Devil in the Details

It seems as if everyone these days is trying to put the frontline attack on things we've known for years.

This time it is the cranberry.  And then it is the benefit from cranberry that helps you if you get an infection in your bladder, commonly called a UTI.

If you read closely, the tell tale sign of spurious research is the fact that this report is based on the use of a product only 27% cranberry.

For the unenlightened, it is important to use a product that is organic, and 100% cranberry.

Cranberry offers some unique enzymes not found in other food.  I mentioned this a few years ago in an interview I did as a guest on the Jeff Rense program.  

In that discussion of easy things to do to protect your health my suggestion was to take 2 ounces daily of pure cranberry juice. With a UTI, add a cranberry capsules and drink much more water.

Another suggestion is to add 100% pure unsweetened cranberry juice to your daily fluid intake (1 oz juice to 7 oz water).  The keyword is "unsweetened".


You can also make your own cranberry juice from whole cranberries.  Simmer them in water until they pop, then blend the water and berries on high in your blender.  Use one pound of berries to one quart of pure, filtered water.

Just remember, the use of cranberry juice for UTI has been effectively used for decades.
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The New York Times recently reported on cranberry’s spotted affect on bladder infections. The mechanisms responsible for the berry’s affect are still unclear. Theories such as its vitamin C content may sterilize the urine, but that was debunked. In 1998 a team of researchers proanthocyanidin—which is found in blueberry and cranberry juice—does slow bacterial growth, suggesting it is perhaps the ingredient responsible for preventing bladder infections, but does it?.
Fast forward 11 years to 2009, when researchers in Scotland reported a daily cranberry supplement may prevent recurring bladder infections almost as well as an antibiotic. But now, new research is  turning up different results. A 2011 double blind, placebo-controlled trial published in Clinical Infectious Diseases, sponsored by a grant from the National Cener for Alternative Medicine, found, “Among otherwise healthy college women with an acute urinary tract infection (UTI), those drinking 8 oz of 27-percent cranberry juice (from Ocean Spray) twice daily did not experience a decrease in the six-month incidence of a second UTI, compared with those drinking a placebo (2011;52(1):23-30).
The trial studied the effects of cranberry on risk of recurring UTI among 319 college women presenting with an acute UTI. Participants were followed up until a second UTI or for six months, whichever came first. A UTI was defined on the basis of the combination of symptoms and a urine culture positive for a known uropathogen. The study was designed to detect a two-fold difference between treated and placebo groups, as was detected in unblinded trials. Researchers assumed 30 percent of participants would experience a UTI during the follow-up period.
Overall, the recurrence rate was 16.9 percent and the distribution of the recurrences was similar between study groups, with the active cranberry group presenting a slightly higher recurrence rate (20 percent versus 14 percent). The presence of urinary symptoms at three days, one to two weeks, and at more than (or equal to) one month was similar between study groups, with overall no marked differences.
According to The New York Times, senior author of the study Betsy Foxman, a professor of epidemiology at the University of Michigan School of Public Health, said she is going to continue researching the cranberry.

New Level of Insanity

All these scientists are missing the boat these days, just like the folks that believe in the germ theory.

Fallacious thoughts!
What about preventive thinking?

We all know there is the issue of personal hygiene, cranberry nectar, cranberry sugar extract, and even something as simple as drinking more pure water...

Vaccine to prevent urinary tract infections due to E. coli bacteria

ANN ARBOR, Mich., Nov. 15 (UPI) -- U.S. researchers developing a vaccine to prevent urinary tract infections due to E. coli bacteria say the bacteria behave differently in women than in mice.
Scientists at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor say their genetic studies indicated specific surface structures of the E. coli found in mouse infections considered key to the bacteria thriving were not found in great numbers in the human samples.
"If we want to prevent infections in humans, we need to look at what's going on with the bacteria while it's in humans," study senior investigator Harry Mobley said in a statement. "We're not looking to make the world safer for mice."
Mobley and colleagues, who published a study last year showing the vaccine prevented urinary infections in mice, said the differences in gene expression in the mouse and human samples were significant but the key targets of the vaccine related to iron acquisition were similar and raise the hopes -- albeit several years away -- the vaccine will work in humans.
The study was published in PLoS Pathogens.

Elsewhere on the vaccine frontier -
Well, here's yet another vaccine getting the fast track to market. Notice that C. Difficile is a big problem in Europe and North America and that translates into big bucks. The people most affected are senior citizens and those with illnesses. M O N E Y, the company, Sanofi Pasteur stands to make a lot of it. It's ALL ABOUT M O N E Y! Patty

FDA grants C. difficile vaccine candidate fast-track designation
InfectiousDiseaseNews.com - 11-16-10

The FDA has granted Sanofi-Pasteur's investigational Clostridium difficile vaccine candidate fast-track designation for the treatment of C. difficile.

"Our C. difficile vaccine candidate is in phase 2," Michel DeWilde, PhD, senior vice president of research and development at Sanofi-Pasteur, said in a press release. "The FDA fast-track designation recognizes that a C. difficile vaccine could address an important unmet medical need."

The incidence of C. difficile infection has increased significantly in recent years in North America and Europe. Treatments in these two regions of the world are estimated to be costing more than $7 billion a year. The current treatment of C. difficile infection involves the use of one of the two antibiotics recommended for the management of C. difficile.

Under this program, the FDA can accept for review completed portions of the licensing application before receipt of the entire application, according to DeWilde.
source: Rense.com

and along the same lines of thinking -

Why is it that health care providers are failing to rely on dietary supplements that will safely "thin" the blood instead of using warfarin which will ultimately lead to a condition that causes the call wall membrane to self-destruct?

Think of all the lives that could be saved from bleeding to death if one prescribed garlic, nattokinase, garlic, omega 3 fish oil, non-soy vitamin e, and other natural products that accomplish the same result as warfarin...

It is much more that people taking supplements and not wanting to tell the doctor, it needs to start from the doctor being more informed about natural product benefit and working with their patients that wish to avoid drugs.

SALT LAKE CITY—Many of the most popular dietary supplements can interact with prescription drugs, including possible fatal consequences, according to twin studies conducted at Utah’s Intermountain Medical Center. The team of cardiologists and dietitians interviewed 100 patients on warfarin, an anticoagulant drug used to help prevent stroke. They learned 69 percent of subjects also used dietary supplements, especially vitamins, glucosamine and chondroitin, fish oil and coenzyme Q10 (CoQ10). More than half did not know about possible interactions, and nearly two-thirds did not consult with or inform their doctors about the supplement use. Researchers further discovered supplement users on warfarin were more likely to skip or double doses of the drug, and they also more frequently experienced drug interactions, such as unexplained bleeding and increased need for blood transfusions.
 Researcher T. Jared Bunch, M.D., a cardiologist, noted the drugs and supplements all compete in the liver for processing; for example, CoQ10, a favorite among cardio patients, can inhibit warfarin’s benefits and increase stroke risk, while fish oil can increase the risk of unwanted bleeding. He added health care and products providers need to better educate people on the possible interactions between drugs and supplements.
Fellow researchers John Day, M.D., also a cardiologist, added health care providers need to be aware of the supplements their patients are taking, especially if concurrent with prescribed medications. “We’re not saying dietary supplements are bad. We’re saying they should be considered medications,” he said. “And it’s critical that health providers know what medications their patients are taking.”

Antibiotics Up Birth Defect Risks

This article comes on following today'report of the very low ranking (30th) of US infant death. Increasing risk for birth defects can contribute to infant mortality.

Effective natural treatment of urinary tract infection (UTI) can be achieved without reliance on antibiotics.  Pure cranberry juice, the very tart kind with no additives that you get in the health food section is an excellent help.  Adding a small amout of pure apple juice is good for a bit of sweetness if you aren't used to cranberry juice's taste.

Make sure you don't by a "light"type product because these contain artificial sweeteners and thse do cause serious risk of birth defects.

Another type of natural remedy is concentrated cranberry sugar extract that is scientifically proven to clear UTI.  This is available through our organization.

Certain antibiotics may up birth defect risk

By Anne Harding Anne Harding
Tue Nov 3

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Some of the antibiotics used to treat urinary tract infections during pregnancy may increase the risk of several birth defects if a woman uses them early in pregnancy, a new study in the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine shows.

Researchers found an increased risk for two classes of antibiotics: sulfonamide (example: Bactrim) and nitrofurantoins (example: Macrobid). But the antibiotics pregnant women are most likely to be prescribed, the penicillins and erythromycins, appeared to be safe.

"Most of the commonly used antibiotics do not seem to be associated with most of the birth defects we studied," study co-author Dr. Krista S. Crider, of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, told Reuters Health. "This should be helpful for pregnant women and their health care provider as they're trying to make decisions on treatment of infections during pregnancy."

Bacterial infections can be extremely dangerous for a pregnant woman and her foetus, and should not go untreated, Crider and her team note in their report. But to date, they add, there have been no large-scale studies of whether or not antibiotics are safe in pregnancy.

To investigate, they looked at use of six different classes of antibiotics in more than 13,000 women whose pregnancies were affected by at least one of 30 major birth defects, and close to another 5,000 who had babies free from birth defects.

About 30 percent of the women in each group used an antibiotic at some point in her pregnancy, or during the previous three months.

But the researchers were interested in the month before pregnancy and the first trimester, a critical time in fetal development. Around 14 percent of the birth defect group had used an antibiotic during this period, as had 13 percent of the control group.

Sulfonamides were linked to six different birth defects, while nitrofurantoins were linked to four. Other classes of antibiotics were associated with one or two birth defects.

Crider said these findings should not be cause for concern among women who may need to take these drugs. For example, there were around 1,000 women who took penicillin, and just four had pregnancies affected by the birth defect in question. "Those are some pretty low numbers," the researcher said.

"It's important to realise that in every pregnancy, regardless of any medication use, there's a 3 percent chance of a birth defect," Crider added. "Many of the defects that we looked at in this study were very rare."

For example, she noted, a severe heart abnormality known as hypoplastic left heart syndrome, which was three times as common among women who took sulfonamides and four times more frequent among those who used nitrofurantoins, occurs in one in every 4,200 births. If risk is tripled, Crider pointed out, that still means only one case in every 1,400 births.

According to Crider, more research is needed before specific recommendations can be made on which antibiotics are safe-or not safe-to take in pregnancy. She said several years of data now coming in from the National Birth Defects Prevention Study may help to answer this question.

SOURCE: Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, November 2009.

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