By Sarah Luck on July 24, 2008
The Australian Government is giving the green light to use drugs as the first line of treatment for ADHD.  Doctors and specialists no longer need to pretend to search for a cause behind a child’s behavioural and learning problems they can now simply write out a prescription for Ritalin or dexamphetamine, drugs from the same family as cocaine, opium and morphine.  Diet and lifestyle it seems has nothing to do with learning and behavioural problems, these children apparently suffer from nothing more than a simple Ritalin deficiency.

A recent Australian Government set of draft guidelines for ADHD recommends drugs as the first line of treatment for school children diagnosed with ADHD. Read the Rest of this Medical News Story »

It´s always easy to blame the victim, especially when so-called behavioral issues arise. We view behavior as voluntary actions, decisions, and reactions. In this way, we convince ourselves that behavior can be controlled with mere self-control. Further, since we ourselves have self-control, behavioral issues will never affect us. It´s “their” problem and “they” need to fix it. It´s just learned violence. It´s just weakness. It´ll never happen to me.

Surprisingly, science disagrees. Behavior is not all-in-the-head in the sense of being voluntary or simple “stinking thinking”. Read the Rest of this Medical News Story »

Chelation is needed to help distribute nutrients within our bloodstream, to our different organ systems, and to keep nutrients stored in the right place. It is a process that goes on constantly and is required not only for living things but also for formation of the earth itself. Minerals and other nutrients depend on chelation for their transport in the soil as well as in bodies of water.

“Chela” in Greek means “claw,” and there are literally millions of different compounds in food, in our bodies, and in our environment that act as claws and bind with other substances. Chelation goes on continuously in all of these places. In food, a chelating agent may be as simple as a sulfur atom in a protein. Or it may be more complicated and come in the form of an organic acid like picolinic acid.

Sometimes a molecule works especially well for chelating one type of nutrient. That is why specific chelators are sometimes used in therapies to help remove toxic levels of heavy metals such as lead from the body. Chelators specific to lead are ingested or injected. These chelating agents bond with the lead and allow the metal to be excreted through the urine.

Proteins are a major group of chelators. A protein called metallothionein is particularly good at chelating zinc. Another protein called ceruloplasmin is an expert chelator of copper. Because the heating of food makes changes in proteins and other nutrients, cooking can cause changes in chelation. In fact, one of the main reasons we’re opposed to overcooking is because we don’t want to disturb the way that nutrients are naturally “woven” into food. But we also know that minimal cooking can be helpful, and in some cases (like phytic acid and its chelation of trace minerals), absorption of these minerals may actually be increased after heating of the food. The bottom line? Cook appropriately (which usually means minimally) and trust the natural balance of chelators to do the rest!

If we are exposed to a lot of toxins, however, chelators can also latch on to these toxins, transport and store them in our tissue. The solution to this problem isn’t to do away with the chelators, however. We need the chelators to stay healthy. The solution is to reduce our exposure to the toxins.

The news today is all about the extraordinary growth of the Chinese economy, but is there a danger that in importing Western affluence the Chinese may also import our levels of the characteristic diseases of affluence obesity, diabetes, heart attack, stroke and even cancer?

Perhaps, but probably not, so long as traditional Chinese medicine retains its focus on promoting the balance and harmony of the entire human organism; on unleashing and then harnessing the body’s own incredible healing powers.

The Chinese approach is becoming increasingly popular in the West, but fortunately there’s no need for you wait until you’re ill or to consult a specialist practitioner to derive the benefits. As amazing as it may seem, as simple a change as incorporating a few cups of green tea a day in your routine can deliver dramatic improvements in your well being.

Tea became widely known in China during the Tang dynasty (AD 618907) but there’s evidence that its health promoting qualities had been known to the enlightened for at least four thousand years.

It was used first as an aid to good digestion, stimulating the absorption of nutrients from food; and also became known as a powerful anti-oxidant and detoxifying agent. These qualities alone, common to all teas, would be more than enough to make it a very valuable health supplement. But there’s much more to green tea than this.

What makes green tea different from the more common black varieties is the method of production. Crucially, leaves for green tea are steamed rather than fermented, preventing the destruction of the vital EGCG compound. If you’ll forgive a little scientific jargon, EGCG is short for Epigallocatechin Gallate, one of a number of catechin polyphenols that occur naturally in tea. EGCG is a very powerful anti-oxidant, the preservation of which has been indicated by research to make green tea anything up to ten times more potent than the more common fermented varieties.

The power of EGCG and related compounds in green tea may be illustrated by comparison with the so-called “French paradox”. Reputable recent research has indicated that the relatively low incidence of heart disease in France, despite the traditionally high fat national diet, is due to the significant quantities of resveratrol found in the red wine which is also liberally consumed.

Like EGCG, resveratrol is an anti-oxidant polyphenol, but a 1997 study at the University of Kansas demonstrated that EGCG is up to twice as powerful. Other research has credited EGCG with the ability to reduce total levels of cholesterol as well as improving the ratio of “good” (HDL) cholesterol to “bad” (LDL) cholesterol and protecting against the abnormal blood clotting which is a major risk factor for both heart attacks and strokes - still two of the biggest causes of premature death and disablement in the Western world.

