Chemical Incarceration

A woman I’ll call ‘Sandra’ came in for an appointment after a hiatus of over a decade. Originally, she had been successfully treated for some menstrual issues as well as skin rashes, but I lost touch with her after she moved away. With the prospect of moving back into the area plus the advent of Skype (which is a wonderful tool to do consultations at a distance), she decided to get back in touch regarding some more recent health concerns.

It seems that in the interim, Sandra had experienced some difficult times, and had gone on a psychoactive drug for a number of years. At a certain point, she decided it was time to be in the world without the assistance of this pharmaceutical and began to wean herself from it. It was a slow process, but she was in fact able to withdraw completely from the medication.

Having done that, she felt quite ‘moody’, swinging between various emotions without much rhyme or reason. She ‘didn’t feel herself’ – this was certainly not the way she felt while on the medication, nor was it similar to the way she felt before being medicated.

At our first consultation after having re-established contact, I spent several hours with Sandra updating her history and discussing her condition in great detail. This, in and of itself, was not unusual. It had been a long time and to reacquaint myself with her it was necessarily to pretty much start from scratch again. But what was unusual was the fact that her case wasn’t very coherent from a homeopathic perspective.

The process of a homeopathic consultation – and the reason that it can take several hours (or more) – is generally designed to culminate in a fairly comprehensive, integrated understanding of the patients state, physically, mentally and emotionally. The remedy is then chosen to reflect this state of the entire person.

Naturally, it isn’t always possible to arrive at this goal in one sitting. But as a rule, an experienced homeopath will get a somewhat coherent picture of the patient. Unfortunately, in Sandra’s case, that picture seemed quite muddled and inconsistent.

After we finished, I gave quite a bit of thought to Sandra’s case – reviewing my notes, organizing and reorganizing the information, and consulting reference material. This, too, is not an unusual process for a conscientious homeopath. Sometimes the remedy selection for a particular patient is quite straightforward and requires little time beyond the consultation itself, but there are always cases where the selection of an appropriate remedy is a more involved, even arduous, process.

Despite these efforts, my investigation into Sandra’s case provided little direction from a traditional or classical homeopathic perspective. But I did have a hunch as to why this so, and rather than consult once more with Sandra herself to try to further my understanding, I decided to act on my hunch.

I sent her a homeopathic prescription of Venlafaxine (Venlafaxine Hydrochloride, to be more exact). While this might not ring any bells in the mind of most people, its more common appellation ‘Effexor’ might.

Venlafaxine HCL has been around for about 20 years, and is an antidepressant – one of the most commonly prescribed antidepressants in the country – belonging to a class of drugs known as ‘serotonin norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors’. (Cymbalata is another well-known member of this group.) It is used for ‘major depressive disorder’ often combined with anxiety.

Now, just to be absolutely clear, what I gave Sandra was not Effexor itself, but a homeopathic dilution of the drug. That is, through the homeopathic dilution process, the material aspect of the drug – the molecules represented by the formula C17H27NO2 – where removed and what remained was an energetic pattern or vibrating memory of the substance.

The use of a homeopathically diluted substance or potency to remove the toxic effects of the actual physical substance is not a new or unusual concept. Casual users of homeopathic remedies know that one of the treatments for a bee sting is Apis mellifica – or the potentized form of honeybee, and that rhus toxicodendron, the homeopathic dilution of poison ivy, can be effective for poison ivy rash.

Strictly speaking, this is not a classical homeopathic approach, but a related form of treatment known as ‘tautopathy’. ‘Tauto’ is a Greek word meaning ‘the same’, and tautopathy is a method using a substance in diluted or potentized form to alleviate or remove the residues and toxicity the actual crude substance has caused.

Venlafaxine can cause a host of side effects – increased risk of suicide, sexual dysfunction, amnesia, sleepiness or sleeplessness, nausea, dizziness, weakness, dry mouth, constipation and nervousness to name only the most common. It can also cause a potentially fatal reaction called ‘serotonin syndrome.’ In addition, there can be long-term consequences after terminating the drug, a phenomena known as ‘discontinuation syndrome.’

In the short term, the symptoms associated with discontinuation include disorientation, fatigue, headache, poor coordination and nausea. More insidious, are the long-term effects. Drugs like Venlafaxine alter the way the brain works – and the effect remains after the drug itself is withdrawn. Thus a person no longer ‘feels theirself’ – just as Sandra verbalized.

