Encephalitis. A man lives when conventional medics had given up on him - thanks to homeopathy. A miracle cure?

Homeopathy is a very powerful medical therapy. Occasionally I hear about cases that are really stunning. This one comes from Dr Nader Moradi, who is a a friend of a colleague of mine. He described him to me as follows.

               "an incredible Iranian homeopath... a gifted homeopath with great observational powers. He sees about 50 patients a day, and patients fight to get an appointment! In between patients he reads books on Materia Medica! Amazing."

Amazing indeed, as the summary of this case indicates. First, Dr Moradi's diagnosis, and these are his own words.

               "About one month ago an acquaintance - 51 years old - suddenly had convulsions, headache, agitation, altered consciousness and left sided paralysis. An MRI showed there were two huge opacities in both hemispheres with oedema. Here is the MRI report:

               “Two hypersignal areas were noted at left temporal and right frontoparietal lobes with extension to right temporal lobe. The lesions are extended to subcortical, peri and paraventricular white matter and shows vasogenic type edema. Cortex is not involved and white matter involvement id dominant. There is no significant mass effect. Very mild restriction on diffusion is noted at some areas of lesions particularly at medial side of right parietal lobe lesion. Apparent effusion is measured 0.86 mm/s. 

Dr Moradi thought from this that "Encephalitis was the most probable diagnosis. Acquired metabolic disease and side effects of drugs should also be considered in differential list.”

Note. There are now so many conditions, especially sudden and unusual conditions like this, in which the side effects of pharmaceutical drugs are implicated as a cause.

Conventional doctors then examined the case in some detail, and their conclusion was that there was no hope of recovery. Again, in Doctor Moradi's own words:

               "Neurologists believed that it is due to ADEM (Acute diffuse encephalomyelopathy) or SOL (space occupying lesion). The GCS (Glasgow Coma Scale - conscious level) was about 5. Therefore doctors said that there is no hope for recovery and they did not even hospitalise him in an Intensive Care Unit." (My emphasis).

I have often written about this. Hundreds, thousands, perhaps even millions of patients around the world, every year, find themselves in a similar situation.

• Conventional medicine decide that they have no effective treatment for the patient.
• They arrogantly assume that no other medical therapy will have effective treatment.
• So effectively the patient is left to die.

When there is no effective or useful conventional medical treatment DOES NOT mean that there is no treatment available! Fortunately, for this patient, Doctor Moradi's decided that he would not leave it there.

               "I decided to treat him with Homeopathy. As there was oedema in the brain, and the progression was sudden, and as he was shrieking and agitated before decreasing conscious level, I decided to give him Apis 1m. After Apis he calmed down."

               "On the CT scan brain oedema had been stopped but GCS was still 5. After 3 days I gave Apis 10m. The GCS then went up to 7, and doctors agreed to transfer him to the Intensive Care Unit."

               "I repertorized the case, using Repertrium Virosom, and found that TBE and INF were the top miasms, with Sulphur, Helleborus, and Belladonna the top remedies."

               "In the Intensive Care Unit I noticed the patient had automatic and rhythmic motion of the right side extremities, but the left side was paralyzed, and he had no motion. I gave him Helleborus  200C. After the Helleborus automatic motions disappeared and respiration became normal. Before Helleborus his respiration had been deep and rapid."

               "On the 4th day after Helleborus I noticed anger on his face and spasm in the right side, so much so that I could not open his eyelids, his body was hot, and that night he had fever, a seizure and become agitated. Belladonna 10m was prescribed. There was a brief aggravation and then everything became better."

               "On the CT scan oedema had been decreased, there was no agitation, fever and respiration was normal. Everything was getting better but the GCS was the same on the 7th day after Belladonna, so I decided to give him Sulphur 200C."

               "2 days after the Sulphur he opened his eyes while calling him. The GCS score had became 9-10. He improved daily, and they removed his endotracheal tube."

               "On 9th days after Sulphur there was mild anger and anxiety on the face, and he had a gesture like pulling hair or picking something and also pupils were dilated. I decided to give him Belladonna 50m. After that he became better, his paralyzed limb began to recover, and he could move his paralyzed limb, and muscle forces on paralyzed side is 3/5."

