Re: The Burden of Proof

>Dave the raw food trucker had his 10 or 15 year diabetes go away within 4 days when following Dr Cousen's program found in the book there is a cure for diabetes( and conscious eating by Cousens). Dave went on a 100% raw food, vegan, whole food, organic diet.

I saw Dave's video a week or so ago and noticed his endorsement of a book by Dr. Cousens. Anyway, I ordered the book from Amazon and it just arrived today.

At one time, before kidney disease (and lots else) struck, I was a voracious reader, but I have trouble concentrating nowadays; it takes me a long time to get through a book. I'm still reading "Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease" by Caldwell Esselstyn, so the cure for diabetes will have to wait on the cure for heart disease here first. This is the book that set Bill Clinton onto a diet intended to keep his new bipass coronary arteries (originally veins) from clogging up again. Dr. Esselstyn's diet presentation is compelling scientifically.

The Esseltyn strict vegan (plus no nuts or avacados) diet doesn't require raw foods, but raw foods would certainly conform to it. I also ordered/received another book by Dr. Cousins with a bunch of recipes in it, which ought to be helpful in learning anew how to prepare food. I've long been an avid cook, but the whole idea of no fat at all and so much raw stuff isn't something I'm very comfortable with at this point. I have to relearn so much now and at a not too young age. That's not easy to do mentally either, as so much of my self-image is that I'm a really good cook. I've more recently changed that self-image to "good cook too seriously ill to manage to produce any more lavish six-course dinners."

>Another thing which does this according to Dr Joel Furhman in his book eat to live is meat. He says meat is very hard on the kidneys.

Yes, very hard on the kidneys. I've already cut out most meat, and am about to cut it out entirely with the Esselstyn diet. I thought about trying that earlier after reading "Coping with Kidney Disease: A 12-Step Treatment Program to Help You Avoid Dialysis
" by Mackensie Waller - but simply cut way back instead. But I think I'd better assume the worst and quit temporizing about it.

>In the book, the China study which was the largest study ever conducted on the link between diet and health

Dr. Esselyton got his diet research idea from The China Study. People in the poorest countries have virtually no heart disease, and it got him to thinking about why. He took cardiac patients for whom all hope had been lost and helped them to survive for many years into a future of healthy old age.

>When you said "And sure enough, my kidney disease has gotten worse since I took myself off the commercial blood pressure drugs over a year ago (except for HCTZ).: This really does not prove causal effect. Most kidney disease progresses to worst with time. The two events might not be linked.

Right, they might not be linked; a temporal connection does not necessarily imply cause. But the preponderance of the group evidence is that for people generally, a large number will find this to be a component of the progression. I'm just making an assumption here that I'm like the group for which solid, well- controlled testing was done that was widely accepted by knowledgeable specialists.

>I do not believe Dave is a liar on his healing.

I have no real way of knowing. Dave's writing does smell a good bit like a snake oil salesman's, however. It's a little too good to be true in every last detail. As for his claims to be God's conduit, well, God has also told me that he's peddling false information.

>I also spoke via phone to a lady who reversed her stage 5 kidney disease and shocked her doctor who said he never saw a reversal in over 30 years of practice. I do not think she was lying either. She gave a lot of credit to nutrition and to God.

I don't question that. As to its application to wide numbers of others who might read the website, I do question that. All sorts of things can and do happen in life in succession to some other event but causation has nothing to do with it.

People do get better or get worse without any particularly connected event preceeding the outcome. This phenonemon is well known across medicine and it accounts for the general preference of medically educated people for scientifically validated studies, studies using controlled experimental methodology that is open to peer review. The problem is, not everyone reading Dave's site is well educated or thinks well scientifically, and they might tend to jump to conclusions as to what he knows.

>Again I do not think he is a shyster or a liar.

I can't say authoritatively one way or the other.

Perhaps he actually has an MD or is in some other way scientifically trained? PhD in pharmacology or cell bio? It would be hard to know, even if such a claim were made on his website. But anyway, I didn't notice that claim on his website. But in any case he doesn't write like a professional of any sort. Lacking some kind of peer-review process of papers published in a journal by scientifically well-respected people, I think it's safer to assume that he's no more of an expert on kidney disease than I am (I'm not).

As for myself, I try to avoid saying anything to lead someone to believe I have a sure cure for anything serious that they ought to be consulting their licensed doctor about. I'm not an MD and don't intend to practice medicine without a license. Dave might not care about that.

Little tips that might help, over and above what a patient's doctor wants to do? Sure, that seems fine with me. But I try to remember the old idea of "First of all, do no harm" in what I write.

>I saw what doctors treatment did to my mother on dialysis and also what burdock, parsley root, and cayenne did when she was in advanced stages of kidney disease.

No one has a right to deny what you saw with your own eyes and heard with your own ears. It takes a leap of faith, though, to take that to mean that Dave's website holds a cure, especially relevant to many other kidney patients.

>Wolfe on here has kidney disease and did the incurables and had many positive effects that he posted in the dialysis thread.

