June 29, 2009

Slow Down: How Our Fast-Paced World Is Making Us Sick

By Linda Buzzell, AlterNet
Posted on July 2, 2009, Printed on July 2, 2009

Not so very long ago, humans -- like the rest of the animals and plants on earth -- moved through our natural cycles at nature's pace. Time was marked by the passing of the seasons, the life cycles of human, animal and plant life and the yet grander cycles of the moon and the other celestial bodies.

Homo sapiens, a late-appearing species in the long history of our unimaginably ancient planet and universe, evolved during the recent (as the universe views these things!) Pleistocene era, adapted for a life intimately connected with and expressive of our natural surroundings on the African savannah and beyond.
And this is how we lived for millennia.
In the last 150 years, however, the human relationship with time has radically changed. Some say the problems started earlier, with the development of agriculture or writing, but it was really the Industrial Revolution -- the rise of the Machine -- that put humans in thrall to mechanical processes and machine time. And the recent exponential speeding up into Cybertime has accelerated the process still further. Industrial time was bad enough (Charlie Chaplin did a wonderful job of visualizing that "cog in the wheel" feeling in his film "Modern Times") but Cybertime can be dizzyingly discombobulating for a Pleistocene primate.
And that's how many modern people feel -- completely frazzled and out of synch with our deepest selves.
The results of this disconnection from nature and nature's pace show up in therapists' and doctors' offices every day. Living under unnatural time pressures causes a myriad of psychological, social and physical ailments. Delinked from the natural rhythms of our bodies and the rest of the planet, we struggle with diminishing success to adapt to the strange mechanical and disembodied world we have created.
As a practicing psychotherapist and ecotherapist, when I see patients who are suffering from depression or anxiety I ask them to keep a time-journal in which they record the hours and minutes spent each day outside, as well as the hours spent inside in front of a screen. My clients are often shocked to realize how disassociated they have become from nature and our species' natural ways of living, and the effect this disconnection is having on their psyche. In fact, a 2007 study from the University of Essex shows that a daily "dose" of walking outside in nature can be as effective at treating mild to moderate depression as expensive antidepressant medications that can sometimes have negative side-effects.
Time poverty is now a recognized psychological and social stressor. In a speeded-up, highly complex society, there just isn't enough time for everything: our demanding jobs, our interlocking bureaucratic responsibilities (taxes, insurance, legal issues), our loved one, kids, our community (including the rest of nature), plus commuting and keeping up with traditional media and endless 24/7 online communications. Constantly rushing to keep up as we inevitably fall further behind, we find ourselves destroying not only our own health, but our habitat and the habitat of the people, plants and animals with whom we share the planet.
In my recently published book, Ecotherapy: Healing with Nature in Mind (Sierra Club Books, 2009) therapists and experts from many backgrounds discuss some of the ways that nature can help to heal problems like stress and anxiety. What suggestions can ecotherapists offer to help us slow down to a more natural pace of living? Here are a few simple things that can make a difference:

• Reconnect with place. We can learn to resist the constant rushing around and settle into and tend a beloved location, taking time to learn its secrets and hear its whisperings.
• Reconnect with companion and wild animals. Animals slow us down to our natural animal rhythms, which is why animal-assisted therapy works so well at lowering blood pressure and healing psychological ills of many kinds. The simple act of petting a cat or watching the birds flit through the trees is profoundly healing.
• Reconnect with plants. A simple pot on a windowsill slows us down to the pace of a seed, a seedling, a leaf and a flower. A tree on the street, if contemplated and touched, offers its blessings during a busy day.
• Reconnect with the cycles of human life. Instead of demanding that we remain in perpetual-teenager mode (the preferred state in our society, it seems), allowing ourselves to become true initiated adults and then elders honors the natural pace of human life rather than fighting it. Nature teaches us that seeds emerge, plants flourish, bloom, fruit and then wither and slip away -- valuable wisdom for our own lives when we encounter the inevitable transitions in our own and others' lives.
• Reconnect with our wild bodies. Untamed nature is to be found not only in far-away wilderness but in the wilds of our bloodstream, our digestive processes, our breath. Any practice that brings our attention back to our bodies is wilderness ecotherapy. Yoga and ecstatic dance offer release from the controlling modern ego and access to what ecopsychologists call "the ecological self." And once we reach peace with our animal bodies, our souls naturally open up to the larger Spirit in which we are embedded.
• Spend more time outdoors in wild nature. Most of us are indoors most of the time. Our bodies and souls cry out for long walks on a beach, contemplation in a forest or a few minutes in a nearby vacant lot near a stream. These times slow life down to a healing, natural pace.