               "I am following the case to see whether he will need another remedy or not?"

The last report was that the patient had been released from hospital. He could talk and had control over his bowels. With some help he could walk. His cranial nerves were working normally. His hand strength was 3/5. And his left leg strength was 4/5.

A miraculous cure? Or just another wonderful example of homeopathy curing a patient conventional medicine had given up on? Certainly in this case homeopathy was brilliantly applied to a patient who would otherwise have died.

As a homeopath I have never ceased to wonder at how illness, even the most serious illnesses, including patients who have been under conventional medical treatment for many years, can cure. As a relatively new homeopath I remember once being very proud and excited after treating a woman who had less than 50% lung function. I presented the case to my supervisor. He cautioned me. Yes, it was wonderful what I had achieved. But, he said, what the case really demonstrated was not just that I had done a good job, a source of personal pride, but to marvel at the power of homeopathy to cure.

So what happened to this patient was not a miracle. It is what happens when homeopathy is skilfully applied to even the sickest of patients.

POSTSCRIPT
Since writing this I have been waiting for Dr Moradi to approve my draft, which he has now done. So I can now give a further update on the patient's progress.

• He is now walking, unaided.
• The strength in his left hand is coming up to 4/5. 
• He has lost a considerable amount of weight, so they are now focusing on increasing his weight 

Remember - this is the man that conventional medics thought would die - and would have allowed to die because they had no effective treatment for him.

Are the Pharmaceutical Drugs your doctor is prescribing today any safer than the drugs that have already been banned because they were found to be dangerous to patient health?

Are the pharmaceutical drugs your doctor is prescribing today any safer than the drugs that have already been banned as they were a threat to patient safety? The second section of my ebook "The Failure of Conventional Medicine" seeks both to demonstrate and justify that title.

• Chapter five outlines many of the failed pharmaceutical drugs that have been withdrawn or banned over the years - the dangerous drugs of yesterday.
• Chapter six deals with 'the dangerous drugs of today, and highlights the point that the pharmaceutical drugs prescribed today are no safer than yesterday's banned drugs. 

Today I have discovered that the doctors e-magazine, MIMS, publishes a regular list of pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines that have been recently 'deleted', many of them because they have been found to be harmful to patient health.

MIMS was established in 1963, and describes itself as "a multi-channel provider of drug information, medical education and services connecting healthcare communities". It says that it empowers healthcare professionals to "improve patient outcomes by facilitating knowledge exchange and better decision-making". It claims that it has a presence in 13 countries across the Asian Pacific, and has about two million healthcare professional subscribers to its drug and resource portal.

It is one of the 'bibles' used by conventional doctor, informing them about pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines - their uses, their contraindications, their side effects, and much else. So each year MIMS routinely chart and publish information about the drugs that have been deleted.

In 2017 MIMs listed 75 deleted drugs and vaccines! Each one is named, alongside the type of drug it is (or was). There was no indication about whether the drug was banned, withdrawn; they were just 'deleted' perhaps some of them replaced by another drug.

Already in 2018 (that is, first 9 months of the year) MIMS reports that further 96 drugs and vaccines have been deleted.

What this indicates is that the pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines doctors are prescribing to us today are no safer than the drugs they were giving us in previous years, and that they continue to cause the same kind of patient harm that led to the withdrawal, banning or deleting of so many old drugs.

Month by month pharmaceutical drugs are being deleted, and let's be clear, the one's that will be deleted next month, and next year, are the same drugs our doctors are prescribing today - to you and me.

What MIMS has demonstrated is that the pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines being prescribed today are all likely to be deleted tomorrow, next week, or next month, and that conventional medicine, and the pharmaceutical drugs that dominates it,  cannot be trusted with our health.

Placebo. Homeopathy and other natural therapies are often dismissed as being "no better than placebo". So what is wrong with that?

