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Replies to '08/29 Moms Gone Wild'
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April 19, 2007, 8:17 am PDT
 Quote From: valordave I have to admit that I am exasperated with Dr. Phil when he gets condescending like he did today. I have no problem with say no loudly to people who drive drunk and dodge responsibility with their children. I do have a problem with ignoring the disease part of substance abuse. Websters defines disease as a condition of the BODY in which there is incorrect function resulting from the effect of heredity, infection, diet or environment. Alcoholism is a disease of the body that is not curable by humiliation and public shaming anymore than diabetes or schizophrenia or cancer can be cured by humiliation and shaming. There is a biological component that must be addressed and in 50% of the alcoholics the name for that disease is pyroluria. Pyroluria is hereditary and a nutritionally based disease, therefore few medical doctors know about it. One in 10 people off the street test positive for pyroluria. Similarly, one in 10 people are being treated for depression. That is not similar by accident. If you have pyroluria, you have a serious deficiency of zinc and B-6 in the body and subsequently cannot make essential neurotransmitters. The way alcoholics self-medicate and try to compensate for the missing feel good neurotransmitters is with alcohol. Some people use sugar, drugs, anything to get their seratonan or other neurotransmitter levels up. The deficiency snowballs because it takes B6 to produce insulin to break down the sugars in alcohol or table sugar, which increases the deficit in B6. Without a proper diagnosis people with Pyroluria crave feeling better and grab onto whatever they can to lift their mood. WHY WHY WHY do people call alcoholism a disease and then treat it as if it is merely an act of will --- and shaming is the cure? A Phd Nutritionist, Joan Mathews-Larson, wrote two books addressing the biological causes and treatment of these legitimate nutritional cravings called: Depression Free Naturally; Seven Weeks to eliminating Anxiety, Despair, Fatigue, and Anger from your Life and Seven Weeks to Sobriety. No one believes that substance abuse issues can be successfully treated in so little time so they ignore her very important work. Her treatment Center has an astonishingly high success rate one year after treatment because she treats the biological causes and not just character defects and psychological issues. If you want a test for Pyroluria have your doctor call: The Bio Center Laboratory in Wichita Kansas, 1-316-684-7784. I sent this first book (the Title then was Seven Weeks to Emotional Healing) to the doctor Phil Show but never got any response. I am so frustrated that there is good research on this issue that is utterly ignored by people with the same attitude as Dr. Phil. You dont tell someone with Kidney failure to just stop misbehaving; you dont with any person who has a terrible brain chemistry problem to just stop misbehaving either. You treat the legitimate biological need.
Alcholics (I have MANY in my own extended family) have more of a desire (chemical desire) to drink. That does not mean they can't stop and shouldn't be held responsible for their choice to drink. I have seen it with two of my relatives who have been sober for MANY years. Was it easy? Of course not. Can it be done..definitely! So did they get over their "disease" or is it in remission???? :)
Overeaters often have a compulsion to overeat. I eat out of stress and boredom. Do I have a disease? If you call being an emotional glutten a "disease," than I guess I am sick.
Cigarettes are additive. Because I desire them and my brain chemistry changes with smoking, do I have a disease? Heck, I gave up cigarettes (11 packs weekly) easier than I did over-eating!
The medical association, in the past couple of decades, seems to be labeling every compulsion a "disease." They are not always correct. For many decades, homosexuality was considered an "abnormality." In our secular, politically corrent culture, the AMA has now changed that and no longer considers it abnormal.
MY POINT is that if you believe everything the AMA has to say than you are one foolish person. Their "science" has more to do with social mores than it does with reality!!!! |
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