Making just a few of these simple changes can radically shift how we feel. Ecopsychological research is now proving that reconnecting with nature and more natural living performs a host of psychological miracles, including lowering depression, improving our sense of well being, calming our anxieties, raising self-esteem and giving us a sense of belonging to the great whole of which we are a part.

Linda Buzzell, M.A., MFT is the co-editor with Craig Chalquist of the new anthology Ecotherapy: Healing with Nature in Mind, just released by Sierra Club Books (May 2009). She is a psychotherapist and ecotherapist in Santa Barbara.

http://www.alternet.org/story/140994/

Peanut butter can be healthy
United Press International 07-01-09
BOSTON, Jun 30, 2009 (UPI via COMTEX) -- A Boston doctor says eating peanut butter can be a healthy choice.
Dr. Walter Willett of the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston says the presence of some saturated fat doesn't automatically kick peanut butter into the camp of "unhealthy foods."
"Olive oil, wheat germ, and even tofu -- all considered to be 'healthy' foods -- have some saturated fat," Willett says in a statement.
"It's the whole package of nutrients, not just one or two, that determines how good a particular food is for health."
Peanut butter has nutrients including fiber and some vitamins and minerals -- especially potassium. Unsalted peanut butter has a terrific potassium-to-sodium ratio, which counters the harmful cardiovascular effects of a sodium surplus, Willett says. Even salted peanut butter still has about twice as much potassium as sodium.
Numerous studies have shown that people who regularly include nuts or peanut butter in their diets are less likely to develop heart disease or type 2 diabetes than those who rarely eat nuts, Willett says in the Harvard Heart Letter.
http://www.lef.org/news/LefDailyNews.htm?NewsID=8457&Section=Nutrition

Vegetarians less likely to develop cancer, say researchers

Nutraingredients.com, 02-Jul-2009

Vegetarians will develop less blood, bladder and stomach cancer than meat eaters, according to new research published in the British Journal of Cancer.
The grouping of two studies featured more than 61,000 vegetarians over a timespan of 12 years and found they contracted less cancer, independent of factors such as smoking, alcohol use and obesity than those who consumed meat or fish or both.
Differences in stomach and bowel cancer rates were not as pronounced as may have been expected given previous research and indeed, vegetarians had slightly higher, but not significantly so, rates of colon and rectum cancer.
Cervical cancer rates were twice that of meat-eaters among vegetarians. Breast and prostate cancer rates were similar, although there was less risk for prostate cancer among fish eaters than meat eaters.
Participants were drawn from a pool of British men and women who were eithermeat eaters and/or fish eaters or vegetarians. Of the total study population, 3,350 were diagnosed with one or more of the twenty cancers the researchers tested for.
They noted that 33 out of a hundred meat eaters will develop some form of cancer but only 29/100 non-meat eaters.
For some cancers such as multiple myeloma, which strikes bone marrow, vegetarians were 75 per cent less likely develop the condition.
Cancers of the blood and lymph such as leukemia and non-Hodgkin lymphoma were 50 per cent less likely in vegetarians than carnivores.
More study required
"More research is needed to substantiate these results and to look for reasons for the differences," said lead researcher, Tim Key, from the Cancer Research UK epidemiology unit at Oxford University.
"At the moment these findings are not strong enough to ask for particularly large changes in the diets of people following an average balanced diet."
The researchers said the reasons for lower cancer rates among vegetarians were not clear but suggested it could be down to viruses and mutation-causing compounds found in meat such as N-nitroso which are thought to damage DNA.
The temperatures at which meats are cooked could also produce damaging carcinogens.
Study detail
The study population contained 15 571 men and 45 995 women, one third of whom were vegetarian.
Levels of physical activity were higher in vegetarians and fish-only eaters than in meat eaters, who also had higher body mass indexes (BMIs).
But the researchers said none of the findings were conclusive despite some evidence linking, for instance, high intake of fruit and vegetables and onset rates of some cancers.
“There is also some evidence that a high intake of fruit and vegetables might reduce the risk for stomach cancer, but the data are not consistent and, although on average vegetarians eat more fruit and vegetables than meat eaters, the difference in intake is modest,” they wrote.
Source: British Journal of Cancer (2009) 101, 192–197. doi:10.1038/sj.bjc.6605098 ‘Cancer incidence in British vegetarians’ Authors: TJ Key, PN Appleby, EA Spencer, RC Travis, NE Allen, M Thorogood and JI Mann
http://www.nutraingredients.com/Research/Vegetarians-less-likely-to-develop-cancer-say-researchers

