Category Archives: Health

Phthalates in the News….. Again

Data on the negative effects of the common plasticizer phthalates keeps on coming. Last month, it was the relationship between phthalates, insulin-resistance and male waist circumference and this month it is the effect of this toxin on thyroid function in men.  The journal Environmental Health Perspectives has published numerous articles on the subject but the last two issues seem to really bring home the fact that we need to look at phthalates more closely and avoid exposure as much as possible.

The June 2007 article, authored by Stahlhut, et al, shows a link between levels of urinary excretion of phthalates and insulin resistance as well as obesity in males. The gist of the article found here, is that phthalates may be anti-androgenic, meaning it blocks the production of testosterone. We know that by depressing testosterone you see an increase in cholesterol and a decrease in the ability to regulate blood sugar.

This month, researchers Meeker, Calafat and Hauser report on a study they did which looked at 408 men and measured their urine output of two forms of phthalates. There conclusion was that there may be an association between phthalate concentrations and altered free T4 and/or total T3 levels. This is the first time that human studies were conducted on this relationship and it seems to back up the limited animal research that showed this same correlation.

To find out where your levels are, have your doctor call Lab Interpretation LLC at 775-851-3336 and ask about the Environmental Pollutants Panel and you can check not only your phthalate level, but a number of other petrochemical solvents (benzene, toluene, xylene, parabens, trimethylbenzene and styrene), Phthalates are commonly found in drinking water as well as cosmetics, shampoos, perfumes and other skin and hair care products. Go to the Environmental Working Groups website (click the link) and go to their Skin Deep database. There you will find out where your exposures may be from.

Nutrition Update

According to the journal Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers and Prevention, people who have hepatitis B may benefit from folic acid supplementation because it may protect them from the development of liver cancer which is common with people who have hepatitis B.

Coenzyme Q10 Supplementation May Protect Against Statin-Induced Liver Disease – At this point in time, with all of the research done about the need for Coenzyme Q10 and statin use, wouldn’t you think that every doctor in America would just put the two together for all of their patients?  Sad to say, they don’t. In Europe its mandatory, in the U.S. we have such an anti-supplement bias fueled by misdirected reporters that people may be developing life-threatening diseases because of it. This is just another study showing real benefits to CoEnzyme Q10 use.

High Dietary Vitamin B-6 Intake May Lower Colorectal Cancer Risk in Men – In a very large prospective cohort study (81,184 subjects) it was noted that those men in the highest quartile for B6 intake had a 31% decreased risk for developing colorectal cancer. For men who drank more than 150 grams of alcohol a week the benefits were even greater.

Vitamin B6, Conception, and Early Pregnancy Loss – In yet another human study, researchers have shown that those women with the highest plasma levels of vitamin had a higher level of conception and a lower level of early pregnancy termination (spotaneous miscarriage).

These three studies show how much human research is going on regarding the benefits of nutritional supplement. I bring this up because of communications I had with a reporter from CNN I lambasted in an earlier blog. I challenged him saying that I could produce ten human studies showing the benefits of supplements for every one negative study. Caleb, here is just a smattering of evidence for the use of supplements. Of course, they need to be done in a biochemically individualized manner but when you claim there are no known benefits to the use of nutritional supplements, you kind of lose all credibility.

Do Selenium Supplements Cause and Increase in the Risk of Developing Diabetes?

New research led by Dr. Saverio Stranges of Warwick Medical School in Britain, showed that people who took 200 mcgs of selenium daily, had a 50% increased risk for developing type-II diabetes over a 7 year period than those taking placebo. Published in the Journal Annals of Internal Medicine, the Dr. Stranges group said 58 of 600 people taking selenium and 39 of 602 taking placebos developed type-II diabetes over the 7.7 years. The study was well constructed although quite small in my opinion.

Here are my thoughts about the study. First off, if you take another 1202 people and tried it again, it may show up differently. Secondly, they measured the levels of blood selenium for their patients and the higher the level, the higher the risk of developing diabetes. Well, duh! My work over the years has clearly shown that excessive amounts of nutrients, especially trace minerals have a double-edged sword to them. If deficient, they need to be repleaded. If in excess, they need to be eliminated. It has to do with this quirky idea called biochemical individuality. If they were monitoring peoples selenium levels as has been indicated, did they stop the people from taking the selenium supplement?  If not, then a serious breech of ethics was committed. Excessive selenium is known to be toxic. This is a major problem and should cause serious review of the researchers protocols.

There are other problems with the study. They studied people with skin cancer. Could it be that having skin cancer and taking selenium together may increase the risk of developing the disease but not with healthy people? No healthy cohorts is a bad error in their study design.

Now get this, the researchers relied on participants’ reports that they developed diabetes and did not confirm those reports with measures of blood sugar. Huh?  You didn’t confirm the reports? Terrible research error again.

Next, did they measure other nutrient co-factors like vitamin C, E, amino acids, and dietary intake of foods? Of course not. They blindly rely on one-to-one analysis which is hideously poor. They also only looked at elderly white people yet they make the sweeping statement that selenium supplementation causes people to have an increased risk of developing diabetes.

