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When I came across this novel therapy for non-surgical healing of intestinal strictures, bowel adhesions and bowel obstructions I could hardly believe what I was reading. After doing this podcast with one of the technique’s inventors, Larry Wurn, I am even more excited!
As you’ll discover when you listen, this technique may also work for anal stenosis and possibly for malrotation and volvulus. I didn’t ask about it in the podcast, but I suspect it may also work for dysphagia (difficulty swallowing, tight, spasming or obstructed esophagus).
In addition to listening to the podcast, you can also download an informative and inspirational chapter from Larry & Belinda Wurn, founders of Clear Passage Physical Therapy about their revolutionary, hands-on technique for loosening the tough collagen cross-fibers that make up strictures, scar tissue, adhesions, etc. – providing a fantastic alternative to surgery:
“Adhesions form in all people as they heal from infection, surgery or injury. Modern medicine offers little relief, because surgery creates more adhesions. When physical therapist Belinda Wurn experienced terrible adhesion pain a year after cancer surgery, her doctors said that corrective surgery would only create more adhesions. Unable to cope with the pain and unwilling to undergo surgery, she and her husband (co-author Larry Wurn) worked with respected physicians and scientists to develop a non-surgical treatment that has cured many complex medical conditions, including cases of female infertility.”
I hope to try out this therapy for myself sometime this year, so will write about it when I do. But in the meantime, be SURE and download this chapter from their book (it is amazing and so worth reading!) and listen to my podcast with Larry Wurn (press the play button).
If you can’t afford this type of therapy, or you want something you can try yourself at home first, then check out our tried and tested methods for Stricture Emergencies and Treatment.
For a visual demonstration of exactly how strictures, adhesions and scar tissue in the abdomen form and how to loosen them manually, see my video with Mary Cox, Physical Therapist from Clear Passage:
Here we have yet another example of our craze for cheap ‘n easy resulting in health issues that weren’t present when quality and nutrition were the higher priority.
Modern people seem to have lost the knowledge that wheat is a grain, and like all grains, needs to be soaked and fermented prior to cooking/ingestion. As the cookbook, Nourishing Traditions points out, when you prepare grains properly, many tolerance issues disappear.
There are artisan bakers who use these natural fermentation techniques in their bread if you don’t want to start baking bread yourself. I’m lucky to have a local bakery, Fieldstone Artisan Breads, just down the road, who uses this natural fermentation method and I can tell you, the bread is delicious! As they say on their website:
Naturally leavened breads are easier to digest due to their slow, extended, 24 hour fermentation with leaven. During the long fermentation required to produce a natural leaven or sourdough, the natural cultures “predigest” the grain, converting carbohydrates into simple sugars and breaking down proteins, making naturally leavened bread easier to assimilate in our digestive systems. This is similar to how beneficial bacteria will culture milk into yoghurt and cheese.
And now, here’s an excerpt of an article from the Shipton Mill in England, which illustrates that when wheat is fermented properly, even gluten-intolerant and coeliacs can eat bread!!:
The timing of the emergence of coeliac disease, which was first diagnosed in the 1950s, coincides with the post-war drive to industrialise food production including baking.
Widespread wheat intolerance, however, emerged less than 20 years ago. At almost the same time, people started talking about an invasive strain of yeast called Candida albicans, which caused joint pain and digestive discomfort.
Andrew Whitley recalls in his book that at this time people started ringing up asking for breads made without wheat or baker’s yeast. As luck would have it, he had developed a sourdough rye bread that contained no wheat and was raised using a spontaneous fermentation (lasting about 24 hours) of ‘wild’ yeasts present in the flour. Customers tried it and found that their digestive problems were eased.
This experience was echoed elsewhere, as more people sought bread that didn’t contain wheat, or industrial yeast, or both. The bread on offer in the shops seemed to be making them ill.
Scientific evidence
The most interesting recent research, with considerable implications for making our daily bread wholesome again, has shown that lactic acid bacteria are capable of de-activating the very substances that cause wheat allergy and coeliac disease.
In 2002 Italian scientists demonstrated, for the first time that, with selected sourdough, lactic acid bacteria could neutralise some of the wheat gliadin that attacks the intestinal mucosa of coeliacs.
