Tuesday, December 15, 2009

baking soda for healing? it's not just for cakes anymore!

Overlooked 150 Year Old Household Cleaner a Remedy for Swine Flu?
Posted by: Dr. Mercola
December 15 2009 | 197,921 views

In today’s modern world of medicine the FDA just will not let companies that sell products make medical claims about them unless they have been tested at great expense, and approved as a drug. But this was not always the case.

In a 1924 booklet published by the Arm & Hammer Soda Company, the company starts off saying, “The proven value of Arm & Hammer Bicarbonate of Soda as a therapeutic agent is further evinced by the following evidence of a prominent physician named Dr. Volney S. Cheney, in a letter to the Church & Dwight Company:

“In 1918 and 1919 while fighting the ‘Flu’ with the U. S. Public Health Service it was brought to my attention that rarely any one who had been thoroughly alkalinized with bicarbonate of soda contracted the disease, and those who did contract it, if alkalinized early, would invariably have mild attacks.”

Recommended dosages from the Arm and Hammer Company for colds and influenza back in 1925 were:

During the first day take six doses of half teaspoonful of Bicarbonate of Soda in glass of cool water, at about two hour intervals
During the second day take four doses of half teaspoonful of Bicarbonate of Soda in glass of cool water, at the same intervals
During the third day take two doses of half teaspoonful of Bicarbonate of Soda in glass of cool water morning and evening, and thereafter half teaspoonful in glass of cool water each morning until cold is cured

Sources:

Sodium Bicarbonate November 30, 2009




Dr. Mercola's Comments:



Baking soda (also known as sodium bicarbonate), popularized by Arm & Hammer some 155 years ago, is derived from a natural occurring mineral, and is one of the safest and most versatile substances around. In fact, if you search for “baking soda” on my site, you’ll find a number of articles detailing its potential uses, including using it as a:

Household cleaner
Sunburn remedy
Alternative to toxic antiperspirants
Sports performance enhancer
Few people realize, however, that baking soda also has potent medicinal properties. Taken internally, it helps maintain the pH balance in your bloodstream. This is likely the basic premise behind its recommended uses against both colds and influenza symptoms, and even cancer.

WARNING!!!

Many believe that Arm and Hammer Baking Soda is contaminated with aluminum even though the company that makes it claims it does not. We have been able to confirm that there are aluminum free baking sodas like Bob's Red Mill Baking Soda. If you have any information on this please add it to the comment section below.

Baking Soda as an All-Natural Cold Remedy

In their booklet “Arm & Hammer Baking Soda Medical Uses,” published in 1924, Dr. Volney S. Cheney recounts his clinical successes with sodium bicarbonate in treating cold and flu:

“In 1918 and 1919 while fighting the ‘flu’ with the U. S. Public Health Service it was brought to my attention that rarely anyone who had been thoroughly alkalinized with bicarbonate of soda contracted the disease, and those who did contract it, if alkalinized early, would invariably have mild attacks.

I have since that time treated all cases of ‘cold,’ influenza and LaGripe by first giving generous doses of bicarbonate of soda, and in many, many instances within 36 hours the symptoms would have entirely abated.

Further, within my own household, before Woman’s Clubs and Parent-Teachers’ Associations, I have advocated the use of bicarbonate of soda as a preventive for “colds,” with the result that now many reports are coming in stating that those who took “soda” were not affected, while nearly everyone around them had the “flu.”

According to the Materia Medica by Walter Bastedo, sodium bicarbonate taken internally can soothe your mucous membranes and dissolve thick mucus.

It’s worth noting that I have personally never tried this cold remedy, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it worked, as maintaining proper acid-alkalinity balance in your body will have a beneficial impact on your natural immune system function.

If any of you have experience using baking soda as a cold remedy, I’d love to hear about it.

The administration is easy enough, and is harmless even if you should not experience relief from your cold symptoms. Simply dissolve the recommended amount of baking soda in a glass of cold water and drink it.

Recommended dosages from the Arm & Hammer Company for colds and influenza back in 1925 were:

Day 1 -- Take six doses of ½ teaspoon of baking soda in glass of cool water, at about two hour intervals
Day 2 -- Take four doses of ½ teaspoon of baking soda in glass of cool water, at the same intervals
Day 3 -- Take two doses of ½ teaspoon of baking soda in glass of cool water morning and evening, and thereafter ½ teaspoon in glass of cool water each morning until cold symptoms are gone
Further dosing recommendations and instructions for taking sodium bicarbonate can be found in Mark Sircus’ book Sodium Bicarbonate – Rich Mans Poor Mans Cancer Treatment, which is also available in Kindle edition.

