Every step a Victory!!!

My life and work are very gratifying.

I have terrible teeth and go to the U of T Dental school to have them worked on. Over the 5 years I have had several student dentists. My present doctor, Brian Waxman took one of my pocket packs although until he met me he did not know anything about homeopathy or flower remedies. I showed him how to tkae the pills and what they might help with. How to go with the guiding symptom. He just finished his finals and here is his testimonial.
Hey John,

I wanted to thank you for your guidance in helping me discover the healing power of the hollywood surival kit. As a dental student, I often have a ton of exams and clinic which is double the stress. I often don't have time to have lunch, and often have a racing mind and don't have great sleeps due to stress. Furthermore, being in dental school, I am always on the run! So, with the help of the survival kit, I was able to deal with my stress with the stress formula, the nux vomica and the coffea cruda. They all helped me to focus and to sleep and really took my stress to a level that was manageable. Also, the arnica montana was amazing in helping with the aches and pains of running around all day. I recommended it to all my friends and colleagues who already are seeing the benefits.

Thanks again John!

Bryan Waxman
U of T Dental School

Separating Doctors from Pharmaceutical Companies

This New York Times editorial tells us that the problem of an inappropriate liaison between doctors and the drug companies is now clearly on the table. It is about time that the doctors began to honor their oath of "First Do No Harm."


http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/29/opinion/29tue4.html?th&emc=th

I came across this article and it is nicely written and one can even go back and read Hahnemann's original thoughts on how to treat burns. He did not suffer fools lightly and his letter is a response to a Doctor who had prescribed cold applications to burns. It seems that actually hot water or hot flame is better for a burn and seems to encourage the healing. It is worth knowing or at least in my life there have been times when knowing how to treat a burn would have been good to know. Have a look as it is well documented.
http://www.hpathy.com/papersnew/bartlett-tratment-burns.asp

PANGEA DAY IN MAY

http://pangeaday.org/
Have a look. This is sponsored by TED.com and many others and will prove to be a fabulous 4 hours of TV that will circle the world and each person or group who attends will come away with wonderful ideas and images I am sure.

Join the army!!! Be counted.

I have joined a group: www.Avaaz.org They peacefully support humane action worldwide. For Myanmar, Tibet, Zimbabwe and other situations of concern. By joining you can add your name to each petition that supports by thousands of names and become and are a real voice.

I wrote the below to add support for a clear recognition of the dangers of the large corporations and their allies.

Harsh as it sounds I have to agree with Sadun. I am in Canada doing my best to promote homeopathy and Bach Flower remedies and the created resistance to homeopathy by the medical/pharmaeceuticals is clear and continuing. I am in the midst of reading The Homeopathic Revolution by Dana Ullman.
http://www.homeopathic.com/
His book is a clear history and supports your thesis completely by its contents. Remembering always that Homeopathy is cheap, safe and effective and these humane attributes make it the enemy of the medical/pharmaceutical group.
It is only through public awareness can we grow the alternate world and so like cream we must rise to the top with support from groups like Avaaz. I am very pleased you are here.

Waking up at 4 am and wondering what to do

The last few nights I have woken around 4 or 5 am and then been restless. I even got up once and just began my day. I don't know why this is happening but last night I woke at 4 and went to the bathroom and when I came back my mind was going a hundred miles an hour. I tried an old trick of just watching my breath but nothing seemed to be working. I lay and tossed a while longer and remembered my own pocket pack. I wondered if I should take Coffea #6 for my overactive mind or Nux Vomica #8 for overwork and waking with a mind full of thoughts. I opted for the #8 and I cannot remember the process of going to sleep again but I woke at 8 and felt refreshed.

Answers to an interesting letter.

Thanks for your considered reply. Your questions are all sensible and I will do my best to answer them all.

Why wouldn't you want to part with your base supply? Wouldn't they be identical according to the rules of homeopathy?

If I gave my bottle away then what about the next person who may need a pill. It costs about 6 dollars a bottle and about 75 cents to use blanks. Cost effective and I am lazy and poor and so do not want to either go out or pay for foolish behaviour.

I understand that you genuinely believe seeing people feeling better, but insn't it safe to say, youre not sure how the remedies work, or more importantly, if they're even involved?

