Category Archives: Health

Vitamin C and Kidney Stones – More Myth than Reality

I get the following inquiry more often than I care to hear and it is “My doctor told me that excessive vitamin C intake can cause kidney stones. Is this true?” My answer is an emphatic, NO!  This myth was perpetrated by the late Victor Herbert who was a notorious anti-vitamin shill.  The myth has been carried on for decades despite evidence to the contrary. 

For a nice review of the issue, go to Chris Gupta’s blog site http://www.newmediaexplorer.org/cgi-bin/mt-tb.r484.cgi/1891 and read up on the issue.  So the next time a doctor tells you to cut back on the vitamin C because it causes kidney stones, your response should be – Read the literature and realize what you just said was wrong.

Common Misconception – Medical Malpractice Lawsuits Aren’t Filled with Fraud

One very common misconception is that medical malpractice lawsuits are at the core of our rising medical costs in the U.S. and that many of them are fraudulent. Well a study published in the May 11th issue of the New England Journal of Medicine begs to differ.

What the reviewers found was that 97 percent of the patients who sued for medical malpractice had indeed suffered harm. The study also found that most people who did not suffer injury did not receive compensation so that the system does seem to work there.  The problems came up with the time it took to complete the litigation process which was as long as 6 years. Streamlining the process is where much of the true savings would be although the costs pale in comparison to the drug cost increases over the past 20 years.

Chronic Fatigue Syndrome – New Genetic Evidence Found

At a conference held in the UK last week, Jonathan Kerr of St. George’s University of London spoke about his looking into the genes of 27 people with CFS and 54 controls where he found differences in 100 genes out of the nearly 47,000 looked at. What came out of the study was a treatment protocol that will be looked at in more depth. It was the use of beta interferon to look into enhancing the immune system and natural killer cells.

An osteopath who also attended the conference claimed that most of the 1,000 cases of CFS he has seen appeared to have problems with lymphatic drainage issues that responded well to massage. Dr. Kerr said “There is a rationale for why it works.  It’s non-specific, but manual lymphatic drainage is a good thing.”

Dr. Basant Puri of the Hammersmith Hospital in London said that many patients he saw responded well to a combination of EPA and evening primrose oils.

The biggest thing to come out of the conference was that underlying causes are different from one person to another and that one solution is unlikely to fit everyone.  Captain Obvious pops his head up and laughs once again. Something I have been saying for about 2 decades is that we are all different biochemically as well as genetically and to try to use a one shoe size fits all model is ridiculous. Modern protocol medicine refuses to take this into account which is why so many people are suffering from side-effects of drug therapies. The idea of metabonomics must overcome this shortfall and force the health care community to treat people as individuals and not as homogenous reflections of population studies. It can be done. Carbon Based Corporation has been doing it for years with their CellMate reports.

America – We’re at the bottom of the heap in newborn survival rates

In a shocking study just published, the United States ranked 2nd worst in the developed world in newborn mortality rates. How can a country as advanced as ours do so poorly?  In my opinion it is because there is no universal health care in this country. The reason I feel that this is one of the contributing factors is because the death rate among neonates in the African-American community is double that of the rest of our society.

It is truly a sad state of affairs when a country as wealthy as ours has such an abysmal record.  We tout how we’ve increased longevity of our citizens while we rack up medical costs that will eventually bankrupt us all. Something has to be done and done sooner than later. 

Eating Chicken Nuggets and Fries. How bad could it really be?

According to Danish researchers Stender, Dyerberg and Astrup, in a letter to the New England Journal of Medicine (April 13, 2006, pgs 1650-1652) the amount of trans fats in fast food like chicken nuggets and french fries is higher in the United States then other places in the world.   The differences were somewhat staggering. In Denmark and Germany, the amount of trans fat in a meal of nuggets and fries was 1 gram and in New York City it was 10 grams. The amount of trans fat used to cook in many European countries was 10 percent and in the U.S. it was 23 percent.

The journal Nature had a nice little synopsis in their April 20th, 2006 issue on page 975 of the Danish study. They point out that 50% of the food samples had levels of trans fats that increased the risk of heart disease, 38% of the fats used by KFC in the Czech Republic were trans fats and only 1% of the oil used in cooking contained trans fats in Spain. 

Bottom line here is that we, as consumers, need to step up our avoidance of places like McDonalds and KFC until they completely halt their use of trans fats. If we make better choices in our day to day lives, we can make a difference.

Melatonin Study and Biased Media

A recent study in the respected journal Sleep showed that normal, healthy people with no sleep problems did not need melatonin supplements to improve their sleep.  Now think about what was just said because it is important to repeat and understand.  Normal healthy people with no sleep problems didn’t receive any benefits from melatonin supplementation. My question to you is; why are they doing a study like this on a group that doesn’t need help?  Do we try out chemotherapy on people who don’t have cancer and tell the world that chemo doesn’t help them?

