 1 percent?
Those resistant bacteria are living and multiplying, of course, creating a strain that soon those same cleaners won’t be able to kill.
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Gary Moller comments:
The best way to ensure good hygiene is to scrub way the bugs mechanically. This means using soap and warm water for cleaning sufaces in the kitchen and in the bathroom. Chemical cleaners are heavily promoted and the need to scrub is all but dismissed as being unnecessary. You know the ads: The ones that demonstrate squirting a chemical into the toilet bowl and leaving it to do the dirty work.

The problem is that 1% of the bugs that survive flourish to become a super bug. This is what is happening in our hospitals where such bugs are getting out of hand.

In the case of infections of wounds the tandard treatment is to treat with chemicals and antibiotics. In the last 29 years I have met only one doctor who took the time with an infection to carefully debride and clean the wound and then dress it himself. If this is ever done, the job is handed to the nurse to do. More often than not, the wound is superficially cleaned, a dressing applied and a prescription for an antibiotic given.

The better treatment in most cases of infection is to manually clean all the dead skin and other debris that are the food source for bugs, dress the wound with a sterile dressing and repeat the cleaning and dressing process twice a day. By removing the food source, any bacteria can not survive and the few that do are easily handled by the body's natural defences. The worst a person can do is leave a dressing on a wound for more than a day because it becomes a festering breeding ground for bugs.

The over use of antibiotics lead to sloppy hygiene practices and now that such sloppy practices are now the norm, so is the ongoing use of antibiotics.

Vitamin D, tuberculosis and winter ailments

Scientists have shown that a single 2.5mg dose of vitamin D may be enough to boost the immune system to fight against tuberculosis (TB) and similar bacteria for at least 6 weeks. Their findings came from a study that identified an extraordinarily high incidence of vitamin D deficiency amongst those communities in London most at risk from the disease, which kills around two million people each year.

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Gary Moller comments:
The evidence grows daily showing that improving population health first and foremost lies with low cost commonsense and low-tech measures that revolve about lifestyle and nutrition and not big medicine.

Vitamins D, C and A are essential for a robust immune system and for healthy lungs. There is a very good case for everyone to take additional of these vitamins during winter.

The outbreak of rampant TB within a Palmerston Nth college last year was probably not helped by the kids being required to keep out of the sun all year and the low fat diet that ensures that there is deficiency in the fat soluble vitamins minerals that are so essential for immune health. 

Vitamin D deficiency is most likely in dark-skinned immigrant populations that move either from rural areas to cities or from high latitudes to colder lower ones. They are adapted for harsh sun conditions and are therefore at serious risk of vitamin D deficiency when shifting to sunless conditions and also when subjected to crazy "Sun Smart" policies. This is one major factor that explains why just about all health measures for these population groups tends to be very poor, including high rates of tuberculosis.

Free range eggs, grass fed butter, organ meat and raw milk are excellent sources of the fat soluble vitamins. In addition to this, if you and your children are not getting sufficient of these, including up to 2,000mg of vitamin C per day over winter, then you should consider a daily supplement. The best for children is the Floradix Kinderval range of tonics which are also a rich source of minerals. Cod liver oil is a rich source of vitamin D, A and omega 3 which has traditionally been a winter tonic in our family for generations. There is now also a new vitamin D and omega 3 supplement that is available from Thompson's Nutrition (All of these are available from www.myotec.co.nz). Right now, here in New Zealand, vitamin C-rich Kiwi fruit are in season and selling for as low as 99 cents a kilo - yum-yum! I am currently eating 6-10 per day.

Good health may be as simple as eating much more of the forbidden foods (Fatty eggs, whole milk etc), eating more Kiwi Fruit, getting some sun and taking a few nutritional supplements.

Depression link with chronic cough

"Among people suffering from chronic cough, more than half have symptoms of depression, new research shows. The good news is that the depression seems to lift as the cough improves."
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Gary Moller comments:
Duuh? Did we miss something? Ok, so I am looking awful and coughing all over the place, grossing other people out. That's depressing.

So, what do we do? Place the person on antidepressants and antibiotics - one or both? Do we take a cough suppressant? This is leading medicine down the wrong path of treating the symptoms and not the cause. Symptoms are being treated to treat symptoms.