I can tell you just like the high from the first time I ever had grass that the sensations in my painful hand once I took one pill were awesome. Over a couple of days. At first sharp pains in knuckles never before painful (like the advance forces were being defeated)
and then slowly all the pains subsided and then the one frozen knuckle on my baby finger started to move correctly. I could go on about the next 10 years and even now so personally I am sure.
I can tell you about the guy who took a pill for horrible allergy in the summer, his nose running, his eyes sore and red and his nostrils on fire. He took the pill turned away and then turned back. He said."Could this work that fast?" I said. "You tell me. You took the pill." He shook his head and smiled. Or the 10 in the evening call when my designer of 7 years and old friend Morley Markson called me up. "John that stuff really works!!! That pill you gave me this afternoon is still working and my cold is going away. In truth I knew something had changed the moment I took the pill but it was unspoken and somehow I could not define it in words."
I can tell you stories about people who used it successfully on their dog when they were afraid of thunder. I am sure they work and I am sure they are involved. You can tell me what a drug will do to its immediate point like effect x chemical which seems to stop y from happening. But else is x doing and is stopping y best for healing and strengthening the patient. Remember that every thing people take from me has no side effect. The explanation I like best is the idea of a hhuge spectrum of notes into infinity and some get out of line and each has a vibration and homeopathy will pass through if its vibration is represented in the spectrum and if it is missing it comes and stays and completes the perfect total vibration: The Human.


If the remedies work, then the process that makes them would also cause the empty pills to be contaminated by pill dust from other mixtures in the air no?

I think this is a matter of clean labs and appropriate cleaning first of all just the same as a pharmaceutical who will use one machine for different jobs or a printer for that matter. The machine goes to zero before it is reused for the reasons you point out. Now for me who will make pills you could be right although I have not had any mixed messages in the pills I have made for others.

Why do have such a strong inclination against the power of suggestion and placebo? There are many more powerful effects that just placebo when testing an effect. Subjective bias creeps up in even the most well controlled experiment.

My homeopath would agree with you to a degree. He would say it is also in the giver and he would not be beyond using a placebo if the remedy he gave last had not worked yet and then he would wait longer before giving another real pill. It is a complex art well beyond my abilities. So yes I know I may have effect but I back away from that idea for all the reasons of ego and confidence that I had no person influencing my first experiences so both ideas are true but both also not necessary. I can say the same for medicines given by a doctor. For it rests on the giver too. We are subtle auras in the end.

Let me ask you this.. Hypothetically speaking, what type of evidence would you personally need to collect to convince yourselt that homeopathy is an illusion, based on placebo and personal bias?

I am not sure you could. I have thousands of people world wide using my kits. Thousands. And there are millions of people being helped every day for both acute and chronic ailments. If you read at all or have had my experiences you would understand. I have given guys pills telling them to shut up and stop ranting about whether it worked or not on a finger slammed in a door. Three times he told me "I don't believe in that shit. I'm a stunt man and I know this will hurt for a couple of hours and turn blue and I will cut a slit in my nail and let the blood out and in three weeks I will have a new nail. Now F.O. Not once but three times in about 20 minutes but I persisted each time. When I saw him an hour later and I asked how his finger was he said. "I don't believe that shit!!! Which finger?" I had to search the hand to find a tiny mark under one nail and he said I was right and if he were here he would tell you he carries arnica with him all the time now for bangs and sprains etc. Physical injury and stunt men get it a lot. I have seen and I have helped even Burt Reynolds. He gave me a book at the end of the film for helping him. I am actually an awesome healer. But it is the pills that heal. I am sure of that. So tell me how you could change my mind. Solid evidence until I could not deny it.

You can ask the same of me in reverse. I think I could come up with a pretty specific requirement for accepting or rejecting its usefulness.

I know your requirements for accepting, what are you requirements for rejecting it?

Buy a Pocket Pack and put it to use for one month. For you and your friends. One month. The only requirement is to read the remedy profiles in the pamphlet and when you hear a symptom word then use the kit. Try it honestly for I am sure. If after an honest month and you can keep a little book on it if you will. If you have no success or poor success then I will refund you the money and you can keep the pack and I will know your reasons for rejecting it for you will be obliged to tell me.

I hope I have answered your questions to some satisfaction. It is not easy to articulate what you know without words. We all of us lose our freedom in being attached so hard to our concrete selves. It suits the corporations if we are but it does not serve our inner selves nearly so well. But that is another conversation about society and our loss of community etc.

