Your Momma Should Have Known
"Our brains develop according to a recipe encoded in our genes...The sequence of DNA in those genes is pretty much fixed. For experiences to produce long-term changes in how we behave, they must be somehow able to reach into our brains and alter how those genes work."
- Carl Zimmer
Nothing against your mother. The point is that your mother and everyone's mother should have been taught what you are about to learn, before you were born. The news is recent, but the information itself has been around since the beginning of our existence.
Caution: What you are about to learn may change what you think about life and how you understand the sometimes mysterious behaviour of others. You won't be asked to convert to any way of thinking. It will simply help you to understand.
Human behaviour, or human nature if you will, may present the greatest mystery and challenge anyone has ever faced. For examples, men ask "What do women want?" while women wonder "What makes men tick?" Neither is a huge mystery, it's just that we haven't taught each other what a few of us already know.
The study you will read about could not have been conducted on humans. At least not on living ones. You will soon understand why. It was conducted on rats. And on the brains of people who had recently died, some from suicide. Just to make it more enticing, love has a great deal to do with it.
In humans, love is a mystery. The word has more definitions than just about any other in the Oxford English Dictionary. The problem is that we can't get a handle on exactly what love is. Yet, in our own lives, we tend to quantify love. We don't measure love as such. We measure loving touch.
In general, we touch those we love more than those we don't love. When the romance of the early months of a new relationship filled with lots of loving touch fades and the touching reduces to little or nothing, we say that love was lost. People leave legal relationships seeking more and better love, but what they really seek is more loving touch. We tend to equate touch with love. We measure how much others love us by the amount they want to share loving touch with us.
Not so easy to test in a science lab. Especially when ethics intervenes when we want to prove that people change for the negative when they lack sufficient touch of others. Many labs have turned to rats as substitutes. The similarities between us and rats in these tests may make you uncomfortable, but they are real.
In one family of rats the mother was allowed to lick the fur of her babies, often and extensively. In another, the mother hardly licked her babies at all. As adults, the two groups of rats turn out very different. In the neglected group, the rats were easily startled by unexpected noises, they were reluctant to explore new places and their bodies produced lots of hormone when they experienced stress.
The licked and loved rats were not easily startled, showed great curiosity in exploring new places in their environment. And they "did not suffer surges of stress hormones," according to Carl Zimmer.
They did not suffer surges of stress hormones. I do. Like many others, I lack the gene that should cause my adrenal gland to produce a hormone that neutralizes the effects of epinephrin (commonly known as adrenalin), the chemical produced by the adrenal gland to prepare us for action in times of sudden stress, known as the fight or flight response. In other words, when my body senses stress, I not only get the surge of adrenalin but it hangs around in my bloodstream for hours, even for days.
Why do some people suffer severely from stress--even to the point of thinking about or actually committing suicide--while others seem able to handle stress with relative ease? The rats in the experiment above and in hundreds of other labs may show us the answer. The rats--and at least some of us--may not be able to handle stress as well as others because our brains and bodies are not prepared for what amounts to prolonged chemical warfare on us. Self-induced chemical warfare.
Two families of molecules control when our genes turn on and off, which ones and for how long. One, the methyl group, essentially plugs the path for genes to express themselves by producing proteins. The other, coiling proteins, wraps our DNA into spools so tight the genes can't become active. If either is too successful or lacking, something can happen with gene expression (or may be prevented from happening) that will affect our health and even our lives.
Our experiences can rewrite these two, collectively called the epigenetic code. Most of the writing or behaviour patterning is done before we are born. However, strong experiences after we are born--even extraordinarily strong experiences as adults--can rewrite the code.
Differences between the brain of the licked rats and the neglected ones were found in the hippocampus. The glucocorticoid receptor gene--the one that controls how long adrenalin stays in the bloodstream--for example, was capped off by methyl groups in the neglected rats and they had fewer receptors than the licked rats. Thus the neglected rats had fewer ways to stop adrenalin from doing its thing when it was no longer needed. They were permanently stressed out.
Neurobiologist Michael Meaney, of McGill University, and colleagues followed his rat studies by studying the brains of people who had recently died. Twelve had committed suicide and had suffered abuse as children, 12 had committed suicide but had not suffered abuse and the final 12 had died of natural causes. The suicide people who had suffered abuse had cortisol receptors capped by methyl groups and had fewer receptors, as they had found with the rats. Abuse in childhood had caused them to be permanently stressed as adults.
Another group studied suicide victims and people who died natural deaths and found methyl groups blocking the gene that produces the protein BDNF in the Wernicke area of the brains of the suicides. Environmental influences--everything after birth, including human interaction--can also affect adults.
Neuroscientist Eric Nestler, of Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City, examined the brains of mice that had been put through so much stress in conflicts with other mice that they were depressed. He found differences in an area of the brain called the nucleus accumbens, which is involved with the brain's reward system and helps to set values on things based on the pleasure derived from them. He found the DNA in that part wound tightly with coiling proteins. Nestler's group found the same kinds of epigenetic changes in the brains of depressed humans who had recently died.
Brain changes caused by coiling proteins and methyl groups should be able to be reversed, once we learn how. Nestler injected HDAC inhibitors into the nucleus accumbens parts of the brains of depressed mice to loosen the coils of DNA. Ten days later the mice were less hesitant about approaching other mice and other signs of depression were absent.
These studies suggest that previously intractable human troubles such as depression, suicide and a wide range of problems associated with constant stress (including those that impact the immune system) may be correctable. More study is needed and testing on humans will be tricky, maybe even risky at first.
Any change to the brain is risky. But it may be do-able. Medical science is still in the very early stages of learning about our most complex and sophisticated organ.
Soon taking a DNA sample of a newborn baby will be routine. The sample will be examined for variations from expected norms so the child can have a genetic adjustment made and avoid genetic problems and weaknesses that are an unfortunate part of life today.
Bill Allin is the author of Turning it Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for teachers and parents who want to grow healthy children right from birth. This book shows us how.
Learn more at http://billallin.com/
[Primary source: The Brain, by Carl Zimmer, Discover, June 2010]
Showing posts with label science. Show all posts
Showing posts with label science. Show all posts
Tuesday, June 08, 2010
Sunday, December 27, 2009
Ardi Shook Science to its Roots
Ardi Shook Science To Its Roots
by Bill Allin, author of Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for teachers and parents who want to understand all the ways children develop, not just intellectually. People have problems when they don't know.
"From studying Ardipithecus ramidus, or Ardi, we learn that we cannot understand or model human evolution from chimps and gorillas."
- Owen Lovejoy, a lead author of one of the 11 studies of Ardi that appeared in the journal Science.
Science labelled the discovery of Ardi (more accurately, the revelations of study results of Ardi) the biggest scientific breakthrough of 2009.
At this stage, the study of Ardi and the ramifications of the changes of thinking that will come from it are just beginning. This article will add a few important observations to what we in the general public should learn from the whole exercise. Different information to ponder.
First and foremost is that the lead author of a respected scientific study admitted that the theory (that human evolutionary models could be devised from ape models) that was cherished so long it became thought of as fact, was wrong.
As much as we look somewhat like apes, especially so in the case of young chimpanzees, we differ significantly. The theory claimed that our prehistoric and prehuman ancestors lived in trees and only emerged from the African jungle to walk upright, learn to run and hunt on the savannah.
Cats and birds, for examples, live in trees (at least cats are as comfortable in trees as they are on the ground). Cats and birds can hang upside down from a tree branch and their brains will adjust to the orientation so that they can understand the scene as well as if they were standing upright.
Humans cannot. Stand up now, spread your legs and bend your head down so you look between your legs at the scene behind you. It simply doesn't make as much sense as it would if you were standing upright even though you know the components of the scene you are trying to look at. Your brain cannot adapt to what it understands as a scene that is non-conventional, that is not oriented to the way it wants to understand a floor or ground level scene.
Can you not bend that far? Interesting. Cats and birds can do that for their whole lives. Most can also keep their bodies steady and turn their heads almost completely around to face behind them (some can even do it more than 180 degrees). That would be useful for animals that spend a great deal of time in trees.
If you have observed a pet cat--perhaps one climbing on you--then you have likely seen it hang upside down (at least its head would be upside down according to common orientation) and yet have no trouble understanding everything in the scene. Birds can do the same. To a cat or a bird, there is no upside down, only different orientations of the head, to which their brains easily adapt and adjust immediately.
Monkeys and their kin can do the same. You may have seen one in a zoo, on television or in a movie hanging upside by a foot, or even by its tail. They understand the scenes around them no matter what orientation their heads have to view the scene.
We humans can't. No matter how practiced we become, viewing a scene from a non-conventional perspective is always "not right" to us.
Why? If we did indeed once live in trees, we had no reason to lose what was once a critically important ability. We may lose body parts because we have no use for them (prehensile tail of the human fetus that disappears after the fifth month, wisdom teeth that will soon not appear in future generations, useless organs we can have removed and easily live without), but there is no example of humans or other animals losing inherent skills or abilities they once had.
We may no longer be able to do things we once did because our bodies have changed shape or configuration slightly, but we don't lose the skill within our brain should we ever need it. The potential is still there. Yet we still can't understand a scene that is "upside down" to our brain.
Even the reason science gives for humans losing their body hair is lame. The claim is that humans lost their body hair because it would have been too hot to run around the plains hunting in a fur coat. So we lost our fur coats so we could expose our bare skin to ultraviolet radiation from the sun (more direct, thus damaging, in Africa than in temperate zones) so we could contract skin cancer more easily?
That doesn't make sense. Evolution has never been shown to work to create more health risk in any animal. That would be counter to natural selection. Besides, do monkeys not get hot from swinging around in the trees? I would, if I had that ability and strength, hairy or naked. But I don't now and I didn't as a child, though I climbed awkwardly (by ape standards) in some trees.
The claim that hair in the crotch and armpits helps to dispel sweat, which is why we still grow it in those places, would apply as well to hair anywhere else on the body. Sweat would evaporate more quickly from crotch and armpits without hair to slow down the movement of air across them. If not, then women who shave those places today would be sweatier than women who let their hair grow. I'm not an expert, but I have never heard of that being a problem of women who shave.
Why do we retain head hair? To protect us from the sun? That argument should give more reason why we should retain all-body hair, not lose it. We can wash hair and skin (cooling off in the water at the same time), but we can't slough off melanoma.
Why do we like water so much? Never mind that most of our bodies consist of water as that applies to all animals and plants. Archaeologists looking for ancient human habitation almost always look near water. Or they look near where water once was in the prehistoric past.
Why? We can get enough water into our bodies the way monkeys and other animals do.
We also swim differently from most land animals that spend part of their lives in water. A dog swims using the dog paddle (elephants, excellent swimmers, swim the same way). A dog swims this way so easily because its face and nose are, compared to the locations of our own, on top of their heads. A dog doesn't have to lift its head to swim because its nose is already above water as it floats.
That convenient location of the nose and eyes for dogs did not cause them to lose their fur because they hunt and basically live on land. Elephants, on the other hand, are naked, can find food in the water, and they have webbing between their toes like a duck.
It seems highly likely that our prehuman ancestors--in the Pliocene period--spent a good deal of time in the water. There we lost our body hair, retained it in crotch and armpits for warmth and on the head so our babies could hold onto it. Ever held out your finger to a young baby and had it grasp the finger naturally? For more on this see Elaine Morgan's The Descent of Woman.
If the experts that study the history of our own species are so careless, so inexact, so arrogant about teaching theory that doesn't even meet the criterion of common sense examination, as if it were established fact, how much confidence can we place in any scientific claims made with the certainty of experts?
Theory is not fact, by its very definition, though theory is often taught as if it were fact. Even the laws of physics bear questioning. Remember reading about when light was believed to travel in straight lines, when time and space were linear, when the earth was the centre of the universe and when an object was in one place it couldn't be anywhere else? Not anymore. Evidence proves that these "facts" of science were wrong.
