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Rectal Bleeding |
Rectal Bleeding |
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It's time to take
the bull by the tail and face the situation. Bleeding is scary, and
rectal bleeding is the scariest. Margorie, age 53, came to visit. She was losing
half a cup of blood a day rectally. That is a lot of blood; a younger
woman's entire five-day menstrual flow is only about that much. Marjorie
was worried, and rightly so. She had seen an assortment of doctors, and
was currently under the care of a proctologist who could find nothing really
wrong with her bowel. He found some slight, general inflammation during a
sigmoidscope examination, but no lumps, bumps, polyps, or lesions of
note. He told her that there was nothing to be done except keep an eye
on it. So how would you like to
be told that if you were losing half a cup of blood a day through your anus?
Keep looking. Uh huh. Not a nice thought under the circumstances. Marjorie's question to me was the obvious one: what can be done? She
was willing to try anything. My standard answer, and it is also the
truth, is that I wasn't sure, but natural therapies were generally worth a
full and fair trial. Years ago I had read an
article from California Medicine about a doctor who treated bleeding
peptic ulcers with cabbage juice, of all things. It was just
crazy enough to get my attention: he gave around one hundred hospitalized
patients four glasses (that's one quart) of raw cabbage juice daily.
The doctor, Garnett Cheney, MD, reported pain relief in a few days, and
healing in one third of the customary time. All this, not with
medicines, not with surgery, but with cabbage juice. And he published
his findings in a medical journal, no less. In 1953! Figuring that it would be
hard to hurt yourself with cabbages, unless you dropped them on your toe or
something, I told Marjorie about the study. She was a lot more
interested than a healthy person would have been, and said she'd do it.
She had little to lose that she wasn't already losing. Margorie called back a
week and a half later. She hadn't bought a juicer, but was putting fresh
cabbage through her blender, and then straining it through cheesecloth to get
the juice. She was drinking four glasses a day in this way. Her
bleeding had been reduced to a teaspoon on most days, and no blood at all on
others. She was delighted. Then the really odd part of the
conversation began: she had been to her proctologist, and told him of the
improvement. He was pleased, of course: nothing odd about
that. She then asked him if he'd care to know what she'd been doing
lately. He said, certainly, he was a doctor, and was always interested
to know what helps his patients. So she said, do you really want to
know? He again said yes. So she told him that she'd been drinking a
quart of fresh, raw cabbage juice every day. He stared back at her for
a long moment, and then said, "No, that couldn't be it." Marvel at this: to the
specialist, it just couldn't have been due to the cabbage juice; it couldn't
have been something that she had done on her own. Truth is, she got
better in spite of him. He still got paid his specialist fees. Just who are the
quacks? Andrew Saul is the author of the books FIRE
YOUR DOCTOR! How to be Independently Healthy (reader reviews at
http://www.doctoryourself.com/review.html
) and DOCTOR YOURSELF: Natural Healing that Works. (reviewed at http://www.doctoryourself.com/saulbooks.html
) For ordering information, Click Here . |
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AN IMPORTANT NOTE: This page is not in any way offered as prescription, diagnosis nor treatment for any disease, illness, infirmity or physical condition. Any form of self-treatment or alternative health program necessarily must involve an individual's acceptance of some risk, and no one should assume otherwise. Persons needing medical care should obtain it from a physician. Consult your doctor before making any health decision. Neither the author nor the webmaster has authorized the use of their names or the use of any material contained within in connection with the sale, promotion or advertising of any product or apparatus. Single-copy reproduction for individual, non-commercial use is permitted providing no alterations of content are made, and credit is given. |
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