This is an open letter to Senator John and Mrs. Edwards -
Elizabeth, I am thinking about you and your family today. This is just as I do every day when I think of those with cancer whom I serve as a health advisor.
I am a medically trained health professional with over thirty years of experience. I have seen many people die of cancer and know that often this does not have to be the accepted end.
I am also an expert in natural health care, studying and using it for 50 years.
Right now I work with someone who has 'leukemia', most likely the result of the extreme benzene exposure he had while making the tires our cars and trucks ride on every day.
The other is the mother-in-law of a dear freind who recently was diagnosed with stomach cancer. She has been taking the 'purple' pill on her doctor's order for well over a year because of indigestion. Now she has stomach cancer and is told she has but a few months to live. The 'purple pill' is known to interfere with the P450 cytochrome pathway, a detoxification pathway that helps you retain your health.
Mrs. Edwards, I highly respect your decision to "live with cancer" and to work with your chosen route of treatment and your doctors prescribed treatment.
I am sad because it seems you drink diet soda frequently when it is well established scientifically that aspartame causes cancer (known to the FDA as well).
You may even eat 'yoplait', a toxic mixture of unhealthy ingredients passed off as yogurt. As some one said to me at a talk I gave recently to a breast cancer survivor's group, "they support breast cancer researh". They may to some, but our health education-public health-non-profit organization does not get a penney from General Mills. We at CHI really need support because the demand we get from people for help (especially those with low income) is much greater than out finances can support. Perhaps this is because I learned that cancer would be cured by 1972 and am wondering what happened and why the incidence keeps climbing.
I am sad because I know the science behind the increase rate of breast cancer from mammography and the added cumulative damage from radiation treatment.
I am sad because I know the damage of chemotherapy drugs and that manistream medicine does not allow any adjunct treatment to detoxify the body from the 'die-off' of caner cells in this treatment, unlike natural care.
I am sad because Senator Kennedy's son had some natural treatment for his bone cancer and you may not know of it.
I am sad too because you do not consider proven intravenous vitamin C therapy that has cured cancer (see this same blog for more information), or the Kelley method that some of my clients choose - and that FDA studies show has an 83% cure rate, or the Burzynsky treatment that is effective also. This is in addition to other natural methods that have been used in conjunction with chemotherapy by enlightened medical doctors such as Laetrile, Hoxsey or Essiac herbal extracts.
Even the much maligned 'zapper' is proven at the University of WA to kill cancer cells.
There is so much more you can really do.
I wish that my thoughts reach you in some way, should the universe and it's Creator deem.
Sending you love, light and healing,
Dr. Gayle
and today (27 March) this same message goes to Tony Snow and all of the people everywhere 'living with cancer' and searching for options.
Monday, March 26, 2007
A reason to consider (and demand) effective natural treatment
Cayenne, hawthorne berry, white willow bark, natural vitamin E, chelation, IV vitamin c and other scientifically supported natural treatments can and will help you prevent the risk of heart disease without risky (yes! angioplasty can kill you) and expensive surgical treatments.
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Most angioplasties unneeded, study finds
By MARILYNN MARCHIONE, AP Medical Writer1 hour, 2 minutes ago
More than half a million people a year with chest pain are getting an unnecessary or premature procedure to unclog their arteries because drugs are just as effective, suggests a landmark study that challenges one of the most common practices in heart care.
The stunning results found that angioplasty did not save lives or prevent heart attacks in non-emergency heart patients.
An even bigger surprise: Angioplasty gave only slight and temporary relief from chest pain, the main reason it is done.
"By five years, there was really no significant difference" in symptoms, said Dr. William Boden of Buffalo General Hospital in New York. "Few would have expected such results."
He led the study and gave results Monday at a meeting of the American College of Cardiology. They also were published online by the New England Journal of Medicine and will be in the April 12 issue.
Angioplasty remains the top treatment for people having a heart attack or hospitalized with worsening symptoms. But most angioplasties are done on a non-emergency basis, to relieve chest pain caused by clogged arteries crimping the heart's blood supply.
Those patients now should try drugs first, experts say. If that does not help, they can consider angioplasty or bypass surgery, which unlike angioplasty, does save lives, prevent heart attacks and give lasting chest pain relief.
In the study, only one-third of the people treated with drugs ultimately needed angioplasty or a bypass.
"You are not putting yourself at risk of death or heart attack if you defer," and considering the safety worries about heart stents used to keep arteries open after angioplasty, it may be wise to wait, said Dr. Steven Nissen, a Cleveland Clinic heart specialist and president of the College of Cardiology.
Why did angioplasty not help more?
It fixes only one blockage at a time whereas drugs affect all the arteries, experts said. Also, the clogs treated with angioplasty are not the really dangerous kind.
"Even though it goes against intuition, the blockages that are severe that cause chest pain are less likely to be the source of a heart attack than segments in the artery that are not severely blocked," said Dr. David Maron, a Vanderbilt University cardiologist who helped lead the new study.
Drugs are better today than they used to be, and do a surprisingly good job, said Dr. Elizabeth Nabel, director of the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute.
"It may not be as bad as we thought" to leave the artery alone, she said.
About 1.2 million angioplasties are done in the United States each year. Through a blood vessel in the groin, doctors snake a tube to a blocked heart artery. A tiny balloon is inflated to flatten the clog and a mesh scaffold stent is usually placed.
The procedure already has lost some popularity because of emerging evidence that popular drug-coated stents can raise the risk of blood clots months later. The new study shifts the argument from which type of stent to use to whether to do the procedure at all.
It involved 2,287 patients throughout the U.S. and Canada who had substantial blockages, typically in two arteries, but were medically stable. They had an average of 10 chest pain episodes a week — moderately severe. About 40 percent had a prior heart attack.
"We deliberately chose to enroll a sicker, more symptomatic group" to give angioplasty a good chance to prove itself, Boden said.
All were treated with medicines that improve chest pain and heart and artery health such as aspirin, cholesterol-lowering statins, nitrates, ACE inhibitors, beta-blockers and calcium channel blockers. All also were counseled on healthy lifestyles — diet, exercise and smoking cessation.
Half of the participants also were assigned to get angioplasty.
After an average of 4 1/2 years, the groups had similar rates of death and heart attack: 211 in the angioplasty group and 202 in the medication group — about 19 percent of each.
Heart-related hospitalization rates were similar, too.
Neither treatment proved better for any subgroups like smokers, diabetics, or older or sicker people.
At the start of the study, 80 percent had chest pain. Three years into it, 72 percent of the angioplasty group was free of this symptom as was 67 percent of the drug group.
That means you would have to give angioplasties to 20 people for every one whose chest pain was better after three years — an unacceptably high ratio, Nissen said.
After five years, 74 percent of the angioplasty group and 72 percent of the medication group were free of chest pain - "no significant difference," Boden said.
The study was funded by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, the Medical Research Council of Canada and a host of drug companies. Stent makers refused to help pay for the research, said scientists who led the study.
The study renewed a heated animosity between doctors who perform angioplasty and other heart specialists.
In fact, one who does the procedures and who spoke at a meeting in New Orleans sponsored by stent maker Boston Scientific Corp. was responsible for the early release of the study's results, which were not due out until Tuesday.
The study "was rigged to fail, and it did," the Wall Street Journal quoted Dr. Martin B. Leon of Columbia University telling several hundred of his colleagues Sunday night.
"A lot of people have been taking shots at us, and we need to go on the offense for awhile," the Journal reported Leon said.
He claimed to have inside knowledge of the results because he reviewed the study for the New England Journal. The journal would not comment, saying the identity of its reviewers is confidential.
The cardiology college issued a statement saying it was "extremely disappointed" results were released prematurely, "betraying the confidentiality of the scholarly process and the professional integrity of the scientific community."
The college "will be considering strong sanctions against the individual or individuals involved," the statement said.
Boston Scientific shares fell $1.05, or 6.6 percent, to close at $14.22 on the New York Stock Exchange at double their average volume.
Dr. Spencer King of Piedmont Hospital in Atlanta, a leading cardiologist who does many angioplasties, said he was disappointed in the study results.
"How many patients have interventions in which the only expectation is to reduce the use of nitroglycerin or to walk a bit faster? Most patients anticipate a better prognosis and might opt for an extended course of medical therapy if they believe they are not putting their life at excess risk," he wrote in a recent editorial in an American Heart Association journal.
In an interview at the cardiology meeting, King said he recently had surgery for back pain and did not expect permanent relief but added, "If it only held up for five years, I wouldn't be happy about it."
The new study "should lead to changes in the treatment of patients with stable coronary artery disease, with expected substantial health care savings," Dr. Judith Hochman of New York University wrote in an editorial in the journal.
An angioplasty costs roughly $40,000. The drugs used in the study are almost all available in generic form.
Maron, the Vanderbilt doctor who helped lead the study, said people should give the drugs a chance.
"Often I think that patients are under the impression that unless they have that procedure done, they're not getting the best of care and are at increased risk of having a heart attack and die," he said.
Dr. Raymond Gibbons, a Mayo Clinic cardiologist and American Heart Association president, agreed: "This trial shows convincingly that that assumption is incorrect."
New England Journal: http://www.nejm.org
Heart meeting: http://www.acc.org
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Stent use in heart disease treatment does not reduce mortality: study
by Jean-Louis Santini, 26 March 07
The use of stents in obstructed arteries, a widespread and lucrative heart disease treatment, does not reduce mortality in stable patients, a study released Monday found.
The results, released at a gathering of the American College of Cardiology (ACC), looked at the use of stents to reduce mortality compared to use of drugs alone, and could encourage a major shift in the way physicians treat heart disease patients.
The finding could rock a six-billion-dollar a year industry, 3.2 billion dollars of which is done in the United States.
US-based Johnson and Johnson and Boston Scientific are the top manufacturers of the devices.
"As an initial management strategy in patients with stable coronary artery disease, percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI, or stent insertion) did not reduce the risk of death, myocardial infarction, or other major cardio-vascular events when added to optimal medical therapy," write the authors of the study due to appear in the March 29 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.
The mortality rate was around eight percent in both groups at the end of the study. Related risks such as death, heart attack and other cardiovascular incidents, were 20 percent and 19.5 percent, respectively, a statistically negligible difference.
Dubbed the Courage trial (Clinical Outcome Utilizing Revascularization and Aggressive Drug Evaluation), its results "should lead to changes in the treatment of patients with stable coronary artery disease, with expected substantial health care savings," wrote cardiologists Judith Hochman and Gabriel Steg in an editorial in the same edition of the New England Journal of Medicine.
"PCI has an established place in treating angina but is not superior to intensive medical therapy to prevent myocardial infarction and death...in patients such as those in the study," they added.
Lead author William Boden added that "percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) is critically important in terms of reducing death, improving survival in patients with acute myocardial infarction; it's the procedure of choice, in that minority of patients, PCI is beneficial and life saving.
"But it's not in the great majority of patients with symptomatic coronary artery disease," Boden stressed.
"I think the results of COURAGE are good news for patients and physicians because now we have a base for adoption of a treatment," he added, noting that "historically, there has been an unproven assumption that if you have a significant a coronary diseases, you must have PCI."
More than one million stent procedures were done in 2004 and 85 percent of them were stable patients, according to the study's authors.
The study was done with 2,287 heart disease patients in Canada and the United States between 1999 and 2004. Half received stents and half drug treatment alone. The study was funded among others by the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Canadian Institute for Health Research and pharmaceutical firms such as Merck, Pfizer and Sanofi.
More than 70 million Americans suffer from cardiovascular disease the leading cause of death in the United States, with more than 900,000 deaths in 2005.
Worldwide cardiovascular disease caused 17.5 million deaths the same year, 30 percent of the total, according to data from the World Health Organization.
Copyright © 2007 Agence France Presse.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Most angioplasties unneeded, study finds
By MARILYNN MARCHIONE, AP Medical Writer1 hour, 2 minutes ago
More than half a million people a year with chest pain are getting an unnecessary or premature procedure to unclog their arteries because drugs are just as effective, suggests a landmark study that challenges one of the most common practices in heart care.
The stunning results found that angioplasty did not save lives or prevent heart attacks in non-emergency heart patients.
An even bigger surprise: Angioplasty gave only slight and temporary relief from chest pain, the main reason it is done.
"By five years, there was really no significant difference" in symptoms, said Dr. William Boden of Buffalo General Hospital in New York. "Few would have expected such results."
He led the study and gave results Monday at a meeting of the American College of Cardiology. They also were published online by the New England Journal of Medicine and will be in the April 12 issue.
Angioplasty remains the top treatment for people having a heart attack or hospitalized with worsening symptoms. But most angioplasties are done on a non-emergency basis, to relieve chest pain caused by clogged arteries crimping the heart's blood supply.
Those patients now should try drugs first, experts say. If that does not help, they can consider angioplasty or bypass surgery, which unlike angioplasty, does save lives, prevent heart attacks and give lasting chest pain relief.
In the study, only one-third of the people treated with drugs ultimately needed angioplasty or a bypass.
"You are not putting yourself at risk of death or heart attack if you defer," and considering the safety worries about heart stents used to keep arteries open after angioplasty, it may be wise to wait, said Dr. Steven Nissen, a Cleveland Clinic heart specialist and president of the College of Cardiology.
Why did angioplasty not help more?
It fixes only one blockage at a time whereas drugs affect all the arteries, experts said. Also, the clogs treated with angioplasty are not the really dangerous kind.
"Even though it goes against intuition, the blockages that are severe that cause chest pain are less likely to be the source of a heart attack than segments in the artery that are not severely blocked," said Dr. David Maron, a Vanderbilt University cardiologist who helped lead the new study.
Drugs are better today than they used to be, and do a surprisingly good job, said Dr. Elizabeth Nabel, director of the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute.
"It may not be as bad as we thought" to leave the artery alone, she said.
About 1.2 million angioplasties are done in the United States each year. Through a blood vessel in the groin, doctors snake a tube to a blocked heart artery. A tiny balloon is inflated to flatten the clog and a mesh scaffold stent is usually placed.
The procedure already has lost some popularity because of emerging evidence that popular drug-coated stents can raise the risk of blood clots months later. The new study shifts the argument from which type of stent to use to whether to do the procedure at all.
It involved 2,287 patients throughout the U.S. and Canada who had substantial blockages, typically in two arteries, but were medically stable. They had an average of 10 chest pain episodes a week — moderately severe. About 40 percent had a prior heart attack.
"We deliberately chose to enroll a sicker, more symptomatic group" to give angioplasty a good chance to prove itself, Boden said.
All were treated with medicines that improve chest pain and heart and artery health such as aspirin, cholesterol-lowering statins, nitrates, ACE inhibitors, beta-blockers and calcium channel blockers. All also were counseled on healthy lifestyles — diet, exercise and smoking cessation.
Half of the participants also were assigned to get angioplasty.
After an average of 4 1/2 years, the groups had similar rates of death and heart attack: 211 in the angioplasty group and 202 in the medication group — about 19 percent of each.
Heart-related hospitalization rates were similar, too.
Neither treatment proved better for any subgroups like smokers, diabetics, or older or sicker people.
At the start of the study, 80 percent had chest pain. Three years into it, 72 percent of the angioplasty group was free of this symptom as was 67 percent of the drug group.