Another example of poor research and equally poor reporting.

Omega 3 Fatty Acids and Premature Babies – Saving Eyesight

In a study about to start soon led by Dr. Lois Smith, an ophthalmologist at Children’s Hospital in Boston, omega 3 fatty acids will be used to try and prevent a serious retinal disease that affects many premature babies.  The impetus to do this study came from research done on premature mice and the results were quite promising. This type of treatment shows how very valuable omega 3 fatty acids can be.

Usually, infants get most of their supply of omega 3s from their mothers in the third trimester of pregnancy which is why those who are born prematurely may not get the full benefit of these important nutrients. What is nice abou this research is that is shows that you don’t necessarily need expensive pharmaceutical drugs to treat certain diseases. Still, I would bet my last dollar that they would be working on it if the market were bigger.

Read the full article here, posted on MSNBCs website

Antidepressant Use in America. A Depressing Situation.

Don’t like the way your husband is handling the family finances?  Take some antidepressants! Angry with the school about your child’s report card? Take some antidepressants.  According to a government funded study, more Americans take antidepressants than any other drug family. Over 118 million prescriptions were written last year which is up a staggering 48% over the past decade. Some of this increase is the fact that more physicians are becoming adept at diagnosing the disease but I feel that the majority of it is due to marketing done by the pharmaceutical industry. Dr. Richard Dworkin even states, “Doctors are now medicating unhappiness. Too many people take drugs when they really need to be making changes in their lives.”

While depression is a serious disorder, there are way too many cases where physicians are prescribing drugs for issues that have nothing to do with the disease. These medications have serious side effects and should be used only when a clinical diagnosis of depression is clear. Still, an even better solution would be to try using amino acid therapy first. The book The Healing Nutrients Within recalls many stories of patients with depression improving using amino acid therapy.

It’s so much about profits, so little about really helping patients. Amino acids can help people far more than antidepressants can. They just won’t make the pharmaceutical industry any money. America, the land where we medicate unhappiness.

Is The Ban On Smoking Indoors Really Helping Non-Smokers? Should We Ban Outdoor Smoking As Well?

In a news feature article in the latest issue (June 28, 2007) of Nature, Kris Novak writes how effective the ban on smoking in bars, restaurants and workplaces has been worldwide. It seems that people smoke less in states and countries where smoking has been banned. In California, 23% of the citizens were smokers in 1988 and in 2006 the number dropped to 13%. That should be good news to the health care system due to smokings incredible cost to human health.

The other issue has to do with second-hand smoke and has a difference been seen here. The big reason indoor smoking was banned was the hubabaloo over the effect of second-hand smoke on health. From all the media hype you would think that it’s a slam dunk. Second-hand smoke kills, right?  Well the answer is yes and no.

When it comes to reducing lung cancer, the answer is a resounding yes. Since smokers have a 25 times greater risk of developing lung cancer and non-smokers who are around smokers inhale 1% of the amount of smoke you would expect a decrease in the incidence of lung cancer in non-smokers to be about 24% lower and that fits. As for cardiovascular disease drops, the data is not all that convincing. We really don’t have the kind of evidence that we do with lung cancer.

Still, banning indoor smoking is a good thing in my estimation. Here in Nevada, we have put a small venue ban on smoking in bars which has created an economic hit on them which according to the article is a short-term problem. But should we go further and ban outdoor smoking?  If you try to use the argument that this will protect non-smokers then you are barking up the wrong tree because that just doesn’t make sense. The amount of exposure you would get from outdoor smokers is extremely minimal. But if you do it with the thought that more people would quit smoking because it would be so difficult to find a place to smoke, then yes, you have a backer here.

Smoking kills, tobacco companies are purveyors of death and I would be much happier if there was no more smoking by anyone.

Vitamin C and Type 1 Diabetes – A Big Time Winner

According to the journal Diabetes Care, researches found out that injecting type 1 diabetics with vitamin C “neutralized the reactive molecules that were responsible for the damage” that is caused by the disease. This important nutrient did as well as the blood-pressure-lowering drug telmisartan. Of course, and sad to say, the researchers were not happy with this finding since people would have to stay on vitamin C forever (so?) and they want to develop a drug that permanently stop the effect of reactive molecules on certain proteins.

There have been previous experiments showing the benefits of alpha-lipoic acid on neutralizing reactive oxygen species (ROS) and it is likely other antioxidant compounds like acai, may have similar benefits. My suggestion is that anyone with type 1 diabetes should be on a bunch of antioxidant compounds like acai, vitamin C and vitamin E, although testing your oxidative stress levels would be a good idea as well.

It’s Time to Just Say No to Drug Ads

In an editorial from the journal New Scientist, one of the best arguments against allowing pharmaceutical companies to continue to advertise to the general public.  I have been a supporter of a ban of drug ads for years. There is no purpose and I believe it causes illicit drug use to go up. As long as the image is that drugs will solve all of your health problems, instead of talking about leading a healthy lifestyle, we are going to be a sick society with way too expensive of a health system.

