My guest today is Pamela Seefeld, a registered pharmacist who prefers to dispense medicinal plants and other natural substances instead of prescription drugs. Today we’ll be talking about vaccines. I asked Pamela tim address this subject after seeing a scary commercial on TV trying to get grandparents to get a vaccine so they don’t infect their grandchildren. We’ll discuss the dangers and find out when and if they should be used. Pamela is a 1990 graduate of the University of Florida College of Pharmacy, where she studied Pharmacognosy (the study of medicines derived from plants and other natural sources). She has worked as an integrative pharmacist teaching physicians, pharmacists and the general public about the proper use of botanicals. Pamela is the owner of Botanical Resource and Botanical Resource Med Spa in Clearwater, Florida. www.botanicalresource.com

LISTEN TO OTHER SHOWS WITH PAMELA SEEFELD

• Evaluating A Study and Testing a Test
• Seven Deadly Drugs
• The Hidden Dangers Affecting Your Heart and How You Can Protect It Naturally
• What We Can Do About Cancer
• The Power of pH
• How to Protect Your Health From Toxic Mercury Dental Fillings
• Pharmacology 101: How to Use What Pharmacists Know to Take Supplements to Best Advantage
• Are You Heading For Kidney Failure? Natural Remedies Can Help
• How to Keep Your Blood Vessels Open and Flowing With Supplements
• How Inactivity Leads to Illness and Drug Use—And How Exercise Can Get You Off Drugs and into Health
• How to Protect the Environment from Pharmaceutical Pollution by Using Natural Medicinals
• Hidden Toxic Dangers in Common Dietary Supplements
• See More Clearly with Natural Remedies
• Hidden Mental Health Dangers in Common Drugs
• Different Types of Detox
• Getting Off Prescription Drugs with Natural Remedies
• How Natural Remedies Could Have Saved A Life
• Natural Alternatives to Sleeping Pills
• Natural Back Pain Treatment Options That Work
• How Toxics Age Your Body & What You Can Do to Stay Young
• You CAN Lose Weight—Even if You’ve Had Difficulty Losing Weight Before
• Calcium—Is There Really a Deficiency in America?
• It’s Cold and Flu Season—How to Support Your Immune System and Why You Shouldn’t Get a Toxic Flu Shot
• How Eating Fruits and Vegetables Help Your Cells Create Health
• Toxic Psychiatry and How to Have Mental Health Without Drugs
• Why You Should Take Fish Oil and How To Choose the Right One for You
• Medicinal Plants Can Replace Toxic Drugs

TOXIC FREE TALK RADIO
Vaccines: Harmful or Necessary?

Host: Debra Lynn Dadd
Guest: Pamela Seefeld

Date of Broadcast: December 02, 2015

DEBRA: Hi, I’m Debra Lynn Dadd and this is Toxic Free Talk Radio where we talk about how to thrive in a toxic world and live toxic-free. It’s Wednesday, December 2nd. Wow! The year is almost over. It’s Wednesday, December 2nd 2015. And today, we’re going to talk about vaccines, which is something that we haven’t talked about on the show before.

My guest is Pamela Seefeld. She’s on every other Wednesday because she has so much knowledge about drugs and natural alternatives and how things work in the body that we just talk about something new every other week.

She’s a registered pharmacist who prefers to dispense medicinal plants and other natural substances instead of prescription drugs. However, she is a pharmacist. She’s a regular pharmacist. She works in a pharmacy in a hospital and she also works in her natural pharmacy which she owns here in Clearwater, Florida. She works with people all over the country. So if you want to talk to her, you can pick up the phone and call her. We’ll give her number later on the show. But she also is right in the midst of both traditional pharmaceuticals and alternative pharmaceuticals.

So today, we’re going to talk about vaccines with Pamela. Hi Pamela!

Pamela Seefeld: Hi! It’s great to be here.

DEBRA: Yeah, great to have you.

So I asked you to do vaccines as the subject on this show because I was watching television (I do watch television, there’s actually a lot of good stuff on television) and there was an ad for a whooping cough vaccine. It was a very scary ad. It was wanting grandparents, seniors, to get a whooping cough vaccines, so they wouldn’t infect their grandchildren and their grandchildren will die if they got infected.

And then, once that got my attention and we decided to do this show, I saw another one the other night for pneumococcal pneumonia vaccine. I don’t even know what pneumonococcal pneumonia is.

So what is going on now that in addition to these commercials for drugs that make it look either scary or desirable and with all these beautiful music in the background and they tell you all the side effects, that it’s going to kill you, what is going on with advertising vaccines like drugs?

Pamela Seefeld: Well, that’s a good question. What’s happening is vaccines (especially the pneumonococcal penumonia vaccine and the whooping vaccine), there’s a huge a market for these vaccines. So the way that they’re building awareness is by having these ads, these controversial ads that make people all scared. And especially when you’re talking about the whooping cough, it shows the grandparents turning into like wolves as if they’re going to eat their grandchildren. It’s very frightening. It’s basically insinuating that you’re harboring this really dangerous organism and you’re going to kill your grandkids if you don’t do something about it.

These advertising, let’s face it, is meant to motivate people. And if you’re motivated, you’re going to call your doctor and say, “I want this vaccine.”

There’s a lot of money in vaccines. And once the research has already been done and the production is inside the factory, there’s a lot of mark-up. You have to realize you have the pediatric population, they’re all forced to get all these vaccines.

So the adults are an untapped market, right? A certain percentage of the population is pediatric, those people have to get the vaccines.They have no choice. They can’t go to school. That market has already been tapped about. And if you think about it, a lot of people are refusing vaccines for tehir kids, so they have to start looking for somebody else to market to.

And who are they going to market to? The elderly people.That’s an untapped market – and a market that’s very lucrative.

A lot of them have Medicare. Medicare does cover a lot of the vaccines. And even if it doesn’t, there are a lot of retirees that would be willing to shell out the money if there was some sort of a payment that they have to co-pay in order to have these vaccines because they think they’re protecting their family.

DEBRA: Well, tell us what is a vaccine?

Pamela Seefeld: Vaccines, I want to explain something interesting. Vaccines are kind of like homeopathy. Now, homeopathic pharmacy is really what I do. And homeopathy was developed by Samuel Hahnemann in the late 1800s.He was a German doctor. And in the time that he developed homeopathic medicine, they were doing a lot of pretty barbaric stuff in medicine. They were doing leeches and things like that.

He came along and he discovered that like cures like. Basically, when you take a vaccine – this is really important. I use this example when I give a lecture to physicians or to people that are skeptical about homeopathic and the relevance and how well it works. What I’ll do is I’ll mention to them, “Look, people get vaccines all the time and they work. They provide immunity.The reason why a vaccine works is because it has a small amount of causative agent (whatever the vaccine is supposed to be against) that they put in this formula and they give it to you as an injection and basically, they’re inoculating you with a small amount of vaccine.”

What happens is your body makes an immune response to it and that can impart protection where you actually come in contact with the organism.

So that’s how the vaccines work. But I like to think of it as being a good intro into understanding homeopathy. If you don’t believe in homeopathy, you think it’s all bogus, then why are vaccines working? I use that case in point all the time. It makes the people think. They’re like, “Okay, I see what you’re saying.”

I’ll give you an example. In homeopathy, say someone has a lot of histamine and they have rashes and allergies and things, well we treat them with histamine. Low dose histamine is basically inoculating them against it so you don’t have what’s called mass cell degranulation and this massive histaminic release when you come in contact with the cat or the dog or oak trees or whatever they might be allergic to.

So this is a good intro when you think about it. People think, “Well, how would a vaccine work?” it’s exactly the same principles of homeopathic medicine. It’s exactly the same.

DEBRA: So is there any difference between homeopathic medicine and a vaccine?

Pamela Seefeld: Oh, by far…

DEBRA: So what would be the differences?

Pamela Seefeld: With the homeopathic medicine, it’s obviously encompassing a lot of different things. We use plants. We use toxins in some cases, things that work in the body to mimic a certain type of response. When you have a vaccine, all it is is some kind of a carrier fluid and specifically, the causative agent of whatever you’re going against. So say it’s pneumococcal pneumonia, say it’s a whooping cough, say it’s a papillomavirus virus, whatever virus it is, that’s all it contains. It contains nothing else.