That means you would have to give angioplasties to 20 people for every one whose chest pain was better after three years — an unacceptably high ratio, Nissen said.
After five years, 74 percent of the angioplasty group and 72 percent of the medication group were free of chest pain - "no significant difference," Boden said.
The study was funded by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, the Medical Research Council of Canada and a host of drug companies. Stent makers refused to help pay for the research, said scientists who led the study.
The study renewed a heated animosity between doctors who perform angioplasty and other heart specialists.
In fact, one who does the procedures and who spoke at a meeting in New Orleans sponsored by stent maker Boston Scientific Corp. was responsible for the early release of the study's results, which were not due out until Tuesday.
The study "was rigged to fail, and it did," the Wall Street Journal quoted Dr. Martin B. Leon of Columbia University telling several hundred of his colleagues Sunday night.
"A lot of people have been taking shots at us, and we need to go on the offense for awhile," the Journal reported Leon said.
He claimed to have inside knowledge of the results because he reviewed the study for the New England Journal. The journal would not comment, saying the identity of its reviewers is confidential.
The cardiology college issued a statement saying it was "extremely disappointed" results were released prematurely, "betraying the confidentiality of the scholarly process and the professional integrity of the scientific community."
The college "will be considering strong sanctions against the individual or individuals involved," the statement said.
Boston Scientific shares fell $1.05, or 6.6 percent, to close at $14.22 on the New York Stock Exchange at double their average volume.
Dr. Spencer King of Piedmont Hospital in Atlanta, a leading cardiologist who does many angioplasties, said he was disappointed in the study results.
"How many patients have interventions in which the only expectation is to reduce the use of nitroglycerin or to walk a bit faster? Most patients anticipate a better prognosis and might opt for an extended course of medical therapy if they believe they are not putting their life at excess risk," he wrote in a recent editorial in an American Heart Association journal.
In an interview at the cardiology meeting, King said he recently had surgery for back pain and did not expect permanent relief but added, "If it only held up for five years, I wouldn't be happy about it."
The new study "should lead to changes in the treatment of patients with stable coronary artery disease, with expected substantial health care savings," Dr. Judith Hochman of New York University wrote in an editorial in the journal.
An angioplasty costs roughly $40,000. The drugs used in the study are almost all available in generic form.
Maron, the Vanderbilt doctor who helped lead the study, said people should give the drugs a chance.
"Often I think that patients are under the impression that unless they have that procedure done, they're not getting the best of care and are at increased risk of having a heart attack and die," he said.
Dr. Raymond Gibbons, a Mayo Clinic cardiologist and American Heart Association president, agreed: "This trial shows convincingly that that assumption is incorrect."
New England Journal: http://www.nejm.org
Heart meeting: http://www.acc.org
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Stent use in heart disease treatment does not reduce mortality: study
by Jean-Louis Santini, 26 March 07
The use of stents in obstructed arteries, a widespread and lucrative heart disease treatment, does not reduce mortality in stable patients, a study released Monday found.
The results, released at a gathering of the American College of Cardiology (ACC), looked at the use of stents to reduce mortality compared to use of drugs alone, and could encourage a major shift in the way physicians treat heart disease patients.
The finding could rock a six-billion-dollar a year industry, 3.2 billion dollars of which is done in the United States.
US-based Johnson and Johnson and Boston Scientific are the top manufacturers of the devices.
"As an initial management strategy in patients with stable coronary artery disease, percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI, or stent insertion) did not reduce the risk of death, myocardial infarction, or other major cardio-vascular events when added to optimal medical therapy," write the authors of the study due to appear in the March 29 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.
The mortality rate was around eight percent in both groups at the end of the study. Related risks such as death, heart attack and other cardiovascular incidents, were 20 percent and 19.5 percent, respectively, a statistically negligible difference.
Dubbed the Courage trial (Clinical Outcome Utilizing Revascularization and Aggressive Drug Evaluation), its results "should lead to changes in the treatment of patients with stable coronary artery disease, with expected substantial health care savings," wrote cardiologists Judith Hochman and Gabriel Steg in an editorial in the same edition of the New England Journal of Medicine.
"PCI has an established place in treating angina but is not superior to intensive medical therapy to prevent myocardial infarction and death...in patients such as those in the study," they added.
Lead author William Boden added that "percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) is critically important in terms of reducing death, improving survival in patients with acute myocardial infarction; it's the procedure of choice, in that minority of patients, PCI is beneficial and life saving.
"But it's not in the great majority of patients with symptomatic coronary artery disease," Boden stressed.
"I think the results of COURAGE are good news for patients and physicians because now we have a base for adoption of a treatment," he added, noting that "historically, there has been an unproven assumption that if you have a significant a coronary diseases, you must have PCI."
More than one million stent procedures were done in 2004 and 85 percent of them were stable patients, according to the study's authors.
The study was done with 2,287 heart disease patients in Canada and the United States between 1999 and 2004. Half received stents and half drug treatment alone. The study was funded among others by the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Canadian Institute for Health Research and pharmaceutical firms such as Merck, Pfizer and Sanofi.
More than 70 million Americans suffer from cardiovascular disease the leading cause of death in the United States, with more than 900,000 deaths in 2005.
Worldwide cardiovascular disease caused 17.5 million deaths the same year, 30 percent of the total, according to data from the World Health Organization.
Copyright © 2007 Agence France Presse.
Drugs for 'good' cholesterol fail tests
So what do they expect? Cholesterol drugs are known to be extremely hazardous and may cost you your life. Why play Russian Roulette with all the barrel loaded by taking these drugs on the false promise that cholesterol is hazardous?
Try one tablespoon a day of high quality, cold and first pressed extra virgin olive oil from a glass bottle. Add a teaspoon or two of raw apple cider vinegar in your glass of pure and fluoride free water daily and throw in some good vitamin C and niacin. Might be easier, less expensive and life altering.
Yoda
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
By MARILYNN MARCHIONE, AP Medical Writer
The hot new strategy of trying to prevent heart disease by raising good cholesterol had more setbacks Monday as new studies showed that experimental drugs didn't work and also had safety problems.
The news follows Pfizer Inc.'s abandonment in December of an $800 million investment in torcetrapib, the leading contender in this class of drugs, because it raised the risk of heart attacks and deaths.
Heart specialists have been anxious to know whether the problems extend to all such drugs and doom this approach.
"A lot of people think it's the next big thing, and we'll need to understand what went wrong with torcetrapib to move forward," said Dr. Steven Nissen, a Cleveland Clinic heart specialist who is president of the American College of Cardiology.
The new studies, reported at the group's conference, gave a mixed answer. The Pfizer drug seems uniquely risky, but other drugs have problems, too.
And even though they and the Pfizer drug raised HDL good cholesterol as intended, that made no difference in the odds of heart attacks or deaths, or key measures of cholesterol buildup in arteries.
Doctors long have focused on lowering LDL, or bad cholesterol, to cut heart attack risk. Statins, sold as Lipitor and Zocor and also in generic form, lower LDL, which ferries fats from food into the bloodstream.
But many statin users suffer heart attacks anyway, so doctors have been trying to boost HDL, or good cholesterol — which transports fat from the blood to the liver to be disposed of — to further lower risk.
An extended-release niacin drug called Niaspan, sold by Kos Pharmaceuticals Inc., does this. But it can cause a prickly hot sensation called flushing that some people find intolerable. Pfizer, Merck & Co. and Swiss drug maker Roche Holding AG are testing drugs that boost HDL in a novel way.
On Monday, scientists reported the results of several studies on torcetrapib. In one, the drug boosted HDL by 61 percent, but trends in death, hospitalization and heart attacks "are all going in the wrong direction," Nissen said.
An experimental diabetes drug by Eli Lilly and Co. that is 10,000 times more potent than fibrates, a current cholesterol treatment, also proved disappointing. The new drug raised HDL but also raised the risk of kidney, heart and other serious problems, Nissen reported.
Finally, infusions of a reconstituted form of HDL developed by CSL Ltd., an Australian company, made no big difference in the burden of artery buildups in a study led by Dr. Jean-Claude Tardif of the Montreal Heart Institute.
In several of these studies there were hints of some improvements in less important measures of artery buildup, which provides "a glimmer of hope for future development of this class of drugs," Dr. Alan Tall of Columbia University writes in an editorial in the New England Journal of Medicine.
That journal and the Journal of the American Medical Association published several of the new studies.
"The bar has been raised a lot for this entire class, but I do not think we can abandon this entire approach," Nissen said.
If Baycol had been the first statin tested and research had stopped after safety problems emerged, there wouldn't even be this class of drugs, he noted. Baycol, sold by Bayer AG, was withdrawn from the market in 2001 after reports of a severe and sometimes fatal muscle disorder.
Try one tablespoon a day of high quality, cold and first pressed extra virgin olive oil from a glass bottle. Add a teaspoon or two of raw apple cider vinegar in your glass of pure and fluoride free water daily and throw in some good vitamin C and niacin. Might be easier, less expensive and life altering.
Yoda
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
By MARILYNN MARCHIONE, AP Medical Writer
The hot new strategy of trying to prevent heart disease by raising good cholesterol had more setbacks Monday as new studies showed that experimental drugs didn't work and also had safety problems.
The news follows Pfizer Inc.'s abandonment in December of an $800 million investment in torcetrapib, the leading contender in this class of drugs, because it raised the risk of heart attacks and deaths.
Heart specialists have been anxious to know whether the problems extend to all such drugs and doom this approach.
"A lot of people think it's the next big thing, and we'll need to understand what went wrong with torcetrapib to move forward," said Dr. Steven Nissen, a Cleveland Clinic heart specialist who is president of the American College of Cardiology.
The new studies, reported at the group's conference, gave a mixed answer. The Pfizer drug seems uniquely risky, but other drugs have problems, too.
And even though they and the Pfizer drug raised HDL good cholesterol as intended, that made no difference in the odds of heart attacks or deaths, or key measures of cholesterol buildup in arteries.
Doctors long have focused on lowering LDL, or bad cholesterol, to cut heart attack risk. Statins, sold as Lipitor and Zocor and also in generic form, lower LDL, which ferries fats from food into the bloodstream.
But many statin users suffer heart attacks anyway, so doctors have been trying to boost HDL, or good cholesterol — which transports fat from the blood to the liver to be disposed of — to further lower risk.
An extended-release niacin drug called Niaspan, sold by Kos Pharmaceuticals Inc., does this. But it can cause a prickly hot sensation called flushing that some people find intolerable. Pfizer, Merck & Co. and Swiss drug maker Roche Holding AG are testing drugs that boost HDL in a novel way.
On Monday, scientists reported the results of several studies on torcetrapib. In one, the drug boosted HDL by 61 percent, but trends in death, hospitalization and heart attacks "are all going in the wrong direction," Nissen said.
An experimental diabetes drug by Eli Lilly and Co. that is 10,000 times more potent than fibrates, a current cholesterol treatment, also proved disappointing. The new drug raised HDL but also raised the risk of kidney, heart and other serious problems, Nissen reported.
Finally, infusions of a reconstituted form of HDL developed by CSL Ltd., an Australian company, made no big difference in the burden of artery buildups in a study led by Dr. Jean-Claude Tardif of the Montreal Heart Institute.
In several of these studies there were hints of some improvements in less important measures of artery buildup, which provides "a glimmer of hope for future development of this class of drugs," Dr. Alan Tall of Columbia University writes in an editorial in the New England Journal of Medicine.
That journal and the Journal of the American Medical Association published several of the new studies.
"The bar has been raised a lot for this entire class, but I do not think we can abandon this entire approach," Nissen said.
If Baycol had been the first statin tested and research had stopped after safety problems emerged, there wouldn't even be this class of drugs, he noted. Baycol, sold by Bayer AG, was withdrawn from the market in 2001 after reports of a severe and sometimes fatal muscle disorder.
Monday, March 05, 2007
America's Favorite 'Health' Food Maybe Shouldn't Be: Just A Reminder
The DARK Side Of Soy -
Over the past decade, soy foods have become America's favorite health food. Newspapers, magazines, and best-selling health writers have proclaimed the "joy of soy" and promoted the belief that soy food is the key to disease prevention and maximum longevity.
The possibility that an inexpensive plant food could prevent heart disease, fight cancer, fan away hot flashes, and build strong bodies in far more than 12 ways is seductive. The truth, unfortunately, is far more complex. Soy foods come in a variety of forms, including many heavily processed modern products. Even good forms of soy foods must be eaten sparingly-the way they have been eaten traditionally in Asia. Most important, many respected scientists have issued warnings stating that the possible benefits of eating soy should be weighed against the proven risks. Indeed, thousands of studies link soy to malnutrition, digestive distress, immune-system breakdown, thyroid dysfunction, cognitive decline, reproductive disorders and infertility-even cancer and heart disease.
Americans rarely hear anything negative about soy. Thanks to the shrewd public relations campaigns waged by Archer Daniels Midland (ADM), Protein Technologies International (PTI), the American Soybean Association, and other soy interests, as well as the Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) 1999 approval of the health claim that soy protein lowers cholesterol, soy maintains a "healthy" image.
This article is written for parents who need to know the risks of feeding soy formula to infants, or soy milk and other soy foods to growing children. It's designed for prospective mothers and fathers who need to know the links between soy foods, infertility, and birth defects. Finally, it will serve anyone considering soy as a preventive for menopausal symptoms, osteoporosis, cancer, heart disease, or other ills.
How Much Soy Do Asians Really Eat?
Those who dare to question the benefits of soy tend to receive one stock answer: Soy foods couldn't possibly have a downside because Asians eat large quantities of soy every day and consequently remain free of most western diseases. In fact, the people of China, Japan, and other countries in Asia eat very little soy. The soy industry's own figures show that soy consumption in China, Indonesia, Korea, Japan, and Taiwan ranges from 9.3 to 36 grams per day.1 That's grams of soy food, not grams of soy protein alone. Compare this with a cup of tofu (252 grams) or soy milk (240 grams).2 Many Americans today think nothing of consuming a cup of tofu, a couple glasses of soy milk, handfuls of soy nuts, soy "energy bars," and veggie burgers. Infants on soy formula receive the most of all, both in quantity and in proportion to body weight.
In short, there is no historical precedent for eating the large amounts of soy food now being consumed by infants fed soy formula and vegetarians who favor soy as their main source of protein, or for the large amounts of soy being recommended by Dr. Andrew Weil, Dr. Christiane Northrup, and many other popular health experts.
What's more, the rural poor in China have never seen-let alone feasted on-soy sausages, chili made with Textured Vegetable Protein (TVP), tofu cheesecake, packaged soy milk, soy "energy bars," or other newfangled soy products that have infiltrated the American marketplace.
The Right Stuff
The ancient Chinese honored the soybean with the name "the yellow jewel" but used it as "green manure"-a cover crop plowed under to enrich the soil. Soy did not become human food until late in the Chou Dynasty (1134-246 B.C.), when the Chinese developed a fermentation process to make soybean paste, best known today by its Japanese name, miso.3 Soy sauce-the natural type sold under the Japanese name shoyu-began as the liquid poured off during the production of miso. Two other popular fermented soy foods, natto and tempeh, entered the food supply around 1000 A.D. or later in Japan and Indonesia, respectively.