Homeopathy is often dismissed as being "no better than placebo". So exactly does this mean? Is it important to patients? Why has the concept of a 'placebo' become such a problem in recent years? And why do so many people want to disassociate themselves from it?

A placebo is usually defined as a substance ‘containing no medication’ or ‘an inactive substance’ that is given to patients to help him/her get well. Or a placebo is a substance that has ‘no intrinsic value’ but manages to trick someone into feeling they are better.

Most standard definitions explain placebo using the concepts highlighted above, or similar. It is used in the context of medicine, drugs, active substances that make sick people better. It is supposed to help us distinguish between substances that ‘work’ and substances that don’t ‘work’.

So the value of the term ‘placebo’ should become clearer. It has become a weapon used by those who claim to make people well through ‘active substances’ and ‘medication’ - by conventional, or 'scientific' medicine. Everything else is of ‘no intrinsic value’, merely a confidence trick. The term has been hijacked by the pharmaceutical companies and their supporters, to attack natural medical therapies, to dismiss them as worthless, as being ‘no more, no better than placebo’.

So why is placebo a problem?

It is a problem because most natural therapies utilise methods that are designed to stimulate the body’s own healing mechanisms, not necessarily through 'active substances'. This may be through essential oils, or homeopathic remedies, or the needles of the acupuncturist, or the hands of the reflexologist. So for this reason such therapists can be routinely dismissed and discounted as users of ‘placebo’. Their patients don't really get well. They just think they get well (and presumably they are too stupid the recognise the difference)!

So is this a problem for the patient?

People who are genuinely sick have one main, over-riding priority - to get better. I have never treated a patient, and made them better, who then asked

* “how did you do that?”
* “I hope there was an active ingredient in what you gave me!”
* “I hope what you did had some ‘intrinsic value’!”
* “If it’s just a placebo I will be unhappy”.

Patients want to get better, and largely that is all they want. They don’t ask about the number of randomised double blind trials the treatment has been subjected to. If the treatment does not hold, if the illness returns, the patient will not use the therapy again. Therapies that don’t work for patients don’t survive, especially when they do not have government subsidy! Essential oils, homeopathy, acupuncture have all been around a long time. Patients use them to get better, and they do so because they know that it does make them better.

Conventional medicine may not like this, and no doubt they will continue to rail against us, and dismiss natural therapies for being “no more than placebo”.

But as far as most patients are concerned, they don’t give a damn! 

The future of medicine. It does not rest with pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines. It will be with medical therapies that can cure sick people, safely

Since the beginning of the 20th century, conventional medicine and the pharmaceutical industry has constructed itself upon an edifice of ‘crucial discoveries’ - new ‘wonder drugs’ and ‘miracle cures’ and medical treatments that ‘will transform our experience of disease.

It began just before the discovery of penicillin, with a number of drugs that have now been withdrawn, abandoned, banned - owing to their ineffectiveness, or the harm the caused to patients.

Penicillin itself appeared to herald a new age of 'scientific' medicine, but as we all know now both penicillin and its antibiotic successors are now reaching the end of their useful life too. As resistance to them grows, we must now realise that they, too, also have seriously harmful side effects.

Since the mid-20th century hundreds of 'wonder drugs' and 'miracle cures' have either been banned or withdrawn. Even the pharmaceutical drugs prescribed by doctors today, such as Painkillers, Beta Blockers, Benzodiazepines, Antidepressants, Statins, and many others, are proving harmful to patient health.

Yet for most people the promise of 'scientific' medicine creating "a pill for every ill" has prevailed. The reassuring picture of medical science conquering disease is something we want to believe. After all, we have had over 100 years of this kind of propaganda.

The truth is more mundane. After a century of consuming an ever-increasing amount of pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines we are now experiencing

• levels of serious chronic disease we have never before been seen
• a plethora of ‘new’ diseases we have never heard of before
• and diseases once thought to be about ageing and old age, like cancer and dementia, which are now being contracted by younger people and children.

So what we can actually see, the evidence before our eyes (if we were to lift our blinkers and observe) is a medical system, dominated by pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines, in constant crisis because of the apparently insatiable demands of an increasingly sick population.