And homeopathic remedies, it’s usually a combination of things. Most homeopathic things we use here, I can get injectables, but I don’t use those. They use more of that in Europe. Everything we use here is oral.

DEBRA: Yeah, yeah. So you just put a few drops under your tongue and it’s a very different experience. But what you’re saying is the basic idea of like curing like applies to both.

Pamela Seefeld: It does. And that’s why I like to bring that as an example to your listeners because the people that are listening to this show, they’re going to be possibly more inclined to use homeopathic medicine and use alternatives. I mean,

I’m very busy and I’ve been very successful at doing this and helping people with homeopathics in Europe. In Germany, I know for sure in Germany, they actually cover homeopathic medicines with your health insurance. You can get to the pharmacy, you can get regular medicines or you can get homeopathic and they’ll cover it either way.

So the rest of the world does embrace homeopathy quite a bit. In America, it’s coming around. I think it’s really great because a lot of my clients have done very, very well with taking homeopathic remedies.

But it’s important to know that a vaccine and a homeopathic remedy is kind of somewhat similar as far as their modalities of action. So if somebody doesn’t believe in homeopathic medicine, the best argument to use is that’s how vaccines work.

That’s what a vaccine is, a small amount of a causative agent to elicit a certain type of immune response. It’s important for people to realize that. If you have doubts about homeopathy, you really can’t after you bring that point up for the people.

DEBRA: We’re almost to the break, but tell us what happens in the body when you get a vaccine, the causative agent goes in your body? What happens?

Pamela Seefeld: Your body makes antibodies. Your body sees this foreign entity in the bloodstream and it says, “Oh, my gosh! We need to mount an immune response.” This immune response allows for these antibodies to be formed. So it imparts immunity in that sense. You body thought that it went through an actual infection, but you didn’t.

DEBRA: And so then if you’re exposed to it, say it was a chicken pox vaccine, then if you were exposed to chicken pox, you would not get the chicken pox because you now have an antibody to it?

Pamela Seefeld: Correct! You have antibodies in the bloodstream that are against chicken pox. It’s specific to that strain, you have to realize. But yes, you have impartial immunity.

DEBRA: Great! We need to go to break. But when we come back, well talk more about vaccines with my guest, Pamela Seefeld. She’s a registered pharmacist who prefers to dispense medicine plants and other natural substances. You can go to her website at BotanicalResource.com. You can also call her on the phone. We’ll give her number when we come back.

You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd.

Pamela, why don’t you give your phone number so that people know where to call you?

Pamela Seefeld: Okay, very good. You can call me here at my pharmacy. All consultations are free. I would be glad to help you if you have any questions about the medications you might be taking.

The number here is 727-442-4955. That’s 727-442-4955. I would be most honored to help you and your family with any question you might have.

DEBRA: Yeah, if you have a question about a drug that you’re taking, if you want to get off of a drug, if you want to take a natural remedy for something that’s going on in your body, those are all questions that Pamela can answer very well. She’s very highly respected by doctors here in Clearwater, Florida where I live.

How long have we known each other now? A couple of years I think.

Pamela Seefeld: Yeah, yeah. Absolutely! It’s great.

DEBRA: Yeah! Yeah, yeah. And she’s helped a lot of people. I, in fact, first met her because a friend of mine referred her to me.

Anyway, back to vaccines, it seems like that the idea of vaccine itself just sounds very logical. But why are some people against vaccines?

Pamela Seefeld: Oh, this is a good question. What happened is a lot of the controversy really started with Dr. Andrew Wakefield and he is a British physician. He did some studies and published information, the Study in the British Journal of Medicine. He concluded that he looked at these 12 patients and his statistical of analysis of the data showed that autism was the result of the vaccines that were used on these children.

So there’s been lots of controversy about that. He lost his medical license. There are lots of stories as far as what he did to create it. They tried to recreate his data and they weren’t able to do that. So there was a lot of controversy. But really, it started this movement of non-vaccinations for children because people were scared of autism.

We now know that autism in the past was affecting not as many children as it is today. And we look at this – I mean, I don’t have the statistics off the top of my head. But it was like 1 in 56 kids or something – it’s a lot that have some kind of spectrum disorder. They might not have full autism, but they might have some type of spectrum disorder that’s related to some kind of unknown cause and they don’t really know why there’s this high propensity.

We do know that autism is directly correlated with the age of the father and there’s also infections in utero and a lot of other things. It’s the same thing with schizophrenia. We know that now too.

And actually, with schizophrenia, we now know that schizophrenia is directly related to the bacteria you get from your mother. And if you’re missing some of the vaginal bacteria when you’re born (like in a C-section), you’re going to be at much higher risk for schizophrenia. So it might be bacteria as well.

I don’t think all the answers are there quite yet. This is the problem because it’s overshadowed, the vaccine “hysteria” so to speak.

DEBRA: But there are some things in vaccines that are pretty toxic like mercury and aluminum, some other ingredients that might not be a good idea. Whereas the idea of a vaccine might be okay, what about some of these other additives?

Pamela Seefeld: Excipients, yeah. That’s the right word, yeah.

DEBRA: The excipients in there are controversial. And also, too, the fact that so many vaccines are given in such a small period of time.

So when you have children, you’re launching this immune response with a lot of different infectious agents in a short period of time because a lot of times, we get several vaccines in one visits. I understand why they’re doing that. They have a sequence of vaccines that they need to instill to these kids. I understand all that.

I think really what it comes down to is that I don’t think vaccines are going to necessarily be the one that’s going to be labeled as the cause of a lot of these problems. But I think there’s a lot of things going on in children (and even in adults) today that they just don’t know exactly what’s happening. And their cell signalling bacteria, like I said, are going to the front and foremost that we know are being linked to a lot of different diseases, especially colitis.

If you think about colitis, I mentioned schizophrenia. They’re showing that the bacteria that you have can predict whether you’re going to come down with these diseases.

DEBRA: You know, when I was a child (and I haven’t looked up any data to confirm this, I’m just going on my memory), I don’t know when they started requiring vaccines for children to go to school. But when I was a child, I remember that the big health problem for children was polio. They had posters up of kids in braces and all these things. Every child had to get a polio vaccine. I don’t know if it was required by all, but I remembered going to get the polio vaccine. But I don’t remember getting a lot of other vaccines. So, I don’t know what I actually got. I’m sure I got a polio vaccine.

But just in general, are vaccines being overused?

Pamela Seefeld: Well, that’s a good question. Polio actually has been eradicated from the U.S. very much. But we now know that there are hot spots in Afghanistan and in India and in Pakistan. I’m actually in Rotary International and we do a lot of for raising money with Bill Gates Foundation to try and vaccinate these kids in these poor areas because over there, polio is very debilitating. They still had people there being crippled.

So I don’t want to come out against vaccination in itself. I think that the excipients in some people, I would venture to say (and I may be incorrect, but this is my theory and I think I read this from other people), my theory is that the time at which you receive a vaccine, where your immune system is standing at that particular time does effect the type of response it’s going to launch.

And if you have a vaccine and your immune system is having some problems and it’s not working correctly, I think you’re going to have more chances for adverse effects.

And not only that too, talking about adverse effects. I was looking at one study here that they were talking about just Australian immunizations in the course of the year and what the side effects were, they actually had four deaths and they couldn’t directly attribute it to the vaccine. But I’m telling you that we’re talking about the whole country of Australia. It’s a lot of people. So what percentage?

They couldn’t really directly put it to the vaccine, but these people, maybe they had an anaphylactic reaction or something, but they did report causes of death. And the most common side effects are injection site reactions, rashes, fevers, dizziness and light-headedness. And you would expect that these would happen. You expect rashes because they’re probably reacting in a poor manner. And if a person’s immune system is compromised at the time or they have some other issues (maybe like we were talking about the excipients, the other factors in there), they might have a reaction.

DEBRA: Yeah. Yeah, that’s interesting. Well, we need to go to break. But when we come back, I have a question for you about the immune system and vaccine.

You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Pamela Seefeld. She’s a registered pharmacist who also dispenses natural remedies. She’s on every other Wednesday here on Toxic Free Talk Radio because she has so much information. We’ll be right back!