Tofu came after miso. Legend has it that, in 164 B.C., Lord Liu An of Huai-nan, China-a renowned alchemist, meditator, and ruler-discovered that a purée of cooked soybeans could be precipitated with nigari (a form of magnesium chloride found in seawater) into solid cakes, called tofu. In Japan, as in China, tofu was rarely served as a main course anywhere except in monasteries. Its most popular use was-and is-as a few bland little blocks in miso soup or fish stock.
The Chinese almost never ate boiled or baked soybeans or cooked with soy flour except in times of famine. Modern soy products such as soy protein isolate (SPI), TVP, soy-protein concentrate, and other soy-protein products made using high-tech industrial processes, were unknown in Asia until after World War II.4
Contrary to popular belief, neither soy milk nor soy infant formula is traditional in Asia. Soy milk originated as a byproduct of the process of making tofu; the earliest reference to it as a beverage appeared in 1866.5 By the 1920s and 1930s, it was popular in Asia as an occasional drink served to the elderly.6-8 The first person to manufacture soy milk in China was actually an American-Harry Miller, a Seventh Day Adventist physician and missionary.9
The first soy infant formulas in China were developed in the 1930s and have never been widely used.10-14 Today, babies in Asia are almost always breastfed for at least the first six months, then switched to a dairy-based infant formula. Orphans and others who cannot be breastfed by a wet nurse are fed from birth on dairy formulas.15
Claims that soybeans have been a major part of the Asian diet for more than 3,000 years, or from "time immemorial," are simply not true.
Processing Matters
Soy in the West has been a product of the industrial revolution-an opportunity for technologists to develop cheap meat substitutes, to find clever new ways to hide soy in familiar food products, to formulate soy-based pharmaceuticals, and to develop a renewable, plant-based resource that could replace petroleum-based plastics and fuels.
For years, the soy protein left over from soy-oil extraction went to animals and poultry. Now that food scientists have discovered inexpensive ways to improve or disguise the color, flavor, "bite characteristics," and "mouth feel" of soy protein-based products, soy is being aggressively marketed as a "people feed." Although the newer refining techniques yield blander, purer soy proteins than the "beany," hard-to-cover-up flavors of the past, the main reason that soy foods now taste and look better is the lavish use of unhealthy additives such as sugar and other sweeteners, salt, artificial flavorings, colors, and monosodium glutamate (MSG).
Soy now lurks in nearly 60 percent of the foods sold in supermarkets and natural food stores. Much of this is "hidden" in products where it wouldn't ordinarily be expected, such as fast-food burgers and Bumblebee canned tuna. Soy is also a key ingredient in ersatz products with names like Soysage, Not Dogs, Fakin Bakin, Sham Ham, and TofuRella, which have been named after and made to look like the familiar meat and diary products they are intended to replace.
There's nothing natural about these modern soy protein products. Textured soy protein, for example, is made by forcing defatted soy flour through a machine called an extruder under conditions of such extreme heat and pressure that the very structure of the soy protein is changed. Production differs little from the extrusion technology used to produce starch-based packing materials, fiber-based industrial products, and plastic toy parts, bowls, and plates.16
The process of making soy protein isolate (SPI) begins with defatted soybean meal, which is mixed with a caustic alkaline solution to remove the fiber, then washed in an acid solution to precipitate out the protein. The protein curds are then dipped into another alkaline solution and spray-dried at extremely high temperatures. SPI is then often spun into protein fibers using technology borrowed from the textile industry. These refining processes remove "off flavors," "beany" tastes, and some of the worst flatulence-producing components. They improve digestibility, but vitamin, mineral, and protein quality are sacrificed, and levels of carcinogens such as nitrosamines are increased.17-22 SPIs appear in so many products that consumers would never guess that the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB) decreed in 1979 that the only safe use for SPIs was for sealers for cardboard packages.23
Antinutrients and Toxins in Soy
Scientists who have studied the use of soy protein in animal feeds over the years have discovered a number of components in soy that cause poor growth, digestive distress, and other health problems.24-27 To list just a few of these: Protease inhibitors interfere with protein digestion and have caused malnutrition, poor growth, digestive distress, and pancreatitis.28 Phytates block mineral absorption, causing zinc, iron, and calcium deficiencies.29-34 Lectins and saponins have caused leaky gut and other gastrointestinal and immune problems.35-36 Oxalates-surprisingly high in soy-may cause problems for people prone to kidney stones and women suffering from vulvodynia, a painful condition marked by burning, stinging, and itching of the external genitalia.37, 38 Finally, oligosaccharides give soy its notorious reputation as a gas producer. Although these are present in all beans, soy is such a powerful "musical fruit" that the soy industry has identified "the flatulence factor" as a major obstacle that must be overcome for soy to achieve full consumer acceptance.39, 40
Apologists for soy dismiss such claims, saying that food processing and home cooking remove most of these antinutrients. In fact, modern processing removes most of them, but not all. The levels of heat and pressure needed to remove all protease inhibitors, for example, severely damage soy protein and make it harder to digest. The trick is to eliminate the most antinutrients while doing the least damage to the soy protein. Success varies widely from batch to batch.41-44
For years, the soy industry tried to improve the quality of animal feeds by finding better ways to get rid of these undesirable antinutrients. Having failed, they routinely supplement animal feeds heavily with vitamins, minerals, and methionine, a sulfur-containing amino acid that is low in soy. Even so, makers of animal chows are still limited in the amount of soy they can add without causing growth and fertility problems. Food processors making soy-protein products for people may or may not add these supplements. Generally, calcium and vitamin D are added to soy milk so it can compete with dairy products.
Today, the soy industry has switched tactics-from trying to remove unwanted antinutrients to trying to convince people that they are actually a good thing. Protease inhibitors, saponins, and lectins are being touted as curers of cancer or lowerers of cholesterol, while phytates are being recommended for their ability to remove toxic minerals such as cadmium and excess iron from the body.45-51 Although some of these uses look promising, it is important to note that researchers are not achieving these successes using regular soy foods. Most take carefully extracted components and administer them in carefully measured and monitored pharmaceutical doses. News headlines to the contrary, there is no reason to think that just eating a lot of soy foods will do the trick.
Soy Allergens
Soy is one of the top eight allergens that cause immediate hypersensitivity reactions such as coughing, sneezing, runny nose, hives, diarrhea, difficulty swallowing, and anaphylactic shock. Delayed allergic responses are even more common and occur anywhere from several hours to several days after the food is eaten. These have been linked to sleep disturbances, bedwetting, sinus and ear infections, crankiness, joint paint, chronic fatigue, gastrointestinal woes, and other mysterious symptoms.52, 53
Soy allergies are on the rise for three reasons: the growing use of soy infant formula (now 20 to 25 percent of the formula market), the increase in soy-containing foods in grocery stores, the possibility of the greater allergenicity of genetically modified soybeans.54 Although severe reactions to soy are rare compared to reactions to peanuts, tree nuts, fish, and shellfish, soy has been underestimated as a cause of food anaphylaxis. Recently, after a young girl in Sweden suffered an asthma attack and died after eating a hamburger that contained only 2.2 percent soy protein, Swedish researchers looked into a possible soybean connection. They concluded that the soy-in-the-hamburger case was not a fluke, and that minute amounts of soy "hidden" in regular food had caused four of the total of five deaths caused by allergic reactions in Sweden between 1993 and 1996. Of the children who suffered fatal attacks, all had been able to eat soy without any adverse reactions right up until the dinner that caused their deaths.55 According to the Swedish Ministry of Health and Social Affairs, children at highest risk are those who suffer from peanut allergies and asthma; parents of such children should make every effort to eliminate all soy from their children's diets.56
Soy and the Thyroid: A Pain in the Neck
More than 70 years of human, animal, and laboratory studies show that soybeans put the thyroid at risk. The chief culprits are the plant hormones in soy known as phytoestrogens or isoflavones.57-59 The United Kingdom's Committee on Toxicology has identified several populations at special risk: infants on soy formula, vegans who use soy as their principal meat and dairy replacements, and men and women who self-medicate with soy foods and/or isoflavone supplements in an attempt to prevent or reverse menopausal symptoms, cancer, or heart disease.60
Infants with congenital hypothyroidism need 18 to 25 percent higher doses of thyroxine drug than usual if they are bottle-fed with soy formula.61 Likewise, adults who boost their thyroid with drugs such as Synthroid while also eating thyroid-inhibiting foods such as soy put extreme stress on their thyroids. Toxicologist Michael Fitzpatrick, PhD, points out that this is the way that researchers induce thyroid cancers in laboratory animals.62
Soy and Reproduction: Breeding Discontent
Scientists have known since the mid-1940s that phytoestrogens can impair fertility. Fertility problems in cows, sheep, rabbits, cheetahs, guinea pigs, birds, and mice have all been reported.63, 64 Although scientists discovered only recently that soy lowers testosterone levels,65 tofu has traditionally been used in Buddhist monasteries to decrease the libido, and by Japanese women to punish straying husbands. Humans and animals appear to be the most vulnerable to the effects of soy estrogens prenatally, during infancy and puberty, during pregnancy and lactation, and during the hormonal shifts of menopause. Of all these groups, infants on soy formula are at the highest risk because of their small size and developmental phase, and because formula is their main source of nutrient.66, 67
A crucial time for the programming of the human reproduction system is right after birth-the very time when bottles of soy formula are given to many non-breastfed babies. Normally during this period, the body surges with natural estrogens, testosterones, and other hormones that are meant to program the baby's reproductive development from infancy through puberty and into adulthood. For infants on soy formula, this programming may be interrupted.68-70
Male infants experience a testosterone surge during the first few months of life and produce androgens in amounts equal to those of adult men. So much testosterone at such a tender age is needed to program the body for puberty, the time when a male's sex organs should develop and he should begin to express male characteristics such as facial and pubic hair and a deep voice. If receptor sites intended for the hormone testosterone are occupied by soy estrogens, however, appropriate development may never take place.71-74 To date, most of the evidence damning soy formula can be found only in animal studies, because investigations in which humans' sex hormone levels are lowered experimentally cannot ethically be done. However, in the years since soy formula has been in the marketplace, parents and pediatricians have reported growing numbers of boys whose physical maturation is either delayed or does not occur at all. Breasts, underdeveloped gonads, undescended testicles (cryptorchidism), and steroid insufficiencies are increasingly common. Sperm counts are also falling.75-79
Soy formula is bad news for girls as well. Natural estrogen levels approximately double during the first month of life, then decline and remain at low levels until puberty. With increased estrogens in the environment in the diet, an alarming number of girls are entering puberty much earlier than normal.80-82 One percent of girls now show signs of puberty, such as breast development or pubic hair, before the age of three. By the age of eight, 14.7 percent of Caucasian girls and 48.3 percent of African American girls had one or both of these characteristics.83 The fact that blacks experience earlier puberties than whites is not a racial difference but a recent phenomenon.84, 85
Most experts blame this epidemic of "precocious puberty" on environmental estrogens from plastics, pesticides, commercial meats, etc., but some pediatric endocrinologists believe that soy is a contributor.86 Of all the estrogens found in the environment, soy is the likeliest explanation of why African American girls reach puberty so quickly. Since its establishment in 1974, the federal government's Women, Infants and Children (WIC) program has provided free infant formula to teenage and other low-income mothers while failing to encourage breastfeeding. Because of perceived or real lactose intolerance, black babies are much more likely to receive soy formula than Caucasian babies.
Early maturation in girls heralds reproductive problems later in life, including amenorrhea (failure to menstruate), anovulatory cycles (cycles in which no egg is released), impaired follicular development (follicles failing to mature and develop into healthy eggs), erratic hormonal surges, and other problems associated with infertility. Because the mammary glands depend on estrogen for their development and functioning, the presence of soy estrogens at a susceptible time might predispose girls to breast cancer, another condition that is on the rise and definitively linked to early puberty.87
Recently, a team of researchers headed by Brian L. Strom, MD, studied the use of soy formula and its long-term impact on reproductive health. They announced only one adverse finding: longer, more painful menstrual periods among women who'd been fed soy formula in infancy.88 Dr. Strom's conclusion that the results were "reassuring" made newspaper headlines all over the world, though the data in the body of the report were anything but. Indeed, data left out of the headlines and buried in the report revealed higher incidences of allergies and asthma, and higher rates of cervical cancer, polycystic ovarian syndrome, blocked fallopian tubes, and pelvic inflammatory disease.89 Although thyroid damage from soy formula has been the principal concern of critics for decades, the researchers excluded thyroid function as a subject for study. Not surprisingly, this study was funded in part by the infant-formula industry.
Most of the fears concerning soy formula have focused on estrogens. There are other problems as well, notably much higher levels of aluminum, fluoride, and manganese than are found in either breastmilk or dairy formulas.90-96 All three metals have the potential to adversely affect brain development. Although trace amounts of manganese are vital to the development of the brain, toxic levels accrued from ingestion of soy formula during infancy have been found in children suffering from attention-deficit disorders, dyslexia, and other learning problems.97, 98
Soy apologists sometimes argue that the plant hormones in soy formula could not possibly be harmful because Japanese women eat a lot of soy products and so must have high levels of phytoestrogens in their breastmilk. Researchers, however, have measured the soy isoflavones in breastmilk and found them low even in vegetarian women who consume copious quantities of tofu, soy milk, soy protein shakes, and other soy foods.99-101
Limited evidence, however, suggests that vegetarian women who eat a lot of soy foods during pregnancy may put their infants at risk in terms of their future reproductive health, fertility, and possibly increased risk of breast cancer. All of the problems that have befallen infants on soy formula, as well as estrogen-related birth defects, have occurred (in animal studies, at least) to the offspring of mothers who were given high doses of soy during pregnancy.102 One of these birth defects that has been linked to vegetarian diets in humans is hypospadias, a developmental disorder in which the opening of the penis is located on the underside of the shaft.103
Until soy estrogens are definitely linked to reproductive-tract abnormalities, infertility, and other health problems in humans, most health authorities recommend that we "wait and see." This could be a terrible mistake.
In the 1940s and 1950s, another estrogen, diethylstilbestrol (DES), was widely given to Western women early in their pregnancies in a misguided attempt to prevent miscarriage. That fact is relevant not only because DES bears a striking structural similarity to some plant estrogens-including soy isoflavones-but because it took more than 20 years before the full spectrum of harmful effects was observed.104, 105
DES is 100,000 times more potent than soy phytoestrogens. However, the large quantities of phytoestrogens in soy products are more than enough to counteract their lower potency. When the effects of isoflavones in fetal and neonatal animals have been studied, they have paralleled those observed in human infants exposed to DES.106, 107 Recent studies indicate that the soy isoflavone known as genistein may be even more carcinogenic than DES.108
Yet the belief persists that soy hormones are "safe" because they are "weak" and "natural." Although the soy industry has claimed that soy estrogens are anywhere from 10,000 to 1,000,000 times weaker than the human estrogen estradiol, the correct figure is only 1,200 times as weak.109 Though this still sounds quite weak, it is not-because of the quantity of these estrogens ingested by infants on soy formula, and by children and adults who eat soy every day. These individuals consume far more soy estrogens than were ever part of a traditional diet in Asia. The average isoflavones intake in China is 3 milligrams, or 0.05 mg per kilogram of body weight.