In 2004 a Japanese study showed how the lactic fermentation of soy sauce completely removes any allergens from wheat, which is one of its two main ingredients. This is no mean feat, since other studies have proved that the particular parts of the wheat gliadin that harm humans are hardly affected at all by stomach enzymes, and very acidic gastric and duodenal fluids.
It seems to be the unique property of certain lactic acid bacteria that, given time, they can knock out some otherwise impervious elements that make wheat unpalatable for so many people. Modern processes do not allow this to happen, leaving the allergens in place.
A ray of hope
But what do these are test-tube studies mean for the bread we eat – or can’t eat?
Most remarkably, the Italians made a bread with 30 per cent wheat flour (plus oats, millet and buckwheat) and fermented the dough with selected sourdough lactobacilli. It took 24 hours to hydrolyse almost completely the wheat gliadins and the ‘33-mer peptide, the most potent inducer of gut-derived human T-cell lines’ (the things that do the damage) in coeliac patients. They made a similar bread raised with baker’s yeast and fed samples of both to coeliacs in a double-blind acute challenge.
The results were emphatic, 13 out of 17 patients showed a marked alteration of intestinal permeability (popularly known as ‘leaky gut’) after eating the yeast-raised bread. But the same 13 patients, when fed the sourdough bread, showed no significant reaction: remarkably, coeliacs had eaten bread with wheat in it with no ill effects.
Currently, the only treatment for coeliac disease is a lifetime abstention from gluten. This experiment is a ray of hope for coeliacs and the wheat intolerant.
A traditional way to lessen suffering
There was a time when almost all breadmaking involved lactic acid bacteria and a long fermentation time. Before modern yeasts were isolated, most bread was fermented with what we would now call a sourdough and it would have taken many hours to rise. It is an intriguing possibility that, even if the wheats our forefathers cultivated contained the same potentially harmful gliadins as modern varieties, they were largely neutralised by the lactic acid bacteria that bakers couldn’t help developing in their doughs.
This suggests that a return to traditional breadmaking methods offers a significant reduction in the wheat intolerance people experience.
Jini Patel Thompson’s books on natural healing for digestive diseases have sold in over 40 different countries. Her health articles have been published in journals and magazines in the U.S., Australia and U.K. www.ListenToYourGut.com
You may have already done your research on cell phone safety, realized it’s not safe for adults or children and either drastically reduced your usage, gotten an air tube headset, or like me, just stopped using one (along with your cordless phone in your house, which uses the same microwave frequency).
But have you thought about WiFi safety, or wireless computer/internet safety? Perhaps you have a wireless computer network in your house, or at work? Or perhaps your kids’ school has installed a WiFi router to service their wireless computers? Or perhaps your kids play for hours on a Wii or Nintendo DS – both of which use wireless pulsed microwave radiation technology?
Here’s the big RUB: It doesn’t matter if your kids are using the computers or not, if the school has WiFi, they are being irradiated continuously, whether they are using a computer or not. That’s why this issue is making me crazy – I used to think, “Well, my kids aren’t on the computers so they’re okay.” NOT.
We have many scientists and researchers stepping forward to share the results of their research, and one of them is Barrie Trower – who worked as a specialist in microwave and stealth weaponry for the British military for 11 years.
Here’s what Barrie Trower has to say about WiFi or wireless radiation in schools:
“We are constantly being bathed in an increasing sea of radiation from exposure to the above, as well as electrical appliances, computers, Bluetooth devices, Wi-Fi installations and over 2,000 communications satellites in outer space that shower us with signals to GPS receivers. New WiMax transmitters on cell phone towers that have a range of up to two square miles compared to Wi-Fi’s 300 feet will soon turn the core of North America into one huge electromagnetic hot spot. Children are more severely affected because their brains are developing and their skulls are thinner. A two-minute call can alter brain function in a child for an hour, which is why other countries ban their sale or discourage their use under the age of 18. In contrast, this is the segment of the population now being targeted here in a $2 billion U.S. advertising campaign that views “tweens” (children between 8 and 12 years old) as the next big cell phone market. Firefly and Barbie cell phones are also being promoted for 6 to 8-year-olds.
