I was watching TV over the weekend and was shocked by a very frightening commercial. I see commercials frequently that truly bend, squeeze, and mutilate the truth in order to sell a product, but this one was the equivalent of assassination. It should have been entitled "Let's kill some cats."

IAMS pet food is advertising a cat treat/food that they claim cat's love and is good for them. It contains meat, vegetables, grain, and fruit. That's the recipe for a deadly cocktail. Why not just give your kitty arsenic? Cats are obligate carnivores. An obligate carnivore has a system that is designed for the digestion and utilization of animal protein only, anything else is poison to a cat. I repeat, anything other than animal protein is a poison to an obligate carnivore. The pet food companies tried this about a decade ago, and kidney failure killed millions of family pets. No one ever owned up to the devastation, and to the best of my knowledge it never made the popular press. I don't think anyone really knows how many dogs were killed by tainted food from companies using a melamine product from China, but it was too many, whatever the number.

Our pets are members of our families and I think we need to ask who's regulating these industries who assassinate our family pets with relative impunity. If you buy IAMS pet food from your Vet, stop immediately and tell him/her how angry you are about this. You may get some guff from the Vet because they believe what the Detail people (salesmen) tell them, so check this 'obligate carnivore' status out for yourself on Google so you're absolutely loaded with information when you confront. When will enough be enough?

I buy all my beef and chicken from Sky View Farm. I have placed the information on my website under the Referral Network. Sky View Farm, GodsAcre@ckt.net, is owned by Bill and Sheri Noffke. I understand that Bill is a Pastor, but that may be incorrect because I have had all of my dealings with his wife, Sheri. If you've ever met someone and just knew they were good people, that's the energy you get when you meet Sheri Noffke... you just know.

In particular I enjoy their newsletter, which comes over the email. If you want to receive it, you can get on the list by emailing them at the above email address. The newsletter is something I look forward to receiving each week and think it's a good example of "Life on the farm." It is an ongoing story of their small farm operation on a daily and weekly basis, from getting the steers to slaughter, gathering eggs, and milking the goats and cows. They even teach cheese and bread making class out of their home for those who are interested. If you start receiving the newsletter I think you'll love it and soon become a customer, as so many of my patients already have. I believe Bill and Sheri and the kids treat their animals the way God's creatures were meant to be treated, and the result is healthy food. Enough said.

Benign Prostatic Hypertrophy (BPH) affects 75% of men over the age of 45. Of course, medicine is primarily into treatment of the symptom and ignores the more obvious underlying causes. I'd like to share with you what I feel is the best overall treatment of this condition, and then what I do at the office to eliminate the problem in most of my male patients complaining of BPH.

What Is BPH?
The prostate starts off in the embryo as the vestigial uterus. In males it drops into position around the base of the urethra. The urethra carries urine from the urinary bladder through the penis to the outside. When the prostate becomes swollen it reduces the force of the flow of urination; can makes starting and stopping of the stream more difficult; often affects sexual performance negatively; sometimes creates an inability to delay urination; and most often produces an increase in nocturnal urination. Getting up more than once a night to urinate is an important early warning sign of BPH. If you are experiencing these symptoms, a prostate exam and laboratory testing such as a prostate specific antigen test (PSA) is the medically recommended procedure. If the BPH diagnosis is made, drugs are usually the first approach. If the PSA is high, a biopsy is usually suggested, as BPH is a precursor of prostate cancer. All drugs have side effects, including those to manage the initi al stages of BPH, and when taken long term pose an ever increasing risk. Natural products provide a safer and less expensive approach.

How To Reduce BPH With Supplements
In many European countries, Saw Palmetto is a treatment of choice by the medical community. Saw Palmetto is a saw grass derivative that reduces the inflammation and swelling of the prostate allowing more normal function. Treatment with Saw Palmetto should start with a push dose, or high initial dose. I usually suggest four of the 500mg capsules a day if nightly urination amounts to three or less trips. I usually suggest eight of the 500mg caps a day if nightly urination amounts to 4 or more trips. Symptoms will usually lessen quickly, and when only one trip a night becomes the norm, it's time to start cutting back on the dosage a little at a time. When the symptoms start to re-occur it means you have cut the dosage back too far, and you increase it a little at a time until you are only up to urinate once a night.

Restful sleep is critical to good health, and sleep interrupted by multiple nightly excursions to the toilet has a significant negative impact on ones total health. BPH therefore contributes to a growing number of health problems attributed to aging as a result of insufficient rest.

Other helpful products for the prostate are Iodine/iodide supplements. Many men with BPH also have a clinical or sub-clinical under active thyroid problem (hypo-thyroidism). The thyroid and the prostate are the two thirstiest organs for iodine, and any shortage of that mineral will cause problems. If you browse through my previous newsletters, you will find a test for Iodine sufficiencythat is cheap and can be easily done at home.

Zinc is also an important mineral for optimum prostate function. If you have white spots on your fingernails it suggests that a zinc deficiency is present. Usually 30mg of supplemental zinca day for a month or two will correct this imbalance. Prostate glandularis another supplement that is specific for BPH. Three to six tablets a day has proven helpful in restoring normalcy to the prostate.

To reduce the inflammation of BPH, unsaturated fatty acids in the form of Borage Oil, Flax Seed Oil, or fish oil as Omega 3 EPA is helpful. A good indicator of oil soluble nutrient deficiency is dryness of the skin, especially between the ankles and the knees. I usually suggest that patients start taking one supplement a day for two weeks, and if the skin is still dry to increase it. Then every two weeks increase the dosage until the skin is no longer flaky, and that will be your maintenance dose.

These are the things that can control BPH successfully, for most people without medication. However, even more important is eliminating some of the causative factors behind this epidemic problem.

Getting At Some Of The Cause
Obviously, BPH has a multitude of contributing causes. Some are easily manageable and some are not, so let's discuss the most important ones of the more easily manageable underlying causes. As you all know, I'm an old man, and had BPH symptoms myself many, many years ago. I controlled the problem with the supplements suggested above until I learned what I'm about to share with you next. It took me a few years of eating correctly before I could wean myself off the supplements, but now I seldom get up to urinate at night and I no longer take any supplemental help for the problem.

The main source of BPH, and subsequently the cancer that follows, in my opinion, gathered from a fairly thorough perusal of the research some two decades ago when I was in the midst of symptoms, is sex hormones. In particular, female steroid sex hormones. It has been the policy of the huge agribusiness farms to put female steroid sex hormones (estrogens) into the feed for steers, chickens, and swine so they will continue to eat heartily and put on weight even under the most inhumane conditions... and it works. Unfortunately, the astonishing rise in breast, uterine, ovarian, and prostate cancer coincides with this agribusiness policy. All of these aforementioned organs have an abundance of receptor sites for these hormones and are therefore extremely susceptible to any increases in estrogen, phytoestrogen, or pseudo-estrogen load. Add to this the increased use of soy products, which are loaded with phytoestrogens, and plastics which ablate pseudo-estrogens, and we have a consi derable increase in steroid hormone body burden.

My Advice To You And Your Family...
Discontinue all soy products (I have written newsletters on this topic), and stop eating food prepared, stored, or packaged in plastic. Start using glass bottles for your water and especially baby water and formula. Probably most importantly, start buying grass fed and grass finished beef, and natural free range chicken. I haven't researched an avenue for clean pork as it is something I gave up years ago. Nevertheless, if you're a pork fan, find a farmer that raises a small herd and buy direct. I purchase my meat, and I eat a lot of it, from Sky View Farm. I have a brief article about them in this newsletter.