In Japan, the figures range from 10 to 28 mg, or 0.17 to 0.47 isoflavones per kg of body weight. In contrast, infants receiving soy formula average 38 mg of isoflavones, which comes to a shocking 6.25 mg/kg of body weight. Compare that dose to the 0.47 mg/kg per day fed to healthy Japanese adult men and women who experienced thyroid suppression after just three months-or to the 0.75 mg/kg of isoflavones fed to American women who experienced hormonal changes sufficient to skew their menstrual cycles after just one month.110 Although children and teenagers are less vulnerable than infants, their young bodies are still developing, and highly vulnerable to endocrine-system disruption by soy. And soy has been shown to pass through the placentas of pregnant women to their unborn babies.
Meanwhile, the jury is still out on whether soy might help alleviate menopausal symptoms or prevent osteoporosis and breast cancer. The soy industry's top scientists, convened at the Fifth International Symposium on the Role of Soy in the Preventing and Reversing Chronic Disease (held in Orlando, Florida, September 21-24, 2003), conceded that the data are confusing and contradictory, with some studies suggesting that soy might be helpful, and others showing that soy contributes to osteoporosis and promotes breast cancer.
What's certain is that the levels of soy estrogens that might possibly have a beneficial effect on hormonally related diseases have been proven to jeopardize the health of the thyroid. Likewise, the 25 grams of soy protein per day touted by the FDA to lower cholesterol (see sidebar, "Boon to the Industry: The FDA's Soy Protein Health Claim") is very likely to harm the thyroid, and thus increase one of the risk factors for heart disease.
The bottom line is that the safety of soy foods has yet to be proven, and that human beings have become guinea pigs in what Daniel M. Sheehan, formerly senior toxicologist with the FDA's National Center for Toxicological Research, has called a "large, uncontrolled and basically unmonitored human experiment."111
By Kaayla T. Daniel
2-26-7
Over the past decade, soy foods have become America's favorite health food. Newspapers, magazines, and best-selling health writers have proclaimed the "joy of soy" and promoted the belief that soy food is the key to disease prevention and maximum longevity.
The possibility that an inexpensive plant food could prevent heart disease, fight cancer, fan away hot flashes, and build strong bodies in far more than 12 ways is seductive. The truth, unfortunately, is far more complex. Soy foods come in a variety of forms, including many heavily processed modern products. Even good forms of soy foods must be eaten sparingly-the way they have been eaten traditionally in Asia. Most important, many respected scientists have issued warnings stating that the possible benefits of eating soy should be weighed against the proven risks. Indeed, thousands of studies link soy to malnutrition, digestive distress, immune-system breakdown, thyroid dysfunction, cognitive decline, reproductive disorders and infertility-even cancer and heart disease.
Americans rarely hear anything negative about soy. Thanks to the shrewd public relations campaigns waged by Archer Daniels Midland (ADM), Protein Technologies International (PTI), the American Soybean Association, and other soy interests, as well as the Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) 1999 approval of the health claim that soy protein lowers cholesterol, soy maintains a "healthy" image.
This article is written for parents who need to know the risks of feeding soy formula to infants, or soy milk and other soy foods to growing children. It's designed for prospective mothers and fathers who need to know the links between soy foods, infertility, and birth defects. Finally, it will serve anyone considering soy as a preventive for menopausal symptoms, osteoporosis, cancer, heart disease, or other ills.
How Much Soy Do Asians Really Eat?
Those who dare to question the benefits of soy tend to receive one stock answer: Soy foods couldn't possibly have a downside because Asians eat large quantities of soy every day and consequently remain free of most western diseases. In fact, the people of China, Japan, and other countries in Asia eat very little soy. The soy industry's own figures show that soy consumption in China, Indonesia, Korea, Japan, and Taiwan ranges from 9.3 to 36 grams per day.1 That's grams of soy food, not grams of soy protein alone. Compare this with a cup of tofu (252 grams) or soy milk (240 grams).2 Many Americans today think nothing of consuming a cup of tofu, a couple glasses of soy milk, handfuls of soy nuts, soy "energy bars," and veggie burgers. Infants on soy formula receive the most of all, both in quantity and in proportion to body weight.
In short, there is no historical precedent for eating the large amounts of soy food now being consumed by infants fed soy formula and vegetarians who favor soy as their main source of protein, or for the large amounts of soy being recommended by Dr. Andrew Weil, Dr. Christiane Northrup, and many other popular health experts.
What's more, the rural poor in China have never seen-let alone feasted on-soy sausages, chili made with Textured Vegetable Protein (TVP), tofu cheesecake, packaged soy milk, soy "energy bars," or other newfangled soy products that have infiltrated the American marketplace.
The Right Stuff
The ancient Chinese honored the soybean with the name "the yellow jewel" but used it as "green manure"-a cover crop plowed under to enrich the soil. Soy did not become human food until late in the Chou Dynasty (1134-246 B.C.), when the Chinese developed a fermentation process to make soybean paste, best known today by its Japanese name, miso.3 Soy sauce-the natural type sold under the Japanese name shoyu-began as the liquid poured off during the production of miso. Two other popular fermented soy foods, natto and tempeh, entered the food supply around 1000 A.D. or later in Japan and Indonesia, respectively.
Tofu came after miso. Legend has it that, in 164 B.C., Lord Liu An of Huai-nan, China-a renowned alchemist, meditator, and ruler-discovered that a purée of cooked soybeans could be precipitated with nigari (a form of magnesium chloride found in seawater) into solid cakes, called tofu. In Japan, as in China, tofu was rarely served as a main course anywhere except in monasteries. Its most popular use was-and is-as a few bland little blocks in miso soup or fish stock.
The Chinese almost never ate boiled or baked soybeans or cooked with soy flour except in times of famine. Modern soy products such as soy protein isolate (SPI), TVP, soy-protein concentrate, and other soy-protein products made using high-tech industrial processes, were unknown in Asia until after World War II.4
Contrary to popular belief, neither soy milk nor soy infant formula is traditional in Asia. Soy milk originated as a byproduct of the process of making tofu; the earliest reference to it as a beverage appeared in 1866.5 By the 1920s and 1930s, it was popular in Asia as an occasional drink served to the elderly.6-8 The first person to manufacture soy milk in China was actually an American-Harry Miller, a Seventh Day Adventist physician and missionary.9
The first soy infant formulas in China were developed in the 1930s and have never been widely used.10-14 Today, babies in Asia are almost always breastfed for at least the first six months, then switched to a dairy-based infant formula. Orphans and others who cannot be breastfed by a wet nurse are fed from birth on dairy formulas.15
Claims that soybeans have been a major part of the Asian diet for more than 3,000 years, or from "time immemorial," are simply not true.
Processing Matters
Soy in the West has been a product of the industrial revolution-an opportunity for technologists to develop cheap meat substitutes, to find clever new ways to hide soy in familiar food products, to formulate soy-based pharmaceuticals, and to develop a renewable, plant-based resource that could replace petroleum-based plastics and fuels.
For years, the soy protein left over from soy-oil extraction went to animals and poultry. Now that food scientists have discovered inexpensive ways to improve or disguise the color, flavor, "bite characteristics," and "mouth feel" of soy protein-based products, soy is being aggressively marketed as a "people feed." Although the newer refining techniques yield blander, purer soy proteins than the "beany," hard-to-cover-up flavors of the past, the main reason that soy foods now taste and look better is the lavish use of unhealthy additives such as sugar and other sweeteners, salt, artificial flavorings, colors, and monosodium glutamate (MSG).
Soy now lurks in nearly 60 percent of the foods sold in supermarkets and natural food stores. Much of this is "hidden" in products where it wouldn't ordinarily be expected, such as fast-food burgers and Bumblebee canned tuna. Soy is also a key ingredient in ersatz products with names like Soysage, Not Dogs, Fakin Bakin, Sham Ham, and TofuRella, which have been named after and made to look like the familiar meat and diary products they are intended to replace.
There's nothing natural about these modern soy protein products. Textured soy protein, for example, is made by forcing defatted soy flour through a machine called an extruder under conditions of such extreme heat and pressure that the very structure of the soy protein is changed. Production differs little from the extrusion technology used to produce starch-based packing materials, fiber-based industrial products, and plastic toy parts, bowls, and plates.16
The process of making soy protein isolate (SPI) begins with defatted soybean meal, which is mixed with a caustic alkaline solution to remove the fiber, then washed in an acid solution to precipitate out the protein. The protein curds are then dipped into another alkaline solution and spray-dried at extremely high temperatures. SPI is then often spun into protein fibers using technology borrowed from the textile industry. These refining processes remove "off flavors," "beany" tastes, and some of the worst flatulence-producing components. They improve digestibility, but vitamin, mineral, and protein quality are sacrificed, and levels of carcinogens such as nitrosamines are increased.17-22 SPIs appear in so many products that consumers would never guess that the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB) decreed in 1979 that the only safe use for SPIs was for sealers for cardboard packages.23
Antinutrients and Toxins in Soy
Scientists who have studied the use of soy protein in animal feeds over the years have discovered a number of components in soy that cause poor growth, digestive distress, and other health problems.24-27 To list just a few of these: Protease inhibitors interfere with protein digestion and have caused malnutrition, poor growth, digestive distress, and pancreatitis.28 Phytates block mineral absorption, causing zinc, iron, and calcium deficiencies.29-34 Lectins and saponins have caused leaky gut and other gastrointestinal and immune problems.35-36 Oxalates-surprisingly high in soy-may cause problems for people prone to kidney stones and women suffering from vulvodynia, a painful condition marked by burning, stinging, and itching of the external genitalia.37, 38 Finally, oligosaccharides give soy its notorious reputation as a gas producer. Although these are present in all beans, soy is such a powerful "musical fruit" that the soy industry has identified "the flatulence factor" as a major obstacle that must be overcome for soy to achieve full consumer acceptance.39, 40
Apologists for soy dismiss such claims, saying that food processing and home cooking remove most of these antinutrients. In fact, modern processing removes most of them, but not all. The levels of heat and pressure needed to remove all protease inhibitors, for example, severely damage soy protein and make it harder to digest. The trick is to eliminate the most antinutrients while doing the least damage to the soy protein. Success varies widely from batch to batch.41-44
For years, the soy industry tried to improve the quality of animal feeds by finding better ways to get rid of these undesirable antinutrients. Having failed, they routinely supplement animal feeds heavily with vitamins, minerals, and methionine, a sulfur-containing amino acid that is low in soy. Even so, makers of animal chows are still limited in the amount of soy they can add without causing growth and fertility problems. Food processors making soy-protein products for people may or may not add these supplements. Generally, calcium and vitamin D are added to soy milk so it can compete with dairy products.
Today, the soy industry has switched tactics-from trying to remove unwanted antinutrients to trying to convince people that they are actually a good thing. Protease inhibitors, saponins, and lectins are being touted as curers of cancer or lowerers of cholesterol, while phytates are being recommended for their ability to remove toxic minerals such as cadmium and excess iron from the body.45-51 Although some of these uses look promising, it is important to note that researchers are not achieving these successes using regular soy foods. Most take carefully extracted components and administer them in carefully measured and monitored pharmaceutical doses. News headlines to the contrary, there is no reason to think that just eating a lot of soy foods will do the trick.
Soy Allergens
Soy is one of the top eight allergens that cause immediate hypersensitivity reactions such as coughing, sneezing, runny nose, hives, diarrhea, difficulty swallowing, and anaphylactic shock. Delayed allergic responses are even more common and occur anywhere from several hours to several days after the food is eaten. These have been linked to sleep disturbances, bedwetting, sinus and ear infections, crankiness, joint paint, chronic fatigue, gastrointestinal woes, and other mysterious symptoms.52, 53
Soy allergies are on the rise for three reasons: the growing use of soy infant formula (now 20 to 25 percent of the formula market), the increase in soy-containing foods in grocery stores, the possibility of the greater allergenicity of genetically modified soybeans.54 Although severe reactions to soy are rare compared to reactions to peanuts, tree nuts, fish, and shellfish, soy has been underestimated as a cause of food anaphylaxis. Recently, after a young girl in Sweden suffered an asthma attack and died after eating a hamburger that contained only 2.2 percent soy protein, Swedish researchers looked into a possible soybean connection. They concluded that the soy-in-the-hamburger case was not a fluke, and that minute amounts of soy "hidden" in regular food had caused four of the total of five deaths caused by allergic reactions in Sweden between 1993 and 1996. Of the children who suffered fatal attacks, all had been able to eat soy without any adverse reactions right up until the dinner that caused their deaths.55 According to the Swedish Ministry of Health and Social Affairs, children at highest risk are those who suffer from peanut allergies and asthma; parents of such children should make every effort to eliminate all soy from their children's diets.56
Soy and the Thyroid: A Pain in the Neck
More than 70 years of human, animal, and laboratory studies show that soybeans put the thyroid at risk. The chief culprits are the plant hormones in soy known as phytoestrogens or isoflavones.57-59 The United Kingdom's Committee on Toxicology has identified several populations at special risk: infants on soy formula, vegans who use soy as their principal meat and dairy replacements, and men and women who self-medicate with soy foods and/or isoflavone supplements in an attempt to prevent or reverse menopausal symptoms, cancer, or heart disease.60
Infants with congenital hypothyroidism need 18 to 25 percent higher doses of thyroxine drug than usual if they are bottle-fed with soy formula.61 Likewise, adults who boost their thyroid with drugs such as Synthroid while also eating thyroid-inhibiting foods such as soy put extreme stress on their thyroids. Toxicologist Michael Fitzpatrick, PhD, points out that this is the way that researchers induce thyroid cancers in laboratory animals.62
Soy and Reproduction: Breeding Discontent
Scientists have known since the mid-1940s that phytoestrogens can impair fertility. Fertility problems in cows, sheep, rabbits, cheetahs, guinea pigs, birds, and mice have all been reported.63, 64 Although scientists discovered only recently that soy lowers testosterone levels,65 tofu has traditionally been used in Buddhist monasteries to decrease the libido, and by Japanese women to punish straying husbands. Humans and animals appear to be the most vulnerable to the effects of soy estrogens prenatally, during infancy and puberty, during pregnancy and lactation, and during the hormonal shifts of menopause. Of all these groups, infants on soy formula are at the highest risk because of their small size and developmental phase, and because formula is their main source of nutrient.66, 67
A crucial time for the programming of the human reproduction system is right after birth-the very time when bottles of soy formula are given to many non-breastfed babies. Normally during this period, the body surges with natural estrogens, testosterones, and other hormones that are meant to program the baby's reproductive development from infancy through puberty and into adulthood. For infants on soy formula, this programming may be interrupted.68-70
Male infants experience a testosterone surge during the first few months of life and produce androgens in amounts equal to those of adult men. So much testosterone at such a tender age is needed to program the body for puberty, the time when a male's sex organs should develop and he should begin to express male characteristics such as facial and pubic hair and a deep voice. If receptor sites intended for the hormone testosterone are occupied by soy estrogens, however, appropriate development may never take place.71-74 To date, most of the evidence damning soy formula can be found only in animal studies, because investigations in which humans' sex hormone levels are lowered experimentally cannot ethically be done. However, in the years since soy formula has been in the marketplace, parents and pediatricians have reported growing numbers of boys whose physical maturation is either delayed or does not occur at all. Breasts, underdeveloped gonads, undescended testicles (cryptorchidism), and steroid insufficiencies are increasingly common. Sperm counts are also falling.75-79
Soy formula is bad news for girls as well. Natural estrogen levels approximately double during the first month of life, then decline and remain at low levels until puberty. With increased estrogens in the environment in the diet, an alarming number of girls are entering puberty much earlier than normal.80-82 One percent of girls now show signs of puberty, such as breast development or pubic hair, before the age of three. By the age of eight, 14.7 percent of Caucasian girls and 48.3 percent of African American girls had one or both of these characteristics.83 The fact that blacks experience earlier puberties than whites is not a racial difference but a recent phenomenon.84, 85
Most experts blame this epidemic of "precocious puberty" on environmental estrogens from plastics, pesticides, commercial meats, etc., but some pediatric endocrinologists believe that soy is a contributor.86 Of all the estrogens found in the environment, soy is the likeliest explanation of why African American girls reach puberty so quickly. Since its establishment in 1974, the federal government's Women, Infants and Children (WIC) program has provided free infant formula to teenage and other low-income mothers while failing to encourage breastfeeding. Because of perceived or real lactose intolerance, black babies are much more likely to receive soy formula than Caucasian babies.