It is not generally appreciated that there is a cumulative effect and that talking on a cell phone for just an hour a day for ten years can add up to 10,000 watts of radiation. That’s ten times more than from putting your head in a microwave oven. Pregnant women may also be at increased risk based on a study showing that children born to mothers who used a cell phone just two or three times a day during pregnancy showed a dramatic increase in hyperactivity and other behavioral and emotional problems. And for the 30% of children who had also used a cell phone by age 7, the incidence of behavioral problems was 80% higher! Whether ontogeny (embryonic development) recapitulates phylogeny is debatable, but it is clear that lower forms of life are also much more sensitive. If you put the positive electrode of a 1.5 volt battery in the Pacific Ocean at San Francisco and the negative one off San Diego, sharks in the in between these cities can detect the few billionths of a volt electrical field. EMF fields have also been implicated in the recent massive but mysterious disappearance of honeybee colonies essential for pollinating over 90 commercial crops. As Albert Einstein warned, “If the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe, then man would only have four years of life left.” - Paul J. Rosch, MD
Clinical Professor of Medicine and Psychiatry, New York Medical College; Honorary Vice President International Stress Management Association; Diplomate, National Board of Medical Examiners; Full Member, Russian Academy of Medical Sciences; Fellow, The Royal Society of Medicine; Emeritus Member, The Bioelectromagnetics Society
If you would like to approach your kids’ school to have WiFi removed, or a strong cell phone policy put in place, you can see my petition with my local Surrey School Board for ideas.
It’s a real shame, because my kids are in the Fine Arts program at a brilliant school with a professional theatre, dance studio and music studio (and with ocean views from all the upstairs classrooms!), fabulous teachers, and they couldn’t be happier. But the administration is unwilling to even examine the WiFi issue.
This is the FIRST generation of children to be exposed to wireless computers and cell phones like this – do I want my kids to risk cancer, leukemia, genetic mutation, chronic fatigue syndrome, etc. etc. or would I rather pull them out: better safe than sorry?
We know from GQ Magazine (of all places!) that Wall Street brokers take 10 years of pretty high cell phone use to develop brain tumours. But no one knows what the risks, or timeline is for children. Do I want my children to be part of the experiment? Because right now, without my knowledge or permission, their school installed a WiFi network and presto, they’re guinea pigs. And many other parents have bought their children cell phones which they use in my child’s classroom – thus irradiating my child as well as theirs.
My choice now is what to do about it? As we teach our kids: Problem –> Solution. Don’t whinge, don’t waste energy whining, lashing out, just look for the solution.
For myself, I’m thinking more and more about re-locating to 20 acres somewhere affordable – that way even if all our neighbours have wireless, it won’t come into our house. Combined with some kind of shared homeschool arrangement with like-minded parents. We saw this in Playa Del Carmen in Mexico – some expats there got 5 families together and each would be responsible for one day of homeschooling at each house. I thought it was a brilliant solution – the kids benefited from a mix of talents/education in teachers, good social environment and variety, and then parents only had to homeschool one day a week!
One thing you can control immediately, is to get rid of your cordless phone in your house. Depending on the model, these can emit even stronger radiation than a cell phone and a double-blind experiment shows how they can induce tachycardia (among other nasty symptoms). Likewise, make sure you’re not using a cordless (DECT) baby monitor with your highly-susceptible infant.
p.s. Just when you think it can’t get any worse, electricity companies in the U.S. and Canada are now installing “Smart Meters” that relay information about electricity usage every few minutes via….you guessed it…WiFi! Or even better, WiMax!! Great, now we will all be forced to have WiFi in our homes, or no electricity.
Jini Patel Thompson’s books on natural healing for digestive diseases have sold in over 40 different countries. Her health articles have been published in journals and magazines in the U.S., Australia and U.K. www.ListenToYourGut.com
I found this article and thought it was remarkable enough to pass on. It’s the story of a young man’s dreams taking flight after being told he would never achieve them. If you have bad eyesight or know anyone that does, you’ll want to read this.
