Unconventional thoughts
about kidney problems and dialysis My
story Being
actively working in the field of dialysis, even though on the medical
engineering side, I knew that I had nothing to loose... One of the last things I
wanted was to become a dialysis patient myself. Having had good experiences with
homeopathy and herbal medicine already (though mainly for minor ailments and few
a little worse, such as gastritis), I decided to
take that path. The ex-wife of a friend of mine in Germany was a
“Heilpraktiker”, an officially licensed alternative physician working with
nature medicine. She gave me a set of remedies, which helped me a lot. After a
few weeks I had no symptoms, anymore, and stopped taking them. Some days later
the pains came back. Now I
consulted a nephrologist in Basel (Switzerland), where I lived at that time. He
had blood and urine samples taken and made an isotope radiography. When I came
back a little later for the results, he was confused and said that the data
didn’t fit: “I think something is not OK with my radiography equipment. I will
have it checked by a technician and then we will make another investigation.”
That confirmed to me that I was on the right path and that nothing was wrong
with his equipment, but I didn’t tell him that. What didn’t seem to fit was
simply the effect of the herbal and homeopathic medication. Instead I resumed
taking my natural remedies and didn’t go to see him again. The pains went away
and I felt good. The next
step was to consult Germany’s at that time best homeopathic physician in
Frankfurt. He was old then already and if he is still alive he will be retired
since many years. He tested me and gave me homeopathic remedies, which worked
very well for me. He also said: “You should have your tonsils tested.” So I went
to an oto-rhino-laryngologist, who discovered that I had a latent infection of
hemolytic streptococci, which is known to with time lead to either endocarditis
or kidney disease – I doubt that the nephrologist would ever have had the idea
to check for such a connection... The homeopathic physician said: “I normally
don’t advise this, but you should have your tonsils removed.” That was done some
time later in the hospital in Basel. He had also given me special homeopathic
remedies for the operation, which I secretly took while in the hospital. After
the operation, the hospital physician said: “You are recovering unusually well.
We can send you home earlier than we thought.” Then I
continued getting homeopathic injections every week and took drops when I
couldn’t see the homeopathic physician. Some months later I was completely cured
and never had kidney problems again! And I didn’t take any allopathic
(synthetic) remedies at all! Official
medicine denies that kind of medical treatment and would want to explain my case
as a spontaneous recovery that has nothing to do with homeopathy, as a mistake
in the diagnosis, or something similar. But I KNOW that it isn’t so! They have
their theories and I have my experience! Homeopathy and herbal
medicine is fought as competition to big business, and that is the real truth...
Homeopathy cannot be patented, nor can herbal remedies, and the therefore
limited profit from such remedies is uninteresting for the established
pharmaceutical companies. Synthetic remedies can be patented, at least their
synthetization procedures, and profits can be kept at hundreds of percents. That
is the real reason... Furthermore, homeopathy is difficult to learn for a
physician who is brainwashed for allopathy... and it appears too unscientific to
him (as does herbal medicine, too)... Yet, if all
the money invested in the development of dialysis had been invested in
alternative methods, I am convinced by my own experience that we would have far
less dialysis patients to day. But there wouldn’t be this big business! And that
is all that is wanted in our world, as it is to day. Our real god is money and
business, and alternatives and patients are sacrificed on his altar. This big
business needs patients, and many of them... And we wouldn’t face the problem
that dialysis treatment costs a lot more than the average patient earns and
that, therefore, a limit must be set. Dialysis has become a heavy and growing
economical burden for the health system. In several countries patients are not
admitted to dialysis over a certain age, which means that they are left to
slowly die... But what
does that matter, if only the business is kept running and growing...? The ideal
is a treatment that the patient needs the rest of his life, maintaining the
turnover, and not one that cures him in a few months after which he is lost as a
customer... Nothing is better than the eternal patient! Business and truth don’t
go well together... But I
nevertheless continued working for the dialysis industry. After all, the best
possible has to be done for all these patients, who are already there and become
more all the time... For them there is no return if they no more have their
kidneys, except the much better solution of transplantation. Business or not, we
are here dealing with human beings, even though this fact may seem
quite easy to forget...
