Category Archives: Health

Perchlorates and Iodine – Another Reason to Ban this Substance

Turns out that the molecular pump that drives iodine also does the same to the toxic chemical perchlorate. Researchers at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, led by Dr. Nancy Carrasco, found that perchlorate does double damage to lactating mothers and their babies because the chemical depletes the child of much needed iodine.

This finding is proof that perchlorates (found in jet engine fuel) is more dangerous than the industry admits. Isn’t that how it always works?

Since perchlorate is unavoidable, it is yet another reason to make sure you get adequate amounts of iodine in your diet or at least take a supplement (75 mcg should do for healthy people). Better yet, get tested. Doctor’s Data has a great iodine challenge test that everyone should get at least once every five years.

Another Bad Decision by the FDA

A recent decision to allow pharmaceutical companies to circulate pee-reviewd papers about off-label uses of a company’s products is a bad idea that makes one wonder who’s payroll is the FDA on. Ours or the pharmaceutical industries?

The problem with this idea is that the companies can now go after getting FDA approval for very narrow uses and then promote the drugs for more profitable uses without having to go through stringent testing and scrutiny. My understanding is that the FDA is supposed to protect the public, not the interests of the drug industry. This ruling does the exact opposite and Congress needs to step in which it is now in the process of doing, I hope.

Top Science Stories of 2007 – Part Deux #’s 26-100

Sorry to be a little late on this one. Spent the week at the A4M conference in Las Vegas. To read the complete list from Discover Magazine, go to your nearest newstand and pick up a copy. It’s a great read.

42 – California Bans Phthalates in Plastic Toys – Way to go Governor Schwarzenegger!  Phthalates are bad news health wise despite the industries claim to the contrary. Go to the journal Environmental Health Perspectives and look up the research into this plasticizer. It isn’t good news.

43 – Human Genome Reveals Signs of Recent Evolution – Yes, we are evolving although some wonder whether it is for the better or not. Despite many creationists beliefs, evolution is being seen everyday.

61 – Unsustainable Soil Use Can Cause Civilizations to Collapse – Exactly what we are doing to our soil, especially with the insane amount of corn being grown. Read the book The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan to understand how bad it is getting.

64 – Cloned Hamburger, Anyone? – We need to protect our food supply from biotech companies all out for profit. Hopefully the FDA will protect us from this threat but I have my doubts.

70 – How the Body Protects the Gut – Dendritic cells seems to be important in teaching T-cells to be tolerant to beneficial bacteria and to intestinal cells.

83 – Why Loneliness is Bad for You – Turns out that being lonely can actually affect your DNA. Time to find a friend.

89 – Food Additives’ Effect on Children – Something we in the alterantive health industry have known for decades is finally being accepted by the general public and the main-stream health community. Cut out the additives and try real fruit juices and water.

96 – Function of Appendix Explained – Turns out the appendix is where the body stores beneficial bacteria. If you had yours removed, I would suggest taking probiotics every day (probably a good idea if you didn’t either).

Top Science Stories of 2007

Every year Discover Magazine puts out a list of the top 100 science stories of the year. As I did last year, I want to relate those which relate to issues I deal with on my blog. Please pick up a copy of the January 2008 issue to read the full article.

#1 – China’s Syndrome – From tainted products to their terrible pollution problem, this story ranked first is one that will be with us for many years.

#4 – Artic Thaw – Climatologists are deeply concerned about the melting ice caps in the Arctic and its effects on global warming.

#5 – Rx for the FDA – If there was a governmental agency that needed fixing, it is this one. It needs to be overhauled with no industry say or influence.

#6 – Conservation Gets A Green Light – Switching from incandescent bulbs to the newer generation fluorescents would be a big boost in protecting our environment. Yes, they have a little bit of mercury in them but the reduction of pollution, and the release of mercury from coal-burning power plants makes up for that in buckets.

#8 – Can Vitamin D Save Your Life – You know how I feel about this nutrient, now the world is finding out how much we need it. Get your 2,000 IUs a day and your body will be happier and healthier.

#11 – Hormone Replacement Therapy Linked to Breast Cancer – We’ve known this for years but the drug companies were reticent to let this one out. HRT’s are bad for you, period.

#17 – Is Pollution Weeding Out Male Babies? – Worldwide we are seeing a serious threat to human survival from our insistence on polluting without regard. If we don’t do something soon, this topic will unfortunately become #1.

#21 – Quantifying Global Warming – Denialists need not go any further, we don’t want to hear the nonsense. Global warming is a reality and humans are a major part of the problem.