According to Arm & Hammer’s dosing instructions, do not exceed seven doses of ½ teaspoon per day, or three doses of ½ teaspoon daily if you’re over the age of 60. In addition, do not use the maximum dosage for more than two weeks.

The Potent Healing Power of Baking Soda

Dr. Tullio Simonici and Mark Sircus, Ac, OMD both advocate using baking soda for even the most serious of diseases – cancer!

Unfortunately, despite all the evidence showing that baking soda indeed has enormous potential as an effective and non-toxic cancer treatment, conventional medicine is refusing to take notice, as baking soda will never be a huge profit center for any drug company.

Even worse, the industry tries to discredit or downright destroy those who dare bring inexpensive treatment options like baking soda to the forefront. Make no mistake about it, cancer treatment is big business, and for all the promises to find a cure, there seems to be an unwritten law somewhere stating it will only be studied and accepted if there’s big profits to be had.

Dr. Simoncini, who is an oncologist (cancer specialist), was ousted from the medical community when he refused to use conventional cancer treatment methods and elected instead to administer sodium bicarbonate.

This despite the fact that he’s been able to show that 99 percent of breast- and bladder cancer can heal in just six days, entirely without the use of surgery, chemo or radiation, using just a local infiltration device (such as a catheter) to deliver the sodium bicarbonate directly to the infected site in your breast tissue or bladder!

You can watch actual before and after footage of the treatment working in this video.

In his book Winning the War on Cancer, Dr. Sircus writes:

“Sodium bicarbonate is the time honored method to 'speed up' the return of the body’s bicarbonate levels to normal. Bicarbonate is inorganic, very alkaline and like other mineral type substances, supports an extensive list of biological functions.

Sodium bicarbonate happens to be one of our most useful medicines because bicarbonate physiology is fundamental to life and health.”

Many chemotherapy treatments actually include sodium bicarbonate to help protect the patient’s kidneys, heart and nervous system. It’s been said that administering chemotherapy without bicarbonate could possibly kill you on the spot.

Could it be that while mixing chemo poisons with baking soda, any improvements seen are the result of the baking soda, and not the toxic poisons? Dr. Sircus believes that may be the case.

“There are no studies separating the effects of bicarbonate from the toxic chemotherapy agents, nor will there ever be,” he says.

Final Thoughts

If you keep an open mind, you will quickly learn that there are numerous ways to support your body in healing that have nothing to do with toxic drugs, vaccines, or surgery, even when it comes to a serious condition like cancer.

For my Top 12 all-natural cancer prevention strategies, please review my previous article, Winning the War on Cancer.

As for preventive measures against cold and flu, please read through the three articles listed below. They’re all chockfull of helpful tips and guidelines to make cold and flu symptoms a thing of the past.



Related Links:

How to Prevent the Flu -- as Easy as 1, 2, 3...

Avoid Flu Shots With the One Vitamin that Will Stop Flu in Its Tracks

Top 12 Foods for Healthy Immune Response

scientific advice on using vit C

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Orthomolecular Medicine News Service, December 15, 2009


PUTTING THE "C" IN CURE:
Quantity and Frequency are the Keys to Ascorbate Therapy

Comment by Andrew W. Saul
Editor-In-Chief, Orthomolecular Medicine News Service

(OMNS, December 15, 2009) What is it about a little left-handed molecule of six carbons, six oxygens, and eight hydrogens that ticks off so many in the medical community? Maybe it's cases like this one: Ray, a health professional I know, had an 11-month old son who was very sick for over a week. No one, and I mean no one, in their family had had any sleep in a long time. They were up night after night with this child, who had a high fever, glazed watery eyes, tons of thick watery mucus and labored breathing. The child would not sleep, and did little else but cry. The baby was under the care of a pediatrician, who, in the infant's eleven months on earth, had already prescribed twelve rounds of some very serious antibiotics. That they clearly were not working was all too apparent to Ray, who out of desperation decided to try something he previously had been taught to not try: bowel tolerance quantities of oral ascorbate. Ray and his wife gave their baby vitamin C about every 15 minutes. As a result, the baby was noticeably improved in a matter of hours, and slept through the night. With frequent doses continuing, the child was completely well in less than 48 hours. Ray calculated that the child had received just over 2,000 mg vitamin C per kilogram body weight per day. This is even more than what vitamin C expert Dr. Frederick Robert Klenner customarily ordered for sick patients. Remarkably, at 20,000 milligrams of vitamin C/day, that baby never had bowel-tolerance loose stools. (1)