Here is the editorial.

BACK in 2001, a series of poster advertisements appeared in US cities depicting athletic young men climbing mountains and sailing boats. The sun was always shining and everything seemed right with the world, though the men all had HIV. The clear implication of the ads, which came from pharmaceutical companies, was that thanks to a new generation of drugs, HIV-positive men could now live life to the full.

As marketing campaigns go, it was something of a failure. Gay activists complained that the ads did not reflect the reality of life on anti-retroviral medication. Eventually the Food and Drug Administration told the companies to stop using such unrealistic images, but by then the damage had been done: a survey by health officials indicated that by playing down the consequences of becoming infected with HIV the posters were encouraging unsafe sex.

This may be an extreme example of the dangers of “direct-to-consumer” drug advertising (DTCA), but the lesson has not been learned. Drug companies now spend more than $3 billion annually on DTCA, twice what they spent in 2001, despite the fact that the ads have repeatedly been shown to result in unnecessary or potentially harmful prescriptions. So it is worrying that US policy-makers are backing away from moves to restrict DTCA, and that in Europe, where such advertising is banned, drug companies are trying to bring it in by the back door.

Lobbyists for the industry argue that DTCA is a win-win business: the public gets access to information about new medicines at no cost to the taxpayer, and people who would benefit from them are prompted to visit their doctor to discuss treatments. None of these claims stands up. DTCA does encourage people to see their doctor, but it doesn’t follow that they get the right treatment. Very often their enthusiasm for a drug they have seen advertised persuades the doctor to prescribe it inappropriately. This was illustrated by a 2005 study in which actors claiming to be suffering from “adjustment disorder” – a strong emotional reaction to a stressful event – visited doctors and asked for an antidepressant they said they had seen in a television advert. It is unusual to prescribe such drugs for this condition, since it normally goes away of its own accord, yet more than half the doctors agreed. Many physicians admit it can be hard to resist pressure from patients, something drug companies are well aware of.

Part of the problem is that adverts rarely tell the whole story. Patients are often framed by the setting sun or pictured freewheeling down leafy avenues. The subtext is: here is a pill that can end your pain. What most adverts fail to mention is that many diseases can be tackled or prevented with lifestyle changes, such as diet or exercise. Little wonder that most doctors find DTCA unhelpful.

What everyone agrees on is that the adverts work. In New Zealand, the only other country that permits DTCA, a 1998 marketing campaign resulted in 16,000 asthma sufferers persuading their doctors to switch them to a new brand of inhaler. The adverts angered many doctors, who felt the new inhaler offered little or no extra benefit, and since it was more expensive the switch is estimated to have cost taxpayers over $2.5 million.

That kind of tale should be enough to kill off DTCA everywhere. Some US policy-makers want the government to be able to ban TV commercials for a new drug for up to three years if it thinks the drug poses unknown risks, but last week a House of Representatives subcommittee stripped the proposal from a bill making its way through Congress. Politicians in Europe are likely to face a similar battle as the pharmaceutical industry tries to introduce DTCA under the guise of providing health information to patients.

There is nothing wrong with giving consumers access to information – generally the more the better. The problem with DTCA is that the information is at best incomplete, at worst biased. There is a better way to provide people with data about medicines: the US Consumers Union, for example, produces free drugs guides in partnership with independent researchers who have no financial interest in the drugs they may recommend. It seems the US Congress has thrown away the chance to follow this enlightened approach. The European Commission should embrace it.

Could Stain-Resistant Chemicals Make People More Allergic?

PFOAs, also known as perfluoro-octanoic acid, which is used the manufacture of stain-resistant fabrics and carpets, may make people more allergic to other things in their environment according to Jean Meade and colleagues at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health in Morgantown, West Virginia. In an animal experiment, those who were exposed to PFOAs produced a greater allergic response to egg allergens than those who went unexposed.

Dupont, the leading user of PFOAs of course denied this report vehemently. What I found interesting that while they denied this issue, they did admit that their assertion was not based on any research they did on the subject. PFOAs are found in the blood of everyone out there, but according to researchers, is only found in very small amounts from carpets and upholstery.

My thought on where it comes from is the same as the issue of global pollution; a little bit doesn’t harm the environment, but a little here and a little there and pretty soon you don’t have a little anymore.

Echinachia Helps Fight the Common Cold

In a recent study published in the journal Lancet Infectious Disease, researchers found that the herb Echinachia does indeed help reduce the risk of catching the common cold and that it can lower the number of days with a cold.  Now the study isn’t flawless as it uses a statistical technique called meta-analysis, it does indicate a possibility that this common herb may be beneficial to those who’s immune system isn’t up to snuff.

A word of caution here, this herb may be contraindicated in people with autoimmune disorders like lupus, rheumatoid arthritis and multiple sclerosis. Because of that I recommend that you go see a good naturopath who is familiar with the use of herbs.