#22 – Pesticide Effects on Sex Last Generations in Rats – Yes, the epigenetic effect is upon us. Toxins don’t just cause health disruptions now, they seem to follow us for generations to follow. This is one of the scariest stories of the year.

Tomorrow I will go through #s 26-50

Cancer and Supplementation – Bad Journalism, Poor Writing, Lousy Science

The November 3-9, 2007 issue of the British science magazine New Scientist has an article about Ten Ways to Avoid Cancer. Some of the suggestions like reducing body fat, getting more physical, lowering the intake of red meat, alcohol, junk foor and preservatives are all excellent. One, startled me. It was a suggestion to avoid nutritional supplements. I had to see the report that would make this claim.

The study put out by the World Cancer Research Fund and the American Institute for Cancer Research is called Food, Nutrition, Physical Activity and the Prevention of Cancer: A Global Perspective. I read over the reasoning behind the suggestion they made that supplements cause cancer but I really fail to see how they came up with that reasoning. All I could find was references to a few studies that implicated beta-carotene to an increased risk of cancer in smokers (wow aren’t they a major risk group already?), selenium and calcium actually being protective. How a journalist can make a sweeping statement like avoiding supplements when the recomendation was “Aim to meet nutritional needs through diet alone” and that they even qualified that by saying that “This may not always be feasible”.

Where do those two quotes state to avoid supplements?  In reality, the notion that you can get all the nutrients you need from your diet is an absolute myth. The foods we get at the market today do not have the kind of nutritional backbone they claim. Supplementation is essential to even meet the needs of a non-stressed, healthy person much less someone living in the toxic world we do.

The only real caution the panel makes is that supplements shouldn’t be used to “prevent” cancer. Now I disagree with them on that but that is no where near saying to avoid them to prevent cancer.

Shame on the New Scientist for so twisting the report so much. Bad journalism equals misleading data which causes panic and harm to the general public.

Cost of Health Care – Time is Running Out To Gain Control

In a recent New England Journal of Medicine article, Drs. Pater Orszag and Philip Ellis talk about the problems with our health care system that no candidate for the Presidency of the United States is truly addressing. It is nice to talk about universal healthcare but we can’t do it on the backs of our children and destroy our economy. They propose  two simple (if that is possible) measures to begin to reign in our medical costs.

First off, there is little strong research on treatment comparisons between expensive and cheaper therapies. One example I always use is how insurers are willing to cover the expense of the drug Nexium® which can run hundreds of dollars a month over Prilosec® which is over-the-counter and runs under $50 a month. Why? For two reasons one is that the pharmaceutical industry is more about profits and less about improving the health of people. The second issue the authors bring up is that there is no incentive to cut costs.

At my last few lectures, I noted that insurance companies have no reason to cut costs as long as payments, in the form of your health insurance premiums are greater than costs. The incentive is actually to perform more expensive procedures because the higher the cost, the higher the premiums charged and the more money there is to enrich the stockholders and meet Wall Street’s expectations. If their profit margin is to make 18% for each dollar they spend because they will only charge you more in premiums, what procedure would you think they would want to pay for, one for $1,000 or $100? Yup, the more expensive one.

While I am not a big fan of government intervention, it is imperative it happens here before economic disaster occurs. The idea that industry and the free market will benefit society and that trickle down economics benefits the greatest number in our society are two ideas who need burial. Trickle down is what George Bush Sr. once called “voodoo economics”. Free market is a nice idea, but the bottom line is that excessive greed does not benefit the greatest number of people when it comes to medical care.

Incentives to cut costs, independently measure efficacy in treatment protocols, not just those limited to pharmaceutical models needs to be put in place. We don’t need another male libido drug, we need better treatment for staph, tuberculosis and other deadly diseases that may not be financially enriching for the pharmaceutical industry.

We need more preventive health care, more dietary interventions to stem the tide of obesity and we need to stop the rampant polluting of our environment by greedy, profit above all businesses. We do these things and bite the bullet and we will save our future. Will we? I seriously doubt it unless we elect a leader with enough personality to have the populace back the reforms necessary.

DNA Testing of Stool for Bacterial and Parasitic Markers – Unanswered Questions

The latest lab test being marketed heavily is a DNA Stool test for bacterial and parasites. While the theory of testing for pathogens using their DNA signatures sounds real good, is it necessarily ready for use, especially as a way of determining treatment protocols?  I for one am not sold on the idea yet.