This has not yet a picture of conventional health care that many recognise at the moment but it is one that we all need to understand, as soon as possible. For those who do recognise it the search for safer and more effective medical therapies has already begun, therapies that actually cure people of illness, do so safely, without creating new disease through side effects. This is a trend that will continue, in inverse proportion to the ongoing failure of conventional medicine.

It is becoming a crucial understanding that we all need to make - and soon.

ALLERGY. A Tragic Death. It's in the news and is being widely discussed. Yet no-one asks what is causing the allergy epidemic

The death of Natasha Ednan-Laperouse was undoubtedly a tragedy. Her story can be simply retold. She had a nut allergy, and ate an artichoke, olive and tapenade baguette at Heathrow Airport in July 2016, believing that it did not contain nuts. On the flight she went into cardiac arrest, and despite having two EpiPen injections (adrenaline) she died the same day. The baguette contained sesame seeds, an ingredient apparently not listed on the packaging.

At the recent inquest into Natasha's death the court focussed on food labelling. Pret A Manger did not label its baguettes as containing sesame seeds even though there had been six allergic reaction cases in the previous year. So the family is now campaigning for a change in food labelling laws.

An allergy is simply explained. "An allergy occurs when our immune system overreacts to what is normally a harmless substance, and triggers what, for the healthy human body, is an inappropriate and unnecessary response."

To eat a few sesame seeds, and die as a result, is most certainly "an inappropriate and unnecessary response", so whilst it is appropriate to look at food labelling, it is surely more important to discuss why Natasha's immune system, designed to defend and protect itself from attack from foreign substances, should react to a food it should have been able to eat in complete safety.

Allergy has become an epidemic in recent years. I have written about this in 'Epidemic of Chronic Disease', and in this blog from October 2012.

               "According to the House of Lords Select Committee on Science and Technology's report, published in July 2007, "the prevalence and incidence of allergic disease have markedly increased over the past 50 years", and that evidence presented to the Committee showed that "an increasing prevalence of asthma was first noted in studies of Birmingham school children, starting in the mid 1950s," and that since then "the prevalence of asthma and wheezing appears to have doubled "approximately every 14 years" until the mid 1990s. It added that the trends for other disorders such as hay fever and eczema are similar."

The 2004 report showed the scale of the "allergy epidemic" - that 39% of children and 30% of adults had been diagnosed with one or more of asthma, eczema and hayfever; and 38% of children and 45% of adults had experienced symptoms of these disorders during the preceding 12 months. Yet since then the allergy epidemic has continued to grow!

AND NO-ONE APPEARS TO WANT TO ASK THE OBVIOUS QUESTION - WHY?

In the current debate about Natasha, no one seems to want to ask why she had this allergy in the first place. The cause of her death was her allergy - it was not a sandwich containing sesame seed, this was just the trigger. After all, we should all be able to eat sesame seeds without such a reaction!

The answer is agonisingly simple. One of the main causes of the allergy epidemic, if not the main cause, are pharmaceutical drugs. This link lists the drugs known to cause allergy - including painkilling drugs, antibiotic drugs, sleeping pills, and in particular, childhood vaccinations and the plethora of drugs that 'work' by interfering with our immune system.

Does conventional medicine know about this? Apparently not, although perhaps more pertinent questions might be "does it want to know", and "does it want us to know?" This is what the NHS Choices website tell us about the cause of allergies.

               "Allergies occur when the body's immune system reacts to a particular substance as though it's harmful. It's not clear why this happens.....

               "The number of people with allergies is increasing every year. The reasons for this are not understood....."

So conventional medicine claims not to know - even when its medical textbooks, the doctors bibles like the British National Formulary and MIMS, very clearly provides the evidence for the link with pharmaceutical drugs!

There is a fundamental problem with this. If conventional medicine refuses to acknowledge the serious side effects of pharmaceutical drugs, if doctors won't tell patients about the harm they can cause, if our mainstream media decides not to ask important questions about iatrogenic disease, there will be no solution to this problem, or any other health problem. 