With such a little body, you have to marvel at where all that ascorbate was going. Of course, it is the opinion of those who promulgate the US RDA and related nutritional mythology that almost all of that baby's vitamin C went uselessly into the toilet. Ray and his wife would tell you differently. They would say that their sick child soaked it up like a sponge, and then promptly got better. You choose the answer that works for you.

Quantity of Dose

Dr. Frederick Robert Klenner earned his MD from Duke University School of Medicine and was subsequently board certified in diseases of the chest. (2) A working summation of Dr. Klenner's therapeutic use of vitamin C is 350 milligrams vitamin C per kilogram body weight per day (350 mg/kg/day), in divided doses. (3) Since a kilogram is about 2.2 pounds, this translates to:

mg of Vitamin "C" Body Weight Number of Doses Amount per dose
35,000 mg 220 lb 17-18 2,000 mg
18,000 mg 110 lb 18 1,000 mg
9,000 mg 55 lb 18 500 mg
4,500 mg 28 lb 9 500 mg
2,300 mg 14-15 lb 9 250 mg
1,200 mg 7-8 lb 9 130 - 135 mg
Although these quantities may seem high, Dr. Klenner actually used as much as four times as much for serious viral illness, administered by injection. The oral doses listed above are, for the doctor, comparatively moderate.

Frequency of Dose

For those unable to obtain intravenous vitamin C, it is essential to pay special attention to one of the most important aspects of vitamin C therapy: dividing the dosage improves absorption and retention of vitamin C. High oral doses of vitamin C yield higher blood levels of the vitamin, and dividing the oral doses maintains those higher levels. Although initially seeming almost too obvious to mention, these are not self-evident concepts. Many a medical website and government-based dietary recommendation hinge on ignoring them. Hilary Roberts, PhD, writes: "Stressed and even mildly ill people can tolerate 1,000 times more vitamin C, implying a change in biochemistry that was ignored in creating the RDA. In setting the RDA, unsubstantiated risks of taking too much vitamin C have been accorded great importance, whereas the risks of not taking enough have been ignored. Real scientists understand that 'no scientific proof' is a fancy way of saying 'we don't like this idea.'" (4)

And there is ample proof to not like. Vitamin C, in very high doses, has been used to successfully treat several dozen illness (5), with a published, peer-reviewed literature spanning the last 60 years. Therefore, the effectiveness and safety of megadose vitamin C therapy should, by now, be yesterday's news. Yet I never cease to be amazed at the number of persons who remain unaware that vitamin C is the best broad-spectrum antibiotic, antihistamine, antitoxic and antiviral substance there is. Equally surprising is the ease with which some people, most of the medical profession, and virtually all of the media have been convinced that, somehow, vitamin C is not only ineffective but is also downright dangerous.

Bias against Ascorbate Therapy

When you pick up a health or nutrition book and need to know really fast if it is any good or not, just check the index for "Klenner" and three other key names: Cathcart, Stone, and Pauling. Robert F. Cathcart, an orthopedic surgeon, administered huge doses of vitamin C to tens of thousands of patients for decades (6), without generating a single kidney stone. Irwin Stone, the biochemist who first put Linus Pauling onto vitamin C, is the author of The Healing Factor: Vitamin C against Disease. (7) Pauling cites Stone thirteen times in his landmark book How to Live Longer and Feel Better (8), a recommendation if there ever was one. The importance of vitamin C's power against infectious and chronic disease is extraordinary. To me, omitting it is tantamount to deleting Shakespeare from an English Lit course.