We may be wrong to adopt fantastic stories masquerading as religion (my story is always better and truer than yours), but we would be equally as mistaken to accept all statements by science as fact, no matter how confidently and passionately the statements are made.
We humans do not really know as much as we claim we do. We just act as if we know more, as if we are always right. It's called hubris. We teach it to our kids.
Bill Allin is the author of Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for teachers and parents who want to understand all the ways children develop, not just intellectually. People have problems when they don't know.
Learn more at http://billallin.com/
by Bill Allin, author of Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for teachers and parents who want to understand all the ways children develop, not just intellectually. People have problems when they don't know.
"From studying Ardipithecus ramidus, or Ardi, we learn that we cannot understand or model human evolution from chimps and gorillas."
- Owen Lovejoy, a lead author of one of the 11 studies of Ardi that appeared in the journal Science.
Science labelled the discovery of Ardi (more accurately, the revelations of study results of Ardi) the biggest scientific breakthrough of 2009.
At this stage, the study of Ardi and the ramifications of the changes of thinking that will come from it are just beginning. This article will add a few important observations to what we in the general public should learn from the whole exercise. Different information to ponder.
First and foremost is that the lead author of a respected scientific study admitted that the theory (that human evolutionary models could be devised from ape models) that was cherished so long it became thought of as fact, was wrong.
As much as we look somewhat like apes, especially so in the case of young chimpanzees, we differ significantly. The theory claimed that our prehistoric and prehuman ancestors lived in trees and only emerged from the African jungle to walk upright, learn to run and hunt on the savannah.
Cats and birds, for examples, live in trees (at least cats are as comfortable in trees as they are on the ground). Cats and birds can hang upside down from a tree branch and their brains will adjust to the orientation so that they can understand the scene as well as if they were standing upright.
Humans cannot. Stand up now, spread your legs and bend your head down so you look between your legs at the scene behind you. It simply doesn't make as much sense as it would if you were standing upright even though you know the components of the scene you are trying to look at. Your brain cannot adapt to what it understands as a scene that is non-conventional, that is not oriented to the way it wants to understand a floor or ground level scene.
Can you not bend that far? Interesting. Cats and birds can do that for their whole lives. Most can also keep their bodies steady and turn their heads almost completely around to face behind them (some can even do it more than 180 degrees). That would be useful for animals that spend a great deal of time in trees.
If you have observed a pet cat--perhaps one climbing on you--then you have likely seen it hang upside down (at least its head would be upside down according to common orientation) and yet have no trouble understanding everything in the scene. Birds can do the same. To a cat or a bird, there is no upside down, only different orientations of the head, to which their brains easily adapt and adjust immediately.
Monkeys and their kin can do the same. You may have seen one in a zoo, on television or in a movie hanging upside by a foot, or even by its tail. They understand the scenes around them no matter what orientation their heads have to view the scene.
We humans can't. No matter how practiced we become, viewing a scene from a non-conventional perspective is always "not right" to us.
Why? If we did indeed once live in trees, we had no reason to lose what was once a critically important ability. We may lose body parts because we have no use for them (prehensile tail of the human fetus that disappears after the fifth month, wisdom teeth that will soon not appear in future generations, useless organs we can have removed and easily live without), but there is no example of humans or other animals losing inherent skills or abilities they once had.
We may no longer be able to do things we once did because our bodies have changed shape or configuration slightly, but we don't lose the skill within our brain should we ever need it. The potential is still there. Yet we still can't understand a scene that is "upside down" to our brain.
Even the reason science gives for humans losing their body hair is lame. The claim is that humans lost their body hair because it would have been too hot to run around the plains hunting in a fur coat. So we lost our fur coats so we could expose our bare skin to ultraviolet radiation from the sun (more direct, thus damaging, in Africa than in temperate zones) so we could contract skin cancer more easily?
That doesn't make sense. Evolution has never been shown to work to create more health risk in any animal. That would be counter to natural selection. Besides, do monkeys not get hot from swinging around in the trees? I would, if I had that ability and strength, hairy or naked. But I don't now and I didn't as a child, though I climbed awkwardly (by ape standards) in some trees.
The claim that hair in the crotch and armpits helps to dispel sweat, which is why we still grow it in those places, would apply as well to hair anywhere else on the body. Sweat would evaporate more quickly from crotch and armpits without hair to slow down the movement of air across them. If not, then women who shave those places today would be sweatier than women who let their hair grow. I'm not an expert, but I have never heard of that being a problem of women who shave.
Why do we retain head hair? To protect us from the sun? That argument should give more reason why we should retain all-body hair, not lose it. We can wash hair and skin (cooling off in the water at the same time), but we can't slough off melanoma.
Why do we like water so much? Never mind that most of our bodies consist of water as that applies to all animals and plants. Archaeologists looking for ancient human habitation almost always look near water. Or they look near where water once was in the prehistoric past.
Why? We can get enough water into our bodies the way monkeys and other animals do.
We also swim differently from most land animals that spend part of their lives in water. A dog swims using the dog paddle (elephants, excellent swimmers, swim the same way). A dog swims this way so easily because its face and nose are, compared to the locations of our own, on top of their heads. A dog doesn't have to lift its head to swim because its nose is already above water as it floats.
That convenient location of the nose and eyes for dogs did not cause them to lose their fur because they hunt and basically live on land. Elephants, on the other hand, are naked, can find food in the water, and they have webbing between their toes like a duck.
It seems highly likely that our prehuman ancestors--in the Pliocene period--spent a good deal of time in the water. There we lost our body hair, retained it in crotch and armpits for warmth and on the head so our babies could hold onto it. Ever held out your finger to a young baby and had it grasp the finger naturally? For more on this see Elaine Morgan's The Descent of Woman.
If the experts that study the history of our own species are so careless, so inexact, so arrogant about teaching theory that doesn't even meet the criterion of common sense examination, as if it were established fact, how much confidence can we place in any scientific claims made with the certainty of experts?
Theory is not fact, by its very definition, though theory is often taught as if it were fact. Even the laws of physics bear questioning. Remember reading about when light was believed to travel in straight lines, when time and space were linear, when the earth was the centre of the universe and when an object was in one place it couldn't be anywhere else? Not anymore. Evidence proves that these "facts" of science were wrong.
We may be wrong to adopt fantastic stories masquerading as religion (my story is always better and truer than yours), but we would be equally as mistaken to accept all statements by science as fact, no matter how confidently and passionately the statements are made.
We humans do not really know as much as we claim we do. We just act as if we know more, as if we are always right. It's called hubris. We teach it to our kids.
Bill Allin is the author of Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for teachers and parents who want to understand all the ways children develop, not just intellectually. People have problems when they don't know.
Learn more at http://billallin.com/
Wednesday, July 01, 2009
Hydrogen Peroxide: Truth, Lies and Rumours
Hydrogen Peroxide: Truth, Lies and Rumours
Is it a miracle drug or a carcinogenic poison peddled freely and propagandized openly on the internet? Opinions differ greatly, though (thankfully) not violently, over the efficacy of hydrogen peroxide as a human disease cure or preventative.
When I received, in a print newsletter from a real estate company, a copy of a list of uses for hydrogen peroxide that has been floating around internet how-to sites for nearly a decade, I decided it was time to do some real research on the subject.
The piece begins "This was written by Becky Ransey of Indiana (a doctor's wife)." So far what we know for sure is that there is a real state called Indiana and doctors (at least of the medical variety) deal with health issues. We do not know who Becky Ransey is. An internet search turned her name up hundreds of times, but nothing more verifiable that the sentence quoted above. Becky Ransey, if she exists, may or may not be married to a medical doctor, but if both are true it still means nothing because the source of what was written cannot be verified. The email and internet list provide no source of evidence or verifiable testing.
In fact, the printed version I received said "My husband has been in the medical field for over 36 years." It doesn't even claim that her husband was a doctor, as some versions of the story do (see above). A hospital orderly and maybe even a janitor might make a claim that they are "in the medical field."
I will add the full version that has most commonly made its way around the internet later in the article. For now, let's address the facts and fictions of the peroxide list. First, hydrogen peroxide has been around and known about since it was first discovered about 200 years ago. Before that? Well, our bodies manufacture the stuff naturally so the chemical has been around much longer than that.
Since our own bodies make hydrogen peroxide, does that mean that the product we can buy in any drug store for a small sum is safe to use, it being only at a concentration of three percent (the balance being water)? Like everything else to do with health, the answer is not simple. Too much or too strong a concentration ingested (taken internally) could kill you, or at least kill a child or someone with compromised health. Under the right conditions, it could be used as therapy for cancer, Alzheimer, multiple sclerosis, even asthma and allergies. Just like warfarin, which kills rats at one concentration and heals heart patients at a lesser dose.
You would recognize the chemical formula for the hydrogen peroxide molecule as being similar to that of water. Water is H2O, while peroxide is H2O2. Peroxide is like water, only with a second atom of oxygen. No surprise then when we learn that peroxide breaks into oxygen and water in our bodies.
What may be a surprise is that the free oxygen atom is also known as a "free radical," which some will recognize as potential sources or catalysts for cancer. What's up with that? Free radicals get inside the good bacteria in our bodies and cause no harm because our good bacteria not only keep us healthy, they have adapted to avoid damage from invaders that break into their cells. Inside bad bacteria and other microbes, peroxide wreaks havoc.
The right amount of free radicals in our bodies fights off cancer, while too much can cause it to spread. Hydrogen peroxide in the hands of someone who doesn't know what they are doing could be dangerous. Or it could be a life saver, if the person is lucky.
Of course anyone considering ingesting H2O2 or receiving it by needle should consult a doctor. However, it may be necessary to consult a doctor who knows something about using hydrogen peroxide as a therapy. If your family doctor has no expertise or experience with peroxide use as a therapy, consider contacting the following for names and addresses of doctors near you who do:
International Bio-Oxidative Medicine Foundation (IBOM),
P.O. Box 13205,
Oklahoma City, OK
73113
USA
(405) 478-4266
Note that the ordinary brown bottle of hydrogen peroxide you can buy in a store is 3% concentration, which is low, but frequent use in the mouth, for example, over periods of time longer than a few days or use undiluted for more than a brief time to rinse the mouth is not recommended, even by the manufacturers.
H2O2 may be acquired in several concentrations. They come as follows, though from a variety of sources:
A) 3 or 3.5% Pharmaceutical Grade: This is the grade sold at your local drugstore or supermarket. This product is not recommended for internal use. It contains an assortment of stabilizers which shouldn't be ingested. Various stabilizers include: acetanilide, phenol, sodium stanate and tertrasodium phosphate.
B) 6% Beautician Grade: This is used in beauty shops to color hair and is not recommended for internal use.
C) 30% Reagent Grade: This is used for various scientific experimentation and also contains stabilizers. It is also not for internal use.
D) 30% to 32% Electronic Grade: This is used to clean electronic parts and not for internal use.
E) 35% Technical Grade: This is a more concentrated product than the Reagent Grade and differs slightly in that phosphorus is added to help neutralize any chlorine from the water used to dilute it.
F) 35% Food Grade: This is used in the production of foods like cheese, eggs, and whey-containing products. It is also sprayed on the foil lining of aseptic packages containing fruit juices and milk products. THIS IS THE ONLY GRADE RECOMMENDED FOR INTERNAL USE. It is available in pints, quarts, gallons or even drums.
G) 90%: This is used as an oxygen source for rocket fuel.
That list is courtesy of Dr. David G. Williams
http://educate-yourself.org/cancer/benefitsofhydrogenperozide17jul03.shtml
Dr. Williams not only discourages ingesting hydrogen peroxide at 90% concentration because it's needed in the space industry for rocket fuel, he cautions about taking great care when using the 35% Food Grade version for children, people with certain existing health problems or using it in other than a highly diluted concentration.
..........................
