On Eating Herbs

A Reader's Letter:

Tuesday, December 14, 1999 11:03 AM
Hi Dr. Lowrey

So sorry I haven't got back to you before this. I don't have my own computer, I use my daughters, so I don't get my E-Mail everyday.

Just looked at you heal-naturally site. Do you use herbs? I'm not a Beliver in taking prescription drugs. The only thing I take is an aspirin every now and then.

Hope everything is well for you and yours. Happy Holidays to you also.

Laura
Bakersfield, California

Dr. Lowrey Responds:

Hi Laura,

Well, I don’t generally prescribe herbs as such. I am opposed (in principle – not always in practice) to using vitamins and herbs as substitutes for medicines. I prefer to use whole foods in a proscriptive effort to “be well” and “stay well”. Essentially, I follow a “wellness” approach to health rather than an abuse/repair approach.

Unfortunately, there are a couple problems with my personal philosophy. One is that practically everyone else follows the abuse/repair philosophy, so I find myself fixing, fixing, fixing. I often prescribe a supplement therapy to augment my energy treatments. Sometimes this may involve herbs, but I have to do research, as I am not an herbalist per se. Still, I have had great results from practicing herbal treatment. I certainly believe that we should have plenty of herbs and grasses as a regular part of our diet to maintain health and prevent dis-ease.

This brings me to problem number two. That is that while I hold to the ideal of all energy producing and health maintaining nutrition coming from “whole” foods, the facts are that our soils are so depleted, our air and water are so polluted and toxic (and I mean life-threateningly poisonous) that our foods have little value except as a stimulant and quite often are dangerous. Add to this the agricultural additives, growth hormones, chemical fertilizers, pesticides, antibiotics, putrefactive, diseased animal renderings (liquefied dogs, cats, chickens, cows, sheep etc.) and waste products (urine and feces) as feed and fertilizers and It becomes apparent (to me) that our food needs help and we require supplementation to restore lost nutrition and detoxifiers to neutralize poisons and eliminate bacteria and viral products.

I’m sure you recall the problems of the last few years related to health dangers from eating beef fed on chicken manure and rendered dogs and cats and Mad Cow Disease (Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy), in the US called Creutzfeldt-Jacob Disease, caused by consuming flesh fed on rendered (liquefied) animals. Also this last year I read of a couple other interesting health/food issues. One was the harvesting and marketing of Oranges in California that contained absolutely 0% vitamin C. The other was a sampling of mothers milk in Los Angeles. The milk was found to contain significantly dangerous amounts of DDT, a chemical banned in the United States for over 20 years now. It was concluded the DDT was obtained by eating US beef that was fed on imported (from Mexico in this case) feed products. So the feed contained the DDT. It was absorbed by the flesh of the beef. It was absorbed by the cells of the consumer, transmitted to her milk glands (as well as all her other body and brain cells) and ended up poisoning the baby who drank “natures perfect food”, mothers milk! DDT remember, accumulates in cells. It is not water-soluble. It stays in our body our entire lifetime. Well, there are many more examples. MCD, by the way, our nation declares does not exist in the USA, but it does; just by another name - CJD. We had 6 deaths in Utah this past year from CJD, apparently all from eating “safe” wild deer. We are also finding dogs and cats with CJD here in the US. Here’s an interesting experiment. Go to your local grocery store and read the pet food labels on all the dry food. I never buy wet food, so I haven’t looked there, but it’s probably the same. See how many pet foods you can find that do not contain “animal digest”. I usually can find “ONE” that doesn’t. This holds true for all those pricey pet foods at the pet superstores too! What is animal digest? Well, it’s poop! The dreaded chicken poop, as well as other animal feces. It’s good for rapid weight gain. And death, of course. Poultry by products and Animal by products generally mean ground chicken feathers (for protein) and rendered chickens, dogs and cats. Yup, we are feeding our dogs and cats other dogs and cats. Pretty disgusting, huh? But it’s good for profits.

Interestingly in this case, the beef “growers” involved not only claimed that this dependence on foreign feed, not subject to US agricultural standards was widespread in the industry, but also refused the idea of changing to US grown feeds because of the savings in using foreign feed – in spite of the proven health dangers disclosed to them. Apparently, they felt that if it didn’t kill you instantly, it was safe enough to please them and their profit margin.

For these reasons I have spent my short lifetime in research of health products, learning to distinguish between those that will actually benefit the body and those which simply enrich the seller, the pharmacist and the surgeon. Luckily for me, my Grandfather, Dr. Murray Limbocker, D.C., was one of the earliest researchers into health products and I benefited tremendously from my youthful observation of his research. I feel he gave me a tremendous scientific and philosophical head start.

At any rate, the products that I use and recommend are as close to whole foods as possible. They must be clean and bio-available (digestible, covalently bonded and ionic or colloidal in particulate structure) and naturally occurring or compounds composed of naturally occurring products.

The major supplemental food product I recommend is Spirulina algae.

Also, I recommend an ionic or colloidal multi-mineral from a "vegetable" source and vitamin C (with bioflavinoids).

Occasionally I will recommend a natural ATP precursor or a natural precursor for neurotransmitters.

I hope this has answered your question. Please feel free to make further inquiry or just write to say hi.

Best wishes,

Dr. Lowrey