4 Effective & Inexpensive Treatments Your Doctor May Not Know About

 

When my husband Tim was diagnosed at the age of forty with a cancerous brain tumor, I became a cracker-jack online medical researcher. I found treatments (both nutritional and non-nutritional) that kept Tim alive and in relatively good health for fifteen years—twelve years beyond his doctors’ predictions.

Since Tim was his doctors’ “miracle patient,” surviving much longer than their other patients, I naively assumed they would be eager to learn about the treatments I found for Tim. I hoped they’d want to tell their other patients about them, so they could extend their lives too.

Unfortunately, Tim’s doctors weren’t at all interested in learning about these treatments.

In 2001, Tim had a recurrence of his brain tumor. After this surgery, his suture line wouldn’t heal. Doctors performed eight additional surgeries in eight months, vainly attempting to make the skin on his head heal. Nothing worked. In fact, the repeated surgeries made him much worse until, finally, Tim was bedbound, severely brain injured, and nearly paralyzed from the surgical assaults on his body.

I was frantic, and searched everywhere for answers. Finally, I found an FDA-approved treatment that worked—Silverlon—and it worked literally overnight. But Tim’s doctors were still uninterested in hearing about my remedy for him.

In my research, I have found that certain treatments fall out of favor due to more profit-generating prescription drugs coming out on the market. Below are four lifesaving treatments for life-threatening conditions everyone should know about—all of them effective, inexpensive, and nontoxic. All four treatments form the basis of my book, HONEST MEDICINE: Effective, Time-Tested, Inexpensive Treatments for Life-Threatening Diseases.

Low-Dose Naltrexone (LDN)

For: MS, rheumatoid arthritis, lupus (and other autoimmune diseases) and some cancers

This drug has been used since the mid-1980s by Bernard Bihari, MD, to treat autoimmune diseases and some cancers. Today this off-label, low-dose drug, costing $25-40 a month, is used by patients with multiple sclerosis and also patients with other autoimmune diseases, including lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, fibromyalgia, and Crohn’s disease. Most common MS drugs can cost a whopping $1,000-$2,000—sometimes much more!—per month. And LDN has been shown in some cases to work better than its high-priced counterparts. Small studies conducted at very prestigious institutions, all published in PubMed, have found LDN to be effective:

• Penn State, Crohn’s disease study, published in theAmerican Journal of Gastroenterology
• University of California at San Francisco, multiple sclerosis study, published in the Annals of Neurology
• Stanford, fibromyalgia study, published in Pain Medicine

The Ketogenic Diet

For: Epilepsy

Used since the 1920s at Johns Hopkins and the Mayo Clinic to treat pediatric epilepsy, the Ketogenic Diet fell out of favor when anti-seizure medications came on the market. Today, thanks to the efforts of Hollywood writer/director/producer Jim Abrahams—one of the contributors to Julia’s book—there are now hundreds of hospitals worldwide administering the diet. Studies conducted at institutions such as Penn State and Johns Hopkins have shown the diet to be effective for controlling seizures. Here is a PubMed article showing the historical significance of the diet.

Intravenous Alpha Lipoic Acid

For: Liver disease

This treatment has been used since the mid-1970s by Dr. Burt Berkson, MD, MS, PhD, to treat terminal liver disease and since the mid-1990s (with oral LDN) to treat some cancers. For PubMed listings about this treatment, go here, here and here.

Silverlon

For: Non-healing wounds

This is an amazing wound-healing system that is FDA-approved for all nonhealing wounds. It saved Tim’s life in 2002. Silverlon is comprised of pieces of material impregnated with silver ions. For two studies listed in PubMed, go here and here.

Why Don’t More Doctors Prescribe These Treatments?

There are many theories as to why doctors don’t routinely prescribe treatments like the ones I feature in my book. First, these treatments are not produced by big pharmaceutical companies, so no sales reps “educate” doctors about them. Second, although there have been many small clinical trials showing the efficacy of these treatments, large Phase 3 trials are costly – often in the multi-million to billion dollar range. Because of the expense, the pharmaceutical industry funds 90 percent of all clinical trials, thus dashing the chances of inexpensive treatments like the ones featured in my book making it into the marketplace and into doctors’ prescribing habits.

Read more: http://www.care2.com/greenliving/4-effective-inexpensive-treatments-your-doctor-may-not-know-about