Tax Free

Finance Minister Jim Flaherty’s 10th federal budget on Tuesday, February 11th this week announced that naturopathic doctors will be added to the list of health care professionals whose services are exempt from the GST/HST under the Excise Tax Act. The exemption took effect immediately as of the next day after the budget on Wednesday, February 12, 2014.

The Canadian Association of Naturopathic Doctors [CAND] has exerted concentrated efforts on demonstrating to the government the positive impact that exempting the GST/HST will have on Canadians seeking a more natural approach to their health care and we are pleased to see the government's recognition in this recent budget announcement.

 

The CAND applauds the federal government for exempting GST/HST on services provided by naturopathic doctors since this move will provide greater access for patients seeking a proactive approach to their health care needs and for those looking for an individualized, whole person approach to prevent and treat health problems which now have the conventional medical system overwhelmed and outnumbered.

"Naturopathic doctors are, indeed, primary healthcare providers. They integrate standard, medical diagnostics with a broad range of therapies", said Dr. Pat Wales, ND, Chair of the CAND. "Having patients pay taxes on essential primary health care services didn't sit well with our members, or our patients, and we are pleased that the Government of Canada agreed".

Naturopathic doctors are regulated/licensed in five provinces and two more are soon to follow. Naturopathic doctors can, and do, work together with other medical practitioners as part of a patient's overall health care team resulting in improved outcomes in some of the most chronic and costly areas of the healthcare system including cardiovascular disease and diabetes.

"Patients want greater health care options, partnerships, and access tools that will empower them to become and remain healthy", added Shawn O'Reilly, Executive Director of the CAND. "Removing taxes on services provided by naturopathic doctors will not only help remove the barriers to such options for patients, it will help ensure our healthcare system stimulates the economy for future health care sustainability".

Please note, however, that the GST/HST is still due on the sale of any medicines, supplements and health products.

To help bring this significant legislative tax change to reality, you can listen below to the Beatles singing Taxman. There seems to be no live group performance available except for one by George Harrison which follows as well. But this is fitting because George wrote the song in 1966 and he composed it in anger over the British government taking 95% of the Beatles' earnings which had placed them in the top tax bracket.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oyu5sFzWLk8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oyu5sFzWLk8

___________________________

Dr. Richard Putnam BA, DC, ND

1478 Unity Road, Unit 5
Glenburnie, ON, Canada, K0H 1S0

+1-613-484-5445

www.drrichardputnam.com

Message in a Bottle

Successful homeopathic case reports always reveal so much clearly thought-out, biologically compatible, non-toxic health care delivery that it verges on the miraculous. This is why I use this system of medicine developed by a brilliant group of doctors from the 1800’s. And, since Homeopathy functions on the basis of the vaccine theory, the original reason for a now-cured illness is written on the label of the bottle of medicine that brought about the cure. This teaches us what to avoid in the future in order to stay healthy. For example, if homeopathic Penicillin gets you better, then you can be certain that you have been suffering from a residual Penicillin mould infection probably as the result of an earlier doctor’s prescription. So, in the future, we know to be very wary of a Penicillin prescription because we now know what misery it can cause in the long run. [This would be analogous to your house being invaded by ladybugs long after they have killed all the aphids in your garden. They don’t just stop there! They keep multiplying and searching for something else to attack!]

Another example would be the recent case of a woman [age 30] who complained to me of a 10 year history of heartburn, indigestion and fatigue. She had lots of burping and refluxing
/regurgitation of food back up into the mouth that was worse from consuming coffee or alcohol or food of any type. She also had mild nausea in the mornings and absolutely no appetite until lunch, after which the heartburn and reflux would just start up again. As well, she craved ice and was very fond of chewing ice cubes. Her case was cured completely over a 6 week period in the summer of 2011 using homeopathy alone and, to bring this about, the medicines used were 1] Mercury 12c [to minimize the effects of this common pollutant in order to strengthen the immune system] and 4 homeopathic vaccines to combat 4 germs that love to live in the human digestive tract: 2] Helicobacter pylori 12c, 3] Enterococcus 12c, 4] Campylobacter 12c and 5] Hepatitis B 12c.

She is now, after 10 years of misery, totally symptom-free since last summer and needs to take no follow-up medicines to stay well. And she does not crave ice anymore either [ice craving is a homeopathically known symptom of mercury poisoning], although I would expect this problem to return because metals are soooo difficult to totally remove from the body and usually represent a chronic health problem of their own. More on this and other cases later.

So, because this case went to a lasting cure using these homeopathic medicines, we know that this individual is immune-compromised, probably due to many years of carrying metallic dental fillings, and that she was harbouring these 4 germs chronically in her intestinal tract. The first issue to prevent any infections is cleanliness and cleanliness means washing well but also knowing where not to go to pick up germs.