A couple of issues come up that I haven’t heard adequate answers for.  Here are my main problems with this test:

  • If we find the DNA for a bug, yet it was dead before we ingested it, does this warrant treatment?  Obviously no but how do the labs determine if it is alive or not. An answer I heard was that they deal with it but how?  I’d be interested in knowing.
  • If our body already is dealing with a bacterial or parasitic pathogen and the DNA is picked up, do we deal with it or not?  Remember, overuse of antibiotics or other medications may lead to the development of resistant strains.
  • How accurate and specific is the test? I have not been convinced that it is that accurate as the DNA of pathogenic bacteria is often times very similar to non-pathogenic ones.
  • Quantification of bacteria and parasites is another issue. Does the lab have anyway of saying that the bacteria level is high, low, normal or not. There is a claim that there is a developed reference range but how? What if the infection level is high but not much DNA sloughs off?  What if a lot of DNA from a particular bug is found but there isn’t a high level of infection?

These issues do happen according to the literature I have reviewed so are we ready for the clinical use of this test or do we need more research? My feeling is that more research is needed before we abandon the gold-standard of stool testing, which is culturing. Why drop a very well respected and time-tested methodology for something that has not been shown to actually be superior?  This is akin to trying Nexium® because it has a 3% better efficacy than Prilosec® but is 10 times more expensive.

Another issue I have is that when we treat for a bacteria or parasite, the treatment often times kills more than just the specified “enemy”. When we use antibiotics or even natural treatments, we run the risk, and often times do, kill both beneficial and pathogenic species. Caution is the concept to remember here. The beneficial bacteria are extremely important in a healthy immune response, detoxification of xenobiotics, creation of nutients from food and more.

The use of genetic testing is a sexy concept but some labs seem to be way ahead of the practicality curve here. Just because a test is new and is accompanied by hot marketing doesn’t mean it’s time to abandon what works.

I would be real interested in hearing from the experts who claim DNA stool testing is the best and how they would respond to my concerns.

West Nile Virus – Solution Worse Than the Disease?

Between January 1st and October 16th, 2007 there were a total of 3,022 cases of West Nile Virus in the United States according to the journal Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (published by the New England Journal of Medicine). Seventy-Six cases resulted in death of the infected individual. If you believed the media hype about it, you would think tens of thousands of people were infected and it was a major infectious threat to all Americans.

The hysteria surrounding the disease has caused us to use millions of gallon of pesticides to kill the mosquitos who carry the disease. My real concern here is how much damage to human health have we caused through the use of insecticides to stop a disease which may not be as hyped.  According to one bit of research I’ve seen, fully 80% of the people near those infected were also found to have West Nile Virus but had no symptoms at all. It could be that the aggressive spraying has held back the infection rate but my suspicion is that the government has gone way overboard and caused untold damage to the population especially children and the unborn.

Get Smarter – Feed The World

FreeRice.com is a site that you can go to and increase your vocabulary and at the same time help world hunger. The organization donates ten grains of rice for each word you take a quiz on. That may not seem much but in the past month and a half, they have managed to donate 1,712,371,750 grains.  Not bad for such a short time.

Here is what they are about (from their website):

FreeRice is a sister site of the world poverty site, Poverty.com.

FreeRice has two goals:

  1. Provide English vocabulary to everyone for free.
  2. Help end world hunger by providing rice to hungry people for free.

This is made possible by the sponsors who advertise on this site.

Whether you are CEO of a large corporation or a street child in a poor country, improving your vocabulary can improve your life. It is a great investment in yourself.

Perhaps even greater is the investment your donated rice makes in hungry human beings, enabling them to function and be productive. Somewhere in the world, a person is eating rice that you helped provide. Thank you.

Heliobactor Pylori – Beneficial as Well as Pathogenic

In my recent lecture swing around the U.S., I mention that H pylori, a common bacteria which has been implicated in stomach ulcers and cancer, may have a number of beneficial relationships to the human body. Another one has just been found that is a bit surprising.

According to a study led by Dr. Martin Blase of NY University School of Medicine, children who had H pylori in their stomachs, were 53% less likely to have asthma than those without the bug. Turns out, the overuse of anitbiotics may be killing the bacteria which our bodies may use as a primer for our immune systems early on in life.

My theorm is that many of these so-called pathogenic bacteria, may in fact be an intricate part of what makes us humans and that instead of killing them all, we need to control their overgrowth but allow some amount of them to help us control our health. The newest field of endeavor that has this belief is part of the Microbiome Project where researchers are looking into the symbiotic relationship between parasites, bacteria and viruses and human evolution and health. Turns out we are more than just a single entity but a conglomoration of many organisms working together. The research was published recently in Nature magazine.