While a course of antibiotics may be necessary to get on top of any infection; to really get to the heart of the matter of conditions like chronic chest infections and depression, we need to investigate and deal with the real underlying causes. In doing so, we might find any of the following at work:

• Vitamin D deficient which is linked with chronic respirattory infections and depression
• Malnutrition related to a junk diet that usually goes hand in hand with feeling depressed
• Poor living conditions
• Abuse of drugs including cigarettes, marijuana, prescription drugs and alcohol
• Sleep disturbances
• Chronic stress - financial problems, a lousy marriage or job, no job, no goals, too many committments, out of control kids etc

To not deal with these by means other than drugging is to leave the wolf at the door waiting for the next opportunity to strike.

Vitamin D deficiency linked to tuberculosis, flu and other respiratory diseases

"..the researchers point to studies showing that in winter, colds, flu, and other respiratory diseases are more common and more likely to be deadly than they are in summer. During winter, ultraviolet-light exposure tends to be low because people spend more time indoors and the atmosphere filters out more of the sun's rays, especially at mid and high latitudes.
Cannell's group cites a 1997 study showing that the rate of pneumonia in Ethiopian children with rickets, and therefore a likely vitamin D deficiency, was 13 times as high as in children without that disease. The researchers also point to five studies since the 1930s that have linked reduced risks of infectious disease to dietary supplementation with cod liver oil, a rich source of vitamin D."
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Gary Moller Comments:

It has always fascinated me why, in summer, there is less flu, why we are happier and why more babies are conceived.
A boys' school in Palmerson North. NZ, has suffered a terrifying outbreak of tuberculosis that has spread like wild fire through the pupils. Cases are now turning up in a nearby girls' school. Doctors in sunny Waikato have recently reported an upsurge in cases of rickets while doctors here in Wellington recently reported disturbingly low levels of vitamin D in immigrant populations. Is there a link? How could third world diseases like these be turning up in a country like New Zealand?
"Cold-weather wear and the sun's angle in the winter sky limit how much ultraviolet light reaches the skin. This can add up to a deficiency in production of vitamin D, which might explain why respiratory infections are common and severe in winter." (Quoted from the same report above).
I believe these Drs are dead right: Keeping our children swaddled head to toe in clothes and not allowing them to go outside to play in the sun is at the heart of the problem. Whether it be the flu, TB, meningococcal disease, rickets, osteoporosis or depression, our first defence is ensuring that we have adequate vitamin D levels.
Back in the old days, the sickly (including those with TB) were sent up to the fresh air of the mountainside sanitorium. Was the real health benefits from the exposure to unfiltered UVB?
To date, every person who has consulted me about a chronic ailment and subsequently had a blood test of vitamin D levels, has come up as deficient, or dangerously close to being so.
Note: If you have a blood test and your Dr prescribes a vitmain D supplements, ensure that your blood levels are closely monitored because it is easy to overdose. Getting D from the sun is safe because the production mechanism turns off once levels get high - the body is very smart!

technorati tags: vitamin+d, tuberculosis, influenza, sunlight, meningococcal, sanitorium

Is there a dirty little secret about frozen chicken?

Banning Fresh Chicken Not Practical1:34 pm, 13 Oct 2006
The Food Safety Authority says it is looking at new ways to reduce rates of campylobacter infection, which it considers will be more effective and practical than stopping sales of fresh chicken. An article in the New Zealand Medical Journal says in May this year the number of campylobacter cases exceeded 400 per 100,000 people for the first time, with an estimated 155,000 infections a year.It links the rise to an increase in fresh chicken consumption.
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Gary Moller comments:
I went to a reception last Thursday and was the only person in our family to eat the drumsticks which were delicious. By morning, I was dashing to the toilet and spent the rest of the day parked close to one. It was a most unpleasant experience. Which is why this article about campylobacter caught my attention. Does this mean we should purchase frozen chicken in favour of chilled? Or should we just boycott factory farming and go free-range or vegetarian? Which brings me to a related topic.

Have you ever noticed during the defrosting process that there sometimes seems to be a lot of ice with the frozen chicken that you buy from the supermarket? There could be an explanation.

I was told a story not long ago from a person who worked in a chicken factory. They would process chickens by the tens of thousands daily. Now and then the order would come through from a supermarket chain for XYZ thousand No. 8 size frozen chickens. Quickly one of the process workers would be reassigned to the weighing station with a hose. Any of the "large" ones that were under the minimum No. 8 weight would receive a quick squirt of water in the bag before being sealed and quick-frozen!

Perhaps this is worthy of a Commerce Commission investigation?