Dr Rant: Antidepressants don't work - in Hull

Dr Rant: Antidepressants don't work - in Hull

It is becoming clear that many antidepressent drugs work well in giving the patient side effects that are horrible. I suggest you look at the brilliant work of Dr. Bach who cataloged and tested on hundreds his Flower Remedies. His Rescue Remedy is famous. I speak from an experiential place of using the flower remedies particularly the Rescue Remedy and Homeopathic remedies on sets world wide. I have at least 1000 personal observations and thousands using my Hollywood Survival Kit and now my pocket pack. The set is a microcosm of everyday life in the fast lane with stress and injuries and overwork and sleeplessness. I know what I am using works and I know too that is does no harm as it is without known side effects. The remedies I use are made exactly as they were over 200 years ago and are used for the same reason and with the same good effects. Try and come to the same place I am in now, happy to tell you and everyone else that there are ways that are safe and sure and supportive of the immune system and profoundly user friendly
John Board
www.hollywoodsurvivalkit.net

the idle world

I often wonder if we are all too busy trying to stay alive to care how we are dying. Or if we are all aware we are dying and will do anything to stay alive. I of course am referring to how badly we treat ourselves generally in what we eat and what we think about. I watch the TV and see all the ads for medicines and cold remedies and sleep remedies and pain remedies and know they must be bought by millions or the ads would not be there. Most of the money goes to bringing in new users. It is a shame that we have a health community that is driven by greed. I long for the day when Governments begin to lead their people and examine the choices that they are offering to their countrymen. Why they encourage us to gamble with lotteries and they stoke the coffers of the pharmaceuticals although it is getting clearer and clearer that many of the drugs not sold even over the counter and many that are prescribed by doctors too are dangerous and have nasty side effects. Isn't it a shame.
Here we have television an opportunity to support proper values and a modest sharing life and most of the time we are being given anything that will distract us from any good purpose at all. I marvel at the rise of the extreme fighters as what millions are now watching. I marvel that we are encouraged to be fans of this sort of violence. We are in an age where cheating is fine and anything is considered fair game to get ahead. To those who get caught it is the throw of the die. And to the many who do not get caught well they consider themselves worthy of not getting caught.
Our values are deplorable and our heroes are without real valor but they do get our adrenalin going and we can cheer and forget about the millions of people who would die for the price of a ticket to a sporting event to spend on food. How we think it is our right to have it all and not live in the honour of the place we really find ourselves. In the olden days we would tithe and share one tenth of what we earned with those not so lucky and our companies and our government worked hard to care for us properly but now our medical system is in shambles and our pensions often used by corporations for other things. Isn't it a shame that will all our progressiveness we have forgotten how to live in real community.

Valentine Day Thoughts

Yesterday I spent time at a school where I spoke to a few teachers about wellness and my Hollywood Survival Kit pocket pack and it was such a quick hour spent in enjoyment and contact. If any of you have the wish to put together a group of people or work where a group might wish to talk about wellness and my pocket pack I am available.I wish I could go somewhere every day to do that; to talk to people about health and homeopathy and the benefits of taking care of self with love and direction. It is my goal.

How we are led so astray from our simple selves. How we are pushed into greed and shallow pleasures. Where are our Gods and our religions that they no longer guide our leaders and our energy into better places.

In mixing we have lost the fibers that join us into family, tribes and proper community and so we have no lineal connections it seems. As if we were a beautiful swan made of paper stuck together the rain has soaked us leaving nothing but bits of paper floating on a careless sea.

It is so hard being me for I am all things good and bad and willing and willful. I can sense no reason that it is not hard for everyone, each for their own reasons. It is a large keyboard that I seem to play but then we all play a large keyboard and most are just a bit tunnel-visioned and only see a few of the vast array.

Somewhere inside me I wait for there to be a huge purging cry go up from all the people and we will stop and see the beauty about us and the joy hidden behind the wanton desires that stretch so far now into our beings; and that there will be this primal scream and after that we will love each other and know that though thousands of miles away we are all joined as one caring for each other and ourselves in positive ways.

It is no stretch of mind that takes me to the place of being part of all, but this does not mean I can find it at my surface mind in every moment. To love self and other equally, and treat self and others in a nurturing way is mind stuff easily understood as appropriate but not part of personal action, rather sitting as good thoughts only.

We are all so blessed to have the opportunity of communion, thought and change and each who does comes closer to the will of all. Hope is energy that can and will rise to such strength that change will happen.