So, my question is I first got interested in toxic chemicals because I had an immune system problem where toxic chemicals had made my immune system in effective. And so what you said about the condition of the immune system affecting how vaccine might respond in the body is very real to me. And I also know that a lot of toxic chemicals that we’re exposed to in our daily lives can affect our immune systems and damage our immune systems. And then I’m thinking about the excipients in the vaccines adding even more toxic stuff like mercury and formaldehyde and aluminum. It just seems like a whole lot of other factors going on rather than just a healthy body getting just a vaccine.

Pamela Seefeld: That’s exactly right. And what we have to look at is the baseline properties of your own immune system and if it’s suppressed. And this is another theory, I guess, what I’m saying. People are under a lot of stress today. I’m not just saying that just in general. But we know that chronic stress depresses the immune system pretty much a lot.

I’m just trying to think back. When I was little, I think things were a little simpler time. Maybe I don’t want to play Pollyanna here. But I’m just trying to say that today, people have financial problems, a lot more homelessness, a lot more chronic illness. And also too, I might mention, that we have a lot of viruses they’re finding in the blood supply that we didn’t really know existed before. They don’t even have names for them yet.

So there are a lot of other things going on that are affecting our immune system. And chronic stress and chronic depravation of sleep, I think in the past, people slept a lot more, there are a lot of other things that are going on that I don’t know if we can peg it on one particular problem. But you’re exactly right, the chronic exposure to chemicals, toxic chemicals, contaminants in our food and environmental contaminants in the air and in the water are definitely affecting people’s health and they’re probably affecting their immune system.

Actually, what I do, because I have to get the flu shot where I work at the hospital. It’s required. I drink the Body Anew while they’re giving me the shot.

DEBRA: Oh, good for you.

Pamela Seefeld: Yeah! I tell all my clients to do that. You want to do the detox at the same time.

DEBRA: Yeah, I think that that’s a good idea. Somebody else was telling me the other day just in an email, she said, “When

I’m exposed to something, I take…” – and I’m not going to mention what it is because I haven’t researched it. But if she has an exposure, she knows to take something. And so I think that’s a great idea if you have to do something like if you’re forced to take a vaccine.

Now, weren’t you telling me that – what was it about people that are in hospitals, everybody gets vaccinated?

Pamela Seefeld: That’s exactly right. Part of the mandate for the hospital— and I really think it possibly even in ObamaCare, which I could be wrong. What has happened is these vaccines are offered to the patients, everybody gets the vaccine. It’s basically an automatically launched order. The doctor doesn’t even have to order it. It’s an automatic launched order. It’s for influenza vaccine and pneumococcal pneumonia. People are getting these vaccines when they’re in the hospitals.

And a lot of it is all the hospitals in the country get money based on what percentage of the population they vaccinate because while they’re there, they’re kind of like a captive audience. They can get these people all vaccinated before they go out into the communities. This is in the guise of, “Okay, we don’t want them to spread illness. There’d be an influenza outbreak. We don’t want there to be a pneumococcal pneumonia outbreak.”

So it’s kind of like a herd vaccination. That’s what they call it. They’re trying to get as many people as they possibly can. So they try and keep their vaccination rates up I’m sure close to the nineties. I’m not even sure what the benchmark is. But each place will have their own benchmark as far as their goal.

And I know that once they reach a certain threshold of people being vaccinated, there’s a financial incentive involved that is directly paid to the hospital.

DEBRA: Okay! So aside from the polio vaccine when I mentioned earlier many, many years ago, I haven’t been vaccinated for anything. I don’t get flu shots, none of those things. I’m not perfectly healthy. But the things that are going wrong with my body are not things that you can get vaccines for. So, it’s not from lack of vaccines. I usually go through the winter and I don’t get the flu.

But I’m also living in a very non-toxic home and probably control my exposure to toxic chemical as much or more than anybody that I know myself personally.

And so I’m wondering if – what it looks like to me is that vaccines are being used as a way for people to not get an illness instead of all of us doing things that promote health. You see what I’m saying?

Pamela Seefeld: Oh, yeah. No, absolutely. And that would be the ideal situation. But I can tell you just from my personal experience being in pharmacy (as long as I’ve been in pharmacy and also having my alternative pharmacy here) that a lot of people, we know what’s good for us, but we don’t always do what’s right. And a lot of people, they’re not sleeping enough, they’re around sick people, they don’t take care of themselves. Maybe they’re prescribed vitamins or medications, but they don’t take vitamins.

And so really, in the hospital setting and in the community hospital setting, we see the same people coming back all the time. Every month, they’re back or every two weeks, they’re back. They’re the same people coming back because they didn’t take care of their infection or they didn’t care of whatever they’re supposed to do. So this readmission rate, and really, I think the flu –

And I’ll tell you about the flu. I had the flu shot two years ago and I got influenza A and I got the bird flu at the same time from working in the E.R. I was actually in the hospital for two days and I was very sick. So even if you have the vaccine, they’re guessing which strains are going to be popular. And some years, they’re totally off and they really have no idea whether they’re picking the right vaccine excipients to have immunity.

So it’s not that the vaccines are bad. I don’t know if I agree so much with the hospitals putting everybody being vaccinated and I don’t think the patients understands sometimes (but they do need to have consent and everything). But the idea that every person needst to be vaccinated while they’re there is important to the country, but it seems to be that they’re not really thinking about the consquences of the shot when they’re there. [Inaudible 00:34:02] that everybody gets it.

DEBRA: Well, I would just like to say before we go to break that I think that there’s so much attention on vaccines and not enough promotion of doing the things that strengthen your immune system. And then if we were to all learn what those things are and do those things, there would be much less need for a vaccine and we could then choose whether we wanted to have it or not.

But still, having a strong immune system is the thing that really protects you against these things, vaccine or not.

Pamela Seefeld: That’s exactly right. Absolutely!

DEBRA: That’s what we need to be having, strong immune systems.
We need to go to break. But when we come back, we’re going to talk about flu shots. We’ll be right back.

One of the things that I found interesting about Pamela because I’ve been talking with her for a couple of years is that she will recommend a drug if she thinks that that’s the right thing to do. But she will also tell you what the dangers are of drugs and she will also find something natural that will heal your body instead of just alleviating symptoms.

So if you want to talk to her, her phone number is…

Pamela Seefeld: 727-442-4955. That’s 727-442-4955.

DEBRA: Thank you. Okay! So, let’s talk about flu shots. We actually did a show I think it was last year or the year before. I have to see how long we’ve been doing these shows. Maybe we’ve only been doing it for a year. But anyway, I know we did one on colds and flu. We talked about flu shots and things that you can do to help your immune system. Remember that show?

Pamela Seefeld: Yeah!

DEBRA: And so I will actually put a link to that show next to the description of this show on ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com so that those two can go together. But in this last segment, let’s just talk about the flu shot as a vaccine.

Pamela Seefeld: Okay, good. The flu shot as a vaccine, like I said, we’re trying to have a large portion of the population be vaccinated. This is the government’s goal, which is try and prevent against the flu. I thought it was kind of interesting. We were talking before prior to the break about what can you do as a personal responsibilty to try and help your body be more acutely aware and be able to launch an immune response. The flu shot is not necessary for a great majority of people.

And really, we know certain things that depress the immune system, lack of sleep, chronic stress, adrenal fatigue. You know the gamut…

DEBRA: Toxic chemicals…

Pamela Seefeld: Exactly! No, toxic chemicals. And during the break, I went and looked on the Library of Medicine. There’s a brand new study that was published concerning the flu shot in the Journal of Epidemics (it’s just coming out this month actually) where they did a 10-year performance looking at influenza and looking at the populations and what puts you more at risk for having influenza.

It looks like the regression analysis shows that somebody, of course, that has a chronic disease (say someone who has COPD or just some kind of chronic disease), they’re going to be more at risk for it because their immune system is already depressed. Being with a child and living with children, being female, smoking and pets at home were predictors that influenza may be a possibility.

But get this. The things that can prevent and help your risk assessment go down and help your immune system (and these were associated with less chance of flu) were participating in sports, walking, bicycling or some kind of locomation, moving around a lot, a person that’s very, very busy.