Now for that email/internet list, both the annotated version and the original, courtesy of http://www.truthorfiction.com/rumors/h/hydrogen-peroxide.htm
1. Take one capful (the little white cap that comes with the bottle) and hold in your mouth for 10 minutes daily, then spit it out. (I do it when Ibathe or shower.) No more canker sores and your teeth will be whiter without expensive pastes. Use it instead of mouthwash-Truth! But Limited Use!The Merck Manuals recommended diluting the 3% hydrogen peroxide 50 percent with water, but suggest it as a rinse and part of a treatment for trench mouth, for example. The FDA has approved 3% solutions of hydrogen peroxide for use as a mouthwash. Most sources said to use it only for a short time, however, such as part of a treatment of a mouth infection. A report from Well-Connected (written or edited by physicians at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital) recommended against extended use, saying that overuse may actually damage cells and soften tooth surfaces. We were not able to find any authoritative information about hydrogen peroxide and canker sores.
2. Let your toothbrushes soak [in] a cup peroxide to keep them free of germs-Unproven!We didn't find anything authoritative about soaking toothbrushes in hydrogen peroxide. Because hydrogen peroxide degrades quickly when exposed to light, if you do soak a toothbrush, do it in freshly poured hydrogen peroxide. Just keeping an open cup of the stuff around won't do much good.
3. Clean your counters, table tops with peroxide to kill germs and leave a fresh smell. Simply put a little on your dishrag when you wipe, or sprayit on the counters-Truth!
4. After rinsing off your wooden cutting board, pour peroxide on it to kill salmonella and other bacteria-Truth!The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has approved hydrogen peroxide as a sanitizer.
5. I had fungus on my feet for years - until I sprayed a 50/50 mixture of peroxide and water on them (especially the toes) every night and let dry-Unproven! We were not able to find any authoritative source about foot fungus and treatment with hydrogen peroxide. Again, we are assuming she means a 50/50 mixture of water and 3% hydrogen peroxide. An actual 50/50 mixture of pure hydrogen peroxide and water would be too high a concentration to be safe.
For many of us, hydrogen peroxide was one of the first things we put on a cut or a wound, but that is less recommended nowadays. The reason, according to numerous medical sites, is that there is a downside to the hydrogen peroxide as well. It also damages healthy cells that are needed for the wounds to heal and hinders them from getting to the area where the healing needs to take place. The HealthFinder publication of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services says don't use hydrogen peroxide on a wound because it interferes with healing. The U.S. Gymnastics team has followed the recommendations of researchers and uses soap and water for cleansing wounds and not hydrogen peroxide. The National Safety Council's First Aid Pocket Guide (1996) says "DO NOT use hydrogen peroxide It does not kill bacteria, and it adversely affects capillary blood flow and wound healing." The Mayo Clinic gives the same advice.
[6 was omitted on the site.]
7. Put two capfuls into a douche to prevent yeast infections. I had chronic yeast infections until I tried this once or twice a week-Disputed!Interestingly enough, hydrogen peroxide is naturally produced in the vagina to deal with bacteria. There is conflicting opinion among the experts, however, about whether douching with hydrogen peroxide is helpful or harmful and even some voices that doubt whether douching is necessary at all under normal circumstances.
8. Fill a spray bottle with a 50/50 mixture of peroxide and water and keep it in every bathroom to disinfect without harming your septic systemlike bleach or most other disinfectants will-But be sure you put the mixture into a bottle that filters out sunlight. Also, it appears that hydrogen peroxide does not harm septic systems. Again, this is probably a mixture of 50% water with the other half being 3% or 30% strengths of hydrogen peroxide.
9. Tilt your head back and spray into nostrils with your 50/50 mixture whenever you have a cold, plugged sinus. It will bubble and help to killthe bacteria. Hold for a few minutes then blow your nose into a tissue-Undetermined!
We couldn't find much about this in terms of research. Again, if you choose to do it, this is probably referring to a mixture of 3% hydrogen peroxide with water.10. If you have a terrible toothache and can not get to a dentist right away, put a capful of 3% peroxide into your mouth and hold it for tenminutes several times a day. The pain will lessen greatly-(N.B. this is highly disputed, especially because of the long time that it recommends holding it in the mouth)
11. And of course, if you like a natural look to your hair, spray the 50/50 solution on your wet hair after a shower and comb it through. Youwill not have the peroxide burnt blonde hair like the hair dye packages, but more natural highlights if your hair is a light brown, faddish, or dirty blonde.It also lightens gradually so it's not a drastic change-Truth!One of the classic uses of hydrogen peroxide is to bleach hair. The concentrations are between 3% and 6%. This suggestion to dilute with water probably applies to those solutions.
12. Put half a bottle of peroxide in your bath to help rid boils, fungus, or other skin infections-Undetermined!The half a bottle probably refers to a 3% solution.
13. You can also add a cup of peroxide instead of bleach to a load of whites in your laundry to whiten them. If there is blood on clothing, pourdirectly on the soiled spot. Let it sit for a minute, then rub it and rinse with cold water. Repeat if necessary-Truth! But Careful!The effectiveness of this method is a matter of experimentation, but the principle is sound. Some of the so called "oxygen" bleaches contain hydrogen peroxide.
Be careful about the suggestion to use it on spots. Hydrogen peroxide is a bleach!
14 This list didn't have it, but I use peroxide to clean my mirrors; there is no smearing, which is why I love it so much for this-Unproven!
The original hydrogen peroxide eRumor did not include this. Some of these were added by people along the way.
15. Gargle with hydrogen peroxide, put drops in the ear and nose to end colds, flu, chronic sinusitis (including polyps], and infections. A repeat of some previous information.
16. Use as a vegetable wash or soak to kill bacteria and neutralize chemicals-Truth! We don't know about the chemicals, but there are several credible references about the use of hydrogen peroxide on fruits or vegetables. Research published by the Journal of Food and Science in 2003 showed effective results of using hydrogen peroxide to decontaminate apples and melons that were infected with strains of E.coli.17. Disinfect your dishwasher or refrigerator-Undetermined!
18. Use it on trees and plants as a natural fungicide, insecticide, and as a weed killer-Undetermined!We found no research on the use of hydrogen peroxide as an insecticide, fungicide, or weed killer.
19. Clean with hydrogen peroxide when your house becomes a biohazard after its invaded by toxic mold, such as those with water damage-Truth!In a publication about "Healthy Homes," the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) listed hydrogen peroxide as among the substances that can be used against mold, but also said there had not been enough research to recommend its use. It is not known what molds hydrogen peroxide is most effective against or what the human health hazards may be from using it so extensively. Also, since hydrogen peroxide is a bleach, be careful where you use it in terms of preserving the colors in your home.
Updated 8/5/06
A real example of the eRumor as it has appeared on the Internet:
HYDROGEN PEROXIDE.....H2O2
We know ..........vinegar/baking soda and now peroxide - our mothers were right!
I want to share this with you, which was written by Becky Ransey of Indiana:
"I would like to tell you of the benefits of that plain little ol' bottle of 3% peroxide you can get for under $1.00 at any drug store. My husband has been in the medical field for over 36 years, and most doctors don't tell you about peroxide, or they would lose thousands of dollars.
1. Take one capful (the little white cap that comes with the bottle) and hold in your mouth for 10 minutes daily, then spit it out. (I do it when I bathe or shower.) No more canker sores and your teeth will be whiter without expensive pastes. Use it instead of mouthwash.
2. Let your toothbrushes soak a cup peroxide to keep them free of germs.
3. Clean your counters, table tops with peroxide to kill germs and leave a fresh smell. Simply put a little on your dishrag when you wipe, or sprayit on the counters.
4. After rinsing off your wooden cutting board, pour peroxide on it to kill salmonella and other bacteria.
5. I had fungus on my feet for years - until I sprayed a 50/50 mixture of peroxide and water on them (especially the toes) every night and let dry.
6. Soak any infections or cuts in 3% peroxide for five to ten minutes several times a day. My husband has seen gangrene that would not heal with any medicine, but was healed by soaking in peroxide.
7. Put two capfuls into a douche to prevent yeast infections. I had chronic yeast infections until I tried this once or twice a week.
8. Fill a spray bottle with a 50/50 mixture of peroxide and water and keep it in every bathroom to disinfect without harming your septic systemlike bleach or most other disinfectants will.
9. Tilt your head back and spray into nostrils with your 50/50 mixture whenever you have a cold, plugged sinus. It will bubble and help to kill the bacteria. Hold for a few minutes then blow your nose into a tissue.
10. If you have a terrible toothache and can not get to a dentist right away, put a capful of 3% peroxide into your mouth and hold it for ten minutes several times a day. The pain will lessen greatly.
11. And of course, if you like a natural look to your hair, spray the 50/50 solution on your wet hair after a shower and comb it through. You will not have the peroxide burnt blonde hair like the hair dye packages, but more natural highlights if your hair is a light brown, faddish, or dirty blonde. It also lightens gradually so it's not a drastic change.
12. Put half a bottle of peroxide in your bath to help rid boils, fungus, or other skin infections.
13. You can also add a cup of peroxide instead of bleach to a load of whites in your laundry to whiten them. If there is blood on clothing, pour directly on the soiled spot. Let it sit for a minute, then rub it and rinse with cold water. Repeat if necessary.
14 This list didn't have it, but I use peroxide to clean my mirrors; there is no smearing, which is why I love it so much for this.
15. Gargle with hydrogen peroxide, put drops in the ear and nose to end colds, flu, chronic sinusitis (including polyps], and infections.
16. Use as a vegetable wash or soak to kill bacteria and neutralize chemicals.
17. Disinfect your dishwasher or refrigerator.
18. Use it on trees and plants as a natural fungicide, insecticide, and as a weed killer
19. Clean with hydrogen peroxide when your house becomes a biohazard after its invaded by toxic mold, such as those with water damage.
Throughout the world hydrogen peroxide is used instead of chlorine as a safer and eco-friendly municicpal [sic] water purifier. Some use H2O2 in pools and spas.
.................................
A Few Final Notes
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has not approved those high strength hydrogen peroxide products for use internally and considers them dangerous. In July, 2006, the FDA issued a warning about the high strength hydrogen peroxides, saying they could lead to serious health risks and even death. Though the FDA statement is not clear, we can safely assume that the reference is to taking high strength hydrogen peroxide internally without diluting it.
My personal anecdote involves using hydrogen peroxide to remove ear wax. I have one ear that produces an inordinate amount of wax. That wax not only reduces my hearing, but it provides a nice breeding ground for infection, which I recognize by some dizziness when turning my head quickly. When a now-former family doctor caused tinnitus in my ears by "washing" them with a stream of warm water to remove wax plugs, destroying most of the cilia hairs that amplify incoming air waves that produce "sound," I sought out another solution. Every couple of weeks I lie on my side in bed and drop eight drops of 3% peroxide from an eye dropper into the ear and let it bubble away for 30 to 60 minutes. The peroxide removes the wax, allowing any infection to clear up by itself within a day, should it be present. My sources can't agree about whether the peroxide actually clears up the infection or allows the air to do the job. But it works.
The following sources will be useful to someone interested in learning more about hydrogen peroxide:
http://www.snopes.com/medical/homecure/peroxide.asp
http://www.answerbag.com/q_view/43308
The David Williams web page listed earlier in the article also provides more valuable web sites on the subject.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for parents and teachers who want to provide kids with what they really need rather than just what some adults believe they should be taught in school. Despite the book's heavy sounding subtitle, it's written in an easy to read fashion.
Learn more about the book and the worldwide TIA project at http://billallin.com
Is it a miracle drug or a carcinogenic poison peddled freely and propagandized openly on the internet? Opinions differ greatly, though (thankfully) not violently, over the efficacy of hydrogen peroxide as a human disease cure or preventative.
When I received, in a print newsletter from a real estate company, a copy of a list of uses for hydrogen peroxide that has been floating around internet how-to sites for nearly a decade, I decided it was time to do some real research on the subject.