Walnuts can cut cholesterol, say Harvard researchers

Nutraingredients.com, 02-Jul-2009

A meta-analysis of walnuts by Harvard scientists has found diets rich in walnuts can significantly reduce cholesterol levels, supporting growing evidence to suggest these popular nuts can improve healthy blood lipid ratios.
In their investigation of thirteen studies, the researchers demonstrated that walnut-rich consumption decreased total and low-density lipoprotein (LDL)cholesterol during short term trials.
However the scientists suggested that "larger and longer-term trials" are needed to observe the effects of eating walnuts, rich in polyunsaturated fatty acids, on cardiovascular risk and weight management.
Their analysis joins a blossoming body of science that has linked nut consumption – including almonds and macadamias – to improvements in markers of cardiovascular health.
Coronary heart disease places a significant financial burden on all European states, and in the UK alone costs the health system more than €5bn per year. Governments, scientists and the food industry itself continue to invest time and money in pinpointing potential dietary solutions that could boost cardiovascular health.
Design of the meta-analysis
Published in a recent issue of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, researchers Deirdre Banel and Frank Hu conducted the meta-analysis to,"estimate the effect of walnuts on blood lipids".
Literature databases were searched for published trials that compared a specifically walnut-enhanced diet with a control diet.
"We conducted a random-effects meta-analysis of weighted mean differences of lipid outcomes," said the scientists.
The 13 studies selected represented some 365 participants, with diets lasting between four and 24 weeks and walnuts providing between 10 and 24 per cent of total calories.
"When compared with control diets, diets supplemented with walnuts resulted in a significantly greater decrease in total cholesterol and in LDL-cholesterol concentrations," the Harvard researchers wrote.
Further, the meta-analysis results gave a nod to the widening circle of potential health benefits contained in walnuts.
"Other results reported in the trials indicated that walnuts provided significant benefits for certain antioxidant capacity and inflammatory markers and had no adverse effects on body weight," stated the researchers.
Source: American Journal of Clinical Nutrition
May 2009, Volume 90, Pages 56-63, doi:10.3945/ajcn.2009.27457
‘Effects of walnut consumption on blood lipids and other cardiovascular risk factors: a meta-analysis and systematic review’
Authors: Deirdre K Banel and Frank B Hu
http://www.nutraingredients.com/Research/Walnuts-can-cut-cholesterol-say-Harvard-researchers

Weight-bearing exercise key for bone health
Last Updated: 2009-07-01 17:05:12 -0400 (Reuters Health)
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Higher-impact exercise, including running and jumping, is the most important type of activity for building stronger bones -- especially around the time of puberty, according to a research review.
The review, which included dozens of studies published since the 1960s, confirms the importance of weight-bearing exercise in bone health across a person's lifespan.
Weight-bearing activities, such as running, jumping rope and lifting weights, put the bones under stress. This forces the bones to respond by becoming stronger. In contrast, low-impact exercise, like biking or swimming, works the heart and trims the waistline, but puts little strain on the bones.
In the new review, researchers led by Dr. Ron F. Zernicke, of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, found that a range of activities appear beneficial for bone mass and strength.
Some activities -- like gymnastics, ballet and competitive rope jumping -- have been found to boost young people's bone mass because of the "magnitude" of the stress they place on the bones.
In other cases, it's the rate of the stress - as in "power" lifting, which involves quick muscle contractions -- that appears to benefit bone strength, the researchers report in the journal Sports Health.
"There are many facets related to maintaining bone health, including genetic, intrinsic, and environmental factors, but physical activity is by far one of the strongest means to develop and maintain healthy bone mass," Zernicke said in a news release from the journal.
"In the end," he added, "weight bearing exercise -- even for just 20 minutes per day -- can strengthen your skeleton significantly."
Much of the research on exercise and bone health has been done in postmenopausal women, who are at increased risk of bone loss, osteoporosis and fractures, Zernicke and his colleagues note.
However, they write, "considerable evidence suggests that the early pubertal period provides an unparalleled opportunity to enhance bone health through various types of exercise."
"Making sure young children exercise regularly is key to developing healthy bone structures and long-term injury prevention," Zernicke said. "Regardless of age, weight bearing exercises are extremely beneficial."
SOURCE: Sports Health, July/August 2009.
http://www.reutershealth.com/archive/2009/07/01/eline/links/20090701elin001.html