Fortunately for Sandra, at our follow-up visit about a month after taking the homeopathic dilution of Venlafaxine, she was feeling much better. The mood swings had leveled out and a sense of wellbeing was beginning to return.

PART II

One of the most powerful incentives that motivated Samuel Hahnemann to create the medical science of homeopathy over two centuries ago was to help those suffering from mental illness. He personally witnessed the horrors of contemporary treatment – the asylums where patients were straight jacketed or brutalized in various other ways and forced to live in the most primitive conditions, usually for their entire lives.

Having successfully treated epidemic diseases and the most serious medical conditions that afflicted people in that era, Hahnemann was certain that the same principles and medicines that had made homeopathy so effective in handling physical ailments would also apply to mental ones. In fact, he was one of the first medical authorities to insist that mental illness was akin to physical illness, but just had its seat in the mind instead of another bodily organ. Today, this might sound obvious, but in 1792, it was quite an insight.

Since that time, Hahnemann, his followers and subsequent generations of homeopathic practitioners have in fact been able to help countless persons with mental illness. Our books are replete with remarkable case histories as well as detailed descriptions of many hundreds of medicines useful in this sphere of treatment.

Contemporary practitioners, though, face a new challenge in the treatment of mental and emotional disorders. Since the 1950’s dramatic changes have swept across the mental health landscape both in terms of popularized notions of what causes mental illness and the way in which it is to be treated. In a sense, it is really the story of the evolution of the profession of psychiatry into a partner with the pharmaceutical industry with a shared common goal to promote prescription medication as the most effective means to treat mental illness.

The details of this story are told in an extraordinary book entitled “Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America”, written by a medical journalist named Robert Whitaker and published in 2010. What is remarkable about it is the fact that Whitaker has not written a diatribe against psychiatry, but a steady handed review of research studies and case histories to reveal how a destructive combination of flawed assumptions, misplaced hopes and profit motive have created the contemporary ‘epidemic’ of mental illness in America.

Whitaker’s meticulous scrutiny of the facts leads to an array of significant conclusions about the interface of mental illness and conventional pharmaceutical treatment. Amongst them are the following:

One of the major incentives to establish prescription drugs as the predominant treatment modality for mental illness was a desire to legitimize the inclusion of psychiatry within the modern medical establishment. Psychoanalysis and other forms of ‘talk therapy’ were less ‘scientific’, and, in addition, could be performed by professionals who were not medical doctors. The use of pharmaceuticals was both a way to avoid being marginalized by elevating the status of the profession as well as a way to gain an advantage over the competition by offering treatment that was unavailable from non-MD therapy.

Many psychiatric drugs, especially the first generation discovered in the 1950s, were not developed to treat mental illness at all, but instead to treat some other type of physical disease. It then became apparent that as a side effect, these drugs also seemed to sedate the nervous system or otherwise modify the behavior of patients.

Thus, the treatment was not in fact addressing the cause of the problem nor rectifying the ‘chemical imbalance’, but just distorting brain function to make the patient less prone to certain forms of unacceptable behaviors. This also holds true for subsequent generations of psychoactive medications. People don’t get better per se, they get ‘different’ – and often stay ‘different’. My own clinical experience is that even after withdrawing from these drugs, many people will stay ‘different’.

In spite of this, there has been an aggressive marketing campaign to promote these medications. Various theories were put forth to promote these drugs as curative, when in fact they were not. For instance, perhaps the most well known one is the notion that serotonin deficiency is a cause of depression or other related illness. There is little to no evidence to back the claim. It is basically a myth propagated to encourage the use of SSRIs (Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors), which are amongst the most popular and profitable drugs in the industry.

In the mid-1950’s, when the first wave of psychoactive drugs were introduced, about 350,000 persons were hospitalized in psychiatric institutions of one sort or another in the United States. One of the chief goals of prescribing these medications was to reduce this number – freeing both the individuals from incarceration and the nation of the burden of caring for them.

But the results show just the opposite effect. Over the next 30 years, the number of persons diagnosed as mentally disabled tripled. Again from the late 80’s, when the second generation of psychiatric drugs – led by Prozac - was introduced, the numbers increased again. Most startling is the fact that in this period of time the number of young Americans on mental disability has grown 35 fold.

The basic question that Whitaker seeks to answer is why these numbers have increased so dramatically. His conclusion becomes obvious as one reads through his analysis: psychiatric medications worsen mental illness over the long run. This runs the gamut of drugs – from the stimulants used to control children in school to powerful anti-psychotics. They may adequately control short-term behaviors, but over longer periods of time they create unhealthy distortions in brain function as well as produce systemic side effects.