The piece begins "This was written by Becky Ransey of Indiana (a doctor's wife)." So far what we know for sure is that there is a real state called Indiana and doctors (at least of the medical variety) deal with health issues. We do not know who Becky Ransey is. An internet search turned her name up hundreds of times, but nothing more verifiable that the sentence quoted above. Becky Ransey, if she exists, may or may not be married to a medical doctor, but if both are true it still means nothing because the source of what was written cannot be verified. The email and internet list provide no source of evidence or verifiable testing.
In fact, the printed version I received said "My husband has been in the medical field for over 36 years." It doesn't even claim that her husband was a doctor, as some versions of the story do (see above). A hospital orderly and maybe even a janitor might make a claim that they are "in the medical field."
I will add the full version that has most commonly made its way around the internet later in the article. For now, let's address the facts and fictions of the peroxide list. First, hydrogen peroxide has been around and known about since it was first discovered about 200 years ago. Before that? Well, our bodies manufacture the stuff naturally so the chemical has been around much longer than that.
Since our own bodies make hydrogen peroxide, does that mean that the product we can buy in any drug store for a small sum is safe to use, it being only at a concentration of three percent (the balance being water)? Like everything else to do with health, the answer is not simple. Too much or too strong a concentration ingested (taken internally) could kill you, or at least kill a child or someone with compromised health. Under the right conditions, it could be used as therapy for cancer, Alzheimer, multiple sclerosis, even asthma and allergies. Just like warfarin, which kills rats at one concentration and heals heart patients at a lesser dose.
You would recognize the chemical formula for the hydrogen peroxide molecule as being similar to that of water. Water is H2O, while peroxide is H2O2. Peroxide is like water, only with a second atom of oxygen. No surprise then when we learn that peroxide breaks into oxygen and water in our bodies.
What may be a surprise is that the free oxygen atom is also known as a "free radical," which some will recognize as potential sources or catalysts for cancer. What's up with that? Free radicals get inside the good bacteria in our bodies and cause no harm because our good bacteria not only keep us healthy, they have adapted to avoid damage from invaders that break into their cells. Inside bad bacteria and other microbes, peroxide wreaks havoc.
The right amount of free radicals in our bodies fights off cancer, while too much can cause it to spread. Hydrogen peroxide in the hands of someone who doesn't know what they are doing could be dangerous. Or it could be a life saver, if the person is lucky.
Of course anyone considering ingesting H2O2 or receiving it by needle should consult a doctor. However, it may be necessary to consult a doctor who knows something about using hydrogen peroxide as a therapy. If your family doctor has no expertise or experience with peroxide use as a therapy, consider contacting the following for names and addresses of doctors near you who do:
International Bio-Oxidative Medicine Foundation (IBOM),
P.O. Box 13205,
Oklahoma City, OK
73113
USA
(405) 478-4266
Note that the ordinary brown bottle of hydrogen peroxide you can buy in a store is 3% concentration, which is low, but frequent use in the mouth, for example, over periods of time longer than a few days or use undiluted for more than a brief time to rinse the mouth is not recommended, even by the manufacturers.
H2O2 may be acquired in several concentrations. They come as follows, though from a variety of sources:
A) 3 or 3.5% Pharmaceutical Grade: This is the grade sold at your local drugstore or supermarket. This product is not recommended for internal use. It contains an assortment of stabilizers which shouldn't be ingested. Various stabilizers include: acetanilide, phenol, sodium stanate and tertrasodium phosphate.
B) 6% Beautician Grade: This is used in beauty shops to color hair and is not recommended for internal use.
C) 30% Reagent Grade: This is used for various scientific experimentation and also contains stabilizers. It is also not for internal use.
D) 30% to 32% Electronic Grade: This is used to clean electronic parts and not for internal use.
E) 35% Technical Grade: This is a more concentrated product than the Reagent Grade and differs slightly in that phosphorus is added to help neutralize any chlorine from the water used to dilute it.
F) 35% Food Grade: This is used in the production of foods like cheese, eggs, and whey-containing products. It is also sprayed on the foil lining of aseptic packages containing fruit juices and milk products. THIS IS THE ONLY GRADE RECOMMENDED FOR INTERNAL USE. It is available in pints, quarts, gallons or even drums.
G) 90%: This is used as an oxygen source for rocket fuel.
That list is courtesy of Dr. David G. Williams
http://educate-yourself.org/cancer/benefitsofhydrogenperozide17jul03.shtml
Dr. Williams not only discourages ingesting hydrogen peroxide at 90% concentration because it's needed in the space industry for rocket fuel, he cautions about taking great care when using the 35% Food Grade version for children, people with certain existing health problems or using it in other than a highly diluted concentration.
..........................
Now for that email/internet list, both the annotated version and the original, courtesy of http://www.truthorfiction.com/rumors/h/hydrogen-peroxide.htm
1. Take one capful (the little white cap that comes with the bottle) and hold in your mouth for 10 minutes daily, then spit it out. (I do it when Ibathe or shower.) No more canker sores and your teeth will be whiter without expensive pastes. Use it instead of mouthwash-Truth! But Limited Use!The Merck Manuals recommended diluting the 3% hydrogen peroxide 50 percent with water, but suggest it as a rinse and part of a treatment for trench mouth, for example. The FDA has approved 3% solutions of hydrogen peroxide for use as a mouthwash. Most sources said to use it only for a short time, however, such as part of a treatment of a mouth infection. A report from Well-Connected (written or edited by physicians at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital) recommended against extended use, saying that overuse may actually damage cells and soften tooth surfaces. We were not able to find any authoritative information about hydrogen peroxide and canker sores.
2. Let your toothbrushes soak [in] a cup peroxide to keep them free of germs-Unproven!We didn't find anything authoritative about soaking toothbrushes in hydrogen peroxide. Because hydrogen peroxide degrades quickly when exposed to light, if you do soak a toothbrush, do it in freshly poured hydrogen peroxide. Just keeping an open cup of the stuff around won't do much good.
3. Clean your counters, table tops with peroxide to kill germs and leave a fresh smell. Simply put a little on your dishrag when you wipe, or sprayit on the counters-Truth!
4. After rinsing off your wooden cutting board, pour peroxide on it to kill salmonella and other bacteria-Truth!The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has approved hydrogen peroxide as a sanitizer.
5. I had fungus on my feet for years - until I sprayed a 50/50 mixture of peroxide and water on them (especially the toes) every night and let dry-Unproven! We were not able to find any authoritative source about foot fungus and treatment with hydrogen peroxide. Again, we are assuming she means a 50/50 mixture of water and 3% hydrogen peroxide. An actual 50/50 mixture of pure hydrogen peroxide and water would be too high a concentration to be safe.
For many of us, hydrogen peroxide was one of the first things we put on a cut or a wound, but that is less recommended nowadays. The reason, according to numerous medical sites, is that there is a downside to the hydrogen peroxide as well. It also damages healthy cells that are needed for the wounds to heal and hinders them from getting to the area where the healing needs to take place. The HealthFinder publication of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services says don't use hydrogen peroxide on a wound because it interferes with healing. The U.S. Gymnastics team has followed the recommendations of researchers and uses soap and water for cleansing wounds and not hydrogen peroxide. The National Safety Council's First Aid Pocket Guide (1996) says "DO NOT use hydrogen peroxide It does not kill bacteria, and it adversely affects capillary blood flow and wound healing." The Mayo Clinic gives the same advice.
[6 was omitted on the site.]
7. Put two capfuls into a douche to prevent yeast infections. I had chronic yeast infections until I tried this once or twice a week-Disputed!Interestingly enough, hydrogen peroxide is naturally produced in the vagina to deal with bacteria. There is conflicting opinion among the experts, however, about whether douching with hydrogen peroxide is helpful or harmful and even some voices that doubt whether douching is necessary at all under normal circumstances.
8. Fill a spray bottle with a 50/50 mixture of peroxide and water and keep it in every bathroom to disinfect without harming your septic systemlike bleach or most other disinfectants will-But be sure you put the mixture into a bottle that filters out sunlight. Also, it appears that hydrogen peroxide does not harm septic systems. Again, this is probably a mixture of 50% water with the other half being 3% or 30% strengths of hydrogen peroxide.
9. Tilt your head back and spray into nostrils with your 50/50 mixture whenever you have a cold, plugged sinus. It will bubble and help to killthe bacteria. Hold for a few minutes then blow your nose into a tissue-Undetermined!
We couldn't find much about this in terms of research. Again, if you choose to do it, this is probably referring to a mixture of 3% hydrogen peroxide with water.10. If you have a terrible toothache and can not get to a dentist right away, put a capful of 3% peroxide into your mouth and hold it for tenminutes several times a day. The pain will lessen greatly-(N.B. this is highly disputed, especially because of the long time that it recommends holding it in the mouth)
11. And of course, if you like a natural look to your hair, spray the 50/50 solution on your wet hair after a shower and comb it through. Youwill not have the peroxide burnt blonde hair like the hair dye packages, but more natural highlights if your hair is a light brown, faddish, or dirty blonde.It also lightens gradually so it's not a drastic change-Truth!One of the classic uses of hydrogen peroxide is to bleach hair. The concentrations are between 3% and 6%. This suggestion to dilute with water probably applies to those solutions.
12. Put half a bottle of peroxide in your bath to help rid boils, fungus, or other skin infections-Undetermined!The half a bottle probably refers to a 3% solution.
13. You can also add a cup of peroxide instead of bleach to a load of whites in your laundry to whiten them. If there is blood on clothing, pourdirectly on the soiled spot. Let it sit for a minute, then rub it and rinse with cold water. Repeat if necessary-Truth! But Careful!The effectiveness of this method is a matter of experimentation, but the principle is sound. Some of the so called "oxygen" bleaches contain hydrogen peroxide.
Be careful about the suggestion to use it on spots. Hydrogen peroxide is a bleach!
14 This list didn't have it, but I use peroxide to clean my mirrors; there is no smearing, which is why I love it so much for this-Unproven!
The original hydrogen peroxide eRumor did not include this. Some of these were added by people along the way.
15. Gargle with hydrogen peroxide, put drops in the ear and nose to end colds, flu, chronic sinusitis (including polyps], and infections. A repeat of some previous information.
16. Use as a vegetable wash or soak to kill bacteria and neutralize chemicals-Truth! We don't know about the chemicals, but there are several credible references about the use of hydrogen peroxide on fruits or vegetables. Research published by the Journal of Food and Science in 2003 showed effective results of using hydrogen peroxide to decontaminate apples and melons that were infected with strains of E.coli.17. Disinfect your dishwasher or refrigerator-Undetermined!
18. Use it on trees and plants as a natural fungicide, insecticide, and as a weed killer-Undetermined!We found no research on the use of hydrogen peroxide as an insecticide, fungicide, or weed killer.
19. Clean with hydrogen peroxide when your house becomes a biohazard after its invaded by toxic mold, such as those with water damage-Truth!In a publication about "Healthy Homes," the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) listed hydrogen peroxide as among the substances that can be used against mold, but also said there had not been enough research to recommend its use. It is not known what molds hydrogen peroxide is most effective against or what the human health hazards may be from using it so extensively. Also, since hydrogen peroxide is a bleach, be careful where you use it in terms of preserving the colors in your home.
Updated 8/5/06
A real example of the eRumor as it has appeared on the Internet:
HYDROGEN PEROXIDE.....H2O2
We know ..........vinegar/baking soda and now peroxide - our mothers were right!
I want to share this with you, which was written by Becky Ransey of Indiana:
"I would like to tell you of the benefits of that plain little ol' bottle of 3% peroxide you can get for under $1.00 at any drug store. My husband has been in the medical field for over 36 years, and most doctors don't tell you about peroxide, or they would lose thousands of dollars.
1. Take one capful (the little white cap that comes with the bottle) and hold in your mouth for 10 minutes daily, then spit it out. (I do it when I bathe or shower.) No more canker sores and your teeth will be whiter without expensive pastes. Use it instead of mouthwash.
2. Let your toothbrushes soak a cup peroxide to keep them free of germs.
3. Clean your counters, table tops with peroxide to kill germs and leave a fresh smell. Simply put a little on your dishrag when you wipe, or sprayit on the counters.