Two thirds of American adults are too fat
Last Updated: 2009-07-01 16:51:10 -0400 (Reuters Health)
CHICAGO (Reuters) - Obesity rates continued to climb in the past year with 23 U.S. states reporting adults in their states are fatter now than they were a year ago, two advocacy groups said on Wednesday.
Two-thirds of American adults are either obese or overweight, and the groups warned that the U.S. obesity epidemic could derail efforts by lawmakers to reform the nation's health system.
"Our health care costs have grown along with our waist lines," said Jeff Levi, executive director of Trust for America's health, which released the report along with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
The report also calls for a national strategy to combat obesity, which causes heart disease, diabetes and cancer.
"The obesity epidemic is a big contributor to the skyrocketing health care costs in the United States. How are we going to compete with the rest of the world if our economy and workforce are weighed down by bad health?" Levi said in a statement.
The annual ranking of obesity rates in U.S. states found Mississippi continues as the state with the fattest residents, with nearly a third of adults considered obese. The U.S. state has topped the list for the past five years.
Three other states -- West Virginia, Alabama, and Tennessee -- now have obesity rates above 30 percent, according to the report.
Among U.S. children, obesity rates held steady, but at still alarmingly high levels, with 30 states reporting the percentage of obese or overweight children at above 30 percent.
A report last year in the Journal of the American Medical Association found the U.S. childhood obesity epidemic leveled off this decade after surging for about 20 years, but a worrisome number of young people remain obese, risking serious health problems.
Childhood and adult obesity has emerged as a growing problem not only in the United States but in many countries around the world.
Obese children are more likely to be saddled with risk factors associated with cardiovascular disease such as high blood pressure and high cholesterol, as well as type 2 diabetes. They also are at higher risk for asthma.
They also are much more likely to be obese in adulthood, when they may face the many health problems linked to obesity such as heart disease, stroke, diabetes and some cancers.
http://www.reutershealth.com/archive/2009/07/01/eline/links/20090701elin011.html