Sounds good; I'll keep my fingers crossed for him. Whether it will save him from end stage renal failure any faster than would have happened without it is a different question - one that's hard to know the answer to with just a single patient for the study. In statistical evaluations, an n=1 in a study makes scientific significance fairly impossible.

>so if you take supplements that is fine but do not forget two of our best healers--raw and living food and herbs.

Good information, thanks.

>Your post discourages people from posting things which maybe you do not want to read but many other kidney patients do.

I'm a kidney patient, and I'll attest to how desperate we can feel for a cure. That makes us especially vulnerable to simplistic and wishful thinking. I do know kidney patients want to read. I just hope that what they read doesn't end up harming them.

>One does not necessarily have to be a sufferer of an illness to know how to heal it.

Very true. None of my doctors are suffering from my diseases and I trust them to know what they're doing and to have no one's benefit in mind except mine; that's what I'm paying them to do - what they've been well-trained to do.

>It is fine if you are not interested and want to put restrictions of what you believe or read, but your post might make people reluctant to post things they know or learn.

I was hoping in my post to discourage "I've found a cure for this very serious disease" postings. You can post essentially the same tips without misleading a desperate kidney patient into believing that they can skip the doctor's advice and get the cure for the price of a few herbs and diet changes. If someone actually does find a simple cure for kidney disease, it's going to appear in The New England Journal of Medicine, and it will get rave peer reviews as the process gets replicated by umpteen scientifically trained physicians. Of that I am certain.

>I would be the first to tell people one is not likely to reverse a disease without a complex, multifaceted approach. Generally an herb is not going to cure a serious disease.

I'm glad to see you posting that orientation. An average reader doesn't necessarily get that impression from all you've posted in the numerous times you've posted, though. Those particular words might be a good thing to just add on as a PS whenever you post in the future?

>One needs to hit it as hard as the doctor but in a less toxic way.

I had a friend whose husband died of kidney disease. He was so sure he was going to succeed in curing himself. You know, just a few years earlier he'd been blistering his opponents on the tennis court. When you once were so healthy it's hard to believe that you can't figure out a way to keep going at a relatively young age. But he didn't. We live in a large city here with major medical resources. But he wasn't satisfied with what the kidney specialists here were telling him and he refused to consider dialysis. Instead, he took a trip a few hours away to another medical doctor who he believed knew more about non-standard things to do. He was fired up to cure himself through a rigid diet and specific supplements. But it didn't work, and his kidney disease took an abrupt turn for the worst. He had to go onto dialysis just to live and ended up buying a machine to keep in his house. He died not too long after that. Tough time there, and hard to accept. We all want to find a cure for kidney disease.

My friend's husband's situation no more proves that one shouldn't try some new things than that your mother's situation proves you could have saved her if only she'd stopped doing what her doctor wanted. It's hard to know. But at least MD's are trained to stick with the preponderance of evidence and avoid doing additional harm.

>Dialysis may make one feel better temporarily but as it does it is destroying your body. Unlike natural healing. it does not generally reverse to improve kidney disease. Once a person is on dialysis it is going to be a lot harder to heal oneself.

This has the ring of truth to it. I certainly won't go onto dialysis until I have to. But I doubt that my specialist would put me onto dialysis if I could have any decent quality of life without it.

>Individual doctors may know a lot but they might not be able to share with you what they know if it contains anything out of the ordinary as they must use guidelines established by the AMA.

It's frowned upon by the AMA to use a medical position to foist off-the-wall cures on patients. I'm looking for advice with a well-established foundation of research anyway, so that orientation suits me. If I'm looking for off-the-cuff, I can always ask someone I'm not paying to safeguard my health interests.

>Many know next to nothing about alternative health or even that diseases can be healed.

Integrative medicine is catching on a bit. Dr. Andrew Weil started a Department of Integrative Medicine at the Medical College in Arizona maybe 8-10 years ago, I believe. His website is quite helpful and is where I first heard of Mukta Vati.

http://www.drweil.com/



One last thought now... A reader would have to have a heart of stone not to feel sorry for what happened to you and your mother both in her death. I can put myself into your desperate shoes trying to save her, and the thought is upsetting. I'm very, very sorry.

I've lost both my parents, and though I've gotten over their deaths--30-38 years ago now--in an ordinary sense, one never really gets over a thing like that. It's absolutely universal that you are looking for someone to blame when the unthinkable happens to your parent. You can look at yourself in the mirror and know that you're not being logical, but it's so hard to be logical when you are hurting so badly.

Thinking of your own personal interests here for a moment now, not other readers - I have a bit of advice...

Try not to fixate too much on wishing you could have saved her. You didn't. It's over now. And there's no way of knowing whether, if she had followed your advice from the start, you might have made the outcome any different. No way to know, and wishing you could have saved her doesn't help her or you now either. She wants you to feel happy now, not desperate.

Try now to focus on your own health issues. The messages you want to spread about kidney disease tips are already well spread now. Go exercise, get your car fixed, and take good care of your own life and health issues before your health gets to the stage mine is in (or your mother's was in at your age).

Best of luck to you,
Mary
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