Does everyone need an “aspirin regimen”?

After I was hospitalized for a stoke last year, I was given prescriptions for blood pressure medication, statin drugs and coated baby aspirin.  I was told that this combination of medications was for prevention of future strokes, for which I had a high risk.

At the hospital, I was told that I had suffered a CVA which means Cerebral Vascular Accident.  I took great comfort in the term CVA because to me “stroke” is a bad word; calling it an “Accident” means that the patient is not to blame.  At no time did the doctors and nurses at the hospital blame me for what had happened; it was an accident that could have happened to anyone.  (Actually, I knew that I was to blame because I had been eating a lot of salty potato chips with sour cream dip and not exercising as much as I should have.)

A couple of days later, I went to a Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) doctor and asked for an acupuncture treatment to repair the damage caused by the stroke.  The first question he asked me was “Are you taking blood thinner medication?”  Actually, I had asked the Western doctors in the hospital for a blood thinner, but I was told that baby aspirin was all I needed. After over six months on an “aspirin regimen,” I learned that aspirin might do more harm than good and that aspirin can raise blood pressure.

My TCM Chinese doctor explained to me that blood thinner medication is bad because your blood needs to clot in case you have a stroke that is caused by bursting a blood vessel in your head.

The doctors at the hospital didn’t bother to tell me that there are two kinds of strokes.  I learned that from my Chinese doctor.  One kind of stroke is caused by a blood clot blocking the flow of blood in part of the brain. This is called an ischemic stoke. Another kind of stroke is called a hemorrhagic stroke; this is caused by bleeding from a burst blood vessel in the brain or on the surface of the brain. If you have a hemorrhagic stroke, you want your blood to clot as fast as possible before you have some serious damage to the brain.

If you have an ischemic stroke, as I did, an aspirin regimen may help prevent a second ischemic stroke, but aspirin will not prevent hemorrhagic strokes. In fact, aspirin use slightly increases the risk of hemorrhagic stroke.  My stroke was caused by a blood pressure spike; my blood pressure went up to 205/100 and this caused a piece of plaque in my carotid artery to shoot up into my brain.  At the hospital I was given medication to dissolve the clot; I was told when I was released that my carotid artery was now clear.

If you watch TV, you know that aspirin is highly advertised to prevent heart attacks and stroke.  But I have learned that a person who has weak kidneys should not do an “aspirin regimen.”  Blood pressure is controlled by the kidneys and weak kidneys can cause high blood pressure; aspirin can raise your blood pressure.

I keep a bottle of regular aspirin handy so that I can chew an aspirin in case of a heart attack, but after I stopped the “aspirin regimen,” I finally got my blood pressure under control.

My Chinese doctor even warned me not to eat too much garlic because garlic thins the blood.  I had been eating as many as 15 cloves of garlic a day in an effort to lower blood pressure.  Now I limit my garlic consumption to 3 cloves per day.

New book and possible documentary film could clear up a lot of questions about the Holocaust

A book written in German by Holocaust survivor Leslie Schwartz is due to be translated into English this year and already plans for a documentary about Schwartz’s life are under way, according to a news article which you can read here.  The working title of the film is Lazarus, Schwartz’s camp nickname, referring to his ability to cheat death like the biblical character.  

Holocaust survivor awarded Medal of Freedom

I was watching TV today when President Obama was giving out the Medal of Freedom awards to 14 people.  As soon as I heard him say the name Gerda Weissmann Klein, I immediately thought that she must be a “Holocaust survivor” and I was right.  President Obama gave a short speech about her story, including the fact that she had survived “a 350 mile march.”  He didn’t say where the march started, nor where it ended, but he did call it a “death march.”

Here are the exact words that President Obama used to introduce Gerda Weissmann Klein:

By the time she was 21, Gerda Klein had spent six years living under Nazi rule — three of them in concentration camps.  Her parents and brother had been taken away.  Her best friend had died in her arms during a 350-mile death march.  And she weighed only 68 pounds when she was found by American forces in an abandoned bicycle factory.  But Gerda survived.  She married the soldier who rescued her.  And ever since — as an author, a historian and a crusader for tolerance — she has taught the world that it is often in our most hopeless moments that we discover the extent of our strength and the depth of our love.

“I pray you never stand at any crossroads in your own lives,” she says, “but if you do, if the darkness seems so total, if you think there is no way out, remember, never ever give up.”    

What is “high blood pressure” called in Traditional Chinese Medicine?

What does a Chinese doctor say when he tells you that you have “high blood pressure”?

This is a trick question. In Traditional Chinese Medicine, there is no word for what Western doctors call “high blood pressure” or hypertension. 

Block 24 at Auschwitz — the brothel

Block 24 is the first  building that visitors see on a tour of the main Auschwitz camp. This building was the location of the brothel and the camp library; both facilities were for the use of the inmates.

Arbeit Macht Frei gate at the Auschwitz main camp with Block 24 in the background

You have to get up pretty early in the morning to get a photo of the gate with Block 24 in the background.  The camp opens at 8 o’clock in the morning and there are tour groups already lined up outside the visitor’s center and more tour groups inside the camp, ready to enter through the Arbeit Macht Frei gate.  Last year, there were 1.3 million visitors to the Auschwitz Museum and this year, there will be many more, as the story of Auschwitz-Birkenau grows in popularity.

Early morning photo of Block 24 at Auschwitz I

Note the black sign at the base of the building.  When I took this photo in 2005, the sign did NOT identify the building as the brothel and library.

Auschwitz was not the only camp to have a brothel and a library. According to Laurence Rees, in his book, “Auschwitz, A New History,” Auschwitz was the fifth camp within the Nazi state to offer such a “service.”

