Strand

Sid: My guest by way of telephone is Dr. Ray Strand, and Dr. Strand is a practicing MD that has now because of what he has learned has actually stopped practicing the medicine but doing mostly lectures and speaking on this subject. He has two books that I just can’t say enough about how important it is for you to read these two books.  One is called “Death By Prescription.”  Did you know that the 3rd leading cause of death in America is medicine?  And also his second book is called “What Your Doctor Doesn’t Know about Nutritional Medicine May be Killing You.”  I am so confused on the subject of diets; I am so confused on the subject of medicine; I am so confused on the subject of herbs and vitamins.  I mean I’m on everyone’s list; I just opened something today that the great cure all to lower your blood pressure. But the thing that Dr. Strand has been saying over and over again is that we must become proactive and I mean it’s almost outrageous Dr. Strand that you said that becoming proactive you can prevent having Alzheimer’s, having high blood pressure; having diabetes; being overweight.  I mean and almost every other disease we know of.

Ray:  Well you know we just ended the last program and talked about this very fact that you know when you go to any medical meeting and you hear about high blood pressure of diabetes or cholesterol or heart disease. You know what they say “The first heart therapy should be patients trying to learn healthier lifestyles.”  And this is what people should be doing prior to being placed on any medicine; I mean this is the standard in medicine.  However physicians tend to feel for whatever reason just giving us lip service as they’re writing the prescription.  In other words they might say “You might need to exercise or do this; but they don’t really direct the patient in effective lifestyle changes that could lower their blood pressure, lower the risk of diabetes, heart disease, cholesterol.  And what we do is we end up feeling patients won’t do it because it takes patient motivation. Or the second thing is we feel even if they do do it won’t help and that’s where the fallacy is.  You can control much of these diseases or prevent these by simply adopting healthy lifestyles.

Sid:  Alright, what about the individual that says in my family and I know that these are curses so you don’t have to write me letters. And I know that Jesus died and became a curse for us that we don’t have to bare the penalty of the curse.  But I also know that there are many people that are Spirit Filled Christians that are going to end up with diabetes, with Alzheimer’s, with cancer, with arthritis, with fibromyalgia, with many of these diseases and according to you Dr. Strand they’re all preventable.

Ray: Well, that’s right and you know Sid it’s sad no one is dying of old age anymore.  We’re not… in this body we know that that the outer man is decaying and the inner-man is growing day by day. But what happens is this process is set by God.  But yet again it was not his intent that we should suffer.  You know my patients don’t seem to be as concerned about the years in their life than the quality of life in those years. And we’re just simply living too short and dying too long and people don’t have to do that.

Sid:  Now if people followed the directions in your book, the instructions if you will and I must add even your diet is a relatively simple diet.  Your exercise is relatively simple exercise; your nutrition suggestions are not a long laundry list but just a few vitamins and herbs.  What results do you believe that they’ll have?

Ray:  Well, they are dramatic and I’ve seen it over and over in my clinical practice. I mean not only can you I feel prevent diabetes about 90% of the time.  I have several diabetics these are adult onset diabetics who have totally reversed their disease. And is it a miracle of the Lord?  Yes it is because all we are doing is when you start to take care of yourself and you take nutritionals, which are simply nutrients we should be getting from our food. But Sid now because we have supplements we can supplement at levels you can’t obtain from your food.  But now all we’re doing is enhancing what God’s already created. That natural immune system, the natural antioxidant defense system and the natural repair system.  And this is something that has just been amazing to me when people adopt these very very simple lifestyles changes. Because like you mentioned in an earlier program the more you read the more confused you are.  And that’s where I feel my role is, is try to weed through all of the garbage and marketing and try to give people practical honest truthful aspects of healthy lifestyles that are effective.

Sid: Now when I was telling you some of the herbs that I was taking you seemed to be kind of negative on herbs.  As a matter of fact your book talks about dangers from certain herbs that people buy as well as just going to a drug store and buying something over the counter that’s not an herb in the medicine category.  There’s dangers in these things.

Ray: Well right, first of all herbs are basically natural drugs.  You know that’s where 25% of your drugs that our pharmaceutical companies have developed actually come from plants and herbs.

Sid: You know my rational was “Well, it’s an herb it won’t hurt me; if it’s a medicine it might.”