Because of such bias, the primary way patients (and through them, their physicians) have been exposed to Dr. Klenner's work has been through Dr. Lendon Smith's 68-page Clinical Guide to the Use of Vitamin C: The Clinical Experiences of Frederick R. Klenner, M.D. (9) Upon discovering this book, one of my undergraduates submitted a paper to another class discussing a substantial number of medical references she had found on vitamin C as a cure for polio. That course's instructor told me privately that the student's work was absurd, and he literally described her as a "dial tone." I recall a nutritional presentation I made to a hospital staff. All was going well until I mentioned using vitamin C as an antibiotic, as Dr. Klenner did. The mood changed quickly. And how many of us have heard this old saw: "If vitamin C was so good, every doctor would be prescribing it!"

Cardiologist Thomas Levy, MD, explains: "I could find no mainstream medical researcher who has performed any clinical studies on any infectious disease with vitamin C doses that approached those used by Klenner. Using a small enough dose of any therapeutic agent will demonstrate little or no effect on an infection or disease process." (10)

Preventive Doses

Dr. Klenner recommended daily preventive doses of 10,000 to 15,000 mg/day. He advised parents to give their children their age in vitamin C grams (1 g = 1,000 mg). That would be 2,000 mg/day for a two year old, 9,000 mg/day for a nine year old, and for older children, a leveling-off at about 10,000 mg/day. As for me, I simply say, "Take enough C to be symptom free, whatever that amount may be." It worked for my family. I raised my children all the way into college and they never had a dose of any antibiotic. Not once.

It is high time for medical professionals to welcome vitamin C megadoses and their power to cure the sick. Cure is by far the best word there is in medicine. It would seem that you cannot spell "cure" without "C." I do not think Dr. Klenner would dispute that.

(Andrew W. Saul taught nutrition, health science and cell biology at the college level, and has won three New York State teacher fellowships. He is the author of Doctor Yourself and Fire Your Doctor! and, with Dr. Abram Hoffer, co-author of Orthomolecular Medicine for Everyone and The Vitamin Cure for Alcoholism. Saul is featured in the documentary film Food Matters.)

References:

(1) Bowel tolerance as an indicator of vitamin C saturation is discussed by Dr. RF Cathcart at http://www.doctoryourself.com/titration.html and http://www.doctoryourself.com/cathcart_thirdface.html

(2) For more about Dr. Klenner's life and work: http://www.doctoryourself.com/klennerbio.html

(3) Klenner FR. The significance of high daily intake of ascorbic acid in preventive medicine, p 51-59, in: A Physician's Handbook on Orthomolecular Medicine, Third Edition, Roger Williams, PhD, ed. Keats, 1979.

(4) Hickey S and Roberts H. Ascorbate: The science of vitamin C. 2004. ISBN 1-4116-0724-4. Morrisville, NC: Lulu.

(5) http://www.doctoryourself.com/vitaminc.html

(6) http://www.doctoryourself.com/biblio_cathcart.html

(7) The complete text of Irwin Stone's book The Healing Factor is posted for free reading at http://vitamincfoundation.org/stone/

(8) Pauling L. How to Live Longer and Feel Better, revised edition, 2006. ISBN-13: 9780870710964. Reviewed at http://www.doctoryourself.com/livelonger.html

(9) The full text of Dr. Frederick R. Klenner's Clinical Guide to the Use of Vitamin C is posted for free reading at http://www.seanet.com/~alexs/ascorbate/198x/smith-lh-clinical_guide_1988.htm

(10) Levy TE. Vitamin C, Infectious Diseases, and Toxins: Curing the Incurable. Livon Books, 2002. ISBN: 1-4010-6963-0 and 978-1401069636

Nutritional Medicine is Orthomolecular Medicine

Orthomolecular medicine uses safe, effective nutritional therapy to fight illness. For more information: http://www.orthomolecular.org

The peer-reviewed Orthomolecular Medicine News Service is a non-profit and non-commercial informational resource.

Editorial Review Board:

Carolyn Dean, M.D., N.D.
Damien Downing, M.D.
Michael Gonzalez, D.Sc., Ph.D.
Steve Hickey, Ph.D.
James A. Jackson, PhD
Bo H. Jonsson, MD, Ph.D
Thomas Levy, M.D., J.D.
Jorge R. Miranda-Massari, Pharm.D.
Erik Paterson, M.D.
Gert E. Shuitemaker, Ph.D.

Andrew W. Saul, Ph.D., Editor and contact person. Email: omns@orthomolecular.org

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