Thoughts for a Sunday afternoon

It is so hard to keep balance when so much is happening in life. To keep healthy and fit and alert and kind and thoughtful and caring and leading and following and get enough sleep too and laugh some and see beyond the box you are in and see into the box you are in is not easy for anyone. Busy is a word that defines us all whether we are bees or drones we all seem to find things to occupy our minds and bodies. It is that even at rest we are busy restoring ourselves and just breathing which when you think of it takes millions of tiny movements from molecules of oxygen to the blood carrying it to our different need areas. So we are in fact always in movement and even in death we are physically moved first by people and then by the critters that nosh us up and we become part of new movements of others. So busy we are but what occupies our minds, our waking hours, our conscious busyness. That is always the question we are asking ourselves if we do not have order and direction. Ugh those words must ring in millions of ears in many languages. It is a simple act to carry out - life - at a need to eat to stay alive basis, but it is not so easy for the more complicated quality of the brain that is a continual forest where we must choose a path to go along or make a new one to discover.

And some things are obligations brought on by our circumstances and they must be fit correctly into the stream of things or everything is pushed out of kilter. But circumstances do not care about anything other than themselves and so how do we arrange our lives to do all this. Circumstances may require new directions which may compromise all parts of our lives. This requires openness often and redirections that may totally alter our other purposes in life. Life is as it is and finds you whether you like it or not and you decide what to do.

The circumstance of the car needing an oil change is no different in its obligation idea than the needing to spend time with a loved one that needs your real attention. I see this all the time in my own life and I wonder in retrospect what I chose as the major obligations and what the minor and what I hid from myself and what I realized and how I would perhaps change things had I to do it again. From the distance of age and the meanderings of an old man I think that every moment choices are made and every moment we are challenged and in the end, the statement always holds; that the more you give to the beings about you in the aura you have, and the people that are the closest to you personally, the more you will be satisfied for it is like feeding yourself.
Sometimes it is difficult to know what food is really necessary whether for self or others. So only searching and listening and opening the mind to other ideas and reasoning can a correct decision be made and an action begun. Whether these are self driven through sitting and sorting the priorities out or whether the ideas come from others matters not. Only correct action under the circumstances one finds oneself in matters.

To balance our own physical universe is the continual effort of the inside of the body. This we know. It is the same for everything we are both physical and mental. We are the masters of all we are. We are the creators of our whole world. It seems to follow then that we are the only ones who can change our world.

Recognizing this is one thing, wanting to change something is another thing and the act of changing is what we do if we wish to have things otherwise. Only in action is there physical movement. Many things are needed to get actions ready to happen and the use of personal physical energy is the last thing to need and the first thing needed for change to happen.
Life!!!

About bees and ants sortta

I was thinking about bees and ants that live in huge colonies of thousands of members. Each member knowing and doing its duty unfailingly to render a perfect home for all. I was realizing that our bodies are in some ways like hives only the residents are so small we cannot even understand if they are just energy or have mass. I mean tiny. I know that I have arthritis all over my wonderful body and I can feel it activating at times. I can feel it encroaching on territory. An army moving quickly if I bang myself and slowly if I don't eat right and I do not eat right dumb as I am. So we have tiny negative and positive things that keep us in stasis. I know too that the little pill I take right now is a perfect messenger to the positive side that must do its work to keep the negative under control: to keep the balance. I am able to run and jump too. When I did that Rap I ran and fell and was totally active for over 8 hours and I am 72. I think we fool ourselves if we take medicines that will either mask the negatives or anhialate the negatives and positives at that level of activity through anti-biotics. They leave around all sorts of undesirable effects which we call side effects. It is a drag but true. We all know this. That is one of the main reasons I got into Homeopathy and Flower remedies. They do not have side effects. That is a major reason I tried but I was and am still amazed at how effective they are. I must be well of a couple of thousand experiences that I have seen with my own eyes of people being helped quickly. I myself can tell you I must take a pill or one sort or another maybe 25 times a year for everything from a cold coming on to a hangover in the morning or an upsetting situation where I feel I have to calm down. The odd bang. Wow when I fell into the flowers on the rap I really hurt the arm I thrust out to break the fall. I winced with pain. I think the bone between my elbow and shoulder twisted for I had no damage at all at the shoulder or elbow. I immediately called for Arnica and cream was husstled out and pills as well and I was pain free in under 5 minutes. My son Simon who is also a 1st AD asked me if I had pads down and a stunt coordinator with me. I said no and his look told me he thought I was nuts. I tell you I was half way to the ground when I started to think about landing. I was nuts not to have a pad down. Never trust an actor and that is what I had turned into that day. Mind you not a great actor but the idea of actor. I will one day put together the out takes and you will marvel at how often I had to say each line to get it right. Unbelievable how stupid my mind is when it comes to repeating even one sentence. Arnica is fabulous as a remedy. It is for any physical trauma.