But if there’s one single disease that’s most characteristic of Western society today it must surely be obesity; as a look around your local gym or shopping mall will quickly confirm. And in truth, many of the killer diseases of affluence, most notably diabetes and cardio-vascular problems, have chronic obesity at their root. Swiss research published by the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition in November 1999 suggested that green tea possessed thermogenic properties and promoted fat metabolism at a faster rate than could be explained by its caffeine content alone. Or in layman’s terms, green tea is a powerful fat burner which can be a very useful tool in any weight loss program.

Finally, and perhaps most excitingly of all, there’s increasing evidence that the anti-oxidant effects of green tea may even have positive effects in the fight against cancer. In a major step forward, University of Purdue researchers recently isolated EGCG as the compound responsible, suggesting that the amount contained in as few as four or five cups of green tea a day may inhibit the growth of cancer cells without apparently harming healthy tissue.

Now of course, no one is claiming green tea as a cure for cancer, obesity or any of the conditions mentioned above. But there no longer seems any doubt that just a few cups a day of this very inexpensive and simplest of drinks can be an invaluable addition to your daily health regime.

Steve Smith is a freelance copywriter specialising in direct marketing, with a particular interest in health products.
Find out more about green tea at http://www.sisyphuspublicationsonline.com/GreenTea/Information.htm

Trial Intensifies Concerns About Safety of Vytorin

In a clinical trial, the cholesterol-lowering drug Vytorin did not help people with heart-valve disease avoid further heart problems but did appear to increase their risk of cancer, scientists reported Monday.

The scientists who reported on the trial, called Seas, cautioned against panicking over the cancer findings, saying that even well-designed clinical trials sometimes produce chance results. A review of two other, much larger trials did not find a similar risk, they said.

Vytorin and Zetia, a companion drug, are prescribed each month to almost three million people worldwide and are among the world’s top-selling medicines.

But other cardiologists and epidemiologists said that the cancer risk could not be so easily dismissed.

The findings of the Seas trial will heighten concerns about Vytorin’s safety and effectiveness, said Dr. Steven Nissen, a former president of the American College of Cardiology and a longtime critic of Vytorin. Six months ago, a fourth clinical trial, called Enhance, also failed to show that Vytorin benefited patients, leading a panel of top cardiologists to recommend using Vytorin and Zetia only as a last resort.

Since that recommendation, Vytorin and Zetia prescriptions have plunged, though the drugs remain among the largest sellers for Merck and Schering- Plough, which jointly sell them. The drugs had combined sales of $5 billion last year.

Shares of Merck and Schering skidded Monday after the Seas trial results were reported, with Merck shares down 6 percent and Schering down 12 percent. After the close of trading, both companies reported second-quarter earnings that were slightly ahead of analysts’ estimates.

Vytorin is a single pill that combines two cholesterol-lowering medicines — Zocor, or simvastatin, and Zetia, or ezetimibe. Both Zocor and Zetia are also available as single pills. Zocor is a statin. Because two decades of research have proven that statins reduce the risk of heart attacks and do not raise the risk of cancer, the new safety concerns center around ezetimibe. In the United States, about two million prescriptions a month are written for ezetimibe, either independently as Zetia or in the Vytorin combination pill.

In the Seas trial, which involved nearly 1,900 patients whose heart valves were partially blocked, participants were given either Vytorin or a placebo pill that contained no medicine. Scientists hoped that the trial would show that patients taking Vytorin would have a lower risk of needing valve replacement surgery or having heart failure. But the drug did not show those benefits.

“No significant difference was observed between the treatment groups for the combined primary endpoint,” Dr. Terje Pedersen, the principal investigator for the study and a professor medicine at Ulleval University Hospital in Norway, said. The primary endpoint is the result that scientists hope to prove when they conduct a clinical trial.

However, patients taking Vytorin in the Seas trial did have a sharply higher risk of developing and dying from cancer. In the trial 102 patients taking Vytorin developed cancer, compared with 67 taking the placebo. Of those, 39 people taking Vytorin died from their cancer, compared with 23 taking placebo.

The absolute numbers of cancer cases were relatively small. But they reached statistical significance, meaning the odds were less than 5 percent that they were the result of chance.

To evaluate the cancer findings, Richard Peto, professor of medical statistics and epidemiology at the University of Oxford, examined the interim results of two other clinical trials of Vytorin — called Sharp and Improve-It. The University of Oxford is leading the Sharp trial, which is sponsored by Merck and Schering-Plough but run independently by the university’s Clinical Trial Service Unit.

The Improve-It trial is being led by investigators by Harvard and Duke University.

Both Sharp and Improve-It are comparing Vytorin with simvastatin — Zocor — alone.

Neither trial has yet been completed, but the two trials combined have about 20,000 patients, nearly 10 times as many as the Seas trial.

So far, about the same number of patients taking Vytorin in Sharp and Improve-It have developed cancer as those taking simvastatin alone, Mr. Peto said in London on Monday. That fact strongly suggests that the finding in Seas is due to chance, Mr. Peto said.

