A couple of 2009 "News" Stories I Disagree With

Don’t believe everything you read in the paper or see on the news.

The media seems to have a way of spinning things so that people end up being mis-informed about things.

Its as if some people on the planet that don’t want us to be healthy and free of fear will tell us just about anything to get us to avoid things that are good for us.
Is it the drug companies? Could be.
Government? Maybe.

Rather than focus on Conspiracy Theories though, I will just add a subject to my blog about media mis-information. I won’t get into the H1N1 flu thing in this post, but aside from that there have been two very big news stories that I feel have misinformed people in 2009 and I would like to share a different take on them with you.

The first example is organics. In the summertime there was a huge news story about organics. In the story it was saying that after extensive testing, there was no point in buying organic and paying the extra money because it wasn’t more nutritious.

I don’t know about you, but I buy organic for what it does NOT have, not just for what it does. It often tastes better, but that is just my opinion.

I buy it because it doesn’t have all the pesticides and poisons in it. It is not sprayed with chemicals, nor do the farmers use chemical fertilizers. I don’t care if its more (or even less), nutritious. I don’t want to be ingesting any more pesticides than I have to thanks. Even with meat and dairy. I would rather not have all of the growth hormones and antibiotics that go along with non-organic.

In the spring there was a headline that stated “Glucosamine does not help with Arthritis Pain”. I have arthritis. I take glucosamine for the health of my joints. I take glucosamine to help rebuild my joint cartilage ~ or at the very least keep it from degenerating any more. I do not now, nor have I EVER taken glucosamine for pain. I can only assume that the media puts that story out there to get people to stop taking ‘health food’ type ‘medications’. Like I wrote before, I don’t want to get too much into conspiracy theories but why the heck put out misleading information like that. From what I gather, the intent of the media story was to get people to stop “wasting their money” on glucosamine “for pain”. I wonder how many people quit taking it because of that story. Glucosamine can help the joints, even if not the pain.

Would the “powers that be” rather that we be spending money on pain medications and surgeries? Hmmm. Makes you wonder. Me personally, I’d rather take the vitamins that help rebuild the joints whether it stops the pain or not. I’m no doctor, but I personally would rather try and keep my knees from getting worse than just rely on some kind of surgery later in my life.

As for what stops the pain and what is often sold along with glucosamine. MSM. I DO take MSM for the arthritis pain. I have taken it for many years and it works really well. So well in fact, that if I quit taking it for a few days I notice that I have not taken it. I rarely, if ever take pain pills for the arthritis in my knees. I have taken MSM and Glucosamine separately, and for me, its definitely the MSM that stops the pain. Before I started taking Glucosamine, Chondroitin and MSM together I would often have to take many pain pills to be able to cope. If you decide to take MSM, I have found that once it is out of your system (or if it hasn’t been in it yet), it can take a couple of weeks before it starts to work well.

I want to say again, I am no doctor. I am not suggesting you take anything without first talking to your doctor. I just wanted to clear up a couple of things that I saw written in the media that I think is doing a disservice to those of us that are trying to take care of ourselves.