The New York Times is an alarm clock!!!

The National Institutes of Health does almost nothing to monitor the financial conflicts of university professors to whom it provides grants, and the huge federal research agency does not want to start now.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/19/us/19conflict.html?ex=1358485200

This is a very telling article and shows a certain disregard for ordinary Americans who live trusting that their best interest is being taken care of. With the news over the last years about the research reporting by large Pharmaceuticals who turn out to have on side and paid medical doctors who make these reports and who laud their products, you would imagine that any National Institute of Health that gives away many millions of dolaars would be concerned about who was in conflict. It is bad enough that we are getting lousy information about the negative realities of some of the new drugs but that we might be paying part of the bill to create this bad information is outrageous.

More and more I read in the NY Times horror stories about drugs not being what they are purported to be. They also support medicine and there is a wonderful story aobut the man who fell 48 floors and not only lived but because of great trauma medicine and technique is now being moved to a convalescence facility just 6 weeks since the accident.

I tell you this for I do not feel the Times is witch hunting as much as trying to wake up America about their health.

I too am trying to wake up America to try Homeopathy and Flower remedies for acute situations as an no side effect alternative to drugs that cause side effects and in the end create worse situations than the problem they were trying to solve. My cut line "A safe way to get better." is worth the cost of admission in an age where the human is being bombarded every minute by chemical mixtures that never existed 50 years ago. The immune system is under real attack brought on by human innovations over the last couple of hundred years. The human does not seem to recognize that the world was not put here to serve humanity but rather that humankind are just another species of equal importance. Having run rough shod over the earth and now using artificial means to attain even more plunder the human is weakening not only the whole world but also himself. We are our own executioners. I am doing my best to help people resist this downward spiral in their individual care for themselves under these negative circumstances.

Positive Funk!!!

Yep! That is what I prefer to call my present state. I am getting some good work done but I am heavily addicted to my solitaire game. It is my problem and interesting to study and make efforts to realign my thinking.
I was wondering what to eat yesterday and then went for a shower and suddenly missed my old and long departed friend Brian. I wondered why and then remembered that Brian was always a person to call about supper for he cooked brilliantly and he also was somewhat lazy and great company and we liked each other so supper was always an easy question. We liked Chinese a lot over the years and Sai Woo was our favourite since the 50's. It is gone now and Garfield and Bill our friends who ran it all are now found in my memory. The food I can see too and all the people around a Sunday evening meal. Great fun. So I have good reason to miss Brian and all the company and good times we shared over many years. It is such a pleasure to have friends either alive or gone to better climes I hope. Winter is having a time of being fully recognized this year. It seems every time it gets a hold of us it does not have the strength to stay in control. I think when you get old you jam ideas together so in the case of winter I remember snow forts and snow ball fights and streets piled high with snow for weeks but was that just one year or 5? I cannot say for sure. Time and the mind collects images over time and like an album releases those called up and the identifying label is what collects the data so snow and winter calls up what is asked for. Mind is vast and so complete and my ability to access it is a continuing learning experience.

A story about a cold.

Yesterday Andre woke up in the afternoon as usual. He works as a manager at the Madison and gets home late. His nose was stuffed up and he greeted me sadly with. "I've got a cold and its going into my chest. My throat is sore. Can you help me."
I went down to the dining room where my kits are: all my kits including my large, 'on set' kit. He had 2 sprays of the Echinacea throat spray from the Hollywood Survival Kit. I knew the Aconite in the kit would not be of value for the cold was well established.
I opened my everyday diagnosing book at colds. Andre read the page and found no remedy that suited his symptoms and so I looked up coughs in the same book as he said his cold was getting into his lungs. He read down the remedies and blurted out: "Antimonium" A new remedy to me, but I looked in my biggest case of remedies and found it. We carefully opened the tube for it had never been opened. He took one pill. He left for work an hour later seeming not much improved at all.

I saw him today at 2.00 when he came up to my office on the third floor. His voice was clear and his stuffed nose was gone. He said he was almost better and was upbeat. He came home last night and took another spray in his throat and another pill and thought he might take one more of each before going to work again. He was very happy with the results.

It is such a learning experience for me and so satisfying to offer just books and remedies and then watch if the patient knew his symptoms and could find the right remedy. I am mostly rewarded with a thank you for the diagnosing books are simple and easy to find answers in, and people are able to pick the right remedy most often.

Fibromyalgia is a real disease. ????????