This is the challenge that Hahnemann’s homeopathic descendants face today. It is no longer adequate to treat the underlying issues that psychiatric patients present. Often before a practitioner can even address those, it is necessary to deal with the disturbances caused by pharmaceutical interventions.

This can be an extremely complicated undertaking, depending on what medications – or combinations of medications – have been taken for how long, the willingness or capacity of the patient to wean off of them, as well as the cooperation of family and prescribing medical personnel. Despite these possible complications, it can be a successful and rewarding endeavour.

1. Whitaker, Robert. “Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America”. 2010 Crown Publishing, New York

Smallpox & Other Poisons

  I hadn’t heard from him in quite a while, but as soon as I answered the phone and heard the voice at the other end, there was little doubt who it was. The combination of the thick Eastern European accent, breathy smoker’s tone and the plaintive quality brought instant recognition.

“Dr. Jonas, it seems we’re having a problem and we were wondering if you could help.” “Alexi, I haven’t heard from you in years,” I replied. “What’s going on?” “Dr. Jonas, it’s Irina. You see, last month she was feeling very weak and was complaining of dizziness. We took her to the doctor here, and after many tests they diagnosed her with diabetes...” “Wow! She just suddenly developed juvenile diabetes?” “Yes, it appears that way. Nina and I want to know if there is anything you can do to help.” “There might be... It only just happened, maybe there is something we can do. But it’s important to find out what pushed her body into that state. Was there anything unusual happening? Any illnesses or stresses?” “No, not that we can think of... The only thing that was any different was that Irina was given a flu shot a month before this all happened. The doctor assures me there is no connection.” “No connection, my ass!” I couldn’t contain my frustration. “Didn’t we talk about giving Irina vaccinations? Her medical history makes her the most vulnerable type of person to suffer side effects from them.” “I know that you had told us. But she had been doing well and her pediatrician wanted her to get the shot. She even showed us all this information about it and said it was absolutely safe.”

Irina (not her real name - nor are Alexi’s and Nina’s) is a 10 year old girl who I began treating four years earlier for chronic recurring pneumonias and gastric reflux as a result of an esophageal fistula (an abnormal hole in the esophagus which usually opens into the trachea and is present at birth). In point of fact, I had never met Irina nor her parents face to face. Living too far away for office visits, we had consulted on a consistent basis for several years over the phone. In spite of her delicate constitution, Irina made steady progress over that time until regular consultations were no longer necessary.

This made the news of her latest problem all the more disheartening — especially in the light of the fact that her parents had been duly warned against her vulnerability to the possible side-effects of vaccinations.

If this were the only story I have to tell about vaccine related illness, perhaps it wouldn’t disturb me so much. But it isn’t. This week a woman related to me how she developed chronic fatigue syndrome within weeks of a rubella vaccine. Two weeks before that I saw a 13 month old child who broke out with eczema within days of his first immunizations. The pediatrician swore there was no connection and insisted that the child continue with the series of scheduled shots. After each subsequent vaccination, the eczema would flare up again and his mother would be reassured that it had nothing to do with the shots. Now, unless he is lathered in cortisone creams, his intolerably itching and burning skin condition rages out of control.

Day in and day out, these stories are so commonplace in my practice. And that doesn’t include the patients who, although not consciously aware of it, have a hidden “vaccine connection” as a factor in their illness which becomes apparent either through careful review of their medical history or by energetic testing such as electro-dermal screening.

One would think that these complications would be generallly recognized by the medical establishment. Instead, they are either dismissed as an acceptable rate of “collateral damage” or, more frequentely” pointedly denied. Patients and parents of patients suspicious that a vaccination has caused a medical problem rarely are taken seriously.

But there is clear data that indicates otherwise. For instance, Dr. J. Bart Classen, an immunologist working at his own private laboratory, has presented data showing that, in his words, “80% of cases of insulin dependent diabetes in children who have received multiple vaccines starting after 2 month of life.”

Classen made a public presentation September 11, 2000 - of all dates - revealing that his research showed “causal relationship between many different vaccines and the development of insulin diabetes. “1 The data indicated that it was not a problem with a specific vaccine per se, but was connected with a broad range of them such as pertussis, mumps, rubella, hepatitis B, hemophilus influenza and others. This indicates that the entire concept of immunization shots needs to be reconsidered. What makes the problem even more insidious is that his data indicated it may take 4 or more years after the vaccination for people to develop vaccine induced diabetes.

