GARLIC!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/3344325.stm

"Dr Ron Cutler and his team discovered the effectiveness of allicin in laboratory tests five years ago.

They found it can cure MRSA within weeks.

It is even effective against the newer strains which cannot be treated by the "last line of defence" antibiotics Vancomycin and Glycopeptides."

Stay tuned as the modern medical research world catches up to what we have known clinically since the pyramids were built.

Absence of Evidence

The IOM --Institute Of Medicine-- just released the results of a meta-analysis of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder -PTSD-.

After searching thousands of studies and weeding out the severely flawed ones, the committee eventually reviewed 90 of them (53 pharmaceutical treatments and 37 psychotherapy treatments) and concluded that there is not good enough evidence to draw conclusions about the effectiveness of most treatments.

The question of design in the case of these studies is extremely important and it illustrates a major point about the way we collect data.

PTSD-ICD-9 code=309.81
Patients that are given this diagnosis are eligible to be studied as a group. The trouble here is that there is HUGE variation in what these people are presenting with. The underlying strengths and weaknesses of people, their health, their IQ, their social and cultural structure, before they experience any trauma, has a big role in the degree and type of symptoms they experience.

For many, diagnoses of anxiety, depression, personality disorder, and other psychiatric issues could be applied to their symptom picture just as well. Naturopathic treatments should be designed to treat the individual, not just certain symptoms. So these designation don't really count for what we should be focusing on.

The traumatic event is a trigger; most people have some type of response to that trigger. Physically we don't even have a definition of what happens during a traumatic event that may later lead to PTSD. What a persons response is, physically, as well as emotionally varies. We need to find out what the range of this variation is, and stop looking for a magic bullet. Treatment that is powerfully effective and long lasting DOES exist. People who are experience this reality and have good support that continue to struggle and experiment with various therapies often eventually get better.

We need to re-think the basic design of this research and test specific treatments based on the actual experience and issues that individuals are dealing with rather than ...309.81. otherwise we will never find it.