Or so says Pfizer in a new television advertising campaign for Lyrica, the first medicine approved to treat the pain condition, whose very existence is questioned by some doctors.
Jamie Rector for The New York Times

I am including the whole article here as it is very revealing in its entirety. It makes me marvel at the cavalier attitude taken overall by the pharmaceuticals and in the end the FDA as well. Treating each person as an individual seems to be called for when dealing with what the doctors call Fibromyalgia as it varies in each individual. Medicines are not direct to the person but rather to the disease which in this case has many symptoms. So it may or may not help but one thing for sure is that the medicines listed all have side effects that may affect those who use them.
So read on and be as startled as I am about it all.

For patient advocacy groups and doctors who specialize in fibromyalgia, the Lyrica approval is a milestone. They say they hope Lyrica and two other drugs that may be approved this year will legitimize fibromyalgia, just as Prozac brought depression into the mainstream.
But other doctors — including the one who wrote the 1990 paper that defined fibromyalgia but who has since changed his mind — say that the disease does not exist and that Lyrica and the other drugs will be taken by millions of people who do not need them.
As diagnosed, fibromyalgia primarily affects middle-aged women and is characterized by chronic, widespread pain of unknown origin. Many of its sufferers are afflicted by other similarly nebulous conditions, like irritable bowel syndrome.
Because fibromyalgia patients typically do not respond to conventional painkillers like aspirin, drug makers are focusing on medicines like Lyrica that affect the brain and the perception of pain.
Advocacy groups and doctors who treat fibromyalgia estimate that 2 to 4 percent of adult Americans, as many as 10 million people, suffer from the disorder.
Those figures are sharply disputed by those doctors who do not consider fibromyalgia a medically recognizable illness and who say that diagnosing the condition actually worsens suffering by causing patients to obsess over aches that other people simply tolerate. Further, they warn that Lyrica’s side effects, which include severe weight gain, dizziness and edema, are very real, even if fibromyalgia is not.
Despite the controversy, the American College of Rheumatology, the Food and Drug Administration and insurers recognize fibromyalgia as a diagnosable disease. And drug companies are aggressively pursuing fibromyalgia treatments, seeing the potential for a major new market.
Hoping to follow Pfizer’s lead, two other big drug companies, Eli Lilly and Forest Laboratories, have asked the F.D.A. to let them market drugs for fibromyalgia. Approval for both is likely later this year, analysts say.
Worldwide sales of Lyrica, which is also used to treat diabetic nerve pain and seizures and which received F.D.A. approval in June for fibromyalgia, reached $1.8 billion in 2007, up 50 percent from 2006. Analysts predict sales will rise an additional 30 percent this year, helped by consumer advertising.
In November, Pfizer began a television ad campaign for Lyrica that features a middle-aged woman who appears to be reading from her diary. “Today I struggled with my fibromyalgia; I had pain all over,” she says, before turning to the camera and adding, “Fibromyalgia is a real, widespread pain condition.”
Doctors who specialize in treating fibromyalgia say that the disorder is undertreated and that its sufferers have been stigmatized as chronic complainers. The new drugs will encourage doctors to treat fibromyalgia patients, said Dr. Dan Clauw, a professor of medicine at the University of Michigan who has consulted with Pfizer, Lilly and Forest.
“What’s going to happen with fibromyalgia is going to be the exact thing that happened to depression with Prozac,” Dr. Clauw said. “These are legitimate problems that need treatments.”
Dr. Clauw said that brain scans of people who have fibromyalgia reveal differences in the way they process pain, although the doctors acknowledge that they cannot determine who will report having fibromyalgia by looking at a scan.
Lynne Matallana, president of the National Fibromyalgia Association, a patients’ advocacy group that receives some of its financing from drug companies, said the new drugs would help people accept the existence of fibromyalgia. “The day that the F.D.A. approved a drug and we had a public service announcement, my pain became real to people,” Ms. Matallana said.
Ms. Matallana said she had suffered from fibromyalgia since 1993. At one point, the pain kept her bedridden for two years, she said. Today she still has pain, but a mix of drug and nondrug treatments — as well as support from her family and her desire to run the National Fibromyalgia Association — has enabled her to improve her health, she said. She declined to say whether she takes Lyrica.
“I just got to a point where I felt, I have pain but I’m going to have to figure out how to live with it,” she said. “I absolutely still have fibromyalgia.”