Helicobacter is a bug infecting 50% of the population in developing/underdeveloped countries so holiday flight destinations to poorer countries should be avoided. Enterococcus has long been one of our normal  intestinal bacteria but has recently become one of the new, dangerous, antibiotic-resistant ‘super bugs’ found in hospitals, a trip to which can change your life. Campylobacter is a food-poisoning microbe and the Hepatitis B virus is associated with extended overseas travel and with body fluid contact such as during use of unclean needles as in getting a tattoo or having sexual contact. The characteristics of these infections tell us this person had probably been traveling overseas to poorer countries, had risky sexual or needle contact, had also consumed contaminated food and likely had been in a hospital or close to someone else that had been in a hospital. All avoidance lessons to be learned!


Dr. Richard Putnam BA, DC, ND
1478 Unity Road, Unit 5
Glenburnie, ON, Canada, K0H 1S0
+1-613-484-5445
www.drrichardputnam.com

A Pollution Case

David Suzuki is correct when he indicates to us all that everyday industrial pollutants, common to our unnatural, modern lifestyle of convenience do indeed cause illness.

This is not a fictitious story on his part, and, to corroborate David’s warning, here is a common case sample from my files that demonstrates a health problem due to environmental pollution:
This is the case of a boy in his late teens participating in a summertime, group, bicycle trip from Kingston to Ottawa, Ontario, Canada a few years ago. Having never met the family before, his parents called to tell me of his trip and how he had called them from his cell phone at the side of the road to please come with the car and pick him and his bike up because he was simply unable to continue pedalling due to a terrible pain that had developed in the right side of his upper back in the shoulder blade area. They called me because, at the time, I worked from a rural office close to his location. Could I possibly see him right away and try to help him??

I told them to bring him to the office asap! They arrived out front in the parking lot within the hour with one wheel of the bicycle protruding from the trunk of the car and I took him, groaning with  pain, into my office right away since he was suffering so badly. He had not fallen or injured himself at all and had no previous history of such a pain. I discovered, however, what I thought was a fairly serious case of liver irritation due to petroleum [gasoline] poisoning and I prescribed a homeopathic medicine designed by doctors, yes 100 years ago!, to remove petroleum from the body. He and his family then left with the medicine and strict instructions for him to take a dose of it every 20 minutes for the next several hours!

Most pollutants will adversely affect the liver, located in the right upper abdomen, which can send referred pain spreading from that organ to any location in the right upper quadrant of the body [especially the right shoulder and neck]. The heart will cause similar pains on our left side. The liver, our largest organ, functions very similar to the oil filter in our cars. That is, it filters all of our blood [about 5 liters in the average adult] every time it circulates out from the heart and back again thus cleaning out impurities so as to spare all our other organs [brain, thyroid, lungs, pancreas, etc] from the devastating effects of pollutants we absorb each day. Doing its job, the liver can become quite upset trying to contain all this poisonous chemistry to the point where it will create much pain which is normally treated with general pharmaceutical pain killers like Tylenol which are, themselves, toxic to the liver!

The next day the boy’s parents called me from their home again, this time to say thank you very much because their son’s pain had disappeared so soon after leaving the office and he felt so well that they drove him [and his bike, of course!] further along the route where they caught up with the group which he rejoined until they all finally arrived in Ottawa as planned. The boy called me himself also a few days later to thank me personally and to say that the day before the bike trip he had been refilling the gas tank in their family boat at their cottage on a nearby lake. Being in a hurry, he had refuelled while standing in the boat rather than taking the portable tank out and placing it on the stationary dock surface. Waves had come along rocking the boat strongly enough that he spilled a lot of gasoline into the bottom of the boat which he subsequently spent much time cleaning up with rags. This exposed him to strong gas fumes which he inhaled for quite a while during the clean-up and he wondered if that had anything to do with his severe pain the following day during the bicycle trip. I’ll leave it up to you to figure that one out!

In my next blogs I will move away from this, perhaps, too intense focus upon petroleum toxicity (you can see that I intercept petrol toxicity cases quite frequently!) and explore, for you, other cases from my files that are related to other types of pollutants such as the ‘heavy metals’ and then we will move on to cases that involve acute and chronic infections with actual germs. Please note that petroleum causes much more serious health issues than just back pain as evidenced by the fact that rates of Leukemia [cancerous proliferation of the red blood cells] are much higher amongst full serve gas station attendants. Keep in mind, as we move along, that, just as David Suzuki says, the pollutants weaken our immune systems so we cannot effectively fight the germs. These cases, as you will discover, are all strung together with this common theme.

Dr. Richard Putnam BA, DC, ND
1478 Unity Road, Unit 5
Glenburnie, ON, Canada, K0H 1S0
+1-613-484-5445
www.drrichardputnam.com

The Main Reason for Most Illness

A fantastic video at safecosmetics.org has inspired me to rant and rave again.

The main reason for most illness, pain and discomfort is the toxic effects of chemical pollutants. 35 years of experience as a 6 day/week, front-line, alternative, health care provider allows me to make such a bold statement. The bad news is that we are constantly bombarded with these toxins at every turn and there is no question in my mind that our daily exposure to chemicals in everything from the food we eat to our personal products and even laundry detergent, is causing most of our health problems.

