Dr. Albert Y. Leung

Todos nacemos con un cuerpo que funciona bien preparado para nuestra supervivencia.  Hay todo en la tierra para que nos mantengamos vivos y sanos.  Desde que los humanos aparecieron en este planeta hace incontables años, hemos aprendido qué comer o evitar para nuestra supervivencia.  Cuando estamos enfermos, hemos aprendido qué ingerir para recuperarnos y mantenernos vivos. Durante generaciones desde tiempos antiguos también hemos desarrollado un sistema de salud que nos dice qué es beneficioso tomar y qué es venenoso para evitar.  Debido a esto, todavía estamos aquí hoy.  Nuestra supervivencia no depende de nuevos productos químicos desconocidos hechos de productos químicos tóxicos de la gasolina que puedan aliviar temporalmente nuestra enfermedad, pero eventualmente, al tratar de “mejorarlos”, abusaríamos del proceso, lo que resultaría en la creación de más problemas y enfermedades.  Esto ha terminado en un ciclo vicioso.  Los codiciosos adoradores del dinero podrían no haberlo significado, o ser codiciosos, al principio.  Pero una vez que se estableció este ciclo vicioso, han sucumbido a una de nuestras debilidades humanas y silenciosamente lo han dejado ser, sabiendo muy bien que es una calle de un solo sentido cuesta abajo para los demás, excepto para ellos mismos.  Estos hombres de negocios parecían haber abrazado el mal; cuantos más fármacos tóxicos, más dinero fluirá a su manera.  Al diablo con el resto de nosotros.  ¿Por qué? Tal vez no tengan hijos y nietos o simplemente, compasión.  ¿O tal vez su religión o valor familiar trabaja en contra de todos los demás?  Desearía que alguien con credibilidad y pericia en estos asuntos escribiera algo comprensible para el público en general y nos dijera cómo podría haber sucedido esto.  Primero de efedrina a morfina, y luego a penicilina.  Todos estos son productos químicos naturales en nuestro medio ambiente, más tarde reemplazados por “mejores”, para cualquier propósito – las anfetaminas sintéticas, opioides, y antibióticos resistentes a las bacterias. Ahora, todos han vuelto para atormentarnos. Y sin embargo, tenemos estos increíbles avances científicos en todos los campos, excepto saber cómo juntarlos para beneficiar a todo el cuerpo (un mini cosmos) y nuestro entorno (un poco cosmos).  Podemos poner micro interruptores para cortar una enfermedad a su nivel molecular o interruptores más grandes para apagar trozos y pedazos de un desastre que es natural o ya creado por nosotros.  Por el bien de nuestros nietos, de los suyos y de otras generaciones futuras, ahora deberíamos empezar a no permitir que se utilicen más productos químicos sintéticos a menos que primero podamos encontrar una manera segura de deshacerse de ellos después de usarlos.  Esto ayudaría a nuestro medio ambiente y a nuestra salud.  Es por eso que subí mi post, “¡Vamos a soñar en grande!” (Inglés y Español) anteriormente en mi blog y LinkedIn.  Por el bien de nuestras generaciones futuras, especialmente ustedes, jóvenes, podemos empezar a hacerlo de verdad porque tenemos la tecnología (Phyto-True), el laboratorio y la experiencia.  Todo lo que necesitamos es muchos de ustedes para comprar mi libro y / o difundir la palabra.  Mi blog:  www.ayslcorp.com/blog

#bacteria #resistente #antibióticas #minicosmos #salud #medioambiente #avances #científicos #codiciosos #cuerpo #fármacos #tóxicos #efedrina #morfina #penicilina #químicos #sintéticos #opioides #anfetaminas #ciclovicioso #círculaviciosa #enfermedades # soñar #gasolina #entorno #desastre #supervivencia