The campaign being waged by Natasha's parents will be doomed to failure because it does not address the most important question of all. Why was Natasha body allergic to what should be a harmless food?

Before it is possible to reach a solution for any problem it is first necessary to know what is causing the problem. Identify the wrong cause and a solution is not possible.

Allergy Treatment

And there is another problem. Where should parents be looking for safe and effective treatment for allergy? Natasha's father used two EpiPen injections, and they failed. I have written about the conventional treatment of allergy - the antihistamine drugs, the steroids, the decongestants, the 'Leukotriene receptor antagonists', and of course immunotherapy (playing around with our immune system). In the same link I have written about the homeopathic treatment of allergy, which is altogether more effective, free of serious adverse drug reactions, and safer.

Indeed, conventional medicine has proven that homeopathy is an effective treatment for allergy, and nut allergy in particular. In January 1914 the mainstream media heralded a new and successful treatment for peanut allergy. This from a BBC article.

               "Doctors say a potential treatment for peanut allergy has transformed the lives of children taking part in a large clinical trial. The 85 children had to eat peanut protein every day - initially in small doses, but ramped up during the study. The finding, published in the Lancet, suggest 84% of allergic children could eat the equivalent of five peanuts a day after six months".

As I said at the time, this is a treatment based on the principle of 'like (in small quantities) curing like'. It is, in other words, based on the principles of homeopathy! Whilst Homeopathy prefers to use peanuts in potency (in high dilution), these researchers used minute doses of peanut itself. This is probably not as safe as homeopathy, and probably produces results more slowly, but it is nonetheless homeopathy!

Yet in the years since that research was heralded as a breakthrough treatment conventional medicine  is still not using. So perhaps we should all be asking why!

But then, in matters of health, the right questions are rarely asked. This is why the allergy epidemic continues to grow, year by year, and why so many more 'Natasha's' are likely to die. Her mother was quoted as saying that "nobody else should ever have to suffer such a needless death". No-one is likely to disagree. Hopefully the food industry will eventually get its labelling right.

I am less optimistic that conventional medicine will ever admit that pharmaceutical drugs are a significant cause of allergy. And it is this that will be the basis of future tragedies.

Ronald. A patient getting to the end of the long journey through pain and painkilling drugs, ending up in chronic pain and Tramadol

I wrote in general terms about the "long journey through pain and painkilling drugs" in July 2018. It is, of course, a very personal journey, and in recent days I have come face-to-face with two such journeys. I wrote about Janet's journey a few days ago. Ronald's long journey through pain was somewhat different to hers. Just as pharmaceutical drugs do not have a single side effect, individuals have their own personal side effects, their own personal route to ever more chronic, ever more untreatable pain.

Ronald was always a fit and active man. When he began to suffer some mild rheumatic pain he did what everyone does. He resorted to taking painkilling drugs.

The tragedy (yes the tragedy) was that they worked!

• The pain went. 
• The wonders of modern medicine. 
• The triumph of medical science.

The problem was that the pain came back. But this was really no problem, he could take some more, and whenever the pain returned he took more again. Like with most people suffering with pain it became routine. Pain, pop a pill. It always worked.

Trouble was that Ronald found himself popping a pill more frequently. Monthly, then weekly, then daily. Then more of them each time. One, became two, then the need for more.

No matter, the doctor was there to help. If over-the-counter pain killers did not work, there were strong drugs that he could prescribe. And they seemed to work too. Pain, a pill, and relief from pain. Temporary relief, by relief no less. And he trusted his doctor, he would not give him anything that was harmful. He knew best, and as he said, there was no alternative - until the pain was much worse than it was.

The pain did get worse, his hip became unbearable. It affected him mobility, his life. He had always been an active man, but now he undertook his activities in almost permanent pain. His doctor, though, was not phased. It was wear and tear. His body was wearing out. He needed a hip transplant, and soon he had one.

It worked! It was brilliant, and he soon recovered from him operation.

• The pain had gone.
• The wonders of modern medicine.
• The triumph of medical science.