It’s not even necessarily cardio exercise, but if someone is active and moving around a lot (and let’s just focus on exercise for one second), what happens when we work out? What happens in the body? Well, what happens is these white blood cells, normally, if you were just sitting down, watching TV or on the computer, sometimes, they hang out. And this is just the way I term it. They’re sticking to the sides of the blood vessels and they’re not really doing anything. They’re laying low because there’s nothing going on.

So if that happens, what’s going on is you have less circulating white blood cells to recognize and attack an invader (a virus, a bacteria or whatever it might be). That’s why sedentariness is associated with poor outcomes for disease.

And when you exercise, say you take a brisk walk or you’re doing housework, you’re running around and you’re really working up a sweat, when you are active, what happens is we get what’s called ‘demargination of the white blood cells’. And this demargination basically means that you get this transient increase in white blood cell activity because these cells that were loafing around and not doing anything and hanging out to the side of the blood vessels, they’re forced because of the blood flow to start being active.

That would explain why activity is associated with a better immune response and a better immune system and in turn, less chance of getting the flu or getting any kind of illness that you might come in contact with. So there are things that people can do that help the body other than just taking vaccines. if you’re in poor health, vaccines aren’t going to do anything.

DEBRA: Yeah. I was a looking at an article because it’s this time of year when it’s flu shots and vaccines and things and so I get a lot of this in my email inbox. One was talking about that vaccines have very low level of effectiveness. It was something like 18% effective. That’s very small. That’s very, very small. All these people are taking it and only 18% are actually getting any kind of help.

This is the way I think. I think that the best thing to do is to just be as healthy as possible to do those things because they’re the things that are always recommended for good health anyway – exercise, drink water, eat good food, staying away from toxic chemicals. Well, people aren’t always saying that yet, but they will. They will. I’m working on it.

So, to just recognize that there’s a basic handful of things that are going to give you good health. And if you do those things, then that’s your vaccine. That’s the thing that’s protecting you from anything. You don’t need to have a specific vaccine because you’re protected from everything.

Pamela Seefeld: That’s exactly right. And it’s important to say this. We were talking about it’s your own responsibility in managing your care. And like I said, these people, I feel bad for them. It’s very, very sad. But constantly, the same people are coming to the hospital every month, every month, same people. It’s not about brain.

Especially people that are smoking, there’s a high percentage of the population that ends up in the hospital repeatedly from smoking. And that is a preventable problem.

DEBRA: It is.

Pamela Seefeld: Smoking, not just all the lives that were lost. If you think about Europe, they even have more people that smoke over there. But the effects on your immune system, the effects on your respiratory system, even people with COPD and asthma, smoking is robbing a lot of people out of quality life.

And actually, there are new studies that came out not that long ago talking about – this is just maybe local to Florida. But certain areas of Florida have a higher morbidity/mortality than being in areas that are more affluent. And what they were saying is that like in Pinellas County where we live in, if you lived in Pinellas County, you have a very good chance of making it to 77 years old. But if you live in Hernando or Date County, you lose 14 years off your life.

DEBRA: What?! That’s a lot!

Pamela Seefeld: Fourteen years…

DEBRA: That’s a lot!

Pamela Seefeld: Fourteen years, yes. Fourteen years. They went to the epidemiologist that are in charge of the health department in Hernando and Date Counties, they said, “Well, why do you think there’s such a huge skew. Basically, that’s a big difference in your lifespan that’s being cut short up there” and what they found is those areas have high rates of smoking and high rates of readmission of people coming into the hospitals and just not taking care of themselves.

So, just smoking alone and also, just diet. The food that the people eat in these areas, it’s a poorer group of people, lower socioeconomic, they don’t eat as well. These are directly correlated to behaviors and the fact that if they just would eat a little bit better diet, have a little bit more activity – and the smoking was a big thing! Apparently, those areas have a lot of people smoking – much more than Pinnelas County.

You think about it, 14 years. If you told somebody you were going to die 14 years younger than you normally would just by where you’re living or what you’re eating and what are the bad effects of your smoking, I think this would change a lot of people’s behavior.

DEBRA: I think so too. I mean, 77 minus 14, that’s 63. I mean, there’s a lot of people who are approachign 63 and they could be living longer.

Pamela Seefeld: This is the thing. The statistics were in the paper, but I don’t even know if that’s even brought up to the general population so much. I think people need to realize that they can literally peg it down to the zip code you live in.

And what is the difference between the people that are living in a better zip code versus a zip code where there’s more impoverishment, they probably eat better. They probably do some exercise. They maybe have some better stress-reduction activities. It really comes down to the things you do every day.

I always say it’s not like a marathon.It’s all the little things you do every day that add up. You’re trying to eat right, you’re trying to sleep enough, detoxing the toxic chemicals out of your body. I can’t emphasize it enough.

I know you’re a big fan of Zeolite. I think it’s an excellent product. I’m a big fan of Body Anew. And there’s also a detox product that…

DEBRA: I take both of them.

Pamela Seefeld: Yes. Yeah, that’s good. That’s perfect. And there’s a detox product by Desbio that’s called Comprehensive Detox and that’s even stronger. I think of Body Anew as the kindergarten and then the Desbio Comprehensive Detox which has six different bottles, that’s almost like the college. That’s even a lot stronger.

DEBRA: Oh, I have to look at that. I have to look at that.

Pamela Seefeld: No, it’s excellent! But detoxing and getting the chemicals out of your body, those are things that you can do something about – and the fact that smoking really would prevent a lot of this. And the fact is they just found that just in our local area. If you think about Florida, if you think about Florida, that’s pretty statistically significant, the fact that if you lived in Date or Hernando County, you would have 14 years off your life just from doing that. I think it’s unbelievable!

DEBRA: Yeah. It’s amazing. It’s just amazing. And I think that people should take those statistics to heart.

I was talking to somebody on the phone this morning and I had to give my birth date. I kind of joked, “I’m so old.” She knew exactly how old I am because she was looking at my birthday and then she said, “Oh, you don’t sound old at all.”

Pamela Seefeld: You don’t look your age at all. You look great. But you know what? What you’re doing, it shows.

DEBRA: It does show.

Pamela Seefeld: If you tell people to take care of themselves, I know some people might feel overwhelmed. “Oh, I just don’t have the… I’m tired. I don’t have a lot of money. I’m working a lot.” It’s the little things you do every day.

Even like the detox, putting some drops in your water doesn’t take a whole lot of time.

DEBRA: No, it doesn’t. And it doesn’t even cost that much money.

Anyway, we’re coming to the end of our time here today. Thank you so much. Why don’t you give your phone number again really fast.

Pamela Seefeld: Yes, absolutely. If there are any questions I can help you with, please call me here at my pharmacy. It’s 727-442-4955. That’s 727-442-4955. I’ll be very honored and happy to help your family.

DEBRA: Good. Thank you so much.

Pamela Seefeld: Thank you.

DEBRA: You’ve been listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. You can find out more at ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com. Be well!