But doctors who are skeptical of fibromyalgia say vague complaints of chronic pain do not add up to a disease. No biological tests exist to diagnose fibromyalgia, and the condition cannot be linked to any environmental or biological causes.
The diagnosis of fibromyalgia itself worsens the condition by encouraging people to think of themselves as sick and catalog their pain, said Dr. Nortin Hadler, a rheumatologist and professor of medicine at the University of North Carolina who has written extensively about fibromyalgia.
“These people live under a cloud,” he said. “And the more they seem to be around the medical establishment, the sicker they get.”
Dr. Frederick Wolfe, the director of the National Databank for Rheumatic Diseases and the lead author of the 1990 paper that first defined the diagnostic guidelines for fibromyalgia, says he has become cynical and discouraged about the diagnosis. He now considers the condition a physical response to stress, depression, and economic and social anxiety.
“Some of us in those days thought that we had actually identified a disease, which this clearly is not,” Dr. Wolfe said. “To make people ill, to give them an illness, was the wrong thing.”
In general, fibromyalgia patients complain not just of chronic pain but of many other symptoms, Dr. Wolfe said. A survey of 2,500 fibromyalgia patients published in 2007 by the National Fibromyalgia Association indicated that 63 percent reported suffering from back pain, 40 percent from chronic fatigue syndrome, and 30 percent from ringing in the ears, among other conditions. Many also reported that fibromyalgia interfered with their daily lives, with activities like walking or climbing stairs.
Most people “manage to get through life with some vicissitudes, but we adapt,” said Dr. George Ehrlich, a rheumatologist and an adjunct professor at the University of Pennsylvania. “People with fibromyalgia do not adapt.”
Both sides agree that people who are identified as having fibromyalgia do not get much relief from traditional pain medicines, whether anti-inflammatory drugs like ibuprofen — sold as Advil, among other brands — or prescription opiates like Vicodin. So drug companies have sought other ways to reduce pain.
Pfizer has started a television advertising campaign for the drug Lyrica, the first approved to treat fibromyalgia.
Times Health Guide: Fibromyalgia

Pfizer’s Lyrica, known generically as pregabalin, binds to receptors in the brain and spinal cord and seems to reduce activity in the central nervous system.
Exactly why and how Lyrica reduces pain is unclear. In clinical trials, patients taking the drug reported that their pain — whether from fibromyalgia, shingles or diabetic nerve damage — fell on average about 2 points on a 10-point scale, compared with 1 point for patients taking a placebo. About 30 percent of patients said their pain fell by at least half, compared with 15 percent taking placebos.
The F.D.A. reviewers who initially examined Pfizer’s application for Lyrica in 2004 for diabetic nerve pain found those results unimpressive, especially in comparison to Lyrica’s side effects. The reviewers recommended against approving the drug, citing its side effects.
In many patients, Lyrica causes weight gain and edema, or swelling, as well as dizziness and sleepiness. In 12-week trials, 9 percent of patients saw their weight rise more than 7 percent, and the weight gain appeared to continue over time. The potential for weight gain is a special concern because many fibromyalgia patients are already overweight: the average fibromyalgia patient in the 2007 survey reported weighing 180 pounds and standing 5 feet 4 inches.
But senior F.D.A. officials overruled the initial reviewers, noting that severe pain can be incapacitating. “While pregabalin does present a number of concerns related to its potential for toxicity, the overall risk-to-benefit ratio supports the approval of this product,” Dr. Bob Rappaport, the director of the F.D.A. division reviewing the drug, wrote in June 2004.
Pfizer began selling Lyrica in the United States in 2005. The next year the company asked for F.D.A. approval to market the drug as a fibromyalgia treatment. The F.D.A. granted that request in June 2007.
Pfizer has steadily ramped up consumer advertising of Lyrica. During the first nine months of 2007, it spent $46 million on ads, compared with $33 million in 2006, according to TNS Media Intelligence.
Dr. Steve Romano, a psychiatrist and a Pfizer vice president who oversees Lyrica, says the company expects that Lyrica will be prescribed for fibromyalgia both by specialists like neurologists and by primary care doctors. As doctors see that the drug helps control pain, they will be more willing to use it, he said.