And now in the wake of our concern over biological terrorism we are faced with the spectra a host of other vaccinations such as smallpox and anthrax being forced on us. Several persons have already died from heart attacks after receiving the smallpox vaccine. And that is surely only the tip of the iceberg.

Nearly 4 years ago, the Dr. Classen tesified in front of the Committee on Government Reform of the United States House of Representatives that his research indicated “an increased risk of autoimmunity following immunization in the military and the link between vaccines and diabetes.”2

How long will it be until the “see no evil, hear no evil” attitude toward vaccinations of most medical authorities is replaced with the clear recognition that they pose a severe threat to the well being of a large number of people. This is especially, the true of the most vulnerable and valuable segment of our population — the immunologically undeveloped infants who on the receiving end of an ever increasing number of vaccine insults.

1. http://www.vaccines.net 2. Ibid

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SMALLPOX & OTHER POISONS — ll

The notion that vaccinations are the magic bullet of preventative medicine is deeply ingrained in both philosophy of the public hygiene establishment and the public imagination. When there is a perceived threat from any biological agent, the implementation of preventative vaccinations is often the first - and perhaps only - strategy that is either suggested or enacted.

Yet, there is far too little recognition that we are paying a price for our reliance on this strategy. There are widespread side effects associated with the ever-increasing number of vaccinations that have become part of the standard healthcare protocol for infants, children, the elderly, and military personnel.

The deleterious side effects go far beyond the acute distress, sometimes fatal, that develop in a relatively small percentage of immunized persons. There is evidence that vaccinations compromise our immune and nervous systems, leading to increased incidence of autoimmune disease, behavioral disorders and mental impairment. Research has linked diabetes, rheumatism, autism and other conditions to vaccinations. Recent reports of several deaths from heart attacks suffered after smallpox vaccinations suggest that the cardiovascular system is not immune from similar damaging consequences.

How much of a “vaccination load” can the immune system bear? The numbers of suggested vaccinations keeps on growing every year. The three or four childhood vaccinations of my youth have blossomed into many times that number. Over the past few years, vaccinating for various strains of hepatitis has become standard, vaccinating for various forms of the flu has become an annual autumnal ritual amongst the geriatric population and our concern with a terrorist attack using biological agents such as anthrax or smallpox has once again stimulated renewed interest in adding yet another series to the regimen. No doubt, a vaccine for SARS is in the pipeline...

It is easy to dismiss the negative consequences of vaccines as the inevitable collateral damage, a necessary evil so to speak, associated with a successful public hygiene policy. Yet, the widespread and severe nature of these side effects suggests that this policy is perhaps neither successful nor wise, and that the risks may outweigh the benefits. In other words, the possibility of conferred immunity is too high a price to pay for the long term - and, in some cases, immediate - problems associated with vaccinations.

Consider the case of Kathy (nor her real name), a 26-year-old woman who consulted with me in the fall of 2002. She has been diagnosed with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and fibromyalgia, suffering from joint and muscle pains, inability to concentrate, disturbed sleep, and recurring respiratory infections for over 2 years.

Her problems are clearly related to a vaccination for hepatitis C. The day after receiving the shot, Kathy had for the first time what she refers to a ‘seizure’. In her own words, she described the experience thus: “I know they are coming and I lose the ability to focus on anything. I begin to feel numb. This numbness passes through me, from my nose to my back, from my shoulders down my arms and fingers. It goes into my lips. The right side of my body will start shaking first and I’ll need to lie down and just concentrate on my breathing”. This used to occur several times a day, but with time had diminished in frequency. Along with these phenomena, Kathy also developed an inflamed liver with internal bleeding.

It was after the resolution of the acute liver inflammation and hemorrhage that the chronic symptoms of fatigue, pain, respiratory infection and so on began. Fortunately, in Kathy’s case, she has responded well so far to a regimen of homeopathic cleansing where quite literally the information and energetic grip of the vaccines on her system has been neutralized and the related toxins expunged from her body. The process is by no means completed, but many of her most troubling symptoms have abated.

Although there are healthcare practitioners who, through various protocols involving homeopathics, vitamin and mineral supplementation, diet, botanical medicines and other modalities, are able to assist people who have suffered the negative consequences of vaccinations, their efforts are no match for the size and depth of the problem.

For one, the number of practitioners is miniscule in comparison to the number of persons affected by the vaccinations. Secondly, the general population is for the most part unaware that these remedial therapies exist and, to a great extent, unaware that there is a connection between the problems they or their children suffer and the vaccinations that caused them.