Ray:  Well your right in one aspect it is safer than medications but the problem is that herbs actually change natural enzymatic reactions to create a pharmaceutical effect.  A good example is St. John’s Wart. St John’s Wart is like half strength Prozac and if you take…

Sid:  And the average Christian would say “I don’t want to take Prozac.”  But they’re taking St. John’s Wart.

Ray: Right, it’s the same thing and it just…the other thing is that if you take red rice yeast it’s exactly the same drug that’s in Mevacor which is like a Lipator or Zocor.

Sid: And what about something like over the counter diet pills, tell me a true story.

Ray:  Well, a true story and I can tell you generally a study that was done. They used to contain a product called PPA, Purple Phenylpropanolamine, if I can get it out, but anyway the PPA was in all of these diet pills and decongestants for years.  Until they found out that young teenage girls would have a hemorrhagic stroke from all of these drugs. And it took them years to figure this out except they will hear these 16, 17 year old girls dying of a bleed in the brain and they couldn’t figure it out.  It was due to these over the counter diet pills PPA.  Well, now we’ve heard about Afedra which is an herb that has been taken off the market and it was causing tremendous problems with hemorrhagic strokes or problems with seizures.  And I’ve actually had the patient I’ve written about in my book “Death By Prescription” that happened to a 25 year old man here with just on the right dose of Afedra.  And he had a seizure and had brain damage because he didn’t get enough oxygen and at 24 he’s a vegetable and that’s a true story from my home town here.  So we see this all the time see you have to be careful of that. And then Sid you mentioned the over the counter drugs; 75 – 85% of those over counter drugs were once prescription medication.  And obviously they have problems too but because we feel that they are over-the-counter they must be safe. And you can take Motrin and Aleve and that’s 2 examples…

Sid: I know people with arthritis that just pop them all the time.

Ray:  You know Sid, 100,000 admissions each and every year occur because of those drugs because of  GI bleeds, and over 16,000 deaths just due to the Motrins and the Aleves of the world.

Sid: Hmm.  What about something like antibiotic, someone’s got a cold and they talk their doctor into giving them an antibiotic?

Ray:  Well I’ll tell you some stories.  We had a… I knew of a patient that wasn’t mine and this was before we knew.  People used to take a antihistamine non sedating called Seldane.  Seldane was on the market for 12 years before it was pulled off. Now Seldane by itself was fine, but when you took an antibiotic like Erythromycin very common but you used it in combination they had a side effect which was called sudden death because they could get a cardiac arrest. There are other ones just by them self and there has been several antibiotics taken off the market and they’re called quidalones and it’s really amazing they can cause a heart rhythm problem and cause a sudden death.  And we start to see this and it’s you know there’s a lot of them that have been taken off the market that we didn’t know about.

Sid: What about something like Tylenol?

Ray:  Well, Tylenol causes liver damage.

Sid: Oi vey.

Ray: You know I told you the story about Heidi earlier in the week. When I was up at the University of Minnesota with her and she was having liver failure. Now she was fortunate she came out of it we caught it quick enough. But they said their liver transplant unit was filled with people who had destroyed their livers by the use of Tylenol.  And so you know is Tylenol bad or does it hurt everybody? No, but you have to aware of the fact that it can cause liver damage and if you start to feel sick these people have to say “Whoa it’s my medication and maybe I have to be calling my doctor and checking with them.”

Sid:  Now if someone were to read your books; find out what you have to say about herbs and vitamins and specific prescriptions; and then become proactive. Do the exercise you recommend and do take the nutrition you recommend; have the diet that you recommend. What are some of the things that changes they might have in their body?

Ray: Well the big thing is that what I have found is number 1 their blood pressure drops they start to release fat, they just start losing it.

Sid: Losing weight.

Ray:  They get out of insulin resistance; their cholesterols drop; their good cholesterol goes up.  I’ve had diabetics come under dramatically better control.  Some of them have actually reversing their diabetes they are not even diabetic anymore.

Sid: A great deal of these deadly diseases are preventable.

Ray:  A good example is the native American; the blacks as a community, the Hispanics now have a risk.  If their child is born today 50% of them are going to get diabetes; that wasn’t true 2 generations ago; that is just happening. And what it is yes they have a genetic acceptability to that disease; but then you add to it their lifestyles and their environment.

Sid: Dr. Strand, I’m sorry we’re out of time.  One more day left of very vital information.

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