My guest today is Pamela Seefeld, a registered pharmacist who prefers to dispense medicinal plants and other natural substances instead of prescription drugs. We’ll be talking about seven popular drugs that are toxic enough to kill, and which natural remedies you can take instead. Pamela has more than 25 years experience choosing and selling top quality medicinal supplements, so she’s seen it all. Pamela is a 1990 graduate of the University of Florida College of Pharmacy, where she studied Pharmacognosy (the study of medicines derived from plants and other natural sources). She has worked as an integrative pharmacist teaching physicians, pharmacists and the general public about the proper use of botanicals. She is also a grant reviewer for NIH in Washington D.C. and the owner of Botanical Resource and Botanical Resource Med Spa in Clearwater, Florida. www.botanicalresource.com

LISTEN TO OTHER SHOWS WITH PAMELA SEEFELD

• Vaccines: Harmful or Necessary?
• Evaluating A Study and Testing a Test
• The Hidden Dangers Affecting Your Heart and How You Can Protect It Naturally
• What We Can Do About Cancer
• The Power of pH
• How to Protect Your Health From Toxic Mercury Dental Fillings
• Pharmacology 101: How to Use What Pharmacists Know to Take Supplements to Best Advantage
• Are You Heading For Kidney Failure? Natural Remedies Can Help
• How to Keep Your Blood Vessels Open and Flowing With Supplements
• How Inactivity Leads to Illness and Drug Use—And How Exercise Can Get You Off Drugs and into Health
• How to Protect the Environment from Pharmaceutical Pollution by Using Natural Medicinals
• Hidden Toxic Dangers in Common Dietary Supplements
• See More Clearly with Natural Remedies
• Hidden Mental Health Dangers in Common Drugs
• Different Types of Detox
• Getting Off Prescription Drugs with Natural Remedies
• How Natural Remedies Could Have Saved A Life
• Natural Alternatives to Sleeping Pills
• Natural Back Pain Treatment Options That Work
• How Toxics Age Your Body & What You Can Do to Stay Young
• You CAN Lose Weight—Even if You’ve Had Difficulty Losing Weight Before
• Calcium—Is There Really a Deficiency in America?
• It’s Cold and Flu Season—How to Support Your Immune System and Why You Shouldn’t Get a Toxic Flu Shot
• How Eating Fruits and Vegetables Help Your Cells Create Health
• Toxic Psychiatry and How to Have Mental Health Without Drugs
• Why You Should Take Fish Oil and How To Choose the Right One for You
• Medicinal Plants Can Replace Toxic Drugs

TOXIC FREE TALK RADIO
Seven Deadly Drugs

Host: Debra Lynn Dadd
Guest: Pamela Seefeld

Date of Broadcast: October 07, 2015

DEBRA: Hi, I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. This is Toxic Free Talk Radio where we talk about how to thrive in a toxic world and live toxic-free.

It is Wednesday, October 7th 2015. I’m here in Clearwater, Florida. It’s a beautiful autumn day. The temperature is 80° right now. But in the morning and at night, it’s 70° instead of like in the summer time, really, it’s 85° and 90° all day long and all night long. So this is just like a breath of fresh air. Literally, I can open the windows now. Yehey!

Anyway, I just wanted to say that while I was listening to the music, the opening music, I was sitting here exercising my arms. That’s not something I usually do. I’ve been doing more exercise. I was listening to the music and I was just moving my arms up and down and out to the sides and just kind of moving around. It’s actually important. This is a toxics issue. I want to say this before I bring on my guest today.

In order for your body to process the toxic chemicals that you’re exposed to, it needs to go through your body’s detox system and your lymph system. You may have heard the term ‘lymph nodes’. But your lymph is this whole system that carries things around your body. It’s the waste products carrier. It’s like the garbage system. It takes out the garbage. And that’s how the toxic chemicals move into your detox system.

But your lymph system does not have a pump like your heart. Your heart has a pump that pumps the blood throughout your body, but the lymph system does not. And the only way that you can get your lymph to move is by moving your body.

And so the more you can move even if you’re just sitting here listening to the opening music of the show, move around. Move your arms, move your legs, jump around, whatever. And that’s a good way to just get in a minute of exercise there that will help your body get those toxic chemicals to and through the detox system and out of your body. That’s my tip for today.

So today, we’re going to talk about seven deadly drugs. I don’t even know what they are. It’s every other Wednesday today, so my guest is Pamela Seefeld. She’s a registered pharmacist who prefers to dispense medicinal plants and other natural substances instead of prescription drugs. She’s going to tell us about those seven deadly drugs, what they are and what we can take instead to do what those drugs do. Hi

Pamela!

PAMELA SEEFELD: Hi! It’s great to be here.

DEBRA: Thank you. It’s great to have you. So where are we starting today with seven deadly drugs.

PAMELA SEEFELD: Okay! So, I looked at the common drugs that people are using and I decided that I’m going to start with Tylenol.

DEBRA: Tylenol?

PAMELA SEEFELD: Tylenol, yes.

DEBRA: I would never have thought that was a deadly drug, so it’s good we’re talking about it.

PAMELA SEEFELD: This is why the drugs I picked are going to be of interest to everybody because these are commonly used things that we see and they’re very ubiquitous. They’re everywhere.

So acetaminophen, the reason why it’s bad is it causes liver necrosis. It can be even small amounts. In the hospital, we check to see. There are a lot of pain relievers that people use that have narcotics along with acetaminophen because the narcotic will work through it essentially acting as a pain reliever. It dulls the perception of your pain (let’s say you’ve had an accident or you’ve had surgery).

The acetaminophen blocks the peripheral or the outside of the central nervous system like all the nerving endings in your hands, your feet and your body. So when you give the combination of the two, you get dual type of pain relief.

And so those drugs are commonly used. You should think of like Percocet and Vicodin and things like that.

So the Tylenol component, if you start reaching over 4 grams a day of that, it definitely will lead to liver necrosis. But there are a lot of people that even will pop a Tylenol here or there, an acetaminophen, I should say, here or there like if they have a headache. And then if they’re drinking at the same time (say they had a few cocktails at dinner), these things can be accumulative.

What I found when I did the research on this (I knew this because a lot of people take acetaminophen for pain) acetaminophen poisoning accounts for approximately one half of all cases of acute liver failure in the United States and Great Britain today. That’s all the liver failure.

If you look at acute liver failure and people that are in liver failure, it’s half of the cases. It’s not the drinkers. It’s the people who are taking acetaminophen. Sometimes, they don’t realize that they’re reaching toxic levels. They might have pain problems, maybe they’ve had a back injury, something to that effect. They’ve been taking this. It doesn’t take very long for it to have accumulative effects.

And I actually know, a friend of mine, his son was only 38 and he died from acetaminophen poisoning. And it wasn’t an overdose. He actually ended up in liver failure and they didn’t find a transplant for him. But it was from the acetaminophen. He was popping only one or two pills a week. He was popping when he had a headache. Then they found that he was on liver failure subsequently. He passed away now.

I call this deadly and the reason why is because yeah, you have the Tylenol overdoses and you have these situations where people are taking excessive amounts. But you need to realize that the accumulative effect of acetaminophen in the liver is pretty severe.

DEBRA: So, you mentioned one or two, but then you also said – what was it, four grams?

PAMELA SEEFELD: Correct, four grams. If someone is in the hospital, we look to calculate – sometimes, maybe the doctors won’t maybe pick up on that. Maybe someone is post-operative, they’ve had some surgery. They don’t want IV narcotics because maybe there’s been a history of abuse or maybe the person doesn’t want shots or maybe they’re going to be leaving that day, they’re ambulatory, they’ll give them maybe Vicodin or Percocet or one of these combinations that has either hydrocodon or oxycodone with acetaminophen. We have to make sure that they go under four grams a day because if they go over four grams a day, you’re definitely looking at a liver problem.

And actually, from the studies, what you see, four grams a day is very lenient. I mean, really, people really shouldn’t be even getting more than three because the toxicity is pretty bad.

DEBRA: So how many pills if you were just taking acetaminophen not mixed with anything else for a headache?

PAMELA SEEFELD: Well, it depends.

DEBRA: How many pills is that?

PAMELA SEEFELD: Three twenty-five would be a regular acetaminophen and 500 is an extra strength. So there are some combination products that have the 500 and some that have the 325. Actually, at the hospital where I work, we have removed all the products with the 500 because there were just too many chances that the person was going to end up in an acetaminophen situation. In those cases, those products are gone. We don’t even have them anymore.

What happens if somebody puts an order in the computer and it has too much Tylenol, we can’t automatically change it. We’ve got to call.

There’s a lot of phonecalls and sometimes people don’t call back. You know what I’m saying? So what happened is we just took them off.

They’re not even there anymore. That’s it!

DEBRA: But how many pills? What did you say, 325? That’s 325 mg?

PAMELA SEEFELD: Exactly! So if you’re looking at 325, that would be 12 pills in a day. But you’d be surprised because a lot of times, their order say, “One to two tablets every four hours as needed for pain.” Well then, it’s pretty easy to get up to that.

DEBRA: It is pretty easy to get up to that. But as you’ve said, you don’t need to be taking that much before you have liver failure. And so if you’re taking two tablets four times a day, how many? That’s 12, isn’t it?