4. After rinsing off your wooden cutting board, pour peroxide on it to kill salmonella and other bacteria.
5. I had fungus on my feet for years - until I sprayed a 50/50 mixture of peroxide and water on them (especially the toes) every night and let dry.
6. Soak any infections or cuts in 3% peroxide for five to ten minutes several times a day. My husband has seen gangrene that would not heal with any medicine, but was healed by soaking in peroxide.
7. Put two capfuls into a douche to prevent yeast infections. I had chronic yeast infections until I tried this once or twice a week.
8. Fill a spray bottle with a 50/50 mixture of peroxide and water and keep it in every bathroom to disinfect without harming your septic systemlike bleach or most other disinfectants will.
9. Tilt your head back and spray into nostrils with your 50/50 mixture whenever you have a cold, plugged sinus. It will bubble and help to kill the bacteria. Hold for a few minutes then blow your nose into a tissue.
10. If you have a terrible toothache and can not get to a dentist right away, put a capful of 3% peroxide into your mouth and hold it for ten minutes several times a day. The pain will lessen greatly.
11. And of course, if you like a natural look to your hair, spray the 50/50 solution on your wet hair after a shower and comb it through. You will not have the peroxide burnt blonde hair like the hair dye packages, but more natural highlights if your hair is a light brown, faddish, or dirty blonde. It also lightens gradually so it's not a drastic change.
12. Put half a bottle of peroxide in your bath to help rid boils, fungus, or other skin infections.
13. You can also add a cup of peroxide instead of bleach to a load of whites in your laundry to whiten them. If there is blood on clothing, pour directly on the soiled spot. Let it sit for a minute, then rub it and rinse with cold water. Repeat if necessary.
14 This list didn't have it, but I use peroxide to clean my mirrors; there is no smearing, which is why I love it so much for this.
15. Gargle with hydrogen peroxide, put drops in the ear and nose to end colds, flu, chronic sinusitis (including polyps], and infections.
16. Use as a vegetable wash or soak to kill bacteria and neutralize chemicals.
17. Disinfect your dishwasher or refrigerator.
18. Use it on trees and plants as a natural fungicide, insecticide, and as a weed killer
19. Clean with hydrogen peroxide when your house becomes a biohazard after its invaded by toxic mold, such as those with water damage.
Throughout the world hydrogen peroxide is used instead of chlorine as a safer and eco-friendly municicpal [sic] water purifier. Some use H2O2 in pools and spas.
.................................
A Few Final Notes
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has not approved those high strength hydrogen peroxide products for use internally and considers them dangerous. In July, 2006, the FDA issued a warning about the high strength hydrogen peroxides, saying they could lead to serious health risks and even death. Though the FDA statement is not clear, we can safely assume that the reference is to taking high strength hydrogen peroxide internally without diluting it.
My personal anecdote involves using hydrogen peroxide to remove ear wax. I have one ear that produces an inordinate amount of wax. That wax not only reduces my hearing, but it provides a nice breeding ground for infection, which I recognize by some dizziness when turning my head quickly. When a now-former family doctor caused tinnitus in my ears by "washing" them with a stream of warm water to remove wax plugs, destroying most of the cilia hairs that amplify incoming air waves that produce "sound," I sought out another solution. Every couple of weeks I lie on my side in bed and drop eight drops of 3% peroxide from an eye dropper into the ear and let it bubble away for 30 to 60 minutes. The peroxide removes the wax, allowing any infection to clear up by itself within a day, should it be present. My sources can't agree about whether the peroxide actually clears up the infection or allows the air to do the job. But it works.
The following sources will be useful to someone interested in learning more about hydrogen peroxide:
http://www.snopes.com/medical/homecure/peroxide.asp
http://www.answerbag.com/q_view/43308
The David Williams web page listed earlier in the article also provides more valuable web sites on the subject.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for parents and teachers who want to provide kids with what they really need rather than just what some adults believe they should be taught in school. Despite the book's heavy sounding subtitle, it's written in an easy to read fashion.
Learn more about the book and the worldwide TIA project at http://billallin.com
Wednesday, April 08, 2009
Can You Grasp Spirituality?
The further one grows spiritually, the more and more people one loves andthe fewer and fewer people one likes.
- Gale D. Webbe, clergyman and author (1909-2000)
It almost seems as if there is something missing from this quote, something additional that the person who captured the quote originally neglected to include.
But first let's consider the concept of spirituality. In this sense of the word, we generally agree that spirituality refers to the incorporeal, that which is not a material part of nature. Whether the supernatural part of spirituality could be pure energy or something entirely separate from our understanding of reality is debatable.
Mostly it's debatable because science tends to think of energy as something that may be harnessed to do work. Dark energy, a recently invented term to describe why the universe is apparently blowing apart faster than ever before, is accepted as energy because it's a force that is actually doing something. As God or the supernatural can't be proven by science to actually do anything (especially any kind of work), science disavows the supernatural as being pure energy.
Just because God or the supernatural can't be proven by science to do work does not mean that it doesn't exist, only that science cannot deal with it because it's beyond the realm and purview of science. Science works almost entirely within the proverbial "box" thinking. Anything that does not fall within the "walls" of the box does not exist and will not be considered seriously by science.
Spirituality, by its definition, includes something that is beyond matter and beyond the thinking box of science.
What does it mean, if a person has grown spiritually? It means something that people who insist upon living their lives within the box cannot understand. They can't even grasp the possibility or potential because--whether they realize it or not--they deny the possibility of existence beyond their box.
Imagine someone who has grown up living in one house. The person has never left that house, ever, in 35 years. All that person knows of the world is what he experiences in that house and what he sees out the windows. He comes to believe that what is inside the house is real, what he can see outside of the house may or may not be real (the way we think of movies), and what he may hear about what he cannot experience or see simply does not exist. It could not exist, he believes, because he has no way to comprehend existence beyond his experience and his senses.
Growing spiritually means experiencing beyond what box thinkers can conceive could be real. A person who has grown spiritually passes among people who have no grasp and who have had no inclination to understand or experience anything beyond the box walls of their lives. The spiritual person may love others in their life, recognizing them as part of the wholeness that is total existence. But he may find them hard to like because they are so simple, so limited, so ignorant.
A person who has grown so he or she has the ability to live in a spiritual existence will not dislike anyone. Yet they have no need to like others either. Does a grain of sand feel the need to like and be liked by other grains around it on a beach? The grain of sand, like the spiritual person, lives in a wholeness of everything, where sand, plants, animals, people and even the person himself is a component of the whole of existence.
We know that when plants and animals and people die, their bodies get recycled so the atoms that formed them become part of something else. We know that matter (stuff) can be changed into energy (such as by burning) and energy into matter (as proven by Einstein's famous equation). It's called the Law of Conservation. Nothing disappears, though it may change its form. What exists, continues to exist, whether as matter or as energy.
Box thinkers, non-spiritual people, believe the basic physics of this concept, but refuse to acknowledge its implications, its consequences for our lives and for all of existence through all of history. Is there nothing beyond matter and energy? If so, then there is nothing to you other than body cells and energy. That means nothing that is "you," no personality, no non-physical life, nothing that can form relationships with others. Could a cell of your body or potential energy within your gut form a relationship with other cells or other forms of energy within you or elsewhere? Most of us would say no, meaning that there is more to us than cells and energy.
Spiritual people live in two dimensions (or universes, if you will), one tangible and sentient, the other totally beyond the senses and understanding of box thinkers. Moreover, the latter is beyond the comprehension of themselves. Yet that lack of understanding, that intangibility, that failure to grasp is not frightening. It brings peace.
Spiritual people cannot help but love others, all others. They are not afraid of what they don't understand. After all, what they don't like or understand about the tangible world is only temporary, an existence in transition. What matters to them is real and does not change markedly. It's beyond understanding, outside the box.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for teachers and parents who want to help their children understand the realities of the world and realities beyond their understanding, but still within their ability to experience.
Learn more at http://billallin.com/
- Gale D. Webbe, clergyman and author (1909-2000)
It almost seems as if there is something missing from this quote, something additional that the person who captured the quote originally neglected to include.
But first let's consider the concept of spirituality. In this sense of the word, we generally agree that spirituality refers to the incorporeal, that which is not a material part of nature. Whether the supernatural part of spirituality could be pure energy or something entirely separate from our understanding of reality is debatable.
Mostly it's debatable because science tends to think of energy as something that may be harnessed to do work. Dark energy, a recently invented term to describe why the universe is apparently blowing apart faster than ever before, is accepted as energy because it's a force that is actually doing something. As God or the supernatural can't be proven by science to actually do anything (especially any kind of work), science disavows the supernatural as being pure energy.
Just because God or the supernatural can't be proven by science to do work does not mean that it doesn't exist, only that science cannot deal with it because it's beyond the realm and purview of science. Science works almost entirely within the proverbial "box" thinking. Anything that does not fall within the "walls" of the box does not exist and will not be considered seriously by science.
Spirituality, by its definition, includes something that is beyond matter and beyond the thinking box of science.
What does it mean, if a person has grown spiritually? It means something that people who insist upon living their lives within the box cannot understand. They can't even grasp the possibility or potential because--whether they realize it or not--they deny the possibility of existence beyond their box.
Imagine someone who has grown up living in one house. The person has never left that house, ever, in 35 years. All that person knows of the world is what he experiences in that house and what he sees out the windows. He comes to believe that what is inside the house is real, what he can see outside of the house may or may not be real (the way we think of movies), and what he may hear about what he cannot experience or see simply does not exist. It could not exist, he believes, because he has no way to comprehend existence beyond his experience and his senses.
Growing spiritually means experiencing beyond what box thinkers can conceive could be real. A person who has grown spiritually passes among people who have no grasp and who have had no inclination to understand or experience anything beyond the box walls of their lives. The spiritual person may love others in their life, recognizing them as part of the wholeness that is total existence. But he may find them hard to like because they are so simple, so limited, so ignorant.
A person who has grown so he or she has the ability to live in a spiritual existence will not dislike anyone. Yet they have no need to like others either. Does a grain of sand feel the need to like and be liked by other grains around it on a beach? The grain of sand, like the spiritual person, lives in a wholeness of everything, where sand, plants, animals, people and even the person himself is a component of the whole of existence.
We know that when plants and animals and people die, their bodies get recycled so the atoms that formed them become part of something else. We know that matter (stuff) can be changed into energy (such as by burning) and energy into matter (as proven by Einstein's famous equation). It's called the Law of Conservation. Nothing disappears, though it may change its form. What exists, continues to exist, whether as matter or as energy.
Box thinkers, non-spiritual people, believe the basic physics of this concept, but refuse to acknowledge its implications, its consequences for our lives and for all of existence through all of history. Is there nothing beyond matter and energy? If so, then there is nothing to you other than body cells and energy. That means nothing that is "you," no personality, no non-physical life, nothing that can form relationships with others. Could a cell of your body or potential energy within your gut form a relationship with other cells or other forms of energy within you or elsewhere? Most of us would say no, meaning that there is more to us than cells and energy.
Spiritual people live in two dimensions (or universes, if you will), one tangible and sentient, the other totally beyond the senses and understanding of box thinkers. Moreover, the latter is beyond the comprehension of themselves. Yet that lack of understanding, that intangibility, that failure to grasp is not frightening. It brings peace.
Spiritual people cannot help but love others, all others. They are not afraid of what they don't understand. After all, what they don't like or understand about the tangible world is only temporary, an existence in transition. What matters to them is real and does not change markedly. It's beyond understanding, outside the box.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for teachers and parents who want to help their children understand the realities of the world and realities beyond their understanding, but still within their ability to experience.
Learn more at http://billallin.com/
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
How Science Lets Us Down
The purpose of action is to enable philosophy to continue, for if men are reduced to the material alone they become no more than beasts.