We are all born with a well-functioning body primed for our survival.  There is everything on earth for us to stay alive and healthy.  Since humans appeared on this planet countless years ago, we have learned what to eat or avoid for our survival.  When we are ill, we have learned what to ingest to recover and stay alive. For generations since ancient times we have also developed a healthcare system that tells us what is beneficial to take and what is poisonous to avoid.  Because of this, we are still here today.  Our survival does not depend on unknown brand-new chemicals made from toxic petrol chemicals which may temporarily relieve our illness but eventually, when trying to make ‘better’ ones, we’d abuse the process, resulting in creating more problems and illnesses.  This has now ended up in a vicious cycle.  The greedy money-worshipers might not have meant it, or been greedy, at the onset.  But once this vicious cycle was established, they have succumbed to one of our human weaknesses and quietly let it be, knowing full well it is a one-way street downhill for others but themselves.  These businessmen seemed to have embraced evil; the more toxic drugs, the more money flowing their way.  To hell with the rest of us.  Why? Maybe they don’t have children and grandchildren or simply, compassion.  Or perhaps their religion or family value works counter to everyone else’s?  I wish someone with credibility and expertise in such matters would write something understandable to the general public and tell us how this could have happened.  First from ephedrine to morphine, and then to penicillin.  These are all natural chemicals in our environment, later replaced with ‘better’ ones, for whatever purpose – the synthetic amphetamines, opioids, and bacteria-resistant antibiotics. Now, they have all come back to haunt us. And yet we have these amazing scientific advances in every field, except knowing how to put these together to benefit the whole – our body (a mini cosmos) and our environment (a little cosmos).  We can put micro switches to cut off a disease at its molecular level or bigger switches to turn off bits and pieces of a disaster that is natural or already man-made.  For the sake of our grandchildren, theirs, and other future generations, we should now start not to allow any more synthetic chemicals to be used unless we can first find a safe way to dispose of them after using.  This would help our environment and our health.  Which is why I uploaded my post, “Let’s dream big!” (English & Spanish) earlier on my blog and LinkedIn.  For the sake of our future generations, especially you younger folks, we can start doing it for real because we have the technology (Phyto-True), the lab, and the experience.  All we need is a lot of you to buy my book and/or spread the word.  My blog:  www.ayslcorp.com/blog           #healthcare, #petrolchemicals #viciouscycle #evil #toxicdrugs #ephedrine #morphine #antibiotics #amphetamines #opioids #bacteriaresistant       #scientificadvances #environment #future #generations #disaster #survival

My Life & Rollercoaster Career:  The Life of a Pharmacognosist + Are Drugs Better Than Herbs [550 pages: available from Amazon; $25.95, paperback; $5.49, e-version] 

As I have already repeatedly expressed, I am planning to form a nonprofit with 75% of the gross profits of my books towards 2 immediate achievable goals.  The first is to shape up current commercial herbal products, at least those labeled as ‘herbal’ but in fact are only chemical.  We’ll be fingerprinting and exposing them as what they actually are.  For a typical example of 2 ‘herbal’ products with the exact same herbal ingredients on their labels but showing completely different fingerprints, see “Chapter 9:  Adulteration Continues to be a Major Problem” in my book.  The second is to recommend genuine herbal products to consumers from herbal companies that produce them, now with fingerprints added to guarantee their identity and quality.  Eventually, the goal is to have our own manufacturing facilities crowdfunded by consumers and charging them a fraction of what for-profit companies usually charge.  This would greatly relieve their financial burden and would eliminate their necessity of taking some of the toxic synthetic drugs from the vicious cycle.  My young friends and colleagues, if you think I am doing the right thing for you and your children, and theirs, please buy my book.  Also, help me spread the word!  

             One of the main reasons many herbal medicines/supplements don’t seem to work is because even up to this day, there are no uniform standards or requirements for herbal ingredients.  Some are whole extracts while others may contain only 1 or 2 marker chemicals with no herbal elements.  Consequently, you have no idea what you get when you buy some well-known or well-marketed brand believing and even trusting it to be the real thing.  Big mistake!  We’ll find out when we start fingerprinting them. 

             I have been advocating identity and quality of herbal products for many decades but most of my industry colleagues have not listened, counting on our colleagues in government will continue to do nothing.  For the status quo, see “Chapter 11:  Dietary Supplement Label Database (DSLD) – Not for Herbal Supplements,” of my book.  Once these herbal supplements have improved, consumers should have their true benefits, not just different hype selling the same fake useless products without herbs. 

             The current drug-therapy vicious cycle is untenable.  It’s a manmade situation allowing drug makers and their interdependent industries, supported by many crooked politicians, to exploit the health of the rest of the world’s population with impunity.  Before the drug Ingrezza was approved by our FDA to treat a drug-caused disease Tardive Dyskinesia (TD) 2 years ago, I thought they might not have known that our modern drug-therapy with toxic synthetic drugs was obviously heading towards the vicious cycle.  And that once they realized it, they would stop, because of its disastrous effects on the health of the human race.  Instead, they must have celebrated quietly in glee.  And here is the truth.   With 500,000 people in the United States alone suffering from this manmade TD at $200 to $400 per day per patient (or up to $146,000/yr/patient), the money of just one drug these exploiters of human health drain from us (as individuals and government) amounts to up to $73 billion per year!  From my estimation, assuming we had only 20 such drugs to treat manmade diseases, the amount of money these greedy people quietly take from our treasury is over a trillion dollars per year!   This does not even include the thousands of drugs for treating regular diseases, many of which are probably also drug-caused, such as epilepsy, Parkinson’s Disease, acid reflux, colon cancer, pancreatic cancer, and Crohn’s Disease, among many others.  After all, with so many potentially very toxic, unnatural molecules (synthetic drug molecules) lurking inside the vast majority of Americans, how do we know any illness or disease is not due to these molecules keep bumping into the natural ones in our body to cause havoc, hence imbalance and new diseases?