PAMELA SEEFELD: Exactly! And even in an acute situation, say you have a back injury. You were fine before, you hurt your back, you lifted something or you were in a car accident, this happens quite frequently. And then they’ve given you this combination and you’re taking it every single day for like a week or so, well, you’ve already gotten to that point where you’ve got some accumulative toxicity. You have to always look too because the liver processes all the drugs, but it also processes alcohol.

So say a person gets a headache and they’ve had a few cocktails at dinner. And then they take Tylenol (acetaminophen) and then they go to bed. Those two are accumulatively toxic to the liver. Then say they took a Pepsid or a Zantac because they had an upset stomach, those work on the liver and those can cause toxicity too.

Say they’re on a cholesterol lowering medicine like Sendostatin. This is actually what happens with a lot of people. They tell me they drink wine at night. That’s fine. Then I see that they’re on a cholesterol lowering medicine. Then they take a medication for pain. I’m telling them, “You’re going to end up in liver failure. You’ve got to do something and cut some of these things out and take some herbs to protect the liver.” And that’s where milk thistle and Schisandra chinensis come in because those two can protect the hepatocyte from toxic injury from these substances.

So somebody that takes acetaminophen on a regular basis or drinks wine or beer on a regularbasis especially if they’re on a cholesterol lowering medicine, they need to be on something to protect themselves.

DEBRA: Yeah, that’s good. We need to go to break in just a few seconds. But I can tell there’s so much new information here. We’re going to have to get through each drug a little faster.

PAMELA SEEFELD: Okay, that’s fine. That’s fine, absolutely.

DEBRA: We’ve only gotten through one in the first 15 minutes.

PAMELA SEEFELD: This is a pretty dangerous one, so I wanted to spend a lot of time on it.

DEBRA: Yeah, okay. So in the segment, we’ll do two. And then, we’ll do two. And then, we’ll do two. And then we’ll get through seven.

How’s that?

PAMELA SEEFELD: Perfect!

DEBRA: Okay, good. You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Pamela Seefeld. She’s a registered pharmacist who prefers to dispense medicinal plants and other natural substances instead of prescription drugs. She has her own lovely shop called Botanical Resource here in Clearwater, Florida. You can go to her website at BotanicalResource.com. We’ll be right back.

You can go to her website at BotanicalResource.com.

Okay, Pamela, what’s deadly drug number two?

PAMELA SEEFELD: Okay! Deadly drug number two is Ibuprofen, Naproxen. All these drugs are called collectively NSAIDS or non-steroidal anti-inflammatory agents. And what NSAIDs do (and that’s just some of the examples), those are commonly used as pain relievers.

And what’s bad about these is they are a risk for acute kidney injury – and pretty severely.

You’ve seen this a lot with athletes where they’ll be using Ibuprofen and Naproxen quite a bit and then all of a sudden, they’ll end up with kidney failure and they don’t realize why. This takes very small amounts as well to be damaging. And it looks like it’s not necessarily just one NSAID. This whole drug class is associated with acute kidney injury and kidney failure in some instances. So it’s really important to realize that if you’re taking these things on a regular basis.

And they also include Celebrex, Meloxicam is really popular, Voltaren. These are drugs that are prescribed quite a bit for injury, but also just for arthritis. So you want to definitely not be using these on a continual basis because of the kidney issues. It causes kidney injury.

And let me explain to your listeners too. If anybody has had any acute kidney injury from any of these products, using the Detox 1 is highly effective in reversing this particular types of injury.

DEBRA: And that Detox 1 is a homeopathic remedy that people can get from you.

PAMELA SEEFELD: Well, the Detox 1 is what I would recommend and it’s from DesBio. That really would work especially to clean up the kidneys and repair the nephrones.

I would say, if someone’s creatinine has been elevated at all from Ibuprofen or Naproxen, they need to do something to repair. Let me tell you, kidney and liver failure, we don’t have anything in regular science and regular pharmacy for that.

DEBRA: Right! But what I’m saying is if people can call you and get the Detox 1?

PAMELA SEEFELD: Oh, yeah. I apologize, I apologize.

DEBRA: That’s what I meant?

PAMELA SEEFELD: I’m sorry, I apologize.

DEBRA: As long as we’re talking about that, why don’t you give your phone number?

PAMELA SEEFELD: The number here in my pharmacy, it’s Botanical Resource, is 727-442-4955. That’s 727-442-4955. I would be very honored to help you and your family in any of these situations have happened and also, like I explained, about the hepatic and the liver failure as well. I will be glad to help with that as well.

DEBRA: Yes. And she does free consultation. So please feel free to call her and she’s happy to talk to you about whatever is going on with drugs or your body. Whatever your symptoms are, she can help you with some natural and homeopathic remedies. And so, it really is okay to call Pamela and she will talk to you very happily for free. So give her a call. The number again is…

PAMELA SEEFELD: 727-442-4955. I’d be greatly honored to help you or your family. And also, if you’re on these medicine and you want to get off of them, especially the acetaminophen and narcotic combinations, I can help you transition off of those as well. I know those are very hard especially we’re talking about narcotic combinations.

The addiction potential really starts kicking in less than eight to ten days. It doesn’t take very long. People don’t realize they’ve become dependent in such a short period of time. It’s just very horrible.

DEBRA: And we watch commercials for these drugs on TV all day long. We get in this mindset that they must be safe, they’re on TV and they’re deadly.

So what’s number three?

PAMELA SEEFELD: Number three is Paxil. The reason why I picked Paxil is Paxil is an anti-depressant, but it has a lot of dangers associated with it. I want to explain.

Paxil, it induces its own metaboolism. So what this means when something is inducing its own metabolism, its autometabolism, we know that a person can come to a toxic level at a very short period of time.

And the new data was just released (a study in the British Journal of Medicine this month) that the original studies of Paxil in adolescents were skewed and the data was collected inappropriately and incorrectly and maybe was falsely misleading because Paxil is associated with increased suicide risk especially because of the fact that it inhibits its own metabolism. People, a lot of time, were becoming psychotic and suicidal on Paxil – and this still can happen. And the reason why is because the drug level would be 200 times what they’re expecting to be in the brain and so the person becomes psychotic.

So maybe that even should be number one. If anybody is on Paxil or if they’re contemplating on giving it to adolescents, the new studies show that all of the benefits that were previously shown had been retracted. And this was just Wall Street Journal like two days ago. They had a big article about it. It’s very, very deadly.

So if you’re taking Paxil, especially if you have any young people taking Paxil, the chance of the person becoming suicidal and pyschotic is pretty high. If it inhibits cell metabolism, what’s happening is each drug dose is making more of the drug dose in the brain and it’s a very dangerous combination. I would tell people that of all the SSRIs, that’s probably the worst, especially for young person.

And I want to just briefly talk about SSRIs for a brief second.

DEBRA: And what does SSRI stand for?

PAMELA SEEFELD: It’s serotonin reuptake inhibitor. It’s a very common drug. Paxil is one of them and Prozac and Zoloft. They’re very, very common drugs.

In the last 20 years when they really started becoming popular, we saw that in the past – I’m just going to divert for a second about gun violence and all these shootings that are happening in society, mass shootings and terrible things like that. What happens is when people take serotonin reuptake inhibitors, they lose their inhibitions and their consciousness and their impulse control. This is the problem.

If you look at what’s correlated in society over the last 20 years when we’re starting to see all these mass shootings, all these terrible things, just these random acts of violence that they can’t explain why people are doing this, when you start using these drugs and have millions and millions of people taking this, their perception of impulse when it comes to violence, many times, it’s altered.

This can explain why all of a sudden this is happening. It’s not necessarily, “Are we controlling guns? Or aren’t we controlling guns?” It’s about the fact that you have mass amounts of the population, maybe up to 20% or more on these medicines, and their impulse control for some of these deadly things is gone.

DEBRA: Wow!

PAMELA SEEFELD: That’s what’s really happening. And it correlates with this time period, right? Before these drugs were here, this wasn’t a problem. And now it is. You have to realize too, this stuff, even if you’re not taking this, this serotonin reuptake inhibitors, remnants of this are in the water. We have them in the water supply.

DEBRA: Yeah, yeah.

PAMELA SEEFELD: This is kind of sideline, but I think people really need to ponder this and think. This is a direct correlation. This isn’t like some crazy science.