Government moves to staunch massive Medicare fraud
Last Updated: 2009-07-01 15:58:10 -0400 (Reuters Health)
MIAMI (Reuters) - Since 2006, U.S. taxpayers have paid nearly $155,000 to send home health nurses to inject twice-daily insulin shots for an elderly, diabetic Miami man.
But in fact, the man was not diabetic or homebound and the nurses never existed, according to a federal indictment. Now the owners of two Miami companies that purportedly cared for the man are charged with running a $22 million fraud scheme at the expense of Medicare, the federal health program for the elderly and disabled.
Medicare billing records showed the man, identified in court documents as M.G., had rarely ordered any insulin or syringes. When his care switched from one home care company to another, he had no injections for 30 days -- "miraculously cured of his alleged insulin-dependence for a month," U.S. prosecutors joked in court papers.
As the Obama administration pursues an overhaul of the U.S. health care system and proposes expanding government's role, it also has expanded efforts to root out the fraud that is bleeding tens of billions of dollars a year from Medicare.
The gigantic federal program provides health care for 45 million people who are over 65, blind or disabled and has a proposed budget of $453 billion next year.
In June, the Justice Department and Department of Health and Human Services created Medicare anti-fraud strike forces in Detroit and Houston. Like one set up in Los Angeles last year, they are modeled after one born in Miami, the nation's Medicare fraud capital.
CULTURE FOR MEDICARE FRAUD
In a state with a huge retiree population, Miami is especially rife with Medicare scams because it has pools of non-English-speaking elderly residents who often do not understand the billing practices, federal prosecutors said. It also is a diverse urban area where patients do not necessarily know their doctors and nurses or even their neighbors.
"Miami is a place where anyone from anyplace in the world can blend in," said Jeffrey Sloman, acting U.S. attorney for southern Florida.
Miami has seven teams of prosecutors, FBI agents and federal auditors looking very hard for Medicare scams. Since the precursor to that strike force was set up in 2005, more than 700 people have been charged with fraudulently billing Medicare more than $2 billion in the Miami area, and $350 million has been recouped, Sloman said.
As the new anti-fraud forces ramp up, "I think those other parts of the country are going to discover that they also have a significant Medicare fraud problem," he said.
Increasingly, federal agents and the companies that process Medicare claims are cross-referencing bills and using data mining to try to find suspicious patterns.
They focused on the diabetic injection scam after finding Medicare spending for home health care in the Miami area had jumped tenfold in a couple of years, though there had been no surge in the elderly population or prevalence of diabetes.
Another audit showed three south Florida counties accounted for 72 percent of Medicare charges nationwide for HIV/AIDS beneficiaries, although only 8 percent of such patients lived there. Most of the money went to intravenous drug therapy.
NON-EXISTENT CLINICS
That led to an investigation that saw eight people indicted in June on charges of fraudulently billing Medicare $100 million for purported intravenous therapies at clinics that existed only as empty storefronts or post office boxes.
With the supposed diabetics, prosecutors said patients were bribed to let the defendants use their names on false claims.
Increasingly, the patients and doctors whose names are on the bills know nothing of the fraud, investigators said. Scammers steal identities with the help of unscrupulous clinic or billing workers or buy lists on the Internet. They often use the numbers long after the patients die.
One bogus clinic ran help-wanted ads for doctors, then stole their Medicare provider numbers off the job applications, said Eric Bustillo, chief of U.S. attorney's economic and environmental crimes section.
Often, there's no health care involved at all. It's pure billing fraud and Medicare is vulnerable in part because by law it must pay claims quickly, usually within 30 days. Investigators call it a "pay and chase" system.
"By the time you figure out that it's a fraudulent claim the money's already been paid," Bustillo said.
Since patients' Medicare ID numbers are based on Social Security numbers, it is difficult to change them once they've been compromised, and scammers keep using them.
Investigators say Medicare could learn from credit card companies, which are good at quickly spotting unusual charges.
"Policy changes and safeguards to the Medicare program will go a lot further in saving health care fraud dollars than will prosecutions after the fraud has been committed," Sloman said. "By the time a case gets to us, the money is already gone."
http://www.reutershealth.com/archive/2009/07/01/eline/links/20090701elin014.html

Relaxation techniques decrease anxiety in dementia
Last Updated: 2009-07-01 15:41:39 -0400 (Reuters Health)
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Acupressure and Montessori-based activities decrease agitation in institutionalized residents with dementia, according to a report in The New England Journal of Medicine.
Nonpharmacological interventions such as acupuncture, Montessori methods, and massage have all been used to manage agitation and promote relaxation in patients with dementia, the authors explain. A number of studies have tested the effects of these approaches, but the studies had significant limitations.
Dr. Li-Chan Lin from National Yang-Ming University, Taipei, and colleagues explored the effectiveness of acupressure and Montessori-based activities in decreasing agitated behaviors of 133 institutionalized residents with dementia. This was compared with the potentially calming presence of a visitor who acted as a control. All participants underwent all three treatments in three different sequences.
Acupressure daily (6 days weekly) for 4 weeks significantly decreased overall agitated behaviors, the authors report, especially in the Cohen-Mansfield Agitation Inventory (CMAI) subcategories of physically nonaggressive and physically aggressive behaviors.
Montessori-based activities on the same schedule significantly improved aggressive behavior and physically nonaggressive behavior, the researchers note.
Although neither approach decreased verbally agitated behaviors, Montessori treatment was associated with a significant increase in positive affect.
Nurses' aides noted that ease of care improved when they assisted residents with eating, toileting, bathing, grooming, sleeping, walking, and various other activities after the acupressure or Montessori-based activities.
"This study confirms that a noninvasive, traditional Chinese medical procedure, acupressure, coupled with a Western activities program, could be useful in caring for people with dementia and that in-service training for formal caregivers in private and institutional settings would be beneficial," the investigators conclude.
SOURCE: The New England Journal of Medicine, July 2009.
http://www.reutershealth.com/archive/2009/07/01/eline/links/20090701elin025.html