             Despite the above bad news, there is something positive and uplifting that I admit I have missed during the past 20 years or so while I was not following the general trend of alternative therapies, but rather concentrating on synthetic drug therapy and the confusion between a pure chemical and a multichemical herb among most scientists, resulting in THM (esp. Chinese) not having been ever properly evaluated by appropriate scientific technologies until we succeeded in the development of our Phyto-True system 15 years ago. 

             I discovered the above trend only during the past few months when I was seriously connecting and accepting connections (from a few dozen connections to almost 3,000 in a few more days).  I am gratified to see so many more healthcare practitioners are in diverse fields, from lifestyle, nutrition, true prevention (not the Big Pharma type to detect diseases early and treat them with drugs), naturopathic medicine, acupuncture, traditional herbal medicine (incl.  Chinese and Ayurvedic), tuina massage, energy healing, qigong, food therapy, and many others.  Many of them don’t use drugs at all.  This all gives me a glimpse of hope.  Realistically, we are all in it together. With our modern communication and transportation technologies, our world is getting smaller and we are getting closer together.  At the same time, due to greed, our world is getting more and more polluted and our health is now in a vicious cycle that benefits only drug makers and their interdependent associates.   Think of your children, grandchildren, and theirs.  Start directing them to healthier lifestyles, better nutrition and natural therapies, so that their body can have the natural resistance to ward off diseases before they take hold.  I want to remind you synthetic drugs are not nutrients that our body needs, especially being pushed on us by greedy people who don’t have our wellbeing in mind.  They benefit by making us perpetually sick as in the vicious cycle.  Let’s not let them, by breaking the vicious cycle, or avoid it altogether.  Together, we can do it!

#Encyclopedia #natural #ingredients #herbal #viciouscycle #toxic #syntheticdrugs #mental #handicaps #fingerprints #identity #quality #products #adulteration #Tyler #pharmacognosist #Anazon #Barnes&nobles #Chinesischeheilkrauter #remedies #rollercoaster #career #healingfoods #herbs    

My Life & Rollercoaster Career:  The Life of a Pharmacognosist + Are Drugs Better Than Herbs [550 pages: available from Amazon; $25.95, paperback; $5.49, e-version] 

There are two main reasons why I wrote this book that actually consists of 2 books in one – my Memoir (The Life of a Pharmacognosist) and my republished Newsletter (Are Drugs Better Than Herbs?).  My memoir covers at least 3 or 4 generations of my family history for our daughters and granddaughter, among other things.  The second book is basically my lifetime’s thoughts and work that I want to leave behind, not just for my family, but mainly to alert millennials so that they may be aware of the vicious cycle that can be broken or bypassed by natural medicines by not using the inappropriate chemical technologies we all learn in college.  This vicious cycle has been created by us older folks and is passed on to our future generations through no fault of their own, just as we have done the same with our damaged environment. 

                When I first published my Encyclopedia of Common Natural Ingredients Used in Food, Drugs, and Cosmetics (Wiley, 1980), I had sent my book proposal to only 2 publishers, a trade publisher and Wiley.  Wiley responded quickly and within weeks I was offered a book contract with 15% royalties and an advance of $15,000.  That book became one of Wiley’s best sellers in the natural product field.  Since then, it has gone through the 2^nd Edition (1996, with Steven Foster as my co-author) and is now in its 3^rd Edition (2010) retitled Leung’s Encyclopedia of Common Natural Ingredients…,authored by I.A. Khan and E.A. Abourashed.  I did not participate in its revision for 2 main reasons.  First, because of the confusion in the natural-product field among scientists between traditional herbs and pure chemicals, much of the data on ‘natural products’ were not credible, and I simply couldn’t have time to evaluate them and find enough data worthwhile to use for the purpose of my book which had to be relevant to traditional herbal medicines (THM).  Second, I finally realized that my book could be useful for drug discovery because of the chemicals reported in plants from the literature were relevant to the research and development of chemical drugs, though they were often useless when being applied to THM.  Not only that, they would further continue to muddy the research and production of genuine herbal products and formulas; and I didn’t want to continue to contribute my part to this confusion.

                After my positive experience with Wiley, I thought publishing lay books would also be at least as easy.  However, my first such book, Chinese Herbal Remedies,was accepted and subsequently published successfully by Universe Books in 1984, only after a dozen book proposals had been rejected by other publishers.  Regardless, that was also published in England by Wildwood House, and was shortly translated into German and published in Germany by Diederichs Gelbe Reihe in 1985 as Chinesische Heilkrauter.  Since 1993, it is under the new title, Chinese Healing Foods and Herbs, published by AYSL Corp, now out of print.  I have considered republishing it, especially as an e-book.  