DEBRA: No, I understand what you’re saying. Exposure to these things affects the world in so many ways. And that definitely is a deadly association. Wow!

We need to go to break. When we come back, we’ll continue with our list of seven deadly drugs with my guest, Pamela Seefeld, registered pharmacist. Her natural pharmacy is at BotanicalResource.com. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. This is the Toxic Free Talk Radio. We’ll be right back.

So Pamela, let’s go on with now deadly drug number four.

PAMELA SEEFELD: Yes, deadly drug number four is Metformin. I’ll explain what Metformin is. Metformin is an old drug. It’s been around a long time. it’s the first line therapy for people that have diabetes, type II diabetes particularly. It’s used a lot. Metformin can cause a condition called lactic acidosis. I’m going to explain what that is.

It changes the way lactic acid is produced in the body and handled. And it can happen in a very short period of time. What I want to point out is that a lot of people that are diabetics, they are on this medication (maybe 500 mg. twice a day) and what happens when sugar has been elevated over a period of time, your kidney function gets affected by the sugar damaging the glomerulus and the cells in the kidney.

So, a lot of times, people that have had type II diabetes and even the new ones that have had it for a while and are on Metformin, their serum creatinine (which is a number that is indicative of the kidney function) starts increasing. And I see this a lot of time when people come to the hospital. That’s when we catch it. The doctors are really bad about adjusting for kidney problems the medications.

And actually, as a man, if your serum creatinine is greater than 1.5 or a female, serum creatinine is greater than 1.4, it’s contraindicated.

They can’t take it at all. And I can’t tell you how many times I’m working as a pharmacist and I see people on this medicine and they do not meet the criteria. In fact, it’s very dangerous. Their creatining is elevated to those numbers and the doctors still has them on the Metformin.

This is something for all of the listeners. If anybody is on this drug and they have any questions about how to interpret their numbers, I will be most glad to help you figure out if this drug is damaging your kidneys.

DEBRA: Yeah, that’s a big concern. This is another one where people are just given this and no information about how it might damage your kidneys. My doctor gave me Metformin, “Oh, it’s okay.”

PAMELA SEEFELD: Well, yeah, this is what I’m saying. This is the problem. Say you go to a regular retail pharmacy, they don’t have your blood work, they don’t have your numbers. So, if the doctor doesn’t catch it and when you get it filled at the CVS or the Walgreens or whatever, they don’t see these numbers. So basically, there’s a lot of blind dispensing going on. That’s the way I look at it. They don’t have any of the information. They’re just sending it out. You’re going to be very surprised, what I see as a practitioner that even people coming in here that are on Metformin that have type II diabetes, their kidney function is not compatible with this medication. It’s contraindicated and they should never have been given it in the first place.

And you have to think. I don’t know the exact number of people, how many Americans are on Metformin, but it’s millions, I’m sure. I mean, it’s a lot of people.

DEBRA: Yeah, yeah. Wow! So number five.

PAMELA SEEFELD: Number five is iron, ferrous sulfate, ferrous gluconate. I’ll explain about iron.

Iron, the reason why it’s dangerous – and I thought this is kind of interesting because I was even bringing this up to some of my customers the other day. People don’t realize how dangerous iron is. It’s one of the highest toxic things that you can have in your medicine cabinet and especially for children and adolescents, young kids especially.

That’s why when you see any products that contain over 30 mg. of iron or more per dosage, they have to be packaged in a blister pack. They can’t be in a full bottle. The most dangerous overdose for infants and children is iron. It only takes probably about four pills of 30 mg. to kill a small child.

So if you have iron salt, any iron salts, hanging around your house, if your dog eats it, if your children get into it, if the grandchildren get into it, it’s very, very deadly. It’s neurotoxic and causes seizures and death. This is one of these things that you might have in your medicine cabinet and not even think twice about it.

DEBRA: Well, it’s a vitamin.

PAMELA SEEFELD: That’s exactly right. That’s exactly right. Say someone has some low-grade ongoing anemia, a lot of the ones that the doctors are going to give you are 150 mg. It may only take one. It’s that deadly.

And especially, I have to bring up pets too, because if someone drops an iron pill on the floor and the dog eats it, it’s probably going to die.

So you have to realize that this is something important. So if you actually have a high iron formula or if you’re taking a lot of iron, this is something that little kids, pets, these should be locked up far away from any of these kids or the animals to get a hold of this. You know dogs, if you drop something on the floor, they eat it right away. If you’re counting out your vitamins, you have iron and you have dogs or cats, you need to be very, very cognizant of this.

I’m sure there’s a lot of people listening today that have never heard this before, but that’s very, very important. That’s why I call it deadly because it’s just a small dosage, a seemingly innocuous product can lead to lethal consequences.

DEBRA: Well, what can people take instead of an iron pill? If they have iron-poor blood, do you remember those commercials on TV where they talk about ‘iron-poor blood’?

PAMELA SEEFELD: Yes, yes. Actually, you know what I use? I don’t use as many iron tablets because iron causes severe constipation for a lot of people. It causes these hard stools and cramping. It’s not tolerated very well. I actually use a homeopathic iron and I have reverse a lot of anemia with that. It works great. It’s liquid. You put it in your detox bottle, you just sip it through the day and it works. The regular hemoglobin and hematocrits, those numbers look better, but it looks on your deep iron stores, your ferritin levels as well. The regular iron, a lot of times, won’t reach those deep muscle stores.

The iron mix, I use that a lot of time. I sell quite a bit of that. It’s inexpensive. It works really well and it’s a liquid. It doesn’t constipate. You just put in the water. One or two months on it, you go get your blood work rechecked and it comes back in a nice level. That’s really, really a great product. I would say it’s much better tolerated and much safer than having iron pills around the house. I would not.

If you have kids visiting or living there, you really don’t want to have those. It’s not just worth taking the chance. If a babysitter or somebody else is watching the kids, they might not realize the deadly consequences of just a few pills that the kids get into.

DEBRA: Yeah. One of the things that is impressing me today about what you’re talking about – actually, the way I got the idea for this show was because you got email advertisements all the time for all these things. An email came in and it said something about the “seven deadly drugs.” I don’t even remember what they were selling. I looked to see what they thought the seven deadly drugs were and they were drugs that I recognized.

But what you’re telling us today is from your viewpoint, these are drugs that everybody thinks are safe. And that’s what makes them even more deadly, the fact that people could overdose on them and not know. As you said, drop an iron pill on the floor and the dog or baby just reaches over and picks it up and that’s it!

We’re just not aware of these things, that a lot of the things that are toxic that we talk about in this show are cumulative and so you’re exposed to them over and over and then you get sick. There’s also what are called ‘acute poisons’. These definitely fall into that category. It’s not necessarily that you take one and you’re going to die. But it’s easy to take enough that you could end up having these problems over time.

And they’re so common. They’re so common and people think they’re safe. That’s the thing that’s so amazing to me.

So when we come back, we’re going to heal the last two of the seven deadly drugs. My guest today is Pamela Seefeld. Her website is BotanicalResource.com. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. This is Toxic Free Talk Radio. We’ll be right back.

And Pamela, before we go on, since this is the last segment, why don’t you give your phone number again in case anybody who’s listening wants to call you for a free consultation.

PAMELA SEEFELD: Yeah, absolutely. I’m very glad. It’s Botanical Resource. You can reach me here at 727-442-4955. That’s 727442-4955. I’ll be glad to answer any questions you might have about your supplements, your prescriptions, if you’re intested in getting off of some of your prescription, if there are some side effects you’re suspecting that you’re having from your prescriptions and also some homeopathic supplements in place of what you’re taking. I will be glad to adjust these for you.

All follow-ups are free as well. We keep [inaudible 00:39:46]. It’s very professional. So I’ll be very glad to help you or your family.

DEBRA: Yes, she is very professional. I take remedies that she suggested to me. She’s very well-respected here in Clearwater, Florida by patients and doctors. My medical doctor said, “If Pamela tells you to take it, take it.” She gives lectures to doctors and things like that.

Anyway, so we have two more deadly drugs. Number six?