This quote is from “Auschwitz, A New History”:

Himmler had decided that providing brothels across the concentration camp network would increase productivity by offering “hard-working” prisoners (excluding Jews) an incentive to work even harder. He had ordered brothels to be constructed at Mauthausen and Gusen camps in Austria after an inspection as far back as May 1941 (they were finally opened in the summer of 1942). Then, in March 1943, he visited Buchenwald and demanded that another brothel be established there and also at other camps. His faithful factotum Oswald Pohl issued the necessary orders to concentration camp commandants in 1943.

The small rooms of the former Auschwitz brothel are now used to store archival documents.  The doors into the rooms still have peepholes.  This was for the protection of the women, in case one of the prisoners became violent during his visit. The prisoners were only allowed to have sex in the missionary position and an SS man had to watch in order to make sure that no “perverted” sex acts were committed.  Each man was allowed only 15 minutes for his turn with one of the women.

Most of the women in the brothels came from the Ravensbrueck camp for women, but according to Rees, the women in the Auschwitz brothel were selected from the Auschwitz II (Birkenau) camp.  On page 197 of his book, Rees wrote that the women in the Auschwitz brothel “were forced to have sex with approximately six men every day.”  He also wrote that one of the Auschwitz prisoners said that “the girls were treated very well”  and that they were given “good food” and allowed to “take walks.”

The girls who served the prisoners in the brothels were never Jewish girls because this would have been against Hitler’s Nuremberg laws of 1935.  Jewish prisoners were not allowed to visit the brothels for the same reason.  In spite of this, there are stories told by Auschwitz survivors that the women in the brothel were Jewish.  You can read one of these stories on this blog.

An American Jewish soldier’s letter to his wife about the Dachau “death train”

On May 1, 1945, a Jewish soldier in the American Army saw the “death train” outside the Dachau concentration camp; a few days later, he wrote home about it. Dachau had been liberated on April 29, 1945, but on May 1st, this soldier did not know whether the train, filled with dead bodies, had just arrived or if it was just leaving.

This is a quote from the letter written by 1st Lt. Fritz Schnaittacher to his wife; you can read the full text of the letter here.

… the most striking picture I saw was the “death train” — I say picture, no not picture, but carload and carload full of corpses, once upon a time people, who were alive, who were happy and people who had convictions or were Jews — then slowly but methodically they were killed. Death has an ugly face on these people — they were starved to death — the positions they were lying in show that they succumbed slowly — they made one move, fell, were too weak to make another move, and there are hundreds of such lifeless skeletons covered by some skin. I tried to find out the origin of this train. Some of the stories corresponded — whether this train was to leave Dachau or had just arrived is not essential — essential is that they were locked into these cattle cars without sanitation and without food. The SS had to take off in a hurry — we came too fast — it was too late to cover up their atrocities.  

Acupuncture and tachycardia

Since having a stroke a little over six months ago, I have learned to pay attention to warning signs that something might be wrong.  That’s why I became very worried about a month ago, when I woke up in the middle of the night, experiencing rapid heart rate.  My heart was pounding out of my chest.  I didn’t know if I should immediately call 911 and go to the emergency room.  Was I having a heart attack?  I was not having chest pain and my left arm was not numb, so I decided that it was not a heart attack.  

Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto were sent to the Treblinka death camp — except for Norman Finkelstein’s parents

Way back in the year 2000, I purchased a book, written by Norman G. Finkelstein, entitled “The Holocaust Industry.” Finkelstein mentioned on page 85 that his mother was “A survivor of the Warsaw Ghetto, Majdanek concentration camp and slave labor camps at Czestochowa and Skarszysko-Kamiena.”  I was puzzled by this because I had visited Warsaw in October 1998 and learned that the Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto had been transported to Treblinka.

What was so special about Finkelstein’s mother that she was sent to Majdanek, instead of Treblinka?  Did she first go to Treblinka and was then transferred to Majdanek, or was she sent on a special train that went toward Treblinka, and then turned south at the junction near Treblinka, and continued on to Majdanek?  Finkelstein didn’t explain why she managed to survive when all the other Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto, except his parents, were killed at Treblinka.  

Web site that challenges Holocaust denial

Back in April 2010, I read about a new web site that was soon to be launched by British historian Laurence Rees.  The web site that made the announcement put the photo shown below at the top of the home page.

On the web site that made the announcement, the caption under the photo reads: “Prisoners at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp: damning evidence to rebuff attacks on the Holocaust”

Prisoners at Sachsenhausen concentration camp

Exactly what is the “damning evidence” in this photo that rebuffs Holocaust deniers?  Is it the earmuffs that two of the prisoners are wearing?  Young people today probably don’t know what earmuffs are; they might think that the prisoners are listening to music.  In my opinion, this photo scores one for the deniers, but what do I know?

Sachsenhausen was not a “death camp” for Jews and the men in the photo do not appear to be Jewish.  Sachsenhausen was a concentration camp mainly for political prisoners.

Famous photo of Settela Steinbach, a Gypsy girl who was gassed at Auschwitz

I was catching up on the news about 90-year-old John Demjanjuck, who is currently on trial in Munich for alleged crimes committed during World War II, when I came across the web site of the World Jewish Congress here.  The big news, according to the WJC is that Demjanjuck will be indicted by Spain on new charges as soon as the verdict on his current trial is in, which will be some time in March, 2011.

I noticed that the WJC web site is featuring a video about the Holocaust; the video is entitled “Holocaust denial is Anti-Semitism.”  I watched the video and saw a photo of Settela Steinbach, who is the Gypsy girl in an iconic photo of the Holocaust.

Famous photo of a Gypsy girl on a train to Auschwitz

You can watch the video that shows Settela Steinbach here.  The video is about the 6 million Jews who were killed in the Holocaust, so why is there a photo of a Gypsy girl in the video?