Unfortunately the pain returned, not to the mechanical hip, but his other hip. More painkillers, more often, more of them, and increasing strength. They worked every time, but so did the pain. Don't worry, said the doctor - when it gets bad you can have another hip transplant.

And so he did. It worked! It was brilliant. He would soon recover from his operation. And he did. What marvellous things surgeons were able to do these days.

Trouble was that the pain soon returned. I was due to see him but his wife phoned. His doctor had given him more painkillers, and he had a terrible reaction to them. My eyes rolled. Being a homeopath is difficult sometimes, especially when good friends have such faith in conventional medicine. What had he taken? Tramadol came the answer.

Tramadol is an opiate painkiller, a narcotic. I checked it out. It has the most dreadful side effects, as the website Drugs.com outlines.

* Abnormal or decreased touch sensation

* blisters under the skin

* bloating

* blood in the urine

* blood pressure increased

* blurred vision

* change in walking and balance

* chest pain or discomfort

* chills

* darkened urine

* difficult urination

* dizziness, or lightheadedness, fainting

* fast heartbeat

* frequent urge to urinate

* gaseous abdominal or stomach pain

* indigestion

* irregular heartbeat

* loss of memory

* numbness and tingling of the face, fingers, or toes

* pain in the arms, legs, or lower back, especially pain in the calves or heels upon exertion

* pain or discomfort in the arms, jaw, back, or neck

* pains in the stomach, side, or abdomen, possibly radiating to the back

* pale, bluish-colored or cold hands or feet

* recurrent fever

* seeing, hearing, or feeling things that are not there

* seizures

* severe cramping

* severe nausea

* severe redness, swelling, and itching of the skin

* stomach fullness

* sweating

* trembling and shaking of the hands or feet

* trouble performing routine tasks

* weak or absent pulses in the legs

* yellow eyes or skin

When I eventually saw Ronald we went through this dreadful list. He told me he had never felt as bad as he did. He felt 'out of it'. His consciousness had not so changed as disappeared, he was outside looking in, he was unaware of his whereabouts, he was lightheaded, almost unconscious, and was too tired to do anything. The experience had frightened him. His body was swollen up too, and he came out with a massive rash, around his neck and shoulders.

His doctor had been brilliant. He immediately told him to stop taking the Tramadol, he had only taken a couple, and surmised that the drug just did not suit him. Instead the doctor put him a steroid drug, and he was now much better. No criticism - that he had given him such a drug with such dreadful side effects!

So I ask the same question as I did in Janet's case. What will happen to Ronald? And lots of people like Ronald? The pharmaceutical cupboard is desperately bare. It has never been very full of helpful drugs for treating pain. Perhaps his doctor will put it down to wear and tear, to his age. After all, this is the main explanation doctors give for all the epidemics of chronic disease we are suffering. Certainly, conventional medicine is unlikely to admit that these epidemics have all been caused, to one degree or another, by the pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines they have been prescribing to us for decades.

And my message is the same message as I gave in Janet's case. I urge everyone not to start on this long journey. See through the charm of doctors, the propaganda of drug companies, the idea that medical science is winning the battle against disease, and the silence of the mainstream media. Start looking at natural therapies, and try them, before it is too late.

Janet. A patient getting to the end of the long journey through pain and painkilling drugs, ending up in chronic pain, Amitriptyline - and dementia?

I wrote in general terms of the "long journey through pain and painkilling drugs" in July. It is, of course, a very personal journey, and in recent days I have come face-to-face with two such journeys. This deals with the first one.

Janet (not her real name) is now in her early 70's, and she has suffered from arthritis for many years. She said that she is getting increasingly forgetful, often confused, and her once good memory has become poor. This came to a head recently when she was out, driving her car. She was not far from home but she suddenly realised she did not know where she was. She realised that she did not know how to get home. As you can imagine this frightened her. Was this dementia? What else could it be? It would only get worse. And she knew there was no treatment.