Transplantation has, by the way, in one part also become a really dirty
black market business! Kidneys are offered on the black market which have been
taken from helpless refugees and poor people (such as refugees from Bangla Desh
in India) and acquired in truly criminal ways, e.g., stolen from victims among
the poor in Colombia. There is a mafia at work here, offering to jump the queue
for those waiting for a transplant, if they can afford to pay. One of the stories
I heard is about a man in Slovenia (where I now live with my Slovenian wife), who
went for shopping in Italy and didn’t come home. Some days later he woke up in a
ditch in Italy with a sutured and bandaged operation wound on his back. One of
his kidneys had been stolen! It is remarkable that there are physicians who
don’t more critically question from where the kidney comes, but that way at
least indirectly cooperate with this mafia.
Psychosomatics, a neglected branch of medicine In Chinese
medicine it is said: “Emotional influence on proper kidney function: the kidney
is said to house the force of will power and determination. Will power,
therefore, relies on nourishment by kidney jing [or ching =
essence, vigor]. If jing is weak,
then will power and its sustained expression (memory) will also be weak. Intense
or prolonged fear, the emotion associated with the kidney, will cause injury to
the kidney qì [or ch’ì = energy flow, vitality], resulting in impotence, spermatorrhea, or the gradual
development of cowardly behavior. The other way around, a physical deficiency of
kidney jing can cause a disposition for panicky and fearful behavior.”
[1] German text
books on psychosomatics suggest that kidney problems have to do with partnership
problems. At the time, when I had the above described experience, I did have such
problems. Did I also have fear? Since this happened some 35 years ago, I don't
remember having any clear fear, but one can certainly also have unconscious
fear. Louise Hay, a person who isn’t in any way taken seriously by official
medicine, wrote that kidney problems have to do with criticism, disappointment
and failure, and disappointments I did have. You don’t
believe in psychosomatics? I hope you will not have to learn about it the hard
way... However, psychosomatics works both ways. Most persons make themselves
sick through fears, anger and other negative emotions, but you can also keep
yourself healthy with positive thinking and emotions (especially love)! Is it really
logical to assume that body and psyche would be so completely separated that
none of them affects the other?
Another experience with natural medicine After just a few months of
medication with, a.o., Cordarone (which is known to have unpleasant side effects
in prolonged use), I went to see a German “Heilpraktiker”, specialized in heart
medicine. He gave me a very effective mixture of herbal fluid extracts. It was
so effective that the cardiologist, when I saw him next, after his investigation
said that I could stop taking both Cordarone and the antithrombotic medicament
and instead resort to a mild beta-blocker. Next year he said that I could
actually stop taking even the latter, but it could involve a small risk. I am
still taking only a minimal dose of that mild beta-blocker, but I certainly do continue
with the herbal medicaments, and I will actually one day also stop taking the
beta-blocker. In fact, at the end the
“Heilpraktiker” has helped me more than the
allopathic medicine – after
the acute intervention in the intensive care, which I admit was, maybe,
life-saving – but for the rest of the treatment the herbal cure was more
effective, and this is my personal experience! Then
“scientific prejudice” may say whatever it wants about subjective
interpretation, spontaneous recovery and what it may be. So what
about psychosomatics here? My life at that time was characterized by stress and
some disorganization, which reflected in the heart – and this agrees with the
above mentioned German text books. The fibrillation incident forced me to calm
down and take it more easy. Chinese
medicine says: “...we have to understand that diseases of the structural heart
are always caused by unbalanced emotions such as depression, anxiety, obsession,
or sadness, which open up a pathway through which noxious pathogens can enter
... This means: do not burden yourself with depressing thoughts, do not get
anxious about future events that may never happen, do not dwell on things that
are well in the past – all of these emotions dissipate the brightness of shén
[spirit].”