The good news is that I seem to have stumbled upon this discovery AND the way to combat this very serious health problem, returning people to good health. Unusually hyper-dilute medicines prepared from each pollutant are taken as harmless templates showing the body what to repair.                        

The video at safecosmetics.org will be an eye-opener as most of us are completely unaware of how many chemicals we come in contact with on a daily basis. No matter how wonderful they may smell, these very dangerous, manufactured substances accumulate gradually within our tissues. Surprisingly, most perfume, cologne, make-up, deodorant, soaps and other products contain these toxins. What’s worse is that there are no laws preventing this and with no one protecting us we are all sitting ducks for disease!

The point of this blog is to shed light on the fact that industry is poisoning us and government is allowing it. They’d love to keep us all in the dark but I won’t stop blogging until they stop sneaking harmful chemicals into our bodies!

Dr. Richard Putnam, ND

www.drrichardputnam.com

Petroleum & Pregnancy

My last blog only scratched the surface on the issue of health vs. petroleum. This week I will discuss how petroleum affects our health over time and some of the less obvious ways that it enters our blood streams, organs and body systems. Of special importance is the magnified effect of biological pollutants upon our children and a pregnant woman’s developing fetus. Their immature, rapidly growing tissues are especially vulnerable to disruption. It is a well known fact that the mother’s health is critical to the baby’s development during pregnancy. Even the smallest amounts of petroleum and other pollutants can cross the placenta and have adverse effects upon the developing infant . My many years of experience as a Naturopathic doctor and countless scientific studies attest to the damaging health effects of petroleum-based substances.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12412848
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pollution

Successful commercial marketing (i.e. appealing to our senses in order to create artificial needs) by the chemical industry (which is largely based upon petroleum products) has convinced us that we must use perfume, cologne, deodorant, cosmetics, aftershave, hairspray and hairdressing products as well as scented shampoo, conditioner and mousse, scented soaps and body washes, bubble baths, bath oils and salts, baby products, skin lotions, creams and powders, nail polish, lipsticks and gloss, toothpaste, mouthwash, hand sanitizers, sunblock and suntanning agents, petroleum jelly (Vaseline), perfumed laundry detergent, fabric softener, drier sheets and air fresheners to name a few. 

Most people are unaware that the products they use daily are contaminating their bodies and causing an almost endless list of health problems not to mention infertility and miscarriages.

So what can we do to stay healthy in this new chemical world? 

Here are some recommended changes you can make in your daily life:

1. Stop using perfume or any scented products on your body. Refer, of course, to the above list. If you feel you absolutely cannot live without these items, try a natural product as an alternate. A broad range of ‘biologically compatible’ products are to be found in natural food stores, vitamin shops, alternative pharmacies and the natural sections of major grocery stores.
2. Stop using scented detergent, fabric softener and drier sheets in your laundry room. Use Natureclean for cleaning everything from your hands to your hair and clothes, the dishes, the car and even the household pet (if I can catch her/him!) Check out Naturclean here:     http://www.naturecleanliving.com/
3. Use vinegar instead of high-powered household cleaners. It may sound strange but try it - it really works!

With these few, very basic changes you can dramatically reduce the exposure of you and your loved ones to petroleum products. These adjustments to your lifestyle could mean the difference between a happy, healthy life for you, your children and your spouse or a life of endless illness and doctor's appointments. The choice is yours :)

If you have any questions about this blog or any other health related issues please send me an email at drputnam48@gmail.com If I don't know the answer to your question, I'll research it and reply in any case.

Dr. Richard Putnam is a Naturopathic Doctor with over 35 years experience. For more information about Dr. Putnam please visit his website at www.drrichardputnam.com

Petroleum

Many people whom I treat experience improved health from medicines that are intended to remove petroleum and petroleum byproduct contaminants from their tissues. As with tobacco, petroleum exposure will, hopefully, be recognized in the future as a societal health risk. However, until we arrive at the dawning of the post-petroleum era most of us in this modern oil-rich culture are experiencing daily petroleum intake that gradually bio-accumulates in our tissues over time.

Diminish your exposure as much as you possibly can by gassing up your lawnmower/snowblower, not in the garage, but rather outside in a breeze whilst standing upwind with the gas can. To avoid exposure when in heavy traffic, always drive with your heater recirculation activated in order to diminish the volume of combustion vapors entering your car’s ducting system from the vehicles travelling ahead of you. Be aware that, in many newer cars, if the windshield defogger heater vents are in the “on” position then the recirc function may be automatically turned off. As well, always refuel your car at a full-serve gas station to further decrease your exposure to the vapors.

Dr. Richard Putnam is a Naturopathic Doctor with over 35 years experience. For more information on Dr. Putnam please visit his website at www.drrichardputnam.com