- Saint Sophia, 2nd century Rome, whose daughters Faith (Pistis), Hope (Elpis) and Love (Agape) were slaughtered in front of their mother for their devotion to their God
The Roman emperor Hadrian had Sophia's daughters slashed, stretched and eventually beheaded and burned to get them to renounce their beliefs, all in front of their mother. As he could think of no worse punishment to Sophia that to live out the rest of her life knowing that her only children had died horrifying deaths, he spared her. She gathered the bodies of her children, buried them and died three days later.
Were they all martyrs? Were they all stupid to die before their times instead of saying the words Hadrian wanted (albeit blasphemous words because he wanted them to acknowledge him as their god)?
In the 21st century we have come to respect science more than at any time in the past. Science originally was the means by which humans could better understand the works of God. Yet science gained such power and authority over its respective cultures that it now sees itself as a kind of god.
Nothing that cannot be manipulated by humans or that cannot be rationalized as originating according to natural order exists, according to the materialist view. There can be no God because no one can describe God, no one can prove the existence of God, no one can manipulate God.
Furthermore, the gods of the popular religions of today can be shown to be human inventions or hand-me-downs from earlier pagan religions.
Yet materialists cannot explain dreams in terms that do not make dreamers seem insane at night. They cannot explain visions that people have, or vision quests that change people's lives.
They cannot explain ESP (extra-sensory perception). They cannot explain how patients who are legally dead on an operating table can have out of body experiences where they can later describe exactly what was going on in the operating theatre until surgeons restarted their hearts, brains and other organs.
Materialists cannot explain self or mind other than in ways that make us seem like advanced forms of dogs or dolphins.
In short, if materialists can't grasp their minds around a concept in such a way that they can explain it in human terms, they deny it exists. They expect our reality to be limited by the perimeters of their minds. Or I should say brains because they don't believe in the mind as being separate from the brain.
How does that fit with quantum physics where a particle can be in two places at once, where in fact if you look for it in one of those places it will automatically be in the other? How do they explain that a straight line is the shortest distance between two points only on a global scale, not on a universal scale where time and space bend, can even fold back on each other?
Multiple dimensions, they say. We can only detect four dimensions, but string theory stipulates that all this mysterious stuff makes sense if we accept that reality has eleven dimensions.
Science asks us to believe that some day it will show that all the mysteries of physics, of space larger than we can imagine and space smaller than we can imagine, will be explained and proven as truths. It's called Promissory Science. Science promises that it will prove these mysteries some day.
At the same time science denies that God or any of the other mysteries it cannot explain, phenomena and experiences that you and I may have many times in our lives, will ever be explained because they don't really exist. Science says we should believe its promises, not the promises of non-scientists.
How does science say we invent these things? It's all in our minds.
Oh, wait! They don't believe in the mind. It's all in our brains.
But apes, dolphins, wolves and many other animals have brains similar to our own, some even larger than ours, yet they don't seem to have supernatural experiences. If a brain can create fantasies, should a sophisticated brain such as that of a dolphin or a chimpanzee not be able to do the same?
So far, only humans have been shown to have extrasensory experiences. These can easily be explained by the coexistence of both brain and mind. But materialist scientists can't grasp the concept of mind because it's too difficult to study. It denies the mind exists, in many cases.
Are they not, despite their protests, what Saint Sophia called "no more than beasts?"
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for parents and teachers who want to grow children who are well balanced socially and emotionally as well as intellectually and physically.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
- Saint Sophia, 2nd century Rome, whose daughters Faith (Pistis), Hope (Elpis) and Love (Agape) were slaughtered in front of their mother for their devotion to their God
The Roman emperor Hadrian had Sophia's daughters slashed, stretched and eventually beheaded and burned to get them to renounce their beliefs, all in front of their mother. As he could think of no worse punishment to Sophia that to live out the rest of her life knowing that her only children had died horrifying deaths, he spared her. She gathered the bodies of her children, buried them and died three days later.
Were they all martyrs? Were they all stupid to die before their times instead of saying the words Hadrian wanted (albeit blasphemous words because he wanted them to acknowledge him as their god)?
In the 21st century we have come to respect science more than at any time in the past. Science originally was the means by which humans could better understand the works of God. Yet science gained such power and authority over its respective cultures that it now sees itself as a kind of god.
Nothing that cannot be manipulated by humans or that cannot be rationalized as originating according to natural order exists, according to the materialist view. There can be no God because no one can describe God, no one can prove the existence of God, no one can manipulate God.
Furthermore, the gods of the popular religions of today can be shown to be human inventions or hand-me-downs from earlier pagan religions.
Yet materialists cannot explain dreams in terms that do not make dreamers seem insane at night. They cannot explain visions that people have, or vision quests that change people's lives.
They cannot explain ESP (extra-sensory perception). They cannot explain how patients who are legally dead on an operating table can have out of body experiences where they can later describe exactly what was going on in the operating theatre until surgeons restarted their hearts, brains and other organs.
Materialists cannot explain self or mind other than in ways that make us seem like advanced forms of dogs or dolphins.
In short, if materialists can't grasp their minds around a concept in such a way that they can explain it in human terms, they deny it exists. They expect our reality to be limited by the perimeters of their minds. Or I should say brains because they don't believe in the mind as being separate from the brain.
How does that fit with quantum physics where a particle can be in two places at once, where in fact if you look for it in one of those places it will automatically be in the other? How do they explain that a straight line is the shortest distance between two points only on a global scale, not on a universal scale where time and space bend, can even fold back on each other?
Multiple dimensions, they say. We can only detect four dimensions, but string theory stipulates that all this mysterious stuff makes sense if we accept that reality has eleven dimensions.
Science asks us to believe that some day it will show that all the mysteries of physics, of space larger than we can imagine and space smaller than we can imagine, will be explained and proven as truths. It's called Promissory Science. Science promises that it will prove these mysteries some day.
At the same time science denies that God or any of the other mysteries it cannot explain, phenomena and experiences that you and I may have many times in our lives, will ever be explained because they don't really exist. Science says we should believe its promises, not the promises of non-scientists.
How does science say we invent these things? It's all in our minds.
Oh, wait! They don't believe in the mind. It's all in our brains.
But apes, dolphins, wolves and many other animals have brains similar to our own, some even larger than ours, yet they don't seem to have supernatural experiences. If a brain can create fantasies, should a sophisticated brain such as that of a dolphin or a chimpanzee not be able to do the same?
So far, only humans have been shown to have extrasensory experiences. These can easily be explained by the coexistence of both brain and mind. But materialist scientists can't grasp the concept of mind because it's too difficult to study. It denies the mind exists, in many cases.
Are they not, despite their protests, what Saint Sophia called "no more than beasts?"
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for parents and teachers who want to grow children who are well balanced socially and emotionally as well as intellectually and physically.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
Sunday, July 06, 2008
Canadian Kid Solves Worldwide Problem
Seventeen year old Daniel Burd, of Waterloo, Ontario (Canada) doesn't care much for plastic grocery bags. Specifically, he doesn't like them when his mom sends him to do some cleaning job and he has to go to the cleaning cupboard where bags of plastic bags tumble onto his head from a shelf above the door.
Unlike most 17 year olds, Daniel did something about the bags other than grouse. His research informed him that about 500 billion plastic bags are made and disposed of each year around the world. While they are recycled into lots of furniture and other handy tools in some places, most of the bags end up in dumps and littering streets, parks and other places where people move about.
Sadly, the billions of plastic bags disposed of each year make their way into the oceans, where animals ingest them and die from various causes, including starvation and asphyxiation. The same fate awaits animals wh0 eat plastic bags that formerly had food in them in parks or forests.
Plastic bags take anywhere from 20 to 1000 years to break down in nature, including landfills where the breakdown time is longest because they are buried with no access to oxygen.
Daniel learned that bacteria can break down plastic bags. So he got some soil from a landfill (dump) and used a chemical that encourages bacterial growth on it. Long story short, he found eventually that two types of bacteria, Sphingomonas and Pseudomonas, worked best for breaking down the plastic.
Eventually he found that the two bacteria could break down 43 percent of the plastic in six weeks if the bacteria were incubated in a sodium acetate solution at human body temperature (that part was just a coincidence).
Daniel made a science project out of his work, then took it from science fair to science fair until he eventually won a Canada-wide science fair recently.
He says he envisions plastic recycling centres--essentially large scale composters--where a community's plastic bags or a city's bags can be broken down at once.
Daniel Burd will continue his research to speed up the process to make total breakdown faster in the future before taking it for patent and marketing his system.
Another great example of thinking outside the box...er, bag.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for parents and teachers who want to grow children who can think creatively and innovatively.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
Unlike most 17 year olds, Daniel did something about the bags other than grouse. His research informed him that about 500 billion plastic bags are made and disposed of each year around the world. While they are recycled into lots of furniture and other handy tools in some places, most of the bags end up in dumps and littering streets, parks and other places where people move about.
Sadly, the billions of plastic bags disposed of each year make their way into the oceans, where animals ingest them and die from various causes, including starvation and asphyxiation. The same fate awaits animals wh0 eat plastic bags that formerly had food in them in parks or forests.
Plastic bags take anywhere from 20 to 1000 years to break down in nature, including landfills where the breakdown time is longest because they are buried with no access to oxygen.
Daniel learned that bacteria can break down plastic bags. So he got some soil from a landfill (dump) and used a chemical that encourages bacterial growth on it. Long story short, he found eventually that two types of bacteria, Sphingomonas and Pseudomonas, worked best for breaking down the plastic.
Eventually he found that the two bacteria could break down 43 percent of the plastic in six weeks if the bacteria were incubated in a sodium acetate solution at human body temperature (that part was just a coincidence).
Daniel made a science project out of his work, then took it from science fair to science fair until he eventually won a Canada-wide science fair recently.
He says he envisions plastic recycling centres--essentially large scale composters--where a community's plastic bags or a city's bags can be broken down at once.
Daniel Burd will continue his research to speed up the process to make total breakdown faster in the future before taking it for patent and marketing his system.
Another great example of thinking outside the box...er, bag.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for parents and teachers who want to grow children who can think creatively and innovatively.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
Saturday, May 31, 2008
Attacking The Hypocrisy Of Science
There is a prospect greater than the sea, and it is the sky; there is a prospect greater than the sky, and it is the human soul.
- Victor Hugo (1802 - 1885), Les Misérables
It's impossible at this time to know what Victor Hugo meant by "the human soul." As many different concepts exist for it, it would be nearly impossible to find a consensus among any group of people no matter how small.
Let's put this quote into perspective. It's extremely difficult for anyone to have a workable grasp of the immensity that is the great ocean that comprises most of the surface of our planet. As a frontier of science, the ocean is still relatively unexplored territory. New (previously unknown) species of ocean dwellers are discovered through research every week, almost at the rate of one per day.
The quantity of water and life in the great ocean are beyond the comprehension of most people, if not all of us. At the bottom of the ocean lies more than three times as much land as humans have ever walked in all of history.
What is the sky? If you take a photo of it, or many photos to comprise a panoramic view of the sky, then assemble them into a contiguous whole, would that be enough to explain the sky? Of course not. The blue of the sky is merely a blue shift of white light coming from the sun. Beyond that are galaxies we can see at night, plus billions more galaxies we can't see, then maybe other universes beyond that.
That's not even considering other dimensions that may exist all around us, features of reality we can't sense but some people feel or experience from time to time. As the concepts of multiple universes and dimensions of space-time other than the one we perceive enter science through theories such as the string theories of physics, science is forced to accept that there may be existence beyond what they can detect with their equipment, that is little more than supersensitive versions of our own five senses.
Scientists exploring other galaxies with their telescopes and spacecraft tell us that planets far beyond ours may hold life. They don't want us to accept anything we may perceive as real if they can't prove its existence themselves, but they are quite prepared to propose that whole planets of life--some maybe with non-DNA-based life--probably exist beyond our present ability to detect. They use statistics as evidence, as if anyone with any sense of experience with the false and deceptive use of statistics would grant that any credibility.