Early maturation in girls heralds reproductive problems later in life, including amenorrhea (failure to menstruate), anovulatory cycles (cycles in which no egg is released), impaired follicular development (follicles failing to mature and develop into healthy eggs), erratic hormonal surges, and other problems associated with infertility. Because the mammary glands depend on estrogen for their development and functioning, the presence of soy estrogens at a susceptible time might predispose girls to breast cancer, another condition that is on the rise and definitively linked to early puberty.87
Recently, a team of researchers headed by Brian L. Strom, MD, studied the use of soy formula and its long-term impact on reproductive health. They announced only one adverse finding: longer, more painful menstrual periods among women who'd been fed soy formula in infancy.88 Dr. Strom's conclusion that the results were "reassuring" made newspaper headlines all over the world, though the data in the body of the report were anything but. Indeed, data left out of the headlines and buried in the report revealed higher incidences of allergies and asthma, and higher rates of cervical cancer, polycystic ovarian syndrome, blocked fallopian tubes, and pelvic inflammatory disease.89 Although thyroid damage from soy formula has been the principal concern of critics for decades, the researchers excluded thyroid function as a subject for study. Not surprisingly, this study was funded in part by the infant-formula industry.
Most of the fears concerning soy formula have focused on estrogens. There are other problems as well, notably much higher levels of aluminum, fluoride, and manganese than are found in either breastmilk or dairy formulas.90-96 All three metals have the potential to adversely affect brain development. Although trace amounts of manganese are vital to the development of the brain, toxic levels accrued from ingestion of soy formula during infancy have been found in children suffering from attention-deficit disorders, dyslexia, and other learning problems.97, 98
Soy apologists sometimes argue that the plant hormones in soy formula could not possibly be harmful because Japanese women eat a lot of soy products and so must have high levels of phytoestrogens in their breastmilk. Researchers, however, have measured the soy isoflavones in breastmilk and found them low even in vegetarian women who consume copious quantities of tofu, soy milk, soy protein shakes, and other soy foods.99-101
Limited evidence, however, suggests that vegetarian women who eat a lot of soy foods during pregnancy may put their infants at risk in terms of their future reproductive health, fertility, and possibly increased risk of breast cancer. All of the problems that have befallen infants on soy formula, as well as estrogen-related birth defects, have occurred (in animal studies, at least) to the offspring of mothers who were given high doses of soy during pregnancy.102 One of these birth defects that has been linked to vegetarian diets in humans is hypospadias, a developmental disorder in which the opening of the penis is located on the underside of the shaft.103
Until soy estrogens are definitely linked to reproductive-tract abnormalities, infertility, and other health problems in humans, most health authorities recommend that we "wait and see." This could be a terrible mistake.
In the 1940s and 1950s, another estrogen, diethylstilbestrol (DES), was widely given to Western women early in their pregnancies in a misguided attempt to prevent miscarriage. That fact is relevant not only because DES bears a striking structural similarity to some plant estrogens-including soy isoflavones-but because it took more than 20 years before the full spectrum of harmful effects was observed.104, 105
DES is 100,000 times more potent than soy phytoestrogens. However, the large quantities of phytoestrogens in soy products are more than enough to counteract their lower potency. When the effects of isoflavones in fetal and neonatal animals have been studied, they have paralleled those observed in human infants exposed to DES.106, 107 Recent studies indicate that the soy isoflavone known as genistein may be even more carcinogenic than DES.108
Yet the belief persists that soy hormones are "safe" because they are "weak" and "natural." Although the soy industry has claimed that soy estrogens are anywhere from 10,000 to 1,000,000 times weaker than the human estrogen estradiol, the correct figure is only 1,200 times as weak.109 Though this still sounds quite weak, it is not-because of the quantity of these estrogens ingested by infants on soy formula, and by children and adults who eat soy every day. These individuals consume far more soy estrogens than were ever part of a traditional diet in Asia. The average isoflavones intake in China is 3 milligrams, or 0.05 mg per kilogram of body weight.
In Japan, the figures range from 10 to 28 mg, or 0.17 to 0.47 isoflavones per kg of body weight. In contrast, infants receiving soy formula average 38 mg of isoflavones, which comes to a shocking 6.25 mg/kg of body weight. Compare that dose to the 0.47 mg/kg per day fed to healthy Japanese adult men and women who experienced thyroid suppression after just three months-or to the 0.75 mg/kg of isoflavones fed to American women who experienced hormonal changes sufficient to skew their menstrual cycles after just one month.110 Although children and teenagers are less vulnerable than infants, their young bodies are still developing, and highly vulnerable to endocrine-system disruption by soy. And soy has been shown to pass through the placentas of pregnant women to their unborn babies.
Meanwhile, the jury is still out on whether soy might help alleviate menopausal symptoms or prevent osteoporosis and breast cancer. The soy industry's top scientists, convened at the Fifth International Symposium on the Role of Soy in the Preventing and Reversing Chronic Disease (held in Orlando, Florida, September 21-24, 2003), conceded that the data are confusing and contradictory, with some studies suggesting that soy might be helpful, and others showing that soy contributes to osteoporosis and promotes breast cancer.
What's certain is that the levels of soy estrogens that might possibly have a beneficial effect on hormonally related diseases have been proven to jeopardize the health of the thyroid. Likewise, the 25 grams of soy protein per day touted by the FDA to lower cholesterol (see sidebar, "Boon to the Industry: The FDA's Soy Protein Health Claim") is very likely to harm the thyroid, and thus increase one of the risk factors for heart disease.
The bottom line is that the safety of soy foods has yet to be proven, and that human beings have become guinea pigs in what Daniel M. Sheehan, formerly senior toxicologist with the FDA's National Center for Toxicological Research, has called a "large, uncontrolled and basically unmonitored human experiment."111
By Kaayla T. Daniel
2-26-7
Sunday, January 21, 2007
NEARLY $$$1 BILLION FOR WHAT?
When, in 1980, Susan G. Komen died, it was already eight years after we were told there would be a cure for breast cancer.
Now in 2007 the statistics really aren't all that much better, and the Race for the Cure is just that, a race.
There is no cure, although there really is a cure.
The problem is that mainstream medicine and Big Pharma doesn't really want you to know. I wonder if the 200 employees at Komen Foundation want you to know either.
Gee, aren't they proud of their statistics that at least 74 percent of women over 40 get mammograms annually.
Ever hear, as you would in the Women's Health programs I've been teaching for many years more than a decade, that mammograms are a major cause of cancer?
And did you know that you don't have to lose your hair from chemo or that it is about 2% effective; that tamoxifen raises your risk of the more deadly ovarian cancer or that radiation causes thyroid dysfunction and heart failure.
Not from the Komen Foundation that's for sure.
General Mills won't support Creating Health Institute's Women's Health programs (especially those we provide to people with limited income) through the pink lids program. Komen never responds when we submit a proposal.
We've got much more to tell you. We could do this and a lot more with a small fraction of a billion.
PS - did you know that soy is a promoter of cancer and yeast infection? you would if you visit www.leaflady.org and our BLOG natural health news.
Now in 2007 the statistics really aren't all that much better, and the Race for the Cure is just that, a race.
There is no cure, although there really is a cure.
The problem is that mainstream medicine and Big Pharma doesn't really want you to know. I wonder if the 200 employees at Komen Foundation want you to know either.
Gee, aren't they proud of their statistics that at least 74 percent of women over 40 get mammograms annually.
Ever hear, as you would in the Women's Health programs I've been teaching for many years more than a decade, that mammograms are a major cause of cancer?
And did you know that you don't have to lose your hair from chemo or that it is about 2% effective; that tamoxifen raises your risk of the more deadly ovarian cancer or that radiation causes thyroid dysfunction and heart failure.
Not from the Komen Foundation that's for sure.
General Mills won't support Creating Health Institute's Women's Health programs (especially those we provide to people with limited income) through the pink lids program. Komen never responds when we submit a proposal.
We've got much more to tell you. We could do this and a lot more with a small fraction of a billion.
PS - did you know that soy is a promoter of cancer and yeast infection? you would if you visit www.leaflady.org and our BLOG natural health news.
Aspartame and Statins may now share the same toxicity issues
STATINS: The 'safe' drug that may cause Parkinson's disease
Everyone seems to be popping a cholesterol- lowering statin drug these days. They have become part of the daily health regime for millions of people, and they are considered to be so safe that one statin - simvastatin - is available over-the-counter in the UK without a prescription.
They're not safe, of course, and a new study that links statins to Parkinson's, the disease of the central nervous system, underlines the point.
Statins reduce levels of the 'bad' LDL cholesterol - and the new study, from the University of North Carolina, believes these lowered levels may trigger Parkinson's. Sufferers can have levels of LDL cholesterol that are three times below the average.
Researchers are so concerned by their discovery that they are initiating an immediate and major study involving 16,000 participants.
This is not exactly the first piece of bad news about the 'safe' statins. One statin, Baycol, was withdrawn from the market in 2001 after 31 people died from rhabdomyolysis, a muscle-weakening disease caused by the drug. At the time, 601 further cases of rhadomyolysis and 38 deaths among statin users had been reported to America's drug regulator, the Food and Drug Administration.
Other reported side effects include heart failure,liver and kidney damage, myalgia, insomnia and sinusitis.
None of this will stop the statin rollercoaster. They are among the most popular drugs in the world, topping annual sales of $20bn, thanks in part to the creative prescribing flair of doctors, who are also dishing them out to patients with osteoporosis and Alzheimer's.
Source: Movement Disorders, published on-line on December 18, 2006.
Everyone seems to be popping a cholesterol- lowering statin drug these days. They have become part of the daily health regime for millions of people, and they are considered to be so safe that one statin - simvastatin - is available over-the-counter in the UK without a prescription.
They're not safe, of course, and a new study that links statins to Parkinson's, the disease of the central nervous system, underlines the point.
Statins reduce levels of the 'bad' LDL cholesterol - and the new study, from the University of North Carolina, believes these lowered levels may trigger Parkinson's. Sufferers can have levels of LDL cholesterol that are three times below the average.
Researchers are so concerned by their discovery that they are initiating an immediate and major study involving 16,000 participants.
This is not exactly the first piece of bad news about the 'safe' statins. One statin, Baycol, was withdrawn from the market in 2001 after 31 people died from rhabdomyolysis, a muscle-weakening disease caused by the drug. At the time, 601 further cases of rhadomyolysis and 38 deaths among statin users had been reported to America's drug regulator, the Food and Drug Administration.
Other reported side effects include heart failure,liver and kidney damage, myalgia, insomnia and sinusitis.
None of this will stop the statin rollercoaster. They are among the most popular drugs in the world, topping annual sales of $20bn, thanks in part to the creative prescribing flair of doctors, who are also dishing them out to patients with osteoporosis and Alzheimer's.
Source: Movement Disorders, published on-line on December 18, 2006.
Saturday, January 20, 2007
Fake Foods: Oprah, Bob and General Mills
Maybe you remember when the Texas cattle ranchers sued Oprah after she discussed beef raising and cattle processing on her show some years back.
simply4health supplements - our complete line of vitamins, minerals, herbs, supplements...
Maybe you don't remember, but in either case now it looks like Oprah better round up Dr. Phil and her attorneys and go at it again.
First I guess she should go after the 'Dr. Phil' food bar. You know, the one loaded with not only high fructose corn syrup, but neurotoxic artificial sweeteners.
Then with both pistols loaded and a quick draw motion Oprah can blast the General Mills approach to health.
Now before you all run out and get the ingredients for Oprah's smoothie and Bob Greene's diet, maybe you'd want to read what is in just two of the products being hawked by General Mills for this promotion.
8th Continent Soy Milk contains: Soymilk (Water, Soy Protein, Soybean Oil, Calcium
Phosphate), Sugar, Fructose, Potassium Citrate, Sodium Polyphosphate, Dipotassium Phosphate, Soy Lecithin, Salt, Natural and Artificial Flavor, Carrageenan, Xanthan Gum, Sucralose, Riboflavin (Vitamin B2), Vitamin A (Palmitate), Vitamin D2, Vitamin B12.
Yoplait contains: nonfat milk, high fructose corn syrup, (blackberries in this, the blackberry version), modified corn starch, whey protein concentrate, kosher gelatin, citric acid, tricalcium phosphate, natural flavor, aspartame, potassium sorbate, RED # 40, vitamin A acetate, Blue #1, Vitamin D3.
Cheerios always have been a bit too high in sodium for my taste, but choosing the cold cereal routine can always help you keep up your quick-sugar fix.
And then there is the salad spray that has Oprah 'ready to die for'. It's that one in the cute little plastic spritzer bottle. Read the label and there it is - that liver-toxic canola oil. It's the one that in processing is exposed to cancer-causing benzene to keep the machines running and becomes a trans-fat at the end of the process.
Canola and soy are two of the most genetically modified and allergenic foods we have thanks to ADM.
Soy is known to suppress thyroid function, just another one of those scientific facts that promote hormone imbalance. However, I suppose you think you need it to overcome the bone health risks from phosphates.
But then you have to bet that General Mills is operating from the perspective that shopper's won't ever read the labels and look up what all the chemicals are and the health risks involved through ingesting them.
Read about Carrageenan here, that natural seaweed made toxic by processing to use in food as a thickener.
Get a book about vitamins and learn that D2 is the kind that doesn't absorb well and can be toxic. D3 is the one that works.
Get a nutrition book not written by a dietitian of funded by USDA and learn that you need fat to absorb calcium, so you need 2% milk at the very minimum.
High fructose corn syrup you say? Yup! the one that passes directly into your blood stream and is connected with developing diabetes. And corn again, one of those high pesticide and allergy causing foods. You've got added sugar from fructose too; Oh, my...
And I suppose Oprah and Bob don't have an expert neurosurgeon on their team either to tell you that mixing sucralose (the DDT-like substance marketed as Splenda) and aspartame (or acesulfameK) is highly risky. Try this for more on this combo.