Obama seeks to build support for health reform
Last Updated: 2009-07-01 16:59:10 -0400 (Reuters Health)
ANNANDALE, Virginia (Reuters) - President Barack Obama on Wednesday sought to build support to overhaul the U.S. healthcare system as a key Republican questioned whether bipartisan support among lawmakers is possible.
With Congress out of session for a week, Obama urged participants at a question-and-answer session in a Washington suburb to be wary of "scare tactics" and hugged a woman who said she did not have health insurance or money of her own to treat a tumor.
"You are what is going to drive this process forward. Because if Congress thinks that the American people don't want to see change, frankly, the lobbyists and the special interests will end up winning the day," Obama said at the meeting, which featured questions posed on YouTube and a parallel discussion on the White House Facebook page.
Obama has challenged Congress to send him legislation by the end of the year that will rein in rising healthcare costs and extend insurance to most of the 46 million Americans who lack it.
Obama hopes his top legislative priority will attract support from both parties, and on Tuesday received a welcome boost when Wal-Mart Stores Inc , the world's largest retailer, said it supported Obama's push to require large employers to offer healthcare insurance to workers -- a key part of the plan.
But an important Republican lawmaker on Wednesday said bipartisan support might not materialize if the Democrats who control both houses of Congress insist on creating a public plan to compete with private insurers, as Obama wants.
"Obviously, I'm not going to be a part of any effort of the government to take over health care in America," Senator Charles Grassley, the top Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, said on a conference call.
REPUBLICAN SUPPORT
The Finance Committee is one of five panels in the Senate and the House of Representatives that are drafting healthcare legislation, and its version is viewed as the one that has the best chance of winning Republican support.
Obama has sought to build pressure on lawmakers by mobilizing grass-roots supporters and holding several question-and-answer sessions with voters.
But the extent of public support is unclear.
A CNN poll released on Wednesday found that a bare majority, 51 percent, support his healthcare plan and most worry that it would require them to pay more.
A separate Quinnipiac University poll found that 69 percent back Obama's proposal to make a public plan available, and 49 percent would be willing to pay more for healthcare.
At Wednesday's session, Obama said he would prefer to pay for reforms by ending subsidies for private insurers and reducing tax exemptions for the nation's wealthiest rather than taxing health benefits as some Republicans have suggested.
He urged voters to be wary of "scare tactics" put forward by opponents. People will not be forced to switch to a government program, he said, and costs will not suddenly increase.
"Don't let people scare you out of reforming a system that we know is not working," Obama said.
Soaring healthcare costs undermine the competitiveness of U.S. businesses, strain state and federal budgets and drive many Americans into bankruptcy.
Virginia residents who get insurance through their employer pay an average of 24 percent of the total cost, the highest rate in the nation, according to 2006 figures from the Kaiser Family Foundation.
http://www.reutershealth.com/archive/2009/07/01/eline/links/20090701elin034.html

Obesity as Dangerous to Health as Lifetime of Smoking
David Gutierrez, NaturalNews.com  July 2, 2009 

(NaturalNews) Severe obesity shortens a person's expected lifespan by 10 years, comparable to the effect of a lifetime spent smoking, according to a study conducted by researchers from Oxford University's Clinical Trial Service Unit and published in the journal The Lancet.

"This is the latest and most convincing demonstration of the close relationship between being overweight and poor heart health, and confirms that smoking is harmful regardless of your weight," said Peter Weissberg of the British Heart Foundation.

Researchers compared lifestyle and mortality data for nearly one million people worldwide, and found that every increase in body mass index (BMI) over 25 significantly decreased life expectancy.

BMI is a commonly used measure of obesity, calculated by dividing a person's weight in kilograms by the square of their height in meters. A range of 20-25 is considered normal, 25-30 is considered overweight, 30-40 is considered obese, and 40-50 is considered severely obese.

In the current study, moderate obesity reduced life expectancy by an average of three years, while severe obesity reduced it by 10.

"Excess weight shortens human lifespan," concluded lead researcher Gary Whitlock.

Health experts warn that it is easier to avoid gaining extra weight than it is to lose it later on.