Everything Old Is New Again: Rebuilding Your Vision
Glasses, contacts, or surgery. These are the usual choices offered to those of us with bad vision. Orlin Sorensen, though, needed an alternative. A commercial airline pilot who found himself in jeopardy of being downsized after the 9/11 tragedies, Sorensen decided to go for broke and pursue his lifelong dream of becoming a Navy fighter pilot. The only catch was that Navy fighter candidates were required to have near-perfect, uncorrected vision — no surgery allowed.
As for so many who seek different medical options, it was word of mouth that led Sorensen down a different path: a fellow pilot suggested eye exercises to naturally correct vision. Turns out, the exercises weren’t so much the “road not taken” as the “road not taken in a while.” Sorensen’s research revealed that natural vision training, in fact, had been around for almost a century.
Natural vision correction involves performing eye exercises and relaxation techniques daily to increase optical muscle strength and coordination. With a 30-minute daily routine, after just a month Sorensen improved his vision from 20/85 to 20/20; he went on to pass the Navy’s visual acuity test. In 2001, he founded a company, Rebuild Your Vision, to share his knowledge with the general public and to challenge the widespread belief that surgery is the only method of correcting vision. As more and more people turn to alternative medicine — one in three people in the U.S., according to the New England Journal of Medicine — Sorensen’s company has proven to be visionary in more ways than one.
A wholistic orientation to health
Watching TV, computer use, reliance on optical correction from glasses and contacts, as well as the normal aging process, all contribute to weak and distorted vision. Integral components of the eye are not stimulated but instead suffer from a narrow range of use, in the same way that repetitive mousing and typing tasks on the computer can lead to tendonitis in the arm and, eventually, carpal tunnel. Just as you exercise your body at the gym or practice yoga in order to improve muscle tone, agility, range of motion, and flexibility, so too do the eyes benefit from daily exercise. Designed to reverse the stresses placed upon the optical system, the vision-rebuilding process fortifies your eyes in ways that would never be achieved through normal daily activities.
Sorensen’s Rebuild Your Vision program provides multilevel goals and strengthening tools that challenge and stimulate different parts of the visual system. Customized training programs are available for those suffering from nearsightedness, astigmatism, and aging vision presbyopia). The program’s simple drills and exercises can be done at home, in the office, or on the road, thus enabling the practitioner to integrate them as part of an overall healthy lifestyle. It’s no accident that Sorensen is from Seattle, a city surrounded by natural beauty whose residents are perennially voted as some of America’s fittest.
An idea takes flight
Not only has Rebuild Your Vision become a success — according to surveys from customers worldwide, the program boasts over a 90% success rate in improving vision problems — but the medical establishment has also done research supporting the theories that the program is based upon, as in this excerpt from the Journal of the American Optometric Association describing the results of subjects who underwent natural vision training: “Subjects often stated that they had experienced the ability to make eye contact (without correction) with people across a room or street; they could see buildings and windows clearly without glasses many miles across San Francisco Bay, or in the case of high-diopter myopes (> -4.0 diopters) they were able to read books easily at arm’s length”.
Unlike eye surgery, natural vision correction is noninvasive and risk-free. And unlike glasses or contacts, it an active process rather than a palliative measure. So it’s no wonder vision rebuilding seems to strike a chord with health-conscious people today, who are increasingly choosing organic foods over fast foods, meditation over confrontation, and lifestyle changes over potentially harmful quick fixes. Ironic, but sometimes we need to take the long view to really appreciate what we’re seeing.
The Rebuild Your Vision program is a step-by-step program that systematically leads you through all the steps you need to take to improve your vision. I would also recommend you purchase a reputable supplement designed to specifically improve vision, like Vision Support from Dr. Ben Kim.
If you’re a self-directed learner, then you can access the original instructions for healing your eyesight – free of charge – from one of the founders of this therapy, Dr. William Bates MD, known as The Bates Method.
Jini Patel Thompson’s books on natural healing for digestive diseases have sold in over 40 different countries. Her health articles have been published in journals and magazines in the U.S., Australia and U.K. www.ListenToYourGut.com
NSAIDS (nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs) like aspirin and ibuprofen cause thousands of hospitalizations and deaths every year due to gastrointestinal bleeding. Fortunately, there are very powerful natural painkillers you can use that do not have harmful side effects. Learn about an effective painkilling herb used by Chinese, Indian and Native American Indians for centuries, as well as a do-it-yourself acupuncture tapping technique and become pain-free at last – with no damaging side effects.