                One major thing I have learned from all this is that lay publishers, including major ones, are mostly fed materials by book agents along with their reviewers who often are THM- or fact-challenged.  Hence some of their books published are egregious.  I have critically reviewed at least two of them in my Newsletter between 1996 and 2004.  One was downright plagiarism on a dozen remedies (at least from my herbal book) and the other outrageously ignorant on THM, compiled by 2 Pharm D’s.  They were also illogical or fuzzy-headed in their thinking, which the late Dr. Varro E. Tyler (Dean of Pharmacy at Purdue), well known for his popular book The Honest Herbal, agreed with me.  These are all reprinted in my book.  My question is, “How could such books have been published by these well-known publishers?”  My thinking is that the old-boy network is still alive and active in the lay publishing business.  It’s not what you know, but whom you know.  Obviously, I am at a disadvantage, because my slight mental handicaps never allowed me to initiate making friends or schmooze with others with ease, especially after coming to the United States.  The few close friends I have, or used to have, are from high school, though most of them are gone.  The other few good friends were made while raising our girls here.  Because of my honest and sometimes tactless nature in my work, my direct and frank interactions with colleagues in my field sometimes offend them.  They seem to openly tolerate incompetence and unethical conduct, hence don’t like anyone who criticizes them.  Although I have mellowed quite a bit during the past 10 to 15 years, seeing poor performance or unethical conduct in my colleagues still bothers me.  So I can’t help but speak out.  My rationale is that if we see something sloppy in research and cheating in manufacturing products without speaking out, we are just condoning mediocre research and substandard products.  This, in fact, has happened for decades.  Earlier on in my rollercoaster career, I had spoken out and lost the only 2 jobs when I worked for someone else.   But since then, I have made it on my own as an entrepreneur and successful herbal scientist, without compromising my principle and family values.

                Consequently, being outside of the old-boy network, I decided to get my new book self-published without having to go through a middleman.  After 3 years, the book is now available from Amazon and Barnes & Noble.  I am not sure how much support my colleagues would give me in this project or how many books they would buy, so I count on the younger generation to notice my sincerity of doing this for them, and start supporting me.  I recommend buying the e-version because the paperback does not have an index anywhere as comprehensive as searching on line with the e-book.

 [TO BE CONTINUED…]  

Para mis amigos y colegas de habla española.  Por favor, difundan la voz…   

Todos sabemos que nuestro entorno está siendo rápidamente arruinado por un puñado de miembros de nuestra especie que han decidido tomar mucho más que su parte justa de los recursos de nuestra Tierra (de ahí el dinero y el poder) para sí mismos.  Papa Francisco los llama “adoradores de dinero.”  ¡Mira el Amazonas!  ¡Un desastre visible que nos afecta a todos! Al mismo tiempo, la mayoría de nosotros puede no saber, o incluso ser conscientes, del hecho de que las drogas sintéticas modernas están arruinando silenciosa y constantemente nuestra salud en nombre de la atención médica supuestamente para librarnos de enfermedades y mantenernos saludables.  En cambio, cada vez más de estos medicamentos están siendo generados por la misma maquinaria de desarrollo de drogas que defendemos y promovemos para luchar contra las enfermedades y el sufrimiento humano, con éxito discutible, debido a los dos problemas irresolubles únicos de la terapia sintética con drogas, es decir, el tiempo y nuestro cuerpo complejo.   Dado que nuestra economía y nuestro tejido social están arraigados y entrelazados, sólo podemos abordar una pequeña parte de ellos en la actualidad.  Sólo puedo hacer mi pequeña parte.  Algunos de ustedes están haciendo sus partes en el medio ambiente.  Sin embargo, todos estamos trabajando en contra de intereses codiciosos que tienen una enorme riqueza y poder sobre nosotros, y algunos de ellos son malvados o gravemente enfermos mentales.  Espero que los otros que no son ninguno despertaran un día cuando su lado humano y compasivo los llame.  A pesar de todo, esto no nos impide soñar.  Así, vamos a soñar en grande.  Esperemos que este sueño pueda tocar a las masas que juntos constituyen el poder real en un mundo democrático.    

Este es mi sueño: (1) Para el beneficio de nuestro medio ambiente, sólo usaremos energía renovable.  Todo lo que producimos, junto con la energía limpia, se degradará a cosas que son relativamente inofensivas para nosotros y para nuestro medio ambiente; (2) En nuestra atención médica, sólo practicaremos la verdadera prevención, usaremos las medicinas herbarias tradicionales, y sólo productos químicos naturales en nuestro sistema nuevo de terapia farmacológica, que han tenido innumerables años de contacto humano previo, rompiendo así el círculo vicioso.

#soñarengrande #Papafrancisco #adoradoresdedinero #Amazonas #drogassintéticas #medioambiente #interesescodiciosos #enfermedades  #atenciónmédica #medicamentos #enfermosmentales #lasmasas #verdaderaprevención #círculovicioso # medicinasherbarias #tiempoycuerpo #energíalimpia #dosproblemasirresolubles

We all know our environment is being rapidly ruined by a handful of ‘money-worshipping’ (Pope Francis’ words) members of our species who have decided to grab much more than their fair share of our Earth’s resources (hence money & power) for themselves.  Just look at the Amazon!  A visible disaster that affects us all! At the same time, most of us may not know, or even be aware of, the fact that modern synthetic drugs are quietly and steadily ruining our health in the name of healthcare supposedly to rid us of diseases and keep us healthy.  Instead, more and more of these drugs are being generated by the same drug development machinery we champion and promote to allegedly fight diseases and human suffering, with debatable success, because of the two unique irresolvable issues of synthetic drug therapy, i.e., time and our complex body.   Since our economy and social fabric are entrenched and intertwined, we can only tackle a small part of them at the present.  I can only do my little part.  Some of you are doing your parts in the environment.  However, we are all working against greedy interests that hold enormous wealth and power over us, and some of them are evil or seriously mentally ill.  I hope the others who are neither would wake up one day when their human and compassionate side calls them.  Regardless, these don’t prevent us from dreaming.  So, let’s dream big! Hopefully, this dream can touch the masses who together will constitute real power in a democratic world.   

Here is my dream:  (1) For the benefit of our environment, we’ll only use renewable energy.  Anything we produce, alongside clean energy, will have to be degradable into things that are relatively harmless to us and to our environment; (2) In our healthcare, we’ll only practice true prevention, use traditional herbal medicines, and only use natural chemicals in our new drug-therapy system, which have had countless years of prior human contact, thus breaking the vicious cycle.

#ruin #environment #monyworshippers #Popefrancis #Amazondisaster #healthcare #drugdevelopment #syntheticdrugs #herbalmedicines #renewable #biodegradable #irresolvableissues #cleanenergy #trueprevention #dreambig #traditionalmedicine #newdrugtherapy #naturalchemicals #mentalillness

For details see my paper, “A Disruptive Concept in Drug Therapy” posted on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/albert-leung-9b933913) and on my blog (www.ayslcorp.com/blog).

The following are basic points to recognize in order to understand the dead-end of modern drug therapy along with its vicious cycle, and why traditional medicines have never been properly evaluated, let alone validated.  If you have other better ideas to break the vicious cycle than what I have suggested, or have other logical reason to maintain its status quo, other than enabling a greedy few to exploit the health of the vast majority of other world citizens, including you and me, please tell everyone.

There are three kinds of therapeutics:

1. Synthetic chemicals – brand new to our planet, never before had any direct interactions with us in human history.  These are our modern drugs used in drug therapy.  It is now stuck in a rut for us all, except for drug makers and their associates who have finally attained their dream (I still believe they never expected or planned it, just dumb luck and then keeping quiet) – making and selling any toxic drugs that don’t have to be effective and safe, but they can charge consumers any price they want with total impunity, in perpetuity. 
2. Natural chemicals – consist of 2 kinds: (1) isolated, well identified, and defined, including artemisinin for malaria, lutein for eye health, and vincristine or taxol for cancer; and (2) those still present in their natural material sources (plants, including foods), which are often taken to represent the herbs.  Both these chemicals, inside or outside of herbs, have a long history of interactions with humans since we emerged as a distinct, animal species on earth.  Examples of the 2^nd type include coffee with caffeine and ginseng with ginsenosides.  Researchers who have confused the herb materials with one or two chemicals therein (which they assume to represent the herbs’ identity and quality) have been generating much of the irrelevant or irreproducible data during the past decades.  This has prevented the proper evaluation and validation of traditional medicines as a legitimate healing system even up to this date.  I bet some of the scientists who are most adamantly against true natural medicines have never spent any time with a truly qualified and experienced healer or practitioner of herbal medicine, or they may have been so brainwashed by Big Pharma or so enriched by the vicious cycle that they continue to defend its status quo.
3. Natural therapeutics (herbal medicines) – these are not chemicals isolated from their natural materials (e.g., herbs) but actually are the traditionally prepared materials themselves with their full complement of chemicals (known and unknown) used as a whole, which are no different from the foods we eat, handed down from our ancestors which we know as traditional medicines.   These are the true time-tested traditional therapeutics.  Many of these are still being used by the majority of our world’s population.  However, with the greed, now so obvious, of the pharmaceutical industry and its associates (esp. the insurance industry), these traditional medicines would not be around for too long, unless the vicious cycle of modern drug therapy is broken soon.

Among the 3 types of therapeutics, only the first one, synthetic chemicals, causes the vicious cycle.  The reason is that, being brand-new on this planet, they need to be truly time-tested in our body for much more than their measly 20 or 30 years that include clinical trials of up to 20 years

With the other 2 categories, since they are all natural chemicals, they have already gone through much of the time testing in our body.   This would make it relatively easy for us to go on as I have planned, already described in my recent books and posts on my blog and elsewhere.  My plan for shaping up some of the current deficient or fake herbal supplements on the market hasn’t changed, nor the introduction of simple herbal supplements and traditional formulas with their unique fingerprints. 

After 80 long years of trying, modern drug therapy has ended up in the vicious cycle that only benefits a few exploiters of our health.  It would do nothing for our health except they may offer temporary relief for some people, but will ruin it in the long term, because our complex body can’t be simplified, nor the time required for the drugs to realize their true effects, be shortened.  We need to overhaul the system, involving younger bright brains and new technologies, other than the biological and chemical ones that we have already been using, each of us digging deeper and deeper into our respective holes, lost in the minute entities, without a view towards our total health.

I am encouraged and glad to report that only after a few months being active on LinkedIn, my connections have increased many-fold.  Now, probably at least half of them are alternative healthcare professionals of various diverse fields.  Many agree with me that our body can heal itself when we keep it properly nourished, balanced, and healthy so that it can retain or strengthen our innate ability to resist or restore damage by outside stress (physical, chemical or biological); and with the practice of true prevention, we can avoid taking many of the toxic synthetic drugs.  I hope my fellow herbalists and alternative professionals will continue to support me and help me spread my message to the millennials and their children’s and grandchildren’s generations. 

As to my drug colleagues and friends, please ponder what you have done in the vicious cycle.  Maybe you can start thinking outside of your own holes (specialties) and communicate with your alternative counterparts and start working towards a solution to the so-far unresolvable time and our complex body.  Perhaps together, we can work out a solution to give us good health that we can live to experience, not just a myriad of individual complicated scientific achievements, lying around for future generations to try to decipher, provided our vicious cycle of toxic drugs hasn’t killed us all or turned us into a mutated species.

#therapeutics #synthetic #chemicals #natural #herbal #medicines #time-tested #totalhealth #complexbody #deficientherbalsupplements #fakeherbalsupplements #toxins #stress #viciouscycle #statusquo #artemisinin #taxol #vincristine #lutein

It has entered the vicious cycle.  This means that no matter what drug is developed, whether or not effective or toxic, the drug makers will charge whatever they want and can get away with it, because few people are aware of it, even scientists who have created it.  If the drug has enough serious side effects, a new disease will be created which, in turn, needs more new drugs to treat, affording Big Pharma perpetual income.  There is plenty of incentive for greedy parties to maintain its status quo.

           Just check out the new drug, Valbenazine (Ingrezza), approved in April 2017 for treating the new drug-caused disease, Tardive Dyskinesia (TD), in people who have taken common drugs for mental and gastrointestinal problems.  In the USA alone, there are 500,000 citizens suffering from this new disease, each paying $200-$400 per day.  This would amount to roughly $37 billion to $73 billion per year to add to our national healthcare costs, a big chunk of which would go to the insurance and healthcare companies.  And this is only one drug!  Is this the kind of healthcare you want for your grandchildren and theirs?  Most people have never heard of this.  But it is quietly eliminating alternative therapies (at least trying) so that only new toxic synthetic drugs are produced and approved in an endless stream of drugs to feed the vicious cycle.  Before Valbenazine was approved for treating TD, I had thought that Big Pharma and associates might not know that drug therapy was heading towards its current unnatural state.  And when they finally came to realize that the new drug was to treat a disease caused by taking ‘common’ everyday medicines widely promoted and easily made available to the general public, they would understand the serious implications and would start to try to reassess their situation and perhaps reset their thinking and do right by the vast majority of other citizens.  But no.  It has been 2 years now.  Nothing seems to have been done to take advantage of age-old clinical experiences.  We are still doing the same so-called evidence-based science – from testing in test tubes to cells and small animals and then in humans for a measly few decades and consider the new synthetic drug safe.  But is it?    All I know is this vicious cycle has added another gold mine to its owners’ coffers, and simultaneously increasing our healthcare costs by tens of billions.   I think Big Pharma & Co. may even be quietly celebrating this in glee for over 2 years.  That suggests to me that they never had the health and financial wellbeing of other human beings in mind.  It is greed!  If one even had half a conscience, one would never try to exploit others’ ill health, especially that of the less fortunate, and profit from it.  Most of us are supposed to have religious or family values.  What happened?

           In earlier posts, I thought that most scientists would expect the occurrence of this vicious cycle sooner or later.   To me, it was only about 16 years ago.  Not soon enough, when compared to the length of my career.   This is because the drug technologies in which we are trained prompt us to just do our own tiny part(s) of the whole picture, totally ignoring, or unaware of, the fact that when a new drug enters our extremely well organized and functioning body containing billions of chemicals and cells, it meets apparent ‘organized’ chaos and causes more chaos.  It will take our body much more than a few decades to get used to the brand-new drug before allowing it to deliver its true benefits, if any.   And it takes time! This was what happened to our foods and traditional medicines eons ago when our ancestors tried them and found them safe and beneficial only after many of them, through generations, were probably poisoned, became ill and recovered, or died; then we have inherited this knowledge from them.  As intelligent human beings, we should be able to make this connection and reconsider our current no-win situation, unless some of us are blinded by greed.

Please read my next post, coming up soon.  Or buy a Kindle or e-version of my dual book as it has the capability of being searched for every word and phrase in both my memoir and newsletter [“My Life & Rollercoaster Career” published by CreateSpace Publishing Co., 550 pp.; Paperback $25.95, e-version $5.49].  It can be purchased from www.Amazon.com within seconds/minutes.

#toxicdrugs #viciouscycle #deadend #valbenazine #Ingrezza #tardivedyskinesia #billiondollars #drugcaused #statusquo #syntheticdrugs #healthcare #futuregenerations #alternative

I just came across this that I wrote more than a year ago before I published my last 2 books. Even though everything in it is all true, I can’t believe I actually wrote it.  It doesn’t sound that modest to me.  Probably for this reason I didn’t publish it then.  Now, I’m getting thinker-skinned every day because I need to get my message out to as many people as possible on this planet, and I don’t have any assistants to help me.   We, especially our younger generations, all know about our damaged environment. But few are even aware of the vicious drug cycle.  We can’t leave this mess for our grandchildren and theirs to deal with.  Please help me spread the message! 

Here is what I wrote:

I am Albert Y. Leung, an accomplished scientist but lousy businessman.  I hold degrees of B.S. in Pharmacy and M.S. and Ph.D. in Pharmacognosy, the latter two from the University of Michigan.  In 1991, I formulated and manufactured the first successful herbal drink based on the traditional Chinese medical theory of yin/yang balance.  In 4 years, its annual sales reached 1.3 million bottles.  Since then, many imitations have come and gone.  Most don’t work because they have little or no herbs in them, only some standardized chemicals.  Yet, with slick marketing, some continue to be on the market, because up to this day there is no easy way to tell an adulterated from a true herbal product despite both may have the exact same formula on their labels.  I have been an outspoken advocate of herbal product identity and quality for 40 years and have addressed practically all aspects of herbs in my newsletter (Leung’s Chinese Herb News, published between 1996 & 2004).  Even today, despite many advanced techniques using expensive instruments, none is practical for determining whether an herbal product is real or adulterated.  The main reason is that these techniques have all been developed for pure chemical drugs and not for herbs with a myriad of chemicals.   Our Phyto-True system developed though an NIH grant based on my multifaceted approach is the only system that can easily tell a fake from a real herbal product.  But it was too late to save my business before one of my major clients switched to cheaper adulterated products.  Because of the above sequence of events, I am well-known to consumers of herbal drinks and to scientists involved in herbs and natural products.  And consumers continue to seek out my products.  My second herbal drink (PhytoChi™, launched around 2,000) is still being sold worldwide, though only the Czech version is genuine; others are imitations, all adulterated.   Nevertheless, I’d have a ready audience of at least tens (if not hundreds) of thousands when my book comes out. 

The appeal of my book is not just to the people interested in herbal drinks but also to those who may be interested in reading about my tortuous journey from childhood to adulthood, and then accomplished scientist, of at least equal status to the best in the supplements & natural products field.   My experience, expertise and insight into this field often allow me to see as obvious certain aspects of herb research which my eminent colleagues don’t see.  The most important issue is multicomponent herbs vs. single-chemical drugs.  Without clearly differentiating these two has led to the current mess in supplements, including irreproducible and meaningless research, wrong or poor-quality products, continuing controversy, and so forth, which most experts involved don’t even seem to notice due to various reasons (self-interests, complacency, bias, etc.).  Because of the above, billions of our tax dollars have been wasted yearly in generating useless data without giving consumers a true alternative to toxic drugs. These will all be detailed in my book along with my personal story of how, as an ‘idiot boy’ with various born handicaps, have made good through the love and help of family, friends, classmates, and others.

I was born and raised in Hong Kong, as a child, I couldn’t concentrate on any subject that I found boring and flunked out of elementary school and then the sophomore year of high school. My father used to call me ‘saw jai’ (‘idiot boy’ in Cantonese) because of my spacey, clueless, and trusting nature.  This inborn nature cuts both ways. It makes me vulnerable to being exploited when my guards are down, and this happened a number of times, including losing my trademarks along with my business in 2010.  Around the same time, I initially turned down a 2011 Michigan Alumni Distinguished Lifetime Achievement Award when the Pharmacy Dean called to offer it to me. On the other hand, it provides me with an unusual insight into things technical, including: (1) on second try, getting a publisher for my Encyclopedia of Common Natural Ingredients Used in Food, Drugs, and Cosmetics, (Wiley, 1980; now in its 3^rd Ed.); (2) beating a competitor (the most famous natural products professor, Dr. Norman Farnsworth) whose team had built the world’s largest database (NAPRALERT) with government funds, in a database contract (SBIR, Phase II) offered by the National Cancer Institute in 1988; and (3) being awarded an SBIR research grant (Phases I & II) in 2001 by NCCAM, NIH, leading to the Phyto-True™ approach to meaningful identification and quality control of complex herbal products, published in 2010. I believe what I have to say in my book would positively impact the health, wellbeing, and pocketbook of millions of fellow citizens. But I need help to reach them.  Please spread the word, by forwarding this to your friends, relatives, and colleagues.  Thank you!

But the way, all the above are described in my combined book, memoir + newsletter, “My Life & Rollercoaster Career…” (550 pp., paper back, $25.95; e-version, $5.49).  I recommend the e-version, because any topic by word or phrase can be easily searched and located.  Thank you all!

#viciouscycle #toxicdrugs #damagedenvironment #grandchildren #generations #scientists #traditionalChinesemedicine #UniversityMichigan #pharmacognosy #yinyanbalance #NIHgrants #phytotrue #standardizedchemicals #slickmarketing #standardizedchemicals #adulteration #herbalsupplements #Czechphytochi #mentalhandicaps #meaninglessdata #idiotboy #controversy #NCCAM #napralert #NCI #SBIR #Michiganalumniaward

In my last post, “Thank you, America!” I told you my being admitted to the University of Michigan with a teaching assistantship.  That was real luck!  But then, I almost blew it…

On my arrival in America the last week of August, 1962, I met up with a college friend, Leo Lee, in San Francisco.  We had each bought a ‘See-USA-in-3-months’ Greyhound bus ticket for $99 before we left Hong Kong.  We had planned on doing a little sight-seeing along the California Coast, before heading northeast towards our respective final destinations, Leo to the University of Missouri and I to the University of Michigan.  Here is what I have written in my books:  My memoir (The Life of a Pharmacognosist…) and my combined book (Memoir + my Newsletter) titled, “My Life & Rollercoaster Career…” 

The following is from my memoir.

Chapter 4.  Adulthood in America

IGNORANCE IS BLISS!

San Diego was the last and southernmost California city Leo and I visited. While there, we decided to make a side trip across the border to see a bullfight in Tijuana, Mexico. We must have seen ads or something during our trip and decided to see a bullfight. I don’t remember whether or not the Greyhound bus went to the border at that time and if not, I think we might have ridden a taxi to the Customs & Immigrations checkpoint and walked across the border to Mexico. Once on the Mexican side, taxis were everywhere. We got on one taking us to the bull fight. We each had all our money and valuable belongings in our small bag. I had 200 dollars cash that was supposed to be for my living expenses until my first paycheck from my teaching assistantship. Leo was from a better-off family and had more cash than I. Since we had no idea where we were going or knew anything about Tijuana, what if the taxi driver took us someplace and robbed us? For a while I panicked. I had watched too many American cowboy movies with banditos in them! But then, we got to the bullfight arena soon enough. We paid the driver and got into the arena and watched the bullfight. It was not as spectacular as I had thought. Still, the event that followed was so etched in my memory which made whatever happened after the bull fight and the little tourist stroll in downtown Tijuana become non-events.

How we got back to the border checkpoint is a blank. All I remember is we were immediately detained by U.S. Immigration/Customs. An officer took us into a room and explained we didn’t have the proper documents to enter the United States, because our visas were for a single entry only. We used that up when we landed at the airport or the pier when we first arrived in the States. After maybe 30 or 45 minutes, or maybe an hour, of questioning and reviewing our papers, including university contacts such as correspondences and my teaching assistant appointment, among other papers, the officer was satisfied that we were legitimate students. He released us after giving us a stern lecture about immigration rules. He didn’t even call our school contacts, as far as I know. I was 24 years old and Leo perhaps a year older, obviously both naïve and innocent. Young people at this age now can be high-level executives in government or industry. And we were just starting graduate school and traveling like greenhorns. I shudder at the thought of this episode fast forwarded to now. What could have happened?

When I was a teenager in Hong Kong, there was a widely known case of a homeless European living on the Hong Kong – Macau ferry. I don’t remember the details, but he somehow got himself onto one such ferry without immigration documents. Neither the Hong Kong nor the Macau immigration let him land. For a long time he was living on that ferry as a homeless person without a country. This was the same ferry line I used to take to visit Uncle Siu and Aunt Pauline in my high-school and college days. It usually took three hours. Now the Hong Kong – Macau hydrofoil takes only one hour. I have never found out how the story with the homeless European ended. Regardless, I am grateful for the compassion of that U.S. immigration officer to let us back in.

Having been brought up in an environment encompassing some of the world’s most profound religions and philosophies (Taoism, Buddhism, Confucianism, and Catholicism), I believe in fate and luck. I have been certainly lucky on more than one such occasion.

In present-day America, I wonder anyone dumb and naïve enough as Leo and me to have crossed into Mexico and got back in the States without a visa.  Was I lucky!!