"Being obese not only shortens life, it also leads to chronic ill-health -- diabetes, high blood pressure, gallstones, back and joint troubles," said Alan Maryon-Davis, president of the U.K. Faculty of Public Health. "My advice is don't let it creep up on you. Cut down the fat in your food and use every opportunity to be more physical." 

The researchers estimated that excess weight is responsible for up to one in 16 cancer deaths and one in four deaths from heart attack or stroke among middle-aged residents of the United Kingdom. Approximately 2 percent of U.K. residents are categorized as severely obese.
http://www.naturalnews.com/z026537_health_obesity_lifespan.html

Research Helps Breast Cancer Patients Arm Themselves before Visiting Oncologists
Barbara Minton, NaturalNews.com  July 2, 2009

(NaturalNews) After a diagnosis of breast cancer, most women want to know where they fit into the statistics being quoted to them as reasons for submitting to the traditional toxic treatments being advocated by their oncologists. Scientists in China are helping to further this understanding through research revealing a statistical breakdown of which forms of breast cancer are the most deadly, and which may not be so dangerous. Any woman being pressured to accept chemotherapy, radiation, and follow-drugs can use these statistics to empower herself and more accurately assess where she stands.

In the study, the clinical-pathological characteristics of triple negative breast cancer were investigated.. This type of cancer is diagnosed when cells in the breast lack all three receptors: estrogen receptors, progesterone receptors and human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER-2).

Although these receptors can help fuel breast cancer growth in some cases, they are also indicative of less threatening cancers. Cells that are able to express these factors more closely resemble normal cells, while cells that cannot express the factors have lost resemblance to normal cells. When cancerous cells more closely resemble normal cells, they are more easily returned to a state of normalcy. The lack of receptors makes triple negative breast cancer one of the most deadly forms of cancer.

The researchers investigated the clinical-pathological profiles of 690 female breast cancer patients. 127 of these women were negative for estrogen and progesterone receptors and also negative for HER-2. They were therefore triple negative.

The research showed that the expression rate of a protein called p53 in the triple negative breast cancer patients was 71.42%, significantly higher than that of the non-triple negative breast cancer patient's rate of 42.56%. This p53 specific protein is produced by a gene that functions to suppress the growth of tumors, and is the most commonly mutated gene known in human cancer. Like other tumor-suppressor genes, p53 normally controls cell growth. If p53 is physically lost or is not functioning, cells may be permitted to divide without restraint. Women with high levels of p53 in their cells are at higher risk for cancer recurrence than women with low levels of p53. The buildup of p53 within a cancer cell is a sign that p53 is not working properly to suppress tumor growth.

The expression rate of epidermal growth factor receptor of the triple negative breast cancer patients was 59.74%, significantly higher than that of the non-triple negative breast cancer patients (22.06%).

The local lymph node metastasis rate of the triple negative breast cancer patients was 22.22%, significantly higher than that of the non-triple negative breast cancer patients (2.70%).

The 5 year and 10 year overall survival rates of the triple negative breast cancer patients were 79.76% and 63.15% respectively. These were both significantly lower than those of the non-triple negative breast cancer patients (88.59% and 83.28% respectively).

The 5 year and 10 year disease free rates of the triple negative breast cancer patients were 77.94% and 62.87% respectively, both significantly lower than those of the non-triple negative breast cancer patients (83.82% and 82.53% respectively). (Zhonghua Yi Xue Za Zhi, February)

Some breast cancers are highly threatening and some are not

What is normally termed breast cancer is really many different forms of cancer, all of which originate in the breast. Yet traditional disease establishment treatments tend to be generally the same for all women. There is little interest in viewing breast cancer patients or their types of cancer individually. Traditional treatments use a factory approach in which almost everyone is given the standard regimen of surgery, chemotherapy, radiation and follow up drugs without regard to age, health status, diet, lifestyle, habits, psychology, or type of breast cancer.

These treatments are life altering events from which women never fully recover. Once a woman allows these treatments to begin, she has effectively given away her chance to ever achieve vibrant health again. During these treatments the organs and systems of her body will be compromised to the point of no return. Chemotherapy, the most toxic and deadly of all the treatments, is passed out to almost everyone because that's where the money is. Most oncologists earn the bulk of their large incomes from the sale of chemotherapy drugs administered in their offices.