This situation will not change unless several things happen. People on the front lines of the healthcare delivery system - healthcare providers of every type - need to understand how serious the problem is, how widespread it is and learn to recognize it in individual cases. Only then will the “hear no evil, see no evil” attitude of denial in the medical profession begin to disappear.

Secondly, the coercive tactics of the medical establishment to force infants, school aged children, healthcare works and the elderly to be vaccinated needs to stop. No mother ought to be scolded, belittled or otherwise made to feel guilty for questioning the wisdom of vaccinations for her child. People, both professional and layperson alike, need to be educated about the pros and cons in order to make informed recommendations and decisions.

As a corollary, the grip of the pharmaceutical industry, which obviously has a very strong economic incentive to encourage widespread immunization campaigns, must be loosened. Of course, immunizations are only one aspect of the much large issue concerning the undue influence of drug companies on the way medicine is currently practiced in this country.

Finally, it is important for us to recognize that true preventive medicine does not necessarily rely on this prophylactic tinkering with our immune system that has so many known and unknown consequences. Proper hygiene, nutrition, and lifestyle, along with cohesive family and societal structures are the foundations upon which health is preserved and disease avoided.

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Slippery Elm

A while back I saw a patient on an acute basis who was coughing up a lot of fresh blood for about a week. Although it wasn’t the first time in her life that she had experienced this symptom, it had never lasted this long and the amount of blood had never been this heavy. Needless to say, coughing up significant amounts of blood is a pretty serious thing and I wanted her to have a diagnostic work-up done. For a number of years, she had been going through menopause and also had separated from her husband 6 months earlier. So, her symptoms of night sweats and low appetite with a subsequent loss of weight were not unusual in that context. But with fresh blood apparently coming out of her lungs, they took on another meaning – or more accurately, one of two meanings: cancer or tuberculosis.

Alarmed at what seemed the most likely possibilities, I encouraged her to get a diagnostic work-up as soon as possible and wanted to give something to soothe her throat since it had become rather raw from the coughing. Beyond that, I didn’t want to begin any treatment until the diagnosis was clearer.

Not yet having done the comprehensive consultation necessary to decide on a deep acting constitutional homeopathic remedy and not wanting to suppress her symptoms with a local or symptomatic remedy, I decided to use an herbal approach for the throat and wait for the diagnostic results.

To this end, it occurred to me that a commonly used an herb native to North America about which coincidentally, or maybe not so coincidentally, I had just be reading.

The Red Elm tree, a relative of the American Elm otherwise known as Indian Elm, Moose Elm or Gray Elm, had long been highly valued by both Native Americans and the European settlers for a number of purposes, such as the construction of baskets, kettles, canoes and homes, as a food as well as a food preservative, and as a medicine. Nutritional and medicinal preparations use the tree use the inner bark, and are known as ‘Slippery Elm’. The bark is peeled from the tree in long strips and the outer layers then shaved off; the mucilaginous inner bark, which is about 1/8 to 1/4 inch thick, is then dried and put away for use.

In the 1830’s a European traveler to the New World described how he saw witnessed Slipper Elm being used: “The bark, if chewed or softened for a moment in water, … dissolves into a viscous slime, and is found very useful in dressing wounds, as it is cooling, and allays the inflammation. It is said to have been applied, in powder, with success in cholera, and is now apothecaries' shops. A teaspoonful of this bark, in boiling water, makes a very useful beverage, which is sweetened with sugar, and has the same effect as linseed."

The plant was also researched and adopted by American homeopaths in the 19th century, but was considered to be only a minor remedy with limited scope of action for certain cases that exhibited symptoms like numbness, tingling and pain in the arms and legs.

The Native Americans and the herbalists who subsequently learned from them considered it a very powerful healing agent, applicable for numerous conditions and for all sorts of persons including infants, pregnant women and the elderly.

Its viscous nature noted above is due to high mucilage content. Mucilage, produced by most plants to one degree or another, is a gelatinous substance that contains protein and polysaccharides and is similar to plant gums, and has demulcent properties. Herbalists use Demulcents, - the word derives from the Latin demulcere, "caress"- are used by herbalists for their ‘calming’ properties because they form a soothing film over mucous membrane, relieving pain and inflammation of the membrane.

Slippery elm is a demulcent par excellence and it was for this action that it occurred to me to suggest it to the patient in order to soothe the irritation in her throat. Of course, there are many other mucous membranes throughout the body such as the intestinal and urinary tracts, and lungs which all respond favorably to it’s properties.