I do hope this will make you think, and if you can't find out more about food, skip the Red #40 and shoot us an email with your question. Or get great nutrition with a Vita-Mix
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Sunday, January 14, 2007
Intravenous vitamin C as a cancer treatment: Proof of Effectiveness is Already In.
Boy this makes me angry when I read such inaccurate reporting. Intravenous vitamin C therapy for cancer has been around for a very long time. If you know how to do research you'd find the science behind the treatment and know it has been tested and approved as effective. The down site is that the money machines behind the FDA want everyone to think this treatment is quackery.
It does a great job for Hepatitis C too.
Too bad for so many people who have been denied this treatment by ignorant medical professionals these past few decades. Too bad also that the brave physicians who have carried on this therapy have risked losing their licenses so they could prescribe the best therapy for their patients.
There is an entire medical association that focuses on these treatments, the Oxidative Medical Association. ACAM member doctors also offer this treatment.
We can even tell you how to do a home version, at about half the strength of the IV therapy.
The PetSmart fellows (see next article) would have been helped early on with IV vitamin C, but no one told them!
It does a great job for Hepatitis C too.
Too bad for so many people who have been denied this treatment by ignorant medical professionals these past few decades. Too bad also that the brave physicians who have carried on this therapy have risked losing their licenses so they could prescribe the best therapy for their patients.
There is an entire medical association that focuses on these treatments, the Oxidative Medical Association. ACAM member doctors also offer this treatment.
We can even tell you how to do a home version, at about half the strength of the IV therapy.
The PetSmart fellows (see next article) would have been helped early on with IV vitamin C, but no one told them!
FDA OKs trial on vitamin C for cancer Cancer Treatment Centers runs research
Bruce Japsen, Published January 11, 2007
Adding more credibility to its research into alternative methods for oncologic medical care, Cancer Treatment Centers of America said it has won federal approval to begin a clinical trial studying the potential of intravenous vitamin C as a cancer
treatment.
While winning U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval to begin clinical trials is a regular occurrence for traditional cancer researchers such as the nation's elite comprehensive cancer centers designated by the National Cancer Institute, Zion-based Cancer Treatment Centers is not known for conducting federally approved research--making the FDA-approved vitamin C trial a bit of a coup for the firm.
"Our vitamin C research protocol is the first investigator-initiated protocol approved by the FDA in the history of CTCA," said Christopher Lis, the firm's vice president of research and development. "We are now taking our research here to the next level."
Lis said there will be a limited number of patients who will actually receive the therapy. "Only patients who have exhausted all other conventional treatment options are eligible to receive the therapy," Lis added.
The first phase of the trial is to examine the "optimal therapeutic dose in a series of 18 patients" and largely see whether the treatment is safe and tolerable to patients. Additional studies will be needed that could take several years to show whether it is effective and could lead to FDA-approved treatment.
The FDA confirmed Cancer Treatment Centers' "investigational" new drug application but would not comment further.
Potential medical uses of vitamin C gained notoriety in the 1970s because of the efforts of researchers such as Nobel laureate Linus Pauling. But such research was not known to reveal successes or was not pursued long enough to result in standardized effective cancer treatments, say researchers such as Jeffrey Blumberg, professor of nutrition at Tufts University in Boston. In older studies the vitamin was taken orally.
Although early studies, conducted with orally dosed supplements, failed to demonstrate clinical benefit to cancer patients, hope still persists that vitamin C
may be useful if administered correctly.
"I am not aware of anybody else now that is doing IV studies in patients with vitamin C to look at cancer effects," Blumberg said.
While cautioning that the research is early, Blumberg said vitamin C therapy could result in reducing side effects of chemotherapy or as a potential booster to
existing treatments. He cautioned that it is too early to know.
"If this works, we would have a useful adjunct to chemotherapy treatment that could lower the dose," Blumberg said.
Cancer Treatment Centers' facilities differ from most cancer care centers in that they provide traditional inpatient and outpatient chemotherapy and surgical care as well as non-traditional services such as acupuncture, massage and nutrition therapies.
The privately held for-profit company has hospitals in Zion, Philadelphia and Tulsa, Okla.
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Copyright © 2007, Chicago Tribune
Sorry you missed this help
Michael Manson and Jim Dougherty from PetSmart missed out on ten years of pain free life because they did not enter our trials held in Everett WA in the early 1990s. The program developed by Creating Health Institute was medically monitored by an Everett area MD. To his amazement many of the patients were discharged from the CFS diagnosis.
Our program uses only natural treatment and no risk of unknonw factors assocaited with anti-viral pharmaceuticals and lack of long-term studies.
Nature heals!
Our program uses only natural treatment and no risk of unknonw factors assocaited with anti-viral pharmaceuticals and lack of long-term studies.
Nature heals!
Small trial stirs hope for chronic fatigue patients By Toni Clarke
Sun Jan 14, 6:30 PM ET
Shortly after hiking the Grand Canyon with his wife in 1988, Michael Manson, the co-founder of PetSmart Inc., came down with what felt like the flu. So did business partner Jim Dougherty. The illness changed their lives.
In both men, the flu-like symptoms triggered a more debilitating condition known as chronic fatigue syndrome for which there is no known cure, and no known cause. Its symptoms range from fatigue and vertigo to nausea, pain and cognitive confusion.
Many in the medical community don't believe chronic fatigue syndrome is a real disease. There is no diagnostic test for it. Patients are often referred to psychiatrists on the assumption that their symptoms are psychosomatic.
But for those who suffer its symptoms, including Manson and Dougherty, a former marine who served twice in Vietnam, the condition is all too devastatingly real.
"We've been fighting this for 18 years, and we've tried every possible treatment, from wing of bat to eye of newt," said Manson, who has spent months at a time too weak to walk more than a block or even get out of bed.
Nothing worked - until now.
Last June, Manson went to see Dr. Jose Montoya, associate professor of medicine at Stanford University and a specialist in infectious diseases who believes the disorder may be caused -- at least in some cases, by one or more viruses.
Montoya had presented anecdotal data earlier that year at a conference in Barcelona, Spain, which suggested an antiviral drug called Valcyte, made by Swiss drugmaker Roche Holding AG, could be helpful in treating certain CFS patients.
Montoya now has data on 25 CFS patients, nearly all of whom had high levels in their blood plasma of antibodies to the human herpes virus 6 (HHV-6) and the Epstein-Barr virus.
The data -- presented recently at a conference in Fort Lauderdale, Florida -- were remarkably consistent. Nearly every patient responded to the drug, Montoya said, and most of the responses were dramatic.
"Scientists have suspected viruses for years but have never been able to prove it," said Kristin Loomis, executive director of the HHV-6 Foundation, a non-profit group which funds research into HHV-6.
Last year Manson began a six-month course of Valcyte, which is approved to treat transplant patients to prevent viral infection. At first he felt worse. Then, after a few weeks, he began to improve. He started walking, every day a little more.
Now, nearly seven months later, he is walking two or three miles a day and working out with light weights. And he is working on new business ideas.
"Not only is my physical ability returning but my cognitive ability has come back too," Manson said.
Even so, Montoya stresses that the study is extremely small and the results may not be replicated in bigger trials, the first of which he hopes to start within the next few months.
"In a field that has been so stigmatized, and so full of false hopes, I think the patients and the field deserve the best kind of trial, keeping an open mind to the possibility that it won't work," he said.
Roche has agreed to put up $1.5 million to fund the next, 30-patient study
"Whether we put serious money behind this will all depend on the outcome of this next study," said Nigel Pluck, Roche's clinical science leader for Valcyte. "This is a somewhat contentious area for the medical profession in that CFS is not a disease that you can test for. It's a diagnosis that you come to by excluding everything else."
Even if results of further studies are positive they will probably apply only to those patients with active HHV-6 and Epstein-Barr viruses, as indirectly measured by the number of antibodies produced to fight them, Montoya said.
But for those who appear to fit the profile, like Manson, the benefits could be enormous.
"We are very excited and holding our breath," he said.
Wednesday, January 10, 2007
Crazy Food May Lead to Health Woes
The latest news for all you people that think the supermarket is filled with safe and healthy things to eat, think about this:
Kraft is the parent company for Breyer's ice cream. Breyer's is originally an old Philadelphia company that once made clean ice cream. The Breyer family was in the small circle of friends that I grew up in and my the owners of the icce cream plant where my brother had his first summer job, thanks to my father's phone call.
Now what Kraft has in the works for this food can be considered amazing!
The new 'double-churned' (to make it supposedly taste better to make you think it is healthy and low calorie) will be hiding some facts from the label.
You'll be getting genetically modified (GM) fish protein in your treat and won't know it.
I also wonder why GM fish additives needs to be in ice cream.
Now, what do you think about them apples?
Kraft is the parent company for Breyer's ice cream. Breyer's is originally an old Philadelphia company that once made clean ice cream. The Breyer family was in the small circle of friends that I grew up in and my the owners of the icce cream plant where my brother had his first summer job, thanks to my father's phone call.
Now what Kraft has in the works for this food can be considered amazing!
The new 'double-churned' (to make it supposedly taste better to make you think it is healthy and low calorie) will be hiding some facts from the label.
You'll be getting genetically modified (GM) fish protein in your treat and won't know it.
I also wonder why GM fish additives needs to be in ice cream.
Now, what do you think about them apples?
Food Fortification
Ladies, perhaps you aren't aware that using birth control pills contributes to this problem.
ATLANTA, Jan. 5 -- Despite fortification of the food supply with folic acid, serum folate levels have dropped en masse among women in recent years, researchers said.
Median serum folate concentrations among women of childbearing age decreased 16% from 1999 -- the year after fortification started -- to 2004, said Sheree L. Boulet, Dr.P.H., of the National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities, and colleagues.
Red blood cell folate concentrations also decreased 8% in the same period, they wrote in the Jan. 5 issue of Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, a CDC publication.
Folic acid, the synthetic form of folate, is added to enriched cereal-grain products to help prevent neural tube birth defects (NTD) such as spinal bifida or anencephaly.
In an accompanying note, MMWR's editors suggested that the results do not reflect that folic acid fortification does not work. A previous study found that serum folate levels increased from a mean of 4.8 ng/mL before fortification during 1988 to 1994 to about 13.0 ng/mL in 1999 to 2000 after it started, with similar increases in red blood cell folate concentrations.
The editors suggested that the finding reflects other changes that have occurred in the American population.
"More likely explanations include 1) changes over time in the proportion of women taking supplements containing folic acid, 2) decreased consumption of foods rich in natural folates or foods fortified with folic acid (i.e., enriched cereal-grain products), 3) variations in the amounts of folic acid added to enriched grain products since fortification was mandated, and 4) increases in risk factors associated with lower folate concentrations such as obesity."
The researchers compared National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) data for the periods 1999 to 2000, 2001 to 2002, and 2003 to 2004. Each included a nationally representative sample of the civilian, noninstitutionalized population. Members of these groups were individually interviewed and underwent a physical examination including blood sample collection.
They found that the median serum folate concentration among women ages 15 to 44 were:
* 12.6 ng/mL (95% confidence interval 11.7 to 13.5) in 1999 to 2000,
* 11.4 ng/mL (95% CI 11.1 to 12.0) in 2001 to 2002, and
* 10.6 ng/mL (95% CI 10.2 to 11.2) in 2003 to 2004.
Overall, this represented a significant decline (P<0.001).
The red blood cell folate concentrations likewise fell significantly (P=0.028). The findings were:
* 255 ng/mL (95% CI 240 to 270) in 1999 to 2000,
* 260 ng/mL (95% CI 250 to 272) in 2001 to 2002, and
* 235 ng/mL (95% CI 226 to 246) in 2003 to 2004.
While these levels are not below the 220 ng/mL recommended in the national health objective for the year 2010, the trend is heading that direction.
"Although non-Hispanic whites and Mexican Americans have met the Healthy People 2010 objective for median [red blood cell] folate concentration since 1999 to 2000," the editors wrote. "If folate intake continues to decrease overall, median concentrations might decrease to less than 220 ng/mL."
The researchers found that the serum folate trend was significantly downward for all three ethnic populations considered (P=0.008 for non-Hispanic whites, P=0.023 for non-Hispanic blacks, and P<0.001 for Mexican Americans).
Interestingly, the editors noted that the largest decreases were among non-Hispanic white women, a population with historically higher levels of folate intake who now accounted for most of the decreases in the overall study population.
Future studies should link these findings to data from the National Birth Defects Prevention Network to see if the declines in folate levels have affected neural tube birth defect prevalence, they added.
The CDC recommends that all women of childbearing age capable of becoming pregnant should consume 400 μg of folic acid daily. Since fortification is not expected to provide the full daily requirement, women should consume a diet containing folate-rich or -fortified foods as well as dietary supplements, according to the CDC.
No financial disclosure information was reported.
Primary source: Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report
Source reference:
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention "Folate Status in Women of Childbearing Age, by Race/Ethnicity -- United States, 1999-2000, 2001-2002, and 2003-2004" MMWR 2006;55:1377-1380.
Sunday, December 31, 2006
Food Facts and Risks
Today we are faced every day with real fake food(s). Advertising is so extreme that you don't have much of a chance to escape the blitz. And we are paying a very high price for corporate control of the food chain.
This trend goes from cradle to grave an no one is calling out to stop the madness. At the same time the illutrious USDA and FDA are now allowing you to eat cloned meat, milk and probably other foods not included in the media fray to senstize you to it being ok for health.
Well we just don't really know do we? No labels on your food identifying cloned ingredients...
And how much $$$ has crossed palms in DC from Big Agra for this one?
You have the next month or so to contact the FDA and tell them NO to cloned food, NO GMO food and NO Big Agra over-processed and over-refined health destroying 'foods'.
Check out the organic consumers organization on line too.
Overweight toddlers are at risk of growing up to be overweight, with the attendant constellation of health woes, including diabetes, heart disease, and cancer.
It is a health crisis, specialists say, fueled by eating too much calorie-laden processed food and drinking too many sweetened beverages while also spending more hours plopped in front of television and computer screens than earlier generations.
Toddler weight problems are also a legacy of the obesity epidemic among adults: Overweight mothers tend to give birth to bigger babies who are exposed to insulin imbalances while in the womb that can predispose them to obesity.
This trend goes from cradle to grave an no one is calling out to stop the madness. At the same time the illutrious USDA and FDA are now allowing you to eat cloned meat, milk and probably other foods not included in the media fray to senstize you to it being ok for health.
Well we just don't really know do we? No labels on your food identifying cloned ingredients...
And how much $$$ has crossed palms in DC from Big Agra for this one?
You have the next month or so to contact the FDA and tell them NO to cloned food, NO GMO food and NO Big Agra over-processed and over-refined health destroying 'foods'.
Check out the organic consumers organization on line too.
Overweight toddlers are at risk of growing up to be overweight, with the attendant constellation of health woes, including diabetes, heart disease, and cancer.
It is a health crisis, specialists say, fueled by eating too much calorie-laden processed food and drinking too many sweetened beverages while also spending more hours plopped in front of television and computer screens than earlier generations.