Many scientists deny the existence of the human soul. They claim it's a figment of our brains, if it exists at all. They can even show what happens in our brains when what we call a soul is active. But, they believe, it's nothing more than our imaginations at work. Yet they want us to believe in other civilizations light years away and other dimensions of existence for which they have no evidence more than a vague theory with no proof in the works.
The trouble with our concept of the human soul is that far too many people have used their own versions of fictional concepts they made up to bilk many of us out of our money. Frauds and charlatans have existed almost as long as our species has. Many of them have purported to have knowledge of the human soul that the rest of us don't have. They don't, but we and our ancestors have paid good money to hear their stories anyway.
That doesn't mean that the human soul doesn't exist. Or, for that matter, that God doesn't exist. We all know that there are as many differing concepts of God as there are religions on the planet. That includes societies such as what we call the Roman Empire, that appointed their own Caesars as gods--they worshipped their emperor as a god.
That doesn't mean that God or the human soul doesn't exist. It means that most of us haven't the ability to detect them. We may pray to God, hoping that he exists, having been threatened with eternal damnation in Hell if we don't fall on our knees before the God that someone else tells us is the real God. But we can't be certain that the God we praise is real, any more than we can prove that unknown civilizations light years away are real, or different dimensions are real.
Or even that thought is real. Science can prove that something happens in various parts of the brain as we think and that different parts "light up" on their scopes as we do different kinds of thinking. But science has only proven that something has happened in the brain when we think. It has absolutely no concept of what thought is, at least nothing I consider workable.
The very scientists who are thinking about how to explain to us that things they can't prove don't exist can't prove that thought exists. By rights we should be able to claim that their thoughts are nothing more than activity of their imaginations.
So, what is the human soul? Nothing more or less than a part of God that is on loan to us while we inhabit these bodies of ours. We are all part of one great whole.
When our body dies, it gets recycled. Not an atom is lost when our body decomposes. It all becomes either part of other things composed of atoms (matter) or it becomes some form of energy. Just ask Einstein who explained it with his famous equation, e = mc2 No matter or energy are ever lost when a transfer or transformation happens. It's all part of a great whole.
Science can't explain energy either. They know energy exists because they have experienced it. So what can science offer to those of us who have experienced something beyond what even they can't comprehend?
Perhaps science should do what it tells us to do with thoughts about subjects we can't explain: shut up.
The human soul cannot be explained by science, so science should not have any right to make definitive pronouncements about it. Since the human soul is merely part of the greater whole we call God, it follows that science should have no say about God either. Science has no right to tell us that something we believe doesn't exist while it blithely accepts theories that propose the existence of things they can't prove; that would be hypocrisy.
I feel God within me. I can't explain that. I don't even have an interest in attempting to explain it or to prove it to anyone, let alone a doubter.
The doubters always make more noise than the believers who know they are right, who know what they feel within them. That doesn't make them right or those with greater perception and higher levels of consciousness wrong.
It only shows their ignorance and inability to tolerate thoughts that go beyond what they can comprehend. They are bigots with white coats.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for parents and teachers who want to teach their children truths before the charlatans get at them. or to make corrections if they have.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
- Victor Hugo (1802 - 1885), Les Misérables
It's impossible at this time to know what Victor Hugo meant by "the human soul." As many different concepts exist for it, it would be nearly impossible to find a consensus among any group of people no matter how small.
Let's put this quote into perspective. It's extremely difficult for anyone to have a workable grasp of the immensity that is the great ocean that comprises most of the surface of our planet. As a frontier of science, the ocean is still relatively unexplored territory. New (previously unknown) species of ocean dwellers are discovered through research every week, almost at the rate of one per day.
The quantity of water and life in the great ocean are beyond the comprehension of most people, if not all of us. At the bottom of the ocean lies more than three times as much land as humans have ever walked in all of history.
What is the sky? If you take a photo of it, or many photos to comprise a panoramic view of the sky, then assemble them into a contiguous whole, would that be enough to explain the sky? Of course not. The blue of the sky is merely a blue shift of white light coming from the sun. Beyond that are galaxies we can see at night, plus billions more galaxies we can't see, then maybe other universes beyond that.
That's not even considering other dimensions that may exist all around us, features of reality we can't sense but some people feel or experience from time to time. As the concepts of multiple universes and dimensions of space-time other than the one we perceive enter science through theories such as the string theories of physics, science is forced to accept that there may be existence beyond what they can detect with their equipment, that is little more than supersensitive versions of our own five senses.
Scientists exploring other galaxies with their telescopes and spacecraft tell us that planets far beyond ours may hold life. They don't want us to accept anything we may perceive as real if they can't prove its existence themselves, but they are quite prepared to propose that whole planets of life--some maybe with non-DNA-based life--probably exist beyond our present ability to detect. They use statistics as evidence, as if anyone with any sense of experience with the false and deceptive use of statistics would grant that any credibility.
Many scientists deny the existence of the human soul. They claim it's a figment of our brains, if it exists at all. They can even show what happens in our brains when what we call a soul is active. But, they believe, it's nothing more than our imaginations at work. Yet they want us to believe in other civilizations light years away and other dimensions of existence for which they have no evidence more than a vague theory with no proof in the works.
The trouble with our concept of the human soul is that far too many people have used their own versions of fictional concepts they made up to bilk many of us out of our money. Frauds and charlatans have existed almost as long as our species has. Many of them have purported to have knowledge of the human soul that the rest of us don't have. They don't, but we and our ancestors have paid good money to hear their stories anyway.
That doesn't mean that the human soul doesn't exist. Or, for that matter, that God doesn't exist. We all know that there are as many differing concepts of God as there are religions on the planet. That includes societies such as what we call the Roman Empire, that appointed their own Caesars as gods--they worshipped their emperor as a god.
That doesn't mean that God or the human soul doesn't exist. It means that most of us haven't the ability to detect them. We may pray to God, hoping that he exists, having been threatened with eternal damnation in Hell if we don't fall on our knees before the God that someone else tells us is the real God. But we can't be certain that the God we praise is real, any more than we can prove that unknown civilizations light years away are real, or different dimensions are real.
Or even that thought is real. Science can prove that something happens in various parts of the brain as we think and that different parts "light up" on their scopes as we do different kinds of thinking. But science has only proven that something has happened in the brain when we think. It has absolutely no concept of what thought is, at least nothing I consider workable.
The very scientists who are thinking about how to explain to us that things they can't prove don't exist can't prove that thought exists. By rights we should be able to claim that their thoughts are nothing more than activity of their imaginations.
So, what is the human soul? Nothing more or less than a part of God that is on loan to us while we inhabit these bodies of ours. We are all part of one great whole.
When our body dies, it gets recycled. Not an atom is lost when our body decomposes. It all becomes either part of other things composed of atoms (matter) or it becomes some form of energy. Just ask Einstein who explained it with his famous equation, e = mc2 No matter or energy are ever lost when a transfer or transformation happens. It's all part of a great whole.
Science can't explain energy either. They know energy exists because they have experienced it. So what can science offer to those of us who have experienced something beyond what even they can't comprehend?
Perhaps science should do what it tells us to do with thoughts about subjects we can't explain: shut up.
The human soul cannot be explained by science, so science should not have any right to make definitive pronouncements about it. Since the human soul is merely part of the greater whole we call God, it follows that science should have no say about God either. Science has no right to tell us that something we believe doesn't exist while it blithely accepts theories that propose the existence of things they can't prove; that would be hypocrisy.
I feel God within me. I can't explain that. I don't even have an interest in attempting to explain it or to prove it to anyone, let alone a doubter.
The doubters always make more noise than the believers who know they are right, who know what they feel within them. That doesn't make them right or those with greater perception and higher levels of consciousness wrong.
It only shows their ignorance and inability to tolerate thoughts that go beyond what they can comprehend. They are bigots with white coats.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for parents and teachers who want to teach their children truths before the charlatans get at them. or to make corrections if they have.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
Thursday, February 07, 2008
On Being Truly Original
The will to originality is not the will to be peculiar and unlike anybody else; it means the desire to derive one's consciousness from its primary source.
- Nicolas Berdyeav, Russian writer, philosopher
Ironically, adolescents, in their drive to be different from the rest of the society they have grown up with, tend to follow a small selection of costume styles, hair styles, jewelry piercing styles and tattoo styles. Trying to be different, they all look the same to an outsider from the same society they are trying to offend (or to be different from).
Young adults find it very difficult to be unlike anybody else because they often have no idea how to be different. They have been conditioned to follow the same patterns as their peers (who tend to be dictated to by industries) that they develop a herd mentality. This changes in college when they tend to diverge due according to specialization and interests.
How does anyone "derive one's consciousness from its primary source?" This is the point where scientists and materialists find their eyes glazing over because the discussion inevitably leads beyond their realm of understanding. Which means, to them, the topic is boring, if not outright fantasy.
However, science has no idea, no concept, of what consciousness is. They could derive it from their concept of the unconscious, but they don't have any idea what that is either. Oh, they have guesses, but they can't prove anything one way or another because they have no way to formulate a hypothesis that can be tested.
Science knows what the human brain is because it can be seen, felt, probed and examined with all manner of specialized equipment. But the mind or consciousness, not so much.
Science believes that we all act out our lives in a state of consciousness and dream in our unconscious. But it can't even prove or disprove whether the reverse is true or false. In fact, no one can prove (nor can they know for certain) that we do not dream our (apparently) conscious lives and live reality in our unconscious dreams (or what convention causes us to call dreams).
At this point, consciousness and mind (as opposed to the brain) are as impossible for science to study as the supernatural, miracles or God.
Ask science what the source is of matter and energy and they will likely point to the so-called Big Bang or some theory that serves a similar purpose. What went before the Big Bang, whether there have been more than one of them going back before the one we know and whether more Big Bangs are in store for our universe in the distant future are matters for conjecture.
Science can't deny that consciousness exists because every scientist has one. But it's neither matter nor energy. The unconscious is even more mysterious because it's apparently the opposite (with the prefix un-) of consciousness, which they can't understand.
Berdyeav and many others claim that these originate with something called the Primary Source. Call it what you like, it's beyond human understanding.
If we try to distinguish ourselves from others according to the values of fashion, occupation, beliefs or organizations to which we belong, we must inevitably deal with the values of other people. If we try to establish our consciousness on the basis that it comes from a source beyond human understanding, we have a good chance of being different, individual.
But that brings inevitable consequences with it. Those who derive their consciousness from the Primary Source don't believe in war, in the sociopathic values of business, in the materialism preached by interminable streams of advertising or in the brainwashing methods practised by most religions.
That makes them freaks. They don't mind that because they understand what distinguishes them from the rabble that doesn't understand them.
They are at peace. They understand and appreciate tranquility. They like and respect themselves. They respect everything else around them (either living or not) as part of a universal whole. They won't destroy. They will help others, but they won't force anything on them.
They are originals in the purest sense of the word.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a book about how, when and what to teach children so that they have the potential to be self secure individuals, originals rather than followers.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
- Nicolas Berdyeav, Russian writer, philosopher
Ironically, adolescents, in their drive to be different from the rest of the society they have grown up with, tend to follow a small selection of costume styles, hair styles, jewelry piercing styles and tattoo styles. Trying to be different, they all look the same to an outsider from the same society they are trying to offend (or to be different from).
Young adults find it very difficult to be unlike anybody else because they often have no idea how to be different. They have been conditioned to follow the same patterns as their peers (who tend to be dictated to by industries) that they develop a herd mentality. This changes in college when they tend to diverge due according to specialization and interests.
How does anyone "derive one's consciousness from its primary source?" This is the point where scientists and materialists find their eyes glazing over because the discussion inevitably leads beyond their realm of understanding. Which means, to them, the topic is boring, if not outright fantasy.
However, science has no idea, no concept, of what consciousness is. They could derive it from their concept of the unconscious, but they don't have any idea what that is either. Oh, they have guesses, but they can't prove anything one way or another because they have no way to formulate a hypothesis that can be tested.
Science knows what the human brain is because it can be seen, felt, probed and examined with all manner of specialized equipment. But the mind or consciousness, not so much.