“I think we should not be diverted by fears of cancer,” he said.

Mr. Peto also noted that the increase in cancers was not clustered around a single type of malignancy, but occurred widely. If ezetimibe did cause cancer, it would be more likely to cause a single type than many types, he said.

But other doctors said the data from Improve-It and Sharp were not definitive. The patients in those trials have generally been followed for one to two years, while the Seas trial followed patients for four years. Because cancer generally takes years to develop, it may take some time for Vytorin’s risks — if they are real — to become evident in patients.

“I don’t know that you have much information about the cancer risk from the other two trials,” said Dr. Bruce Psaty, professor of epidemiology at the University of Washington.

In addition, the other two trials contain a puzzling finding. While the number of cancer cases is similar in those trials among patients taking Vytorin and those who were not, the number of cancer deaths is approximately one-third higher among those taking Vytorin. In all, 136 people taking Vytorin have died of cancer in the three trials, compared with 95 taking other medicines or a sugar placebo pill.

Dr. Rob Califf, the director of the Duke Translational Medicine Institute and the co-chairman of Improve-It, the largest of the clinical trials examining Vytorin, said that stopping the trials early would be a mistake, since there was no proof that ezetimibe — either in the form of Vytorin or Zetia — caused cancer.

“To accept nonevidence as evidence is a worse mistake than to finish the trial and get the data one way or the other,” Dr. Califf said. However, patients outside the trials, who can choose to take other cholesterol-lowering drugs, should discuss the findings with their doctors, he said. In general, patients who can tolerate statins should take them and not ezetimibe, he said.

Cost of Combustion

Posted on: Tuesday, 22 July 2008, 15:00 CDT

By SHILLINGTON, David

Combustion has become widely-researched and highly-effective process, but what is it doing to the environment? —————— — Combustion processes (including wood burning) have been extensively researched, particularly since the advent of the internal combustion engine and the development of the aerospace industry. As a result motor cars of today are far more fuel efficient.

The term combustion is used to describe the process whereby a fuel source is oxidised by oxygen or other oxidising material (for example nitrous oxide for extra energy in motor racing).

When combustion is fast enough, sufficient heat can be produced to cause fire and flames.

In the case of a very slow oxidation, such as in the special case involving iron (rusting) the cost to society is enormous through replacement of deteriorating equipment. Read the Rest of this Medical News Story »

Clinical studies suggest that omega-3 fatty acids may be helpful in treating a variety of health conditions. The evidence is strongest for heart disease and problems that contribute to heart disease, but the range of possible uses for omega-3 fatty acids include:

High cholesterol

Those who follow a Mediterranean-style diet tend to have higher high density lipoprotein (HDL or “good” )cholesterol levels. Similar to those who follow a Mediterranean diet, Inuit Eskimos, who consume high amounts of omega-3 fatty acids from fatty fish, also tend to have increased HDL cholesterol and decreased triglycerides (fatty material that circulates in the blood). In addition, fish oil supplements containing eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) have been reported in several large clinical studies to reduce low density lipoprotein (LDL or “bad”) cholesterol and triglyceride levels. Finally, walnuts (which are rich in alpha linolenic acid or ALA) have been reported to lower total cholesterol and triglycerides in individuals with high cholesterol levels. Read the Rest of this Medical News Story »

By Dr. Rashid A. Buttar

I was interviewed a few weeks ago by First Magazine regarding the issue of mercury in dental amalgams.  We discussed the prevalence and danger of mercury toxicity due to the presence of dental amalgams in a huge percentage of the population.  We also talked about how the ten-year court case to get the Food and Drug Administration to comply with the law and set a date to classify mercury amalgam was recently settled.  After the interview the reporter told me this was shocking information and “almost too overwhelming”.
The NC Medical Board had the absurdity to ask my nurse practitioner if she found it strange that almost all our patients have heavy metals in their system when we check them.  The question is, how many people have dental amalgams?  How many people have had vaccines?  In other words, how many people have had this poison (mercury) injected or implanted into their bodies???  Yet, we get all worked up about eating fish that may contain mercury, which obviously is also NOT good. Read the Rest of this Medical News Story »

…the government Web site lists 16 studies that each conclude the chemical does not harm people. The Journal Sentinel examined those studies and found that all were funded by chemical-makers; all but one were conducted more than 25 years ago; and only one was published or peer-reviewed, a standard of rigorous scientific scrutiny.

A flame retardant that was taken out of children’s pajamas more than 30 years ago after it was found to cause cancer is being used with increasing regularity in furniture, paint — even baby carriers and bassinets — and manufacturers are under no obligation to let the public know about it.

The chemical, known as chlorinated Tris, one of the three most commonly used flame retardants, is considered harmful by several international and national health and regulatory agencies, including the National Cancer Institute, the World Health Organization and the Consumer Product Safety Commission.

One program within the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has identified the chemical as a cancer hazard and notes that it caused reproductive problems, developmental defects, anemia, liver failure and eye and skin irritation in laboratory animals. Read the Rest of this Medical News Story »