PAMELA SEEFELD: Number six is Lamisil. This is a prescription. It’s called terbinafine. It’s one of these things if you have toenail fungus, you know the fungus beneath your toes that you go to the doctor, they give you Lamicil, they give you the treatment. You have to take one pill a day usually for several weeks. This can cause severe liver failure. It’s highly hepatotoxic. So if you’re going to the doctor and you’re asking for this particular prescription because you want to take the oral drug to eliminate the fungus that grows underneath the nail, this drug is very, very dangerous. I would tell people to really avoid it. You should be using topical things.

And actually, what works really well for that particular stuff is standardized oil of oregano. It’s an anti-fungal in itself. And the whole idea behind taking something orally is because you need to come up to the nail bed. They have a lot of these tea tree things and stuff you paint on.

That stuff doesn’t really work because it’s under the nail. It needs to come from the bloodstream and bring the medicine up. So oil of oregano capsules work very good for that.

And I also use medical-grade Andrographis to treat that instead. The fungus under the nail is a common problem, but taking the oral medications is highly suspect in causing liver failure. That’s one of those that you’ll go to the doctor’s, he’ll give you the pill and then he won’t really warn you about the liver failure. The thing with liver problems is that once they show up, they don’t have anything to fix it. It’s one of these all-or-nothing sort of problems. That’s really dangerous.

But these are the common problems. I mean, what precentage of the population has a fungus under their nail and they want to get their nail beds looking better. Maybe they want to have a French manicure and they don’t want to have the discoloration so they go to the doctor and they get the prescription. You need to be wary of using that.

DEBRA: I’ve been listening to everything you’ve been saying today obviously. But what I’m thinking is that most of the things that you’ve talked about, I thought, “Oh, damage the liver and/or the kidneys” and the liver and the kidneys are the primary detox organs in our bodies.

So here’s the question. Even if people are not having a deadly effect from these drugs, wouldn’t the liver and kidneys be weakened and it would be more difficult for them to detox other toxic substances that we might be being exposed to.

PAMELA SEEFELD: Oh, by far. And the big thing is it’s cumulative. Maybe you have a glass of wine and you’ve had a Tylenol because you had a really bad headache and you had a really hard day at work. And then you’ve been treating your toenail fungus with this Lamisil. And maybe at the same time, you took some Ibuprofen the day before, maybe you’re on Metformin. Let’s start simple, but all these things together are a big problem.

DEBRA: Well, not only the drugs altogether, but you take these and then you go pump gas in your car or get this nail polish or hair spray or lie in bed and get a formaldehyde exposure from your permanent press bedsheets. All these drugs are contributing to the overall toxic load of your body.

PAMELA SEEFELD: That’s exactly right. I’m a big advocate. If I tell people to do everything, you really need to be doing the Body Anew to clean the chemicals out of your day. I do it every single day to just take this stuff out.

And you really need to be on medical-grade fish oil, maybe a mood-elevating one. And you need to be on folic acid. Those two things protect the heart and the brain. A lot of people will be taking piles and piles of supplements, but if you’re not taking some of those basic things, you’re really missing the boat because you’re going to end up either with heart disease or cancer. That’s what most people are at risk for really == and the carcinogenic exposure.

But also, the fact that if your liver gets damaged, you’re really not metabolizing and conjugating all these chemicals. So if your liver has problems, whatever exposure you have to fat-soluble chemicals and pesticides, it’s going to be double-fold because your body is not going to process it.

DEBRA: That’s exactly right!

PAMELA SEEFELD: That’s the problem. It’s going to store it and cause cancer and other things. It’s one of these things that you want to stay on top of. Especially the people that are listening are probably health-oriented to begin with, they’re interested in trying to improve their health, you need to look at this from a logical standpoint.

DEBRA: Yeah. Okay, good. So number seven.

PAMELA SEEFELD: Number seven is proton pump inhibitors. I would say Protonics, Prilosec, Nexium, Dilatant. These are the drugs that you see a lot. A lot of people are on Omeprazole, Prilosec or Pantoprazole which is Protonics. They’re on these drugs. They block stomach acids. They block all the stomach acids.

In the past, we used to use Tagamet and Pepsid and Zantac and these drugs. Those were called H2 blockers. They block some of the acid, but some of the acids are still there. Now, we use something that blocks all the acid and the problem with that is that you’re not absorbing calcium, you’re not absorbing iron and you’re not absorbing magnesium. Acid needs to be present. So if you want to give somebody brittle bones and anemia, this is a good way to do it.

DEBRA: Wow! Wow!

PAMELA SEEFELD: And a lot of people will go into the hospital for a routine situation. They put everybody on this automatically just to protect against the stress ulcer because you’re stressed when you’re in the hospital. And then they get discharged on it and then they’re on it forever.

Unless you have Barrett’s esophagus or something very dangerous (and there are homeopathic things that work better than this ta twe use), a lot of people are on these things to control stomach acid and they don’t realize that they’re going to end up with brittle bones. I can’t tell you how many times I see elderly ladies that are customers of mine that they’re on one of these medicines and at the same time, they’re taking calcium (well, they’re not absorbing it) and they’re on a medication because of brittle bones, a prescription medication like a biphosphanate.

I’m thinking, “Well, the reason you have brittle bones are because you’re on these drugs. You need to tell the doctor if he’s prescribing this that the anemia you have and the brittle bones and the osteoporosis/osteopenia, those problems are directly as a result because you’re not absorbing any of these nutrients.”

DEBRA: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. There’s just so many things. I know it can seem really overwhelming at times. But I know for me that I’ve spent a lot of time studying this stuff and it’s easier for all of you listening and reading my things because it takes a lot of research to get to knowing these things. And then, we’re giving you this information, so it’s easier for you to apply than if we weren’t here having already done this research for you.

But I can tell you that over time, it just looks simpler and simpler to me. For example, I just don’t take prescription drugs, I don’t take over-the-counter drugs, that’s it. I mean, I haven’t done that in 25 years. And all the things, you just move over to a different way of looking at things and what your options are, Everything that I do is using natural remedies if I even need to take the remedy because you can do a lot to improve your health with diet and exercise. I know that that sounds like everybody says that, but it’s really true.

PAMELA SEEFELD: Oh, most definitely. So, what I tell people, the diet and exercise makes a big difference. And also, you’re taking the chemicals out on a daily basis and protecting your kidney and liver function. So if you use these things, you need to be cognizant of that.

And there are herbs that can damage this as well. Not only herbs are safe either. There are things that can damage the kidney and the liver.

But if there’s any question about what you’re taking, just give me a call and I will go over it. It’s a short-time conversation that can maybe make a big difference as far as your long-term health.

These things are preventable to some degree. There are some viruses and things can attack the kidney and the liver and the heart. Things happens, I understand that. But a lot of times, these things could’ve been avoided if someone had the knowledge beforehand to try and do something about it.

DEBRA: Right! And we really need to be looking at this. One of the things that I’ve observed is that when you don’t know about toxics, then people are doing things like taking vitamins, maybe eating natural food, but not organic food, they’re not eating out of cans anymore, but they’re eating fresh lettuce from the grocery store, for example, they’re going and getting their check-ups and they’re going to exercise class and all these things, which in kind of the mainstream way are the positive things that people are told to do for their health, taking vitamins, et cetera.

But on the other hand, you’ve got this big onslaught of toxic stuff that is working against your health in consumer products and drugs just all over the place. And what I found in my own life and people that I work with is that if you just start by removing the toxics, remove the toxic drugs, remove the toxic chemicals and then do the things that support your body, it’s kind of like if you’re trying to empty the bath tub and you keep dumping water into it, you’re not going to empty the bath tub.

PAMELA SEEFELD: That’s exactly right. And the thing that I was talking about, the cumulative toxicity, is very real and very present and very dangerous. I don’t think people can realize enough they could do all these things for their health, they’re doing all these food choices, sleeping right, exercising, whatever it may be, drinking filtered water, and then when it comes down to it, they’re taking maybe even supplements that can cause damage to either the kidneys or the liver…

DEBRA: Pamela, I have to interrupt you because the music is going to start in just a second. So thank you so much.

PAMELA SEEFELD: Absolutely! Thank you.

DEBRA: You’re welcome. You can go to BotanicalResource.com. You can call up Pamela and she will help you figure this out. This is Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. Be well.