“When you help physicians to recognize the condition and you give them treatments that are well tolerated, you overcome their reluctance,” he said.
Both the Lilly and Forest drugs being proposed for fibromyalgia were originally developed as antidepressants, and both work by increasing levels of serotonin and norepinephrine, brain transmitters that affect mood. The Lilly drug, Cymbalta, is already available in the United States, while the Forest drug, milnacipran, is sold in many countries, though not the United States.
Dr. Amy Chappell, a medical fellow at Lilly, said that even though Cymbalta is an antidepressant, its effects on fibromyalgia pain are independent of its antidepressant effects. In clinical trials, she said, even fibromyalgia patients who are not depressed report relief from their pain on Cymbalta.
The overall efficacy of Cymbalta and milnacipran is similar to that of Lyrica. Analysts and the companies expect that the drugs will probably be used together.
“There’s definitely room for several drugs,” Dr. Chappell said.
But physicians who are opposed to the fibromyalgia diagnosis say the new drugs will probably do little for patients. Over time, fibromyalgia patients tend to cycle among many different painkillers, sleep medicines and antidepressants, using each for a while until its benefit fades, Dr. Wolfe said.
“The fundamental problem is that the improvement that you see, which is not really great in clinical trials, is not maintained,” Dr. Wolfe said.
Still, Dr. Wolfe expects the drugs will be widely used. The companies, he said, are “going to make a fortune.”

Nearly 2008

Soon, soon, we will have a new year. Here in Toronto we genuinely feel mid winterish and the snow white blankets both the countryside and the city. It is an old idea of snow at Christmas like it was when I was a child. I remember forts of snow in my backyard and great snowball fights and jodpers and boots with a knife pocket on the side. Nice warm memories although I recall the thawing out after, in the kitchen being peeled of wet clothes and toweled dry especially my feet that were red with cold.
Maya who I met on Toronto Island on the shoot this summer and who shot my video rap sent me a letter wishing me a good year. She added what follows:
"And on a side note, I've been seeing the Hollywood Survival Kit in circulation on several sets, and I must say it's definitely made my life easier more than once since the island! "

I cannot tell you how wonderful it is for me to hear people are using the kits and finding them a first line of health defense that works. The idea that this is happening in growing numbers is not only proof positive regarding the efficacy of the remedies it means that word is spreading that this technique of healing self is growing outward from my little seed.

2007 has been a great year for me and I hope for everyone else too. It has been difficult too and incredibly challenging and rewarding at every one of my pursuits. Film making, the new Pocket Pack, writing and increasing my energy. Lots of things too that did not manifest. I did not quit smoking, I could not get the first chapter of my on line book completed, and I still lack the office neatness I crave for but cannot seem to manage.

Lots to do in 008
I can hardly wait.

Have a great New Years Eve and a fabulous 2008!!!

Social Entrepreneur - what does it mean to me

I was listening to a program on the radio the other day and someone was describing this term. A person who is after gain, often for a non profit company, and in return was bringing something socially beneficial to the market place. I realize I am one of this breed of person. I am, as strongly as I can trying to reach a general public with awareness that can save them their good health and also importantly save them money that at the present is being spent in harmful ways to themselves.

A Social Entrepreneur. Think about it. Yes a profit but also a great gift to the buyer and a flag for others to see and examine and opt into perhaps: a neat and gentle and inexpensive way of dealing with acute every day health situations personally without incurring any side effects in the process.

Humidity

It is getting to be winter for my windows are beginning to steam up from the humidifier. It is comforting in a way for it means the thing is working and I can be moisturized and not scratching with dry skin. I work on my third floor and I have a nice little window that looks out onto the street. Not much action there but the changing of the weather with each season. Now as there is no heat up here the window has begun to frost over and I am indeed shut off from the throes of winter. I have never been much of a fan of winter when outside but it is lovely to look at and when I do venture out the freshness is exhilarating. I remember as a child how i loved to snuggle my face into my mother's fur coat when she came in from the winter and smelt the fur and felt the cold. I must remember this from a very young age for in my minds eye mother is very tall and I am snuggling beneath her waist. What a pleasant memory. Over my years in film I have been mighty cold at times and once in January on the east coast I did some commercials for a gas company and we were flown in a Sakorski helicopter to an oil rig. The winds were high up to 45 mph and the temperature was - 20 or so. Now that was cold. I remember looking at the little boat that was moored off the side of the platform and at the black sea. So black and uninviting. I was glad when we got our shots and could leave. I felt so vulnerable there.

The mist on my window is melting. The day is warming. I am going out to rake up the last leaves from my front yard and bag them. It is a good day to do it.

I am in a Pet

I always wondered what being in a pet was or at least how the word came to mean: to be in a snit. Wow, I just looked pet up in Roger's Thesaurus.
Here it all is.
The positive and negative of the word pet. From pet name to pet person or pet animal and onward to pet peeve and pet anger.
Have a look. http://thesaurus.reference.com/browse/pet
I'm going to do that right now and savor all the thoughts and feelings surrounding the action verb Pet - to stroke, gently in a comforting, camaraderie sort of way.