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WHY YOU SHOULD ONLY USE NATURAL PAINKILLERS
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Nearly one-third of all gastrointestinal bleeding related hospitalizations and deaths are the result of using aspirin, ibuprofen, or other NSAIDS (nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs), according to an August 2005 report in The American Journal of Gastroenterology. But you may think, oh well I’m only on low-dose aspirin, or baby aspirin, and my doctor told me to take it for heart attack prevention. However, up to one-third of these GI bleeding deaths were due to low-dose aspirin. In real-life numbers, this means that out of every 100,000 people that use aspirin, ibuprofen and other NSAIDS, 15 will die from it.
If these odds look okay to you, then carry on. But if they seem rather high, and out of proportion to the reason you’re using painkillers, then you may want to look at some natural alternatives.
If you find yourself in need of a painkiller, you should investigate both acupuncture and EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique), if you want long-term results. Taking a pill or supplement that kills the pain for a few hours is a coping mechanism, but not a solution. You have to find out why your body is experiencing pain and heal/release the root or cause of that pain from your body. I particularly like EFT (which involves tapping on acupuncture meridian points) for this, because once you know how to do it, you can perform it on yourself and do not have to see a therapist for relief. EFT is amazingly effective with all kinds of pain; back pain, migraines, gut spasming, joint pain, etc.
And here’s a special gift for you:
You can book a free 30 minute Session with my personal EFT therapist, Annabel Fisher – just tell her you were referred by me – to try it out for yourself.
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Another natural painkiller is White Willow Bark (from which aspirin was derived). White willow bark was originally used by Native American Indians and boiled to make a tea which was drunk to alleviate pain. It was also used 2,500 years ago by Chinese physicians, who also used the bark of the willow tree to treat pain and fever.
In the 19th century, western scientists discovered the active ingredient in willow bark was salicin, a natural chemical which the body first converts into saligenin and then into salicylic acid. Using this model, German chemists synthesized acetylsalicylic acid (an non-natural molecular structure and therefore able to be patented by the Bayer drug company), from which all pharmaceutical ASA (acetylsalicylic acid) products are made. However both ASA and natural salicin work in a similar way.
White willow bark reduces pain by blocking the body’s production of inflammatory prostaglandins, which are hormone-like substances involved in inflammation and muscle contraction. White willow bark is also a very effective fever reducer. You can buy it in capsule form and either swallow it, or, open the capsules and mix the powder with Cocoa Butter to make a suppository (I do this for children – but make sure to reduce the dosage appropriately).
In its centuries of use there have been no contra-indications recorded from the use of white willow bark, or salicin. Traditionally it has proved safer then Aspirin and other synthetically derived salicylate based anti-inflammatory drugs. No cases of any serious side effects have ever been reported in medical literature. It is gentler on the stomach, and has a less toxic effect on the body in general.
The only restrictions on usage is that white willow bark should not be taken with aspirin, or by those sensitive to salicylates (found in foods like berries, currants, prunes and raisins). People with gastritis or ulcers should also avoid it, or use it in suppository form only. It should not be used by children under 16, for the same reason aspirin should also not be used: there is the potential for developing Reye’s Syndrome in children, during a viral infection.
I’ve had numerous people test white willow bark for headaches and they all said it worked as well as a drug painkiller. You can take the white willow bark for immediate relief and to hold you while you’re learning EFT (Emotional Freedom Techniques). Then, once you’ve addressed the root and cause of your pain using EFT, you’ll be truly pain-free for the long term and won’t need any herbal or drug painkillers.
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Detailed information on acupuncture, EFT and other painkilling protocols are in LISTEN TO YOUR GUT, Chapters Six and Seven.
Jini Patel Thompson’s books on natural healing for digestive diseases have sold in over 40 different countries. Her health articles have been published in journals and magazines in the U.S., Australia and U.K. www.ListenToYourGut.com
When I came across this novel therapy for non-surgical healing of intestinal strictures, bowel adhesions and bowel obstructions I could hardly believe what I was reading. After doing this podcast with one of the technique’s inventors, Larry Wurn, I am even more excited!