Science believes that we all act out our lives in a state of consciousness and dream in our unconscious. But it can't even prove or disprove whether the reverse is true or false. In fact, no one can prove (nor can they know for certain) that we do not dream our (apparently) conscious lives and live reality in our unconscious dreams (or what convention causes us to call dreams).
At this point, consciousness and mind (as opposed to the brain) are as impossible for science to study as the supernatural, miracles or God.
Ask science what the source is of matter and energy and they will likely point to the so-called Big Bang or some theory that serves a similar purpose. What went before the Big Bang, whether there have been more than one of them going back before the one we know and whether more Big Bangs are in store for our universe in the distant future are matters for conjecture.
Science can't deny that consciousness exists because every scientist has one. But it's neither matter nor energy. The unconscious is even more mysterious because it's apparently the opposite (with the prefix un-) of consciousness, which they can't understand.
Berdyeav and many others claim that these originate with something called the Primary Source. Call it what you like, it's beyond human understanding.
If we try to distinguish ourselves from others according to the values of fashion, occupation, beliefs or organizations to which we belong, we must inevitably deal with the values of other people. If we try to establish our consciousness on the basis that it comes from a source beyond human understanding, we have a good chance of being different, individual.
But that brings inevitable consequences with it. Those who derive their consciousness from the Primary Source don't believe in war, in the sociopathic values of business, in the materialism preached by interminable streams of advertising or in the brainwashing methods practised by most religions.
That makes them freaks. They don't mind that because they understand what distinguishes them from the rabble that doesn't understand them.
They are at peace. They understand and appreciate tranquility. They like and respect themselves. They respect everything else around them (either living or not) as part of a universal whole. They won't destroy. They will help others, but they won't force anything on them.
They are originals in the purest sense of the word.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a book about how, when and what to teach children so that they have the potential to be self secure individuals, originals rather than followers.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
Monday, February 19, 2007
Can Cancer Be cured Without Drugs?
All any drug amounts to is tweaking the incoming data. And you have to be really self-centered or pathetic to be satisfied with simply tweaking the incoming data.
- William Gibson, science fiction writer (1948- )
What is he talking about? Does Gibson mean prescribed drugs or illegal drugs?
He means both. Medical doctors know and everyone else should know that all medical science does is to help the body do what it doesn't do for itself. Furthermore, the brain controls virtually all activity in terms of protecting the body from invaders and ridding the body of invaders that manage to pass its primary defences.
Most drugs that a doctor prescribes tweak some part of the brain to get it to do what it should have done without the drug, but did not. Usually this involves the immune system, but often it involves other organs that have not produced enough of some kind of chemical to defend the body against something that doesn't belong inside of us.
Anyone with enough control over their own brain should be able to coax the brain to do what it should do without taking medication. The catch is that most of us do not have this much control. Some people can control their heart rate and blood pressure, for example, while most of us cannot.
Could we control cancer within our own bodies? Some say yes, but medical science won't admit to anything that almost everyone can't do without much effort. In other words, we may have the power within us to cure our own cancer, but since everyone can't tap into that power (and the power itself does not require any pharmaceuticals) it's unlikely that we will learn much about this power in the near future.
When it comes to illegal drugs, the mind-altering kind, they simply provide an excess of one or more chemicals that the brain provides for naturally. Again, anyone with enough knowledge and control of their own brain could produce the same kinds of effects that mind-altering drugs do. Few do. Pharmaceutical companies will suppress or vigorously oppose any initiative to teach us how to produce our own versions of what they sell for profit.
Runners and those who do strenuous exercises develop a state known as "runner's high" which mimics the effects of marijuana and other feel-good drugs. Nuns deep in prayer to God (a state likened to a trance) have been found to have brain activity in the reward centre, meaning that the brain has provided the kind of relaxation and feeling of well-being that some drugs give. Their communion with God is a natural high.
It is possible to make our own brain work for us to do what it hasn't necessarily been required to do before. That requires considerable study and practice.
This is not to suggest that doctor-prescribed rugs have no value. On the contrary, prescribed medications do for us what we are unable to do for ourselves, given our present circumstances. Most of us don't know how to use our brain effectively to make ourselves healthy.
Gibson wonders if we should be "satisfied with simply tweaking the incoming data," meaning in an artificial way by taking drugs. It might serve us better to learn how to tweak our own brains to get them to provide the full services for which they were designed and are capable.
On the other hand, Gibson, American-born but living in Canada for nearly four decades, best known for his novel Neuromancer , as a science fiction writer might be suggesting that we take our natural brain abilities and enhance them ourselves to become something more than we are now.
Coiner of the term cyberspace and father of the cyberpunk subgenre of scinece fiction, Gibson knows that our brain is the least understood and most underutilized part of our body. He sees its potential but doesn't want that potential destroyed or depreciated by drugs.
"The future is here. It's just not widely distributed yet," he said. The future won't become widely distributed by our increasing dependence on drugs.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, striving to show the potential of the future a little clearer than it is with drugs.
Learn more at http://billallin.com/
- William Gibson, science fiction writer (1948- )
What is he talking about? Does Gibson mean prescribed drugs or illegal drugs?
He means both. Medical doctors know and everyone else should know that all medical science does is to help the body do what it doesn't do for itself. Furthermore, the brain controls virtually all activity in terms of protecting the body from invaders and ridding the body of invaders that manage to pass its primary defences.
Most drugs that a doctor prescribes tweak some part of the brain to get it to do what it should have done without the drug, but did not. Usually this involves the immune system, but often it involves other organs that have not produced enough of some kind of chemical to defend the body against something that doesn't belong inside of us.
Anyone with enough control over their own brain should be able to coax the brain to do what it should do without taking medication. The catch is that most of us do not have this much control. Some people can control their heart rate and blood pressure, for example, while most of us cannot.
Could we control cancer within our own bodies? Some say yes, but medical science won't admit to anything that almost everyone can't do without much effort. In other words, we may have the power within us to cure our own cancer, but since everyone can't tap into that power (and the power itself does not require any pharmaceuticals) it's unlikely that we will learn much about this power in the near future.
When it comes to illegal drugs, the mind-altering kind, they simply provide an excess of one or more chemicals that the brain provides for naturally. Again, anyone with enough knowledge and control of their own brain could produce the same kinds of effects that mind-altering drugs do. Few do. Pharmaceutical companies will suppress or vigorously oppose any initiative to teach us how to produce our own versions of what they sell for profit.
Runners and those who do strenuous exercises develop a state known as "runner's high" which mimics the effects of marijuana and other feel-good drugs. Nuns deep in prayer to God (a state likened to a trance) have been found to have brain activity in the reward centre, meaning that the brain has provided the kind of relaxation and feeling of well-being that some drugs give. Their communion with God is a natural high.
It is possible to make our own brain work for us to do what it hasn't necessarily been required to do before. That requires considerable study and practice.
This is not to suggest that doctor-prescribed rugs have no value. On the contrary, prescribed medications do for us what we are unable to do for ourselves, given our present circumstances. Most of us don't know how to use our brain effectively to make ourselves healthy.
Gibson wonders if we should be "satisfied with simply tweaking the incoming data," meaning in an artificial way by taking drugs. It might serve us better to learn how to tweak our own brains to get them to provide the full services for which they were designed and are capable.
On the other hand, Gibson, American-born but living in Canada for nearly four decades, best known for his novel Neuromancer , as a science fiction writer might be suggesting that we take our natural brain abilities and enhance them ourselves to become something more than we are now.
Coiner of the term cyberspace and father of the cyberpunk subgenre of scinece fiction, Gibson knows that our brain is the least understood and most underutilized part of our body. He sees its potential but doesn't want that potential destroyed or depreciated by drugs.
"The future is here. It's just not widely distributed yet," he said. The future won't become widely distributed by our increasing dependence on drugs.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, striving to show the potential of the future a little clearer than it is with drugs.
Learn more at http://billallin.com/
Friday, January 26, 2007
Life Lesson: What Makes Life Worth Living
"It is not enough to live; you have to have something to live for."
- Commander Adama, Battlestar Galactica (television program) (2003)
Life is not reflected well in science fiction television programs. Yet they often show excellent examples of human aspirations, foibles and life lessons.
In this case, the life lesson is about having something worth living for. But, what?
Many people fail to find what they want out of life. They die still wondering what they could have done to find it.
The problem is that they had been looking for something that would come to them, something that would enhance their lives, something they could acquire that would make their life complete. That never satisfies the desire to find what life is worth lviing for because we humans can never find enough to satiate our desires. We are, by nature, greedy.
By deduction, what makes life worth living must be outside of us. What makes life worth living is not what we can get, but what we can give.
Being greedy, many people never learn that lesson. The laws of economics say that you can't get more by giving away what you have.
But the laws of economics suck. They have destroyed more lives than wars have. According to economics, the only things worth having are what comes in to us, what we can acquire. Because of our greedy natures, if we style our lives around what comes in to us, we will never be satisfied and feel that our lives have been worth living.
Those people who give the most of themselves to help others know what fulfillment is.That's not just feeding the hungry, healing the sick, giving money to the poor or sending blankets to Kosovo. It's helping anyone who needs help with anything.
People are often free about telling others their problems, whether the others want to hear them or not. Sometimes we can offer to help them. Anyone standing by a vehicle at the side of the road needs help, or at least some company, maybe a sandwich or coffee.
Sometimes helping someone else means nothing more than helping them to cry, to grieve, to let out the emotion that is eating them from the inside. Sometimes all we have to do is to listen.
If you want to know what makes life worth living, help someone. Do it more than once because the first time you may not recognize within you the feeling of having done something good and right. The more often you do it, the more it will seem the natural thing to do.
The laws of economics may be natural, but so are tsunamis and earthquakes. If it really matters to you to understand what makes life wonderful, give of yourself to help others.
Until and unless you have tried it, you won't understand. I don't understand economics, tsunamis or earthquakes. You can teach me once you have learned the lesson I have to teach.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, striving to show you how to make it all worthwhile.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
- Commander Adama, Battlestar Galactica (television program) (2003)
Life is not reflected well in science fiction television programs. Yet they often show excellent examples of human aspirations, foibles and life lessons.
In this case, the life lesson is about having something worth living for. But, what?
Many people fail to find what they want out of life. They die still wondering what they could have done to find it.
The problem is that they had been looking for something that would come to them, something that would enhance their lives, something they could acquire that would make their life complete. That never satisfies the desire to find what life is worth lviing for because we humans can never find enough to satiate our desires. We are, by nature, greedy.
By deduction, what makes life worth living must be outside of us. What makes life worth living is not what we can get, but what we can give.
Being greedy, many people never learn that lesson. The laws of economics say that you can't get more by giving away what you have.
But the laws of economics suck. They have destroyed more lives than wars have. According to economics, the only things worth having are what comes in to us, what we can acquire. Because of our greedy natures, if we style our lives around what comes in to us, we will never be satisfied and feel that our lives have been worth living.
Those people who give the most of themselves to help others know what fulfillment is.That's not just feeding the hungry, healing the sick, giving money to the poor or sending blankets to Kosovo. It's helping anyone who needs help with anything.
People are often free about telling others their problems, whether the others want to hear them or not. Sometimes we can offer to help them. Anyone standing by a vehicle at the side of the road needs help, or at least some company, maybe a sandwich or coffee.
Sometimes helping someone else means nothing more than helping them to cry, to grieve, to let out the emotion that is eating them from the inside. Sometimes all we have to do is to listen.
If you want to know what makes life worth living, help someone. Do it more than once because the first time you may not recognize within you the feeling of having done something good and right. The more often you do it, the more it will seem the natural thing to do.
The laws of economics may be natural, but so are tsunamis and earthquakes. If it really matters to you to understand what makes life wonderful, give of yourself to help others.
Until and unless you have tried it, you won't understand. I don't understand economics, tsunamis or earthquakes. You can teach me once you have learned the lesson I have to teach.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, striving to show you how to make it all worthwhile.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
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