The researchers were very careful to say that melatonin did help people who were suffering from jet lag or shift workers but did the media pick up on it?  Minimally.  What they focused on was how it didn’t work on the healthy subjects which show that people are wasting their money on the supplement.  Why do this?  Maybe they felt the need to help their big pharma advertising buddies pushing who spend billions pushing drugs like Ambien (which has numerous dangerous side-effects).  Or is it that they are so trained to think in one way that they can’t critically review articles anymore?  My opinion is that it is due to both. Money, ego and the poor research and learning skills taught to medical professionals are at the root of many of the problems in medicine today. 

NEJM Publishes another Slanted Report

In the April 27th, 2006 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine (vol. 354, no. 17) which appeared on my desk this week, researchers from Australia reported than the use of Vitamin C and E “does not reduce the risk of preeclampsia in nulliparous (never been pregnant before) women.”  While the data was definitive; (there was no improvement in risk factors for women taking vitamin C or E over placebo) the study was flawed enough that it should have been rejected if the editors weren’t so biased.

The two main problems I see were the use of the wrong forms of both nutrients and focusing on the two supplements on a population instead of whether the people being tested were being treated as distinct individuals. 

First, they used straight ascorbic acid and alpha tocopherol instead of trying better forms of vitamin C or a mixed tocopherol.  Secondly, there was no testing to see whether the women actually needed either supplement or if they were profoundly magnesium deficient which is common in preeclampsia?  The concept of biochemical individuality took a beating yet again.  Poor Dr. Roger Williams, he developed such a simple yet powerful concept only to see it constantly being trampled on. Such a shame.

Hot Peppers to Treat Cancer?

Researchers led by biochemist Sanjay K. Srivastava studied the effect of capsaicin, the chemical that makes pepper hot, on aggressive cancer cells. Within 38 days of a group of laboratory mice implanted with pancreatic cancer cells, the mice given capsaicin had tumors half the size of the animals given saline solution. Gastrointestinal problems were not seen with the mice being given capsaicin which could have been a problem if we carry this treatment to humans.

In a related study on prostate cancer tumors, mice given capsaicin orally saw their tumors shrink by ¼ in only 4 weeks.  This was another powerful study that seemingly verifies findings done by Japanese researchers 5 years ago that capsaicin killed leukemia cells in test tubes. 

How capsaicin does its magic is under debate.  One group found that it induced apoptosis (suicide) in the cancer cells and another team of researchers found signs that the compound slowed down cell growth and apoptosis. Either way, the old adage of an apple a day keeps the doctor away may need another line; a jalapeño a day may keep cancer away.

Personalized Medicine – The Carbon Based Theory Proven Once Again

Carbon Based Corporation has been at the forefront of an idea that I came up with many years ago that states that people are biochemically unique and that they react differently to different supplements and medications based not on their genetics but on their biochemical positioning at the time.  A paper in the April 20th issue of Nature confirms my long standing belief as noted biochemist Jeremy K. Nicholson of Imperial College London believes that a multitude of factors aside from genetics have a huge influence of how our bodies process medications.

While his study was on the processing of drugs, the ramifications of his paper shows that in the laboratory, genetically identical mice had a wide range of reactions to acetaminophen (Tylenol) and these reactions were highly correlated to urinary marker patterns.  The patterns include a number of markers looked at by urinary organic acid tests that Carbon Based Corporation has been interpreting for years.

In the Carbon Based Reports, we developed a method of looking at both blood and urinary markers and how they relate to drug interactions.  Our other breakthroughs came in the personalizing of nutritional interventions based on cross-correlated markers of blood and urine metabolites. By measuring the results from these tests we are able to help medical professionals construct biochemically individualized nutritional protocols which will maximize the dollar spent by the patient towards achieving optimal health.

Omega 3 Fatty Acids – Too much of a good thing?

Can taking too much omega 3 fatty acids be bad for you?  Research over the past 20 years has suggested that the fats found in fish are life savers and can dramatically improve the general health of people with many chronic diseases.  Yet, research that will be coming out in the journal Fundamental and Clinical Pharmacology by noted fatty acid expert Dr. Alexander Leaf of Harvard Medical School has found a sub group of individuals who could be severely harmed by the use of omega 3 fatty acids.   

People with advanced congestive heart failure (CHF) have depressed blood flow and see healthy heart tissue turn to scar tissue which can lead to irregular heartbeats and sudden cardiac death. Omega 3 fatty acids work by reducing the function of hyperexcitable cells which is good for most people but deadly for people with CHF.  This finding means that anyone with CHF, chronic angina or poor blood flow to the heart should see their doctor and possibly avoid supplementation or high omega 3 foods such as fish. Better yet, get tested and look deeper into the fatty acid composition of your red blood cells such as the Carbon Based Corporation RBC Fatty Acid tests.