In addition to being a demulcent, Slippery Elm is also quite nutritious, easily tolerated by those with compromised digestion, and is considered a “survival food” that reportedly was eaten by Revolutionary War soldiers lost in the woods. It is a wonderful food for poorly nourished infants, invalids, aged persons, or any cases where a person may be unable to eat due to lack of appetite, nausea or weakness.

In modern times, Slippery Elm has become an invaluable aid for people undergoing radiation and chemo- therapies. Not only does it soothe the tissues irritated by the treatments, but it also can antidote the common digestive side-effects such as constipation, diarrhea and nausea.

In larger doses, Slippery Elm acts like a bulking agent to promote bowel motions. In smaller quantities, it calms the intestines down, stopping diarrhea. It ought to be noted, though, that since it absorbs large amounts of water, anyone taking Slippery Elm needs to also increase water consumption.

Another common use of Slippery Elm is as an expectorant, that is, as an agent to promote the discharge of mucous from the respiratory tract. It is widely used from phlegmy coughs and any number of inflammations or infections of the bronchi and lungs where phlegm needs to be raised and cleared.

Back to the patient who I had suspected her of having tuberculosis or lung cancer, my hope was that while awaiting a diagnosis the Slippery Elm would merely sooth her throat that had become quite irritated from all the coughing. But the effect far exceeded expectations. Her throat did feel better, but the bleeding stopped, the coughing stopped and her menopausal symptoms like heat flashes and dryness cleared up in short order.

Fortunately, it turned out that the results were negative for both the TB and the cancer and it was surmised that perhaps the bleeding was in fact due to damage to the lining of the throat due to all the coughing. That would make sense of the efficacy of the Slippery Elm in stopping the bleeding, and its well known effect as an expectorant might explain why the coughing stopped altogether. But the action on the hormonal system is still something of a mystery.

Be that as it may, needless to say both of us were quite relieved at the results of both the testing and the Slippery Elm prescription. Since the patient was now without symptoms, she elected not to follow up with the suggestion of the medical doctor to visit a throat specialist, and instead, opted to just continue taking the Slipper Elm for a while longer.

One of the appealing characteristics of this herb is that it can be thought of and consumed as food, not merely a medicine. In the ancient Chinese medical texts, it is written that the purest and highest form of therapy comes from our food and that it is only in the ‘degenerate modern times’ (meaning 3 or 4 thousand years ago) that mankind has become so weak as to need specialized medicines. Although we have come to think of Slippery Elm as an herbal preparation, it could just as well be thought of as a wonderful form of nourishment.

Here are some ways to prepare Slippery Elm, variations of the same basic recipe:

1. Mix one teaspoon of the powder and mix well with same amount of honey or syrup. Add one pint of boiling water, soya milk, nut milk, or cow’s milk. Slowly mix as you add the liquid.

2. Put 2 –3 Tablespoons of the bark powder in 16 ounces of cold water for 6-8 hours, then heat slowly, being careful not to boil. Stir constantly while heating. Strain and drink.

3. Add 1/4 cup of slippery elm bark powder to 2 cups of cold water. Let stand 30 minutes. Slowly heat mixture for 5 minutes, gently stirring to prevent clumping. Let cool, and add sweetener such as honey (highly nutritious) and any spice that appeals to the person. Add peppermint leaves for their cooling action to lungs, ginger root to increase circulation, apple juice in place of water, rosemary leaves for their antioxidant properties. If constipation is a problem, try adding a pinch of clove, fennel or ginger.

3. Slippery Elm Food is generally made by mixing a teaspoonful of the powder into a thin and perfectly smooth paste with cold water and then pouring on a pint of boiling water, steadily stirring meanwhile. It can, if desired, be flavoured with cinnamon, nutmeg or lemon rind.

4. Another mode of preparation is to beat up an egg with a teaspoonful of the powdered bark, pouring boiling milk over it and sweetening it.

5. Slippery elm "gruel": Slowly add fresh, cold water, a little at a time, to the finely powdered bark. Stir until the mixture reaches the consistency of a thick porridge. Sweeten with honey and add cinnamon and ginger to taste. Refrigerate unused portions. Milk may also be used in place of water.

6. In cases where they may be unable to eat due to lack of appetite, nausea or weakness, this may be an option. One to three teaspoons of the powdered inner bark can be added to oatmeal and taken as a food.