[1] In the
Internet I found that the active substance in Cordarone is a synthesized and
modified version of a substance found in a North-African herb Ammi visnaga
or “bishop's weed”. I obtained a mother tincture of that herb and it now also
grows in our garden. If needed, I will rather take that. This is again a
confirmation about an important fact in the history of medicine, which is very
much neglected to day: most effective synthesized substances have herbal
origins! In folk medicine, there is an ancient tradition about the medical use of
herbs. The pharmaceutical industry has extensively researched this wealth of
knowledge and wisdom, not with the intention to use the herbs themselves, but to
isolate the “active substance”, synthesize and modify it so that one can have a
new effective but patentable chemical remedy. Digitalis and reserpine are well
known examples, to only mention two of very many (the industry usually keeps
quiet about the herbal origin). The historically first example is Aspirin. It is
derived from the active substance in the shrub Salix alba (White
Willow,
used against
headache in folk medicine), wherefore this substance is called salicylic acid,
which was synthesized almost 150 years ago – the first one in a long series to
come of synthesized herbal substances. But the synthesized acid had side
effects. It was found that it was more tolerable if acetylated. And so we had
acetyl-salicylic acid = Aspirin, still well alive and “active”... One very
important fact is grossly overlooked here (probably on purpose)! The herb contains a complex of many
more or less synergistically active substances. If we take only one of them out,
synthesize it and give it in high doses, it is not astonishing that side effects
are found. The monosubstance philosophy is good for business but harmful for
true therapy, for which the other synergistically active and adjuvant substances
cannot be neglected. In fact there hardly is a single “active substance”, but
rather one “more active” than the others, and the real thing is the cooperation
of this one with other substances in the herb. When these are balancing each
other, there are little or no real side effects (unless largely overdosed). Later addition: In
2008 FDA (the US Food and Drug Administration) issued a warning against the use
of Cordarone (and products with other brand names containing the same substance,
called amiodarone)! The side effects in prolonged use (a.o. liver damage and
visual impairment) are too severe, and it has
even been found that cardiac arrhythmia can under circumstances get worse in the long run, if
it is used. To day, it is recommended only in special cases, when nothing else is
found to help. It is, however, used for cardioversion by means of infusion.
So why take the poisonized
chemically modified and “dead" substance? I prefer to take 30 drops of a mother
tincture of Ammi visnaga (see above)! It not only contains the
corresponding natural and “living” substance – i.e., the original and not the
more harmful and “dead”
copy – but also other synergistically active substances along with it,
which very probably complete the effect and balance side effects out in the
complex of substances. A still
later addition: After consulting literature on medical herbs, I found that
Helleborus viridis
(Green Hellebore) strengthens
the heart (as do other Helleborus
varieties). It is considered to be very poisonous, but as Paracelsus said:
Everything is wholesome or harmful, it is a matter of the dose. It grows
frequently in the forests around where I live. So I prepared a tincture of the
herb and tried one drop, later 3, still later 5 and so on. No negative reaction
at all! Now I rarely take 8-10 drops before bedtime. And
all that is supposed to be a placebo effect? No way...
Addition in 2017. The above concerns the extract
of the leaves and the nice green flowers as they grow in the early spring, an
extract that is not highly active. In the summer, the appearance of the plant
changes and one can make an extract of the roots, which is really strong much
more active! Better dilute 1:10 and carefully try only one drop. Then you may
try to increase.
Reference:
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In the latter half of the 1970es I
attended a dialysis congress in Berlin and had symptoms of getting a cold. One
evening I had kidney pains and discovered that I had anuria. Nothing came out,
though it should, since I hadn’t urinated for hours. So I
sat down with my kidney area leaned to the heating radiator in the hotel room
and drank water, lots of water, to force a so called water diuresis. It worked.
The kidney started to work again and I could urinate. They continued working but
some pains remained. A brute-force method, but it so far did what I wanted...
Why is this science so neglected? The
answer is obvious: it offers possibilities to solve medical problems without
medicaments and technical devices. Thus the industry cannot make money with
it...
In 2005 I came
home from abroad and had atrial fibrillation. Cardioversion in the
intensive care unit by means of infusion was successful. But why did I have
that? Cardiac catheterization showed that I have practically no atherosclerosis.
The coronary arteries are well open. The physicians guessed at a viral
myocarditis as the cause. And, in fact, I had just before it started had an
infection with a nasty and quite aggressive flu that went around at that time.
I fought it, as usual, with homeopathic remedies and an Echinacea
preparation, but began with this a little too late. (I wonder where I would be
to day if I hadn't even done that...)
[1] Quoted from an earlier version of
http://www.itmonline.org/5organs/5organs.swf, now with a wealth of more
information.
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