Toddler weight problems are also a legacy of the obesity epidemic among adults: Overweight mothers tend to give birth to bigger babies who are exposed to insulin imbalances while in the womb that can predispose them to obesity.
"The whole country is struggling with this," said Virginia Chomitz , senior scientist at the Institute for Community Health at the Cambridge Health Alliance. "There's a lot of factors in our environment and our lifestyle that are pushing us toward being fatter. It's an uphill battle to push against that tide."
Wednesday, December 27, 2006
Docs still can't get it
Doctors just don't want you to use any natural treatments for your health and they seem to concoct every imaginable study to convince you that herbs or vitamins aren't beneficial.
So here is a study that shows that Black Cohosh in deed is beneficial for menopausal symptoms.
We suggest that hot flashes are more directly related to adrenal stress but for hundreds, and perhaps thousands, of years Black Cohosh has proven itself many times over. Read on...
So here is a study that shows that Black Cohosh in deed is beneficial for menopausal symptoms.
We suggest that hot flashes are more directly related to adrenal stress but for hundreds, and perhaps thousands, of years Black Cohosh has proven itself many times over. Read on...
December 26, 2006 Science Daily —
The natural herb black cohosh is commonly used by women to treat menopausal symptoms such as hot flashes, but the molecular mechanisms underlying its action have eluded scientists -- until now.
Researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago and the National Institutes of Health Center for Botanical Dietary Supplements Research have discovered that black cohosh may act on human opiate receptors, which play a role in regulating a body's temperature.
Z. Jim Wang, assistant professor of pharmacology and pharmaceutics, led the study, which will be published in an upcoming issue of the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry; the paper is currently available on the journal's web site.
Opiate receptors are chemical sensors that respond to opiates like morphine and endorphins, Wang said. Chemical substances with opiate activity bind to the receptors and produce the appropriate response, including the regulation of pain, temperature and appetite.
"We used several extracts of black cohosh and found that elements of the herb could bind to the human 'mu' opiate receptor," Wang said. "The opiate receptor system affects several aspects of female reproductive neuroendocrinology, such as the levels of sex hormones and neurotransmitters that are important for temperature regulation."
Black cohosh (known as both Actaea racemosa and Cimicifuga racemosa) is a member of
the buttercup family. A perennial plant, it is native to North America. It has been used by Native Americans to treat malaise, gynecological disorders, kidney ailments, malaria, rheumatism and sore throat, as well as colds, cough, constipation, hives and backaches, and to induce lactation.
Women experience a variety of symptoms of menopause, but the hot flash is the most
common. Although the exact mechanism of the hot flash is unclear, estrogen withdrawal
during menopause clearly plays an important role, Wang said. It is assumed that declining estrogen concentrations may change the levels of brain chemicals called neurotransmitters.
As a result, the thermoregulatory center located in the hypothalamus functions irregularly, which leads to inappropriate peripheral vasodilatation that causes hot flashes.
"The hypothalamic thermostat setting can be controlled directly or indirectly by the opiate system," Wang said.
Wang said this is the first time black cohosh has been linked to the activity of the opiate receptors. The ethanol extract used in this study, he said, is currently being used in a phase II clinical trial conducted by researchers from the UIC/NIH Center for Botanical Dietary Supplements Research.
Tuesday, December 26, 2006
Safer Sources
Carla Johnson write for the Spokane Spokesman-Review. Several years ago when I qeustioned this class of drugs and submitted healthier options she ignored my comments. Looks like she might be opeing her thinking a bit. It would be nice to hear an apology.
Be that as it may - and most likely not forth coming - these drugs are really risky because they block the P450 detox pathway, block protein digestion, reduce your immune response and as you see now, raise your risk of hip fracture.
Try some of our natural suggestions at Leaflady.org
Be that as it may - and most likely not forth coming - these drugs are really risky because they block the P450 detox pathway, block protein digestion, reduce your immune response and as you see now, raise your risk of hip fracture.
Try some of our natural suggestions at Leaflady.org
Study links heartburn drugs, broken hip By CARLA K. JOHNSON
Taking such popular heartburn drugs as Nexium, Prevacid or Prilosec for a year or more can raise the risk of a broken hip markedly in people over 50, a large study in Britain found.
The study raises questions about the safety of some of the most widely used and heavily promoted prescription drugs on the market, taken by millions of people.
The researchers speculated that when the drugs reduce acid in the stomach, they also make it more difficult for the body to absorb bone-building calcium. That can lead to weaker bones and fractures.
Hip fractures in the elderly often lead to life-threatening complications. As a result, doctors should make sure patients have good reason to stay on heartburn drugs long term, said study co-author Dr. Yu-Xiao Yang of the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine.
"The general perception is they are relatively harmless," Yang said. "They often are used without a clear or justified indication for the treatment."
Some people find relief from heartburn with over-the-counter antacids such as Tums, Rolaids and Maalox. But for others, those medicines do not work well. Moreover, heartburn can be more than a source of discomfort. People with chronic heartburn can develop painful ulcers in the esophagus, and in rare cases, some can end up with damage that can lead to esophageal cancer.
Dr. Sandra Dial of McGill University in Montreal, who was not involved in the study but has done similar research, said patients should discuss the risks and benefits with their doctors and taper off their use of these medicines if they can.
Nexium, Prevacid and Prilosec are members of a class of drugs known as proton pump inhibitors. The study found a similar but smaller risk of hip fractures for another class of acid-fighting drugs called H2 blockers. Those drugs include Tagamet and Pepcid.
The study, published in Wednesday's Journal of the American Medical Association, looked at medical records of more than 145,000 patients in England, where a large electronic database of records is available for research. The average age of the patients was 77.
The patients who used proton pump inhibitors for more than a year had a 44 percent higher risk of hip fracture than nonusers. The longer the patients took the drugs, the higher their risk.
The biggest risk was seen in people who took high doses of the drugs for more than a year. That group had a 2 1/2 times greater risk of hip fractures than nonusers.
Yang said that for every 1,262 elderly patients treated with the drugs for more than a year, there would be one additional hip fracture a year attributable to the drugs. For every 336 elderly patients treated for more than a year with high doses, there would be one extra hip fracture a year attributable to the drugs.
Dr. Doug Levine of AstraZeneca PLC, which makes Nexium and Prilosec, said the study does not prove that proton pump inhibitors cause hip fractures. It merely suggests a potential association, he said. Doctors need to monitor their patients for proper dosage and watch how long they take the drugs, Levine said.
Julia Ellwanger, a spokeswoman for TAP Pharmaceutical Products Inc., which markets Prevacid, said proton pump inhibitors' safety has been well-established by rigorous studies, and the new study does not prove or disprove a connection to hip fractures.
Dr. Alan Buchman of Northwestern University, who was not involved in the research, said the study should not change medical practice, since doctors already should be monitoring the bone density of elderly people taking the drugs and recommending calcium-rich diets to all patients.
"Most people are not taking enough calcium to start with," he said. He also wondered if a similar result would have been found in a sunny climate, because vitamin D from sunshine helps with calcium absorption.
Also, Buchman said it not known whether the acid-fighting drugs prevent esophageal cancer. He said the risk of esophageal cancer has been exaggerated in the marketing of these drugs.
"I think the risk has been overplayed and scared the community," Buchman said.
Heartburn medicines are heavily are advertised in "Ask your doctor about ..." commercials in this country, particularly during the evening news.
Nexium is the third biggest selling drug in the world, behind the cholesterol medicine Lipitor and blood thinner Plavix, with global sales totaling $5.7 billion last year, according to IMS Health, which tracks drug sales.
Yang and his co-authors disclosed in the paper that they have worked as consultants and received speaking fees from companies making acid-fighting drugs. The study was funded by the National Institutes of Health and the American Gastroenterological Association/GlaxoSmithKline Glaxo Institute for Digestive Health.
Men in the study had a higher drug-associated risk of hip fracture than women, possibly because women may be more aware of osteoporosis and may get more calcium in their diets, Yang said. He plans more research on whether calcium-rich diets or calcium supplements can prevent the problem.
Sunday, December 24, 2006
Something to think about
Can anything be more ridiculous than that a man would have the right to kill me because he lives on the other side of the water, and because his ruler has a quarrel with mine,
though I have none with him?
-- Blaise Pascal (1623-1662), Pensees
though I have none with him?
-- Blaise Pascal (1623-1662), Pensees
Thursday, December 21, 2006
We wonder what took the FDA this long too!
This issue of problems with the kidneys and liver when using NSAIDS goes back to the 70s for sure. We debated it in the days when I worked in ICU.
Remember Kenny Easley?
Liver AND kidney failure is the real risk, as well as aberrations of clotting, silent bleeding, some indication of bone loss and nutritional deficincy. Ginger, willow bark, MSM, turmeric or other are better choices.
There is the same or more risk with aspirin since, like the blood thinners (coumadin or heparin et al), it too will eventually cause disintegration of the cell wall membrane and extremely hazardous bleeding.
So what isn't your doctor telling you?
Remember Kenny Easley?
Liver AND kidney failure is the real risk, as well as aberrations of clotting, silent bleeding, some indication of bone loss and nutritional deficincy. Ginger, willow bark, MSM, turmeric or other are better choices.
There is the same or more risk with aspirin since, like the blood thinners (coumadin or heparin et al), it too will eventually cause disintegration of the cell wall membrane and extremely hazardous bleeding.
So what isn't your doctor telling you?
Wednesday, December 13, 2006
Looking at the Lipitor Lies
The Price of Freedom is Responsibility - It is every American's inherent right to freely choose for themselves whatever type and source of healthcare he or she deems appropriate. However, it must be emphasized that practicing such medical freedom
requires the responsibility of acquiring valid health information and skills, having the wisdom to recognize when professional healthcare is needed, and to choose that healthcare wisely.
I have been a champion of informed consent for decades. I find it missing in today's health care arena, yet it is a cornerstone of healthcare, and required by law.
The 'Don't tell if the patient doesn't ask' mentality is just too common these days, and this is one reason why this BLOG was implemented.
Do you wish to risk your life for 1.9 per cent improvement when better and safer treatment is available? And think of the high price you pay...Lipitor averages a 4700% profit.
requires the responsibility of acquiring valid health information and skills, having the wisdom to recognize when professional healthcare is needed, and to choose that healthcare wisely.
"Informed consent can be effectively exercised only if the patient possesses enough information to enable an intelligent choice (AMA, 1999)."
I have been a champion of informed consent for decades. I find it missing in today's health care arena, yet it is a cornerstone of healthcare, and required by law.
The 'Don't tell if the patient doesn't ask' mentality is just too common these days, and this is one reason why this BLOG was implemented.
Do you wish to risk your life for 1.9 per cent improvement when better and safer treatment is available? And think of the high price you pay...Lipitor averages a 4700% profit.
HIGH-DOSE LIPITOR FOR STROKES: HOW EFFECTIVE, HOW SAFE?
A new study of high-dose Lipitor reveals minimal benefit and unanswered questions about safety. Yet doctors are prescribing high-dose Lipitor to more patients.
In August 2006, a large study was published involving the maximum 80-mg dose of Lipitor (atorvastatin) in patients with a recent stroke.1 Lipitor is the top-selling drug in America and one of several statin drugs (e.g. Zocor, Crestor, Pravachol) widely prescribed for reducing cholesterol. The study, which was funded by Pfizer and authored by 8 Pfizer employees and consultants, showed that high-dose Lipitor reduced the occurrence of subsequent strokes slightly better than placebo. The authors concluded: "These results support the initiation of atorvastatin [Lipitor] treatment soon after a stroke or transient ischemic attack.1" But does the study really support the medicating of all stroke patients with the most powerful, side-effect prone dosage of Lipitor? No, the study does not. Here is why.
Minimal Efficacy, Serious Toxicity
In the study, 11.2 percent of patients receiving high-dose Lipitor experienced another stroke, whereas 13.1 percent of patients receiving placebo had another stroke.1 The difference was only 1.9 percent, a tiny improvement. This result is certainly not enough to warrant the widespread medicating of stroke patients with an expensive, highly potent form of Lipitor.
While Lipitor reduced the occurrence of blockage (ischemic) strokes, the occurrence of bleeding (hemorrhagic) strokes actually increased with Lipitor. Subsequent hemorrhagic strokes occurred in 55 patients receiving Lipitor vs. 33 patients receiving placebo. This means that hemorrhagic strokes increased 67% with Lipitor in comparison with placebo. Therefore, high-dose Lipitor is certainly not warranted in people with hemorrhagic strokes.
No Reduction of Deaths
Another reason for caution with high-dose Lipitor was the failure of the study to show any improvement in overall mortality with high-dose Lipitor. The drug decreased the number of fatal strokes, but this was offset by an increased number of deaths from other causes. The result was that among 2365 Lipitor patients, 216 (9.1 percent) died, while among 2366 placebo patients, 211 (8.9 percent) died. In short, the number of deaths increased slightly with high-dose Lipitor in comparison with placebo.
This is a very important finding, especially since a similar trend was seen in another major study of high-dose Lipitor published in 2005. The 2005 study compared the effect of maximum-dose (80 mg) and low-dose (10 mg) Lipitor on heart attacks and other cardiovascular events. Deaths from cardiovascular disease decreased considerably with high-dose Lipitor in comparison to the lower dose.2 However, the overall number of deaths was slightly greater with high-dose Lipitor than with the lower dose. In an expert editorial that accompanied the 2005 study, Dr. Bertram Pitt deemed the increased mortality with high-dose Lipitor "a matter of concern." Dr. Pitt added, "we need further reassurance as to the safety of this approach."3 For cases requiring aggressive LDL lowering, Dr. Pitt recommended a combination approach that included dietary modifications, moderate-dose statins, and other lipid-lowering therapies.3 I agree with Dr. Pitt's concerns and recommendations.
Hepatic Injuries with Lipitor
In the 2006 stroke study, 51 (2.2%) of high-dose Lipitor patients vs. 11 (0.5%) placebo patients developed elevations in liver enzymes (over 3 times the upper limit of normal), which indicated liver injry.1 In other words, liver injuries occurred nearly 5 times more frequently with high-dose Lipitor than with placebo. This is a serious finding. The 2005 study revealed a similar trend: liver enzyme elevations occurred nearly 7 times more frequently with high-dose than with low-dose Lipitor.2 These findings tell us that high-dose Lipitor is far more likely to cause liver injuries than low-dose Lipitor or placebo.
Is liver injury a serious side effect? A few years ago, a friend of mine was placed on 10 mg of Lipitor by his doctor. My friend's liver enzymes rose to three times above normal. Although the elevation was modest, it indicated the destruction of liver cells. My friend, who is a doctor, discontinued the Lipitor. He knew that statins such as Lipitor can be liver toxic. If the lowest dose of Lipitor caused this liver injury, how much more serious an injury would high-dose 80-mg Lipitor have caused?
You should be very cautious with drugs that cause liver injuries. Several years ago, when the drug Rezulin (troglitazone) was introduced, we were told that the drug caused modest liver injuries in only 2.2% of patients (vs 0.5% with placebo). Soon, reports of liver failure and death with Rezulin flooded the FDA. Belatedly, we learned that the manufacturer had omitted vital information: patients receiving Rezulin in the clinical trails had actually developed dangerous liver enzyme elevations and serious liver damage.4,5 These and other findings indicated that Rezulin was a serious liver toxin, but this information was withheld by the manufacturer for years. By the time Rezulin was withdrawn in 2000, nearly 100 people had died.
The studies of high-dose Lipitor did not provide specifics about the degrees of liver injury sustained by individual patients. Until this information is released, we must assume that high-dose Lipitor has the potential to cause major liver injury. Statin drugs have been linked to liver failure.
Should You Use High-Dose Lipitor?
Statin medications benefit millions of people. However, like all drugs, statins can cause serious side effects. Studies by drug companies tell us that side effects are few, but the experience of practitioners and patients reveal that side effects such as muscle pain, muscle weakness, joint pain, abdominal pain, memory problems, psychological changes, and liver injury are common. These side effects are dose-related: the higher the statin dose, the greater the risk.
So far, the studies of high-dose Lipitor are not extremely impressive. Although high-dose Lipitor does reduce the risk of heart attacks, so do lower, safer doses of Lipitor. So do other statins such as Mevacor (lovastatin) and Zocor (simvastatin), which are available as generics and much cheaper. For preventing strokes, high-dose Lipitor was not impressive. Equally important, in both the 2005 and 2006 studies, high-dose Lipitor did not reduce overall mortality. In addition, high-dose Lipitor clearly increases the risk of liver injury, and the degree of this risk has not been defined. Taken together, these findings demonstrate that there is no basis for administering high-dose Lipitor indiscriminately to broad groups of patients.
For some people with severe cardiovascular disease, there may be a basis for using high doses of Lipitor or other statins. Yet, even among these patients, there will be many who are unable to tolerate high-dose therapy. As studies have shown, some people are highly sensitive to statin drugs, and they obtain excellent responses with modest doses. If doctors begin prescribing high-dose Lipitor to all heart attack and stroke patients, they will overmedicate a lot of people. If you require vigorous lowering of your LEL cholesterol, it is safer to use a combination approach: a heart-healthy diet, a low or moderate dose statin, and other cholesterol-lowering agents. A heart-healthy diet itself can lower cholesterol as much as a moderate-dose statin drug.
References
1. Stroke prevention by aggressive reduction in cholesterol levels investigators. High-dose atorvastatin after stroke or transient ischemic hepatic. New England Journal of Medicine 2006;355:549-559.
2. LaRosa JC, Grundy SM, Waters DD, et al. Intensive lipid lowering with atorvastatin in patients with stable coronary disease. New England Journal of Medicine 2005;352:1425-35.
3. Pitt B. Low-density lipoprotein cholesterol in patients with stable coronary heart disease -- is it time to shift our goals? New England Journal of Medicine 2005;352(14):1483-1484.
4. Physicians' Desk Reference, 52nd and 54th Editions. Montvale, N.J.: Medical Economics Company, 1998 and 2000.
5. Watkins PB, Whitcomb RW. Hepatic dysfunction associated with troglitazone. New England Journal of Medicine 1998;338:916-917.
Copyright 2006, Jay S. Cohen, M.D. All rights reserved.
Sunday, December 10, 2006
Organic Consumers Fight Hijacked Seats on NOSB
More doing No-Gooding -
USDA ATTEMPTS TO PACK ORGANIC STANDARDS BOARD WITH CORPORATE AGRIBUSINESS REPS
WASHINGTON, DC - On December 5, 2006, the USDA announced its new appointments to the National Organic Standards Board (NOSB). The NOSB essentially advises the USDA on how to interpret and implement federal organic laws that regulate industry. The NOSB also reviews and approves substances for placement on the National List of Approved and Prohibited Substances. In other words, the NOSB has the ability to significantly weaken or strengthen the effectiveness of the national organic standards.
According to federal law, the NOSB is to be made up of a diverse group of experts in the organic field, including a public interest group representative, an environmentalist, a scientist, and a handler. Despite this clear mandate of diversity, the USDA's new appointments are all industry representatives.
USDA’s new appointees are:
Scientist: Katrina Heinze (General Mills)
Consumer and Public Interest Group Representative: Tracy Miedema (Stahlbush Island Farms, a primarily non-organic operation)
Environmentalist: Tina Ellor (Phillips Mushroom Farms)
Handler: Steve DeMuri (Campbell Soup)
Historically, there has only been one other instance where the USDA has attempted to stack non-industry seats on the NOSB with industry representatives, and the results were an embarrassment for the USDA. One year ago, the agency attempted to put a General Mills’ company representative, Katrina Heinz in the NOSB Public Interest Group Representative seat, which was closely followed by a massive consumer backlash spearheaded by the Organic Consumers Association (OCA) and the Consumers Union. The protests caused Heinz to decline the appointment.
“Never before has the Bush administration’s USDA made such a blatant attempt to pack the National Organic Standards Board with people who represent corporate agribusiness and industrial farming practices,” says OCA National Director Ronnie Cummins. “Stahlbush Farms, which admits on its website to using pesticides, fungicides, and insecticides on its crops (except for its canned pumpkins, sweet potatoes, and frozen green beans) is not, by any stretch of the imagination, an organic consumer or public interest group. Likewise, General Mills is not an academic institution, qualified to submit an impartial "scientist" to serve on the NOSB.” -more on next page-
Less than a year ago the organic community was forced to mobilize against a sneak attack on organic standards inserted into the 2006 Agriculture Appropriations bill, supported by General Mill’s and Campbell Soup and other corporate agribusiness players that have apparently decided they want to take over the $16 billion organic industry.
OCA is mobilizing its national grassroots action network of 500,000 organic consumers to stop this attempted hijacking of organic standards.. OCA strongly believes that Secretary of Agriculture Mike Johanns should intervene to ensure that the NOSB is composed of organic specialists, bona fide scientists, and representatives of consumer and public interest groups, as mandated by the Organic Foods Production Act. “We will be asking our members to call General Mills, Campbell Soup, and Stahlbush Farms and request that the appointees from their company decline appointment, in the best interest of the organic sector,” added Cummins.
OCA will also target members of Congress and ask for a Congressional hearing on the USDA's management of the National Organic Program and their numerous attempts to ignore OFPA and undermine the will of Congress.
According to Cummins, "A major part of the problem is the arrogance and lack of transparency on the part of the Bush USDA. The entire organic community has a basic right to know well ahead of time who all the nominees are for the NOSB, so we can examine their record and credentials. Then the USDA needs to listen carefully to all of the stakeholders in the community and base its decision on NOSB appointments accordingly."
Take Action Here: http://www.organicconsumers.org/rd/nosb.cfm
USDA ATTEMPTS TO PACK ORGANIC STANDARDS BOARD WITH CORPORATE AGRIBUSINESS REPS
WASHINGTON, DC - On December 5, 2006, the USDA announced its new appointments to the National Organic Standards Board (NOSB). The NOSB essentially advises the USDA on how to interpret and implement federal organic laws that regulate industry. The NOSB also reviews and approves substances for placement on the National List of Approved and Prohibited Substances. In other words, the NOSB has the ability to significantly weaken or strengthen the effectiveness of the national organic standards.
According to federal law, the NOSB is to be made up of a diverse group of experts in the organic field, including a public interest group representative, an environmentalist, a scientist, and a handler. Despite this clear mandate of diversity, the USDA's new appointments are all industry representatives.
USDA’s new appointees are:
Scientist: Katrina Heinze (General Mills)
Consumer and Public Interest Group Representative: Tracy Miedema (Stahlbush Island Farms, a primarily non-organic operation)
Environmentalist: Tina Ellor (Phillips Mushroom Farms)
Handler: Steve DeMuri (Campbell Soup)
Historically, there has only been one other instance where the USDA has attempted to stack non-industry seats on the NOSB with industry representatives, and the results were an embarrassment for the USDA. One year ago, the agency attempted to put a General Mills’ company representative, Katrina Heinz in the NOSB Public Interest Group Representative seat, which was closely followed by a massive consumer backlash spearheaded by the Organic Consumers Association (OCA) and the Consumers Union. The protests caused Heinz to decline the appointment.
“Never before has the Bush administration’s USDA made such a blatant attempt to pack the National Organic Standards Board with people who represent corporate agribusiness and industrial farming practices,” says OCA National Director Ronnie Cummins. “Stahlbush Farms, which admits on its website to using pesticides, fungicides, and insecticides on its crops (except for its canned pumpkins, sweet potatoes, and frozen green beans) is not, by any stretch of the imagination, an organic consumer or public interest group. Likewise, General Mills is not an academic institution, qualified to submit an impartial "scientist" to serve on the NOSB.” -more on next page-
Less than a year ago the organic community was forced to mobilize against a sneak attack on organic standards inserted into the 2006 Agriculture Appropriations bill, supported by General Mill’s and Campbell Soup and other corporate agribusiness players that have apparently decided they want to take over the $16 billion organic industry.
OCA is mobilizing its national grassroots action network of 500,000 organic consumers to stop this attempted hijacking of organic standards.. OCA strongly believes that Secretary of Agriculture Mike Johanns should intervene to ensure that the NOSB is composed of organic specialists, bona fide scientists, and representatives of consumer and public interest groups, as mandated by the Organic Foods Production Act. “We will be asking our members to call General Mills, Campbell Soup, and Stahlbush Farms and request that the appointees from their company decline appointment, in the best interest of the organic sector,” added Cummins.
OCA will also target members of Congress and ask for a Congressional hearing on the USDA's management of the National Organic Program and their numerous attempts to ignore OFPA and undermine the will of Congress.
According to Cummins, "A major part of the problem is the arrogance and lack of transparency on the part of the Bush USDA. The entire organic community has a basic right to know well ahead of time who all the nominees are for the NOSB, so we can examine their record and credentials. Then the USDA needs to listen carefully to all of the stakeholders in the community and base its decision on NOSB appointments accordingly."
Take Action Here: http://www.organicconsumers.org/rd/nosb.cfm
"A SECRET KILLER"
Letter by Gregory Sams. (shortened)
from the London Daily Mail 8 December 06
Polonium-210 is described as a rare isotope. Sadly, it isn't rare.
In 1990 American Surgeon General C. Everett Koop decared that radioactivity, not tar, accounts for 90% of smoking-related lung cancers.
Cigarettes are lightly radioactive. Most of the radiation comes from the rock-mineral FERTILISER (APATITE) that subsidised American farmers use. This contains radon, which decays to deposit polonium-210 in the fine hairs of tobacco leaves. This collects in smokers' lungs & beams out alpha radiation for years.
Increasing use of radon-rich fertilisers accompanied an 18-fold increase in the per capita incidence of lung cancer between 1930 & 1980 in the US. In the same period smoking fell by 20%, but tobacco's polonium-210 content tripled.
Of 33,000 UK deaths a year from lung cancer, 90% equates to 30,000 caused by radiation. 575 Britons die every week from gradually ingesting the same substance that poisoned Litvinenko. The Govt. is aware of this but doesn't publicise it.
from the London Daily Mail 8 December 06
Polonium-210 is described as a rare isotope. Sadly, it isn't rare.
In 1990 American Surgeon General C. Everett Koop decared that radioactivity, not tar, accounts for 90% of smoking-related lung cancers.
Cigarettes are lightly radioactive. Most of the radiation comes from the rock-mineral FERTILISER (APATITE) that subsidised American farmers use. This contains radon, which decays to deposit polonium-210 in the fine hairs of tobacco leaves. This collects in smokers' lungs & beams out alpha radiation for years.
Increasing use of radon-rich fertilisers accompanied an 18-fold increase in the per capita incidence of lung cancer between 1930 & 1980 in the US. In the same period smoking fell by 20%, but tobacco's polonium-210 content tripled.
Of 33,000 UK deaths a year from lung cancer, 90% equates to 30,000 caused by radiation. 575 Britons die every week from gradually ingesting the same substance that poisoned Litvinenko. The Govt. is aware of this but doesn't publicise it.
Back to the drawing board for Pfizer, et al
Drug giant Pfizer is in a panic after its new generation heart drug - designed to raise 'good' HDL cholesterol - was blamed for the deaths of 82 participants in a pre-licensing trial.
Pfizer is desperate to find a replacement for its statin drug Lipitor, which is the world's best-selling drug with annual revenues of around $10bn. The drug loses its patent protection in 2010, when it becomes open season for other manufacturers to produce 'me too' generic copies.
As with all statins, Lipitor lowers the 'bad' LDL cholesterol in the blood - but Pfizer researchers reckoned they could reduce heart deaths more dramatically if they instead raised the levels of HDL cholesterol.
The new drug, called torcetrapib, was due to be licensed for approval next year, and was undergoing $800m trials. Researchers running the trial recommended an immediate halt following the deaths of 82 participants who were taking the new drug in combination with Lipitor.
It's thought that the participants may have died from raised blood pressure, an effect that was reported early on, but one that Pfizer chose to ignore.
Interestingly, 51 participants who were taking only Lipitor also died. This may be as equally surprising to Pfizer as the torcetrapib results. According to the drug company, Lipitor causes a little bloating and gas. Many patients suffer many more serious side effects, including muscle wasting, and according to the latest Pfizer trial, death.
(Source: The Guardian, 5 December 2006).
and here is what the BMJ has to say about STATINS -
Pfizer is desperate to find a replacement for its statin drug Lipitor, which is the world's best-selling drug with annual revenues of around $10bn. The drug loses its patent protection in 2010, when it becomes open season for other manufacturers to produce 'me too' generic copies.
As with all statins, Lipitor lowers the 'bad' LDL cholesterol in the blood - but Pfizer researchers reckoned they could reduce heart deaths more dramatically if they instead raised the levels of HDL cholesterol.
The new drug, called torcetrapib, was due to be licensed for approval next year, and was undergoing $800m trials. Researchers running the trial recommended an immediate halt following the deaths of 82 participants who were taking the new drug in combination with Lipitor.
It's thought that the participants may have died from raised blood pressure, an effect that was reported early on, but one that Pfizer chose to ignore.
Interestingly, 51 participants who were taking only Lipitor also died. This may be as equally surprising to Pfizer as the torcetrapib results. According to the drug company, Lipitor causes a little bloating and gas. Many patients suffer many more serious side effects, including muscle wasting, and according to the latest Pfizer trial, death.
(Source: The Guardian, 5 December 2006).
and here is what the BMJ has to say about STATINS -
STATINS: Heart patients get them after op, but doctors don't know why
It's extraordinary just how frequently medicine works with myth rather than fact. One example is the use of cholesterol- lowering statin drugs, which have become one of medicine's holy grails for patients with coronary heart disease.
Heart specialists are convinced that statins are a vital part of patient care, especially after high-risk surgery.
But scratch the surface and you discover that this post-operative medical practice, conducted in every heart unit in the West for decades, is based on just 16 observational studies - which means they're not even properly regulated trials - and on two small studies.
Researchers from the University of Alberta made the discovery when they sifted through 2,373 references for statins. But these reduced down to just the handful of observational studies that provided any meaningful data.
The truth is, the researchers conclude, we just don't know if statins are helping heart patients after surgery.
So what to do? Well, it might be an idea to test the theory once and for all and discover if the statins are helping - or possibly harming - the patient.
(Source: British Medical Journal, 2006; 333: 1149-52).
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