I asked her what drugs she was taking? This is now the first question I ask anyone when they say they are unwell! Amitriptyline came the reply. I groaned. She smiled, knowing what I was going to tell her. She did not believe in homeopathy, and she knew my views on pharmaceutical drugs. She was someone, like so many others, who has always had great confidence in her doctor. Well, it's scientific medicine, isn't it!

Amitriptyline is an antidepressant. It is usually used to treat depression, but is also used for pain when painkillers no longer work. She took it, in desperation, so that she was able to get some sleep at night. A few days later, I heard, the doctor had discontinued the Amitriptyline.

Over the years Janet has gone a long way down that long journey through pain and painkilling drugs. They are the only treatment for arthritis that conventional medicine has. They have no treatment that deals with the cause of arthritis, just the pain. Doctors state that there is no cure. So once diagnosed Janet was given painkilling drugs, many years ago now. These drugs dulled the pain, but did nothing for the condition itself. Painkilling drugs, all of them, are highly toxic. They cause side effects, some quite horrible disease-inducing effects. And as time goes on painkillers become less effective. They may take the edge of the pain, temporarily, but in time more drug, in greater potency, have to be taken. So the patient is regularly taking the drugs, and suffering not only from arthritis but from the toxicity of the drugs.

As the years went by the effectiveness of painkillers for Janet's pain subsided. Pain was constant, and she could not sleep. So her doctor has to look for something else, anything he had left in their medicine chest. Hence Amitriptyline - an antidepressant - for pain. As far as I know the drug has never been tested or approved for the treatment of pain, but doctors don't have much else to use once patients are in so much pain they cannot sleep. It must be depressing! So maybe this is the reason for prescribing it.

Anyone who wants to see what a dangerous and harmful drug Amitriptyline is should have a look at the known (and accepted) side effects. Go to this Drug.com webpage to read the full horror story! The list is too long to include here, but it includes blood in urine or stools, blurred vision, changes in patterns and rhythms of speech, chest pain, cold sweats, coma, continuing ringing, buzzing, or other unexplained noise in ears, convulsions, difficulty in breathing, passing urine and speaking, irregular heartbeat, general feeling of tiredness or weakness, headache, hearing loss, high fever, high or low blood pressure, inability to speak, lack of coordination, lethargy, loss of balance control, loss of bladder control, loss of consciousness, lower back or side pain, mental depression or anxiety, muscle spasm or jerking of all extremities, nausea and vomiting, nightmares, poor coordination, seeing, hearing, or feeling things that are not there, seizures, sleeplessness, stiffness of limbs, swollen glands,
trouble in speaking, sleeping, breathing, unsteadiness, trembling, or other problems with muscle control or coordination, unusual tiredness or weakness. And much, much more.

The mental side effects that Janet suffered were all there too, of course. She did not have dementia, she was suffering from the side effects of the drug her doctor had prescribed.

• change in consciousness
• confusion
• confusion about identity, place, and time
• disturbed concentration
• stupor
• sudden loss of consciousness

She took them because she trusted her doctor, and the 'scientific' medicine he administered! But for Densise, and probably many millions of people suffering from dementia, this is where decades of taking painkillers had led. Her 'long journey' had led to a diagnosis of dementia.

Pharmaceutical drugs DO cause dementia, and Alzheimer's disease - and it is not just painkillers that are cause this epidemic!

This is one of the reasons why dementia is now running at unprecedented levels. This is why young and middle age people are now being diagnosed with dementia in increasing numbers.

What will happen to Janet now? And lots of people like Janet? The pharmaceutical cupboard is desperately bare. It has never been very full of helpful drugs for treating pain. Perhaps her doctor will put it down to her age. After all, this is the main explanation doctors give for all the epidemics of chronic disease we are suffering. Certainly, conventional medicine is unlikely to admit that these epidemics have all been caused, to one degree or another, by the pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines they have been prescribing to us for decades.

Or perhaps she will now see through the mirage of conventional medicine, and look for more effective and safe treatment.

So I urge everyone, don't start on this long journey. See through the charm of doctors, the propaganda of drug companies, the idea that medical science is winning the battle against disease, and the silence of the mainstream media. Start looking at natural therapies, and try them, before it is too late.