During the initial visit to the oncologist, a woman is deluged with a stream of statistics she has no hope of grasping at a time when she is tense, frightened and intimidated. Yet the decision to begin chemotherapy or radiation is demanded immediately, under the threat that every minute counts. However, research has shown that it is not the immediacy of treatment or the size of the tumor that dictates outcome nearly as much as the type of cancer a woman has.

When a woman with breast cancer asks her surgeon or oncologist how long she has had the tumor in her body, she will most likely be told that no tumors were seen on her last mammogram but now the mammogram shows a tumor. The implication of such information is that the tumor is growing so fast that treatment must be begun immediately. But the reality is that breast cancers can take up to 20 years to grow to a size where they are detectable. Just because a woman had no evidence of a tumor on her last mammogram and now she has evidence of one does not mean the tumor is growing rapidly. It only means that the tumor has at last reached a size where it can be detected, a process that may have taken 20 years. Many breast cancers grow extremely slowly. There is no reason why a decision to submit to surgery, to be injected with poison, or to be radiated must be made without time to think it over and become better informed.

Take time to understand your disease before you make any decisions

Simply hearing that you have a diagnosis of breast cancer is not enough information on which to make any kind of life altering decision. If you have submitted to a biopsy your oncologist will have a copy of the lab report. It is your right to have a copy of that report, so ask for it. Take it home and study it. All terminology needed to understand the jargon can easily be found online. Remember that no one has the vested interest in your health and life that you do.

Women diagnosed with breast cancers that have not become invasive, known as ductal carcinoma in situ need to be aware that these cancers are not spreading to other parts of their body because the body's own mechanisms are keeping them in check. These cancers may completely disappear in time without any interventions whatsoever. Even cancers that are invasive may disappear without intervention. The rates of breast cancer in women were much lower until the invention of mammography which can detect them earlier. Did women magically increase their cancer rate at exactly the same time mammography was invented? This is highly unlikely. So what happened to all the breast cancers women were having all along? The only logical conclusion is that they were handled by the body's own defense systems.

Less threatening forms of cancer may more likely be dealt with effectively by the body's own defense systems. This means that the more a woman knows about the nature of her breast cancer, the better she is able to make an informed choice about the treatment or lack of treatment she is willing to undergo.

Understand your Nottingham Score

When studying your lab report you will probably find a Nottingham Score listed that reflects your test results on three different scales assessing how your invasive breast cancer cells look under a microscope. Each of the three components is assigned a sub-score of 1, 2, or 3. The sub-scores are added to arrive at the Nottingham Score. The lowest Nottingham Score is 3 (1 plus 1 plus 1), and the highest is 9 (3 plus 3 plus 3). The lower the score, the less deadly is the cancer. Consistent with the research findings discussed above, tumors with estrogen and progesterone receptors as well as those expressing HER-2 receptors tend to have lower scores, meaning they are less threatening. Most breast tumors fall into this category. Triple negative breast cancers tend to yield higher scores, meaning they are more threatening.

Probably the most important of the three Nottingham components is the one that reveals the number of cells in mitosis. As you probably remember from high school, mitosis refers to cell division. By knowing what percentage of cells in your biopsy was in mitosis, you will have a measure of the rate of growth of your cancer. In some cancers, especially those in women who have been using bioidentical progesterone cream, there are virtually no cells in mitosis. The cancer is just sitting there minding its own business and posing very little threat. Samples that reflect higher rates of mitosis mean the cancers are growing more quickly.

Understand the nature of statistics

Anyone with a rudimentary knowledge of statistics knows that they can be made to say whatever the person using them wants them to say. Statistics are derived from samples, and because each person is very different from another in diet, age, general health, fitness level and so on, cancer statistics are merely estimates. Samples can be manipulated in many different ways to fit specific purposes.

For example, let's say a woman is told that because cancer cells were found in her lymph nodes, chemotherapy will improve her odds of living for another 5 years by 15%. What she is not told is what comprised the sample pool. Did this pool consist of all women who had any kind of positive cells found in their lymph nodes? If so, the sample pool consisted of women ranging from those who had a few cells squeezed out of their tumors by the excessive pressure of mammography during the diagnostic process, to women who had well established metastases throughout their lymph systems. Among other things a woