An amalgam is any mixture or blending of mercury with another metal or with an alloy. Most metals are soluble in mercury, but some (such as iron) are not. Amalgams are commonly used in dental fillings.  Amalgams poses a serious allergy risk.  Some eczema sufferers experience eczema flare ups after their dental fillings.  If  you suffers from these symptoms, you are at risk of amalgam poisoning:

gastrointestinal problems, sleep disturbances, concentration problems, memory disturbances, lack of initiative, restlessness, numbness of arms and legs , bleeding gums, burning tongue, metallic taste, leg pain , arm pain, ( thanks to thallium polluted amalgam filings), headaches , low immunity, Alzheimer’s Disease, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and many other correlated symptoms. Nobody really knows how big is list of these symptoms.

Acupressure and acupuncture are largely accepted to be safe from results gained through medical studies. Several cases of pneumothorax, nerve damage and infection have been reported as resulting from acupuncture treatments. These adverse events are extremely rare especially when compared to other medical interventions, and were found to be due to practitioner negligence. Dizziness and bruising will sometimes result from acupuncture treatment.

Some governments have decided that Chinese acupuncture and herbal treatments should only be administered by persons who have been educated to apply them safely. “A key finding is that the risk of adverse events is linked to the length of education of the practitioner, with practitioners graduating from extended Traditional Chinese Medicine education programs experiencing about half the adverse event rate of those practitioners who have graduated from short training programs.”

Certain Chinese herbal medicines involve a risk of allergic reaction and in rare cases involve a risk of poisoning. Cases of acute and chronic poisoning due to treatment through ingested Chinese medicines are found in China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, with a few deaths occurring each year. Many of these deaths do occur however, when patients self prescribe herbs or take unprocessed versions of toxic herbs. The raw and unprocessed form of aconite, or fuzi is the most common cause of poisoning. The use of aconite in Chinese herbal medicine is usually limited to processed aconite, in which the toxicity is denatured by heat treatment.

Furthermore, potentially toxic and carcinogenic compounds such as arsenic and cinnabar are sometimes prescribed as part of a medicinal mixture or used on the basis of “using poison to cure poison”. Unprocessed herbals are sometimes adulterated with chemicals that may alter the intended effect of a herbal preparation or prescription. Much of these are being prevented with more empirical studies of Chinese herbals and tighter regulation regarding the growing, processing, and prescription of various herbals.

In the United States, the Chinese herb má huáng (麻黄; lit. “hemp yellow”) — known commonly in the West by its Latin name Ephedra — was banned in 2004 by the FDA, although, the FDA’s final ruling exempted traditional Asian preparations of Ephedra from the ban. The Ephedra ban was meant to combat the use of this herb in Western weight loss products, a usage that directly conflicts with traditional Asian uses of the herb. There were no cases of Ephedra based fatalities with patients using traditional Asian preparations of the herb for its traditionally intended uses. This ban was ordered lifted in April 2005 by a Utah federal court judge. However, the ruling was appealed and on August 17, 2006, the Appeals Court upheld the FDA’s ban of ephedra, finding that the 133,000-page administrative record compiled by the FDA supported the agency’s finding that ephedra posed an unreasonable risk to consumers.

Many Chinese medicines have different names for the same ingredient depending on location and time, but worse yet, ingredients with vastly different medical properties have shared similar or even same names. For example, there was a report that mirabilite/sodium sulphate decahydrate (芒硝) was misrecognized as sodium nitrite (牙硝), resulting in a poisoned victim. In some Chinese medical texts, both names are interchangeable. Chinese herbal medicine authorities are working towards improved standards in this area.

Traditional Chinese medicine has a “macro” or holistic view of disease. For example, one modern interpretation is that well-balanced human bodies can resist most everyday bacteria and viruses, which are ubiquitous and quickly changing. Infection, while having a proximal cause of a microorganism, would have an underlying cause of an imbalance of some kind. The traditional treatment would target the imbalance, not the infectious organism.[citation needed] There is a popular saying in China as follows: Chinese medicine treats humans while western medicine treats diseases.

A practitioner might give very different herbal prescriptions to patients affected by the same type of infection, because the different symptoms reported by the patients would indicate a different type of imbalance, in a traditional diagnostic system.
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When acupuncturist Mike Arsenault’s infant daughter was born with eczema, he looked to his acupuncture and herbal medicine training to develop something that would help his daughter and avoid him having to put chemicals or steroids on his baby.

Q: What made you choose to look at herbal remedies for your daughter?

A: Acupuncture and herbs go hand-in-hand, and that was definitely part of my training, so I do provide herbs for people both internally and externally. Plant-based substances have a whole complement of ingredients, and in Chinese herbal medicine we usually use a number of things all together that complement and balance and enhance each other. So it’s a lot safer, to my mind, than isolated chemical structures.

So when I wanted to treat my daughter, I didn’t want to put anything on her that could possibly cause harm, because she was very young and just infant skinned. Through just trial and error and my training, I created something. It’s basically beeswax, olive oil and three Chinese herbs.

Q: Why does it work?

A: Basically when you have dry skin conditions, your protective oils aren’t doing enough or, in some cases, you have some sensitivity and irritation. So this is a wax oil base. It creates a barrier and almost puts a type of protective oil similar to your body oil. But the herbs inside are, in Chinese terms, to vent heat, and the other herbs are to nourish the blood, to strengthen and beautify the skin.

Q: What else did you try before deciding on this formula?

A: We did have some in-process formulas. I based it on a traditional recipe of Chinese medicine for eczema and the initial recipe calls for sesame oil, which we used. It worked quite well, but she smelled like a little sesame ball all the time, it was quite funny. We didn’t care, because it was working, it was healthy and it was natural. So I did use that with my patients, and people either loved it or hated it. So I had to figure out, OK, if I’m going to use this with more people, what am I going to do? So I changed to olive oil.
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Molds (or moulds, see spelling differences) include all species of microscopic fungi that grow in the form of multicellular filaments, called hyphae. In contrast, microscopic fungi that grow as single cells are called yeasts. Molds do not form a specific taxonomic or phylogenetic grouping, but can be found in the divisions Zygomycota, Deuteromycota and Ascomycota. Although some molds cause disease or food spoilage, others are useful for their role in biodegradation or in the production of various foods, beverages, antibiotics and enzymes.

There are thousands of known species of molds, which include opportunistic pathogens, exclusive saprotrophs, aquatic species and thermophiles. Like all fungi, molds derive energy not through photosynthesis but from the organic matter on which they live. Typically, molds secrete hydrolytic enzymes from predominantly the hyphal tips. These enzymes degrade complex biopolymers such as starch, cellulose and lignin into simpler substances which can enter the hyphae. In this way, molds play a major role in causing decomposition of organic material, enabling the recycling of nutrients throughout ecosystems. Many molds also secrete mycotoxins which, together with hydrolytic enzymes, inhibit the growth of competing microorganisms.

Molds reproduce through small spores. Mold spores can be asexual (the products of mitosis) or sexual (the products of meiosis), and many species can produce both types. They may contain a single nucleus or many. Some can remain airborne indefinitely, and many are able to survive extremes of temperature and pressure.

Although molds grow on dead organic matter everywhere in nature, their presence is only visible to the unaided eye when mold colonies grow. A mold colony does not comprise discrete organisms, but an interconnected network of hyphae called a mycelium. Nutrients and in some cases organelles may be transported throughout the mycelium. In artificial environments, humidity and temperature are often stable enough to foster the growth of mold colonies, commonly seen as a downy or furry coating growing on food or surfaces. Thus buildings, being stable environments, enable mold proliferation.

Some molds can begin growing at temperatures as low as 2°C. When conditions do not enable growth, molds can remain alive in a dormant state, within a large range of temperatures before they die. This explains how molds can survive harsh conditions such as containers in refrigerators or inside building structure cavities.

Xerophilic molds use the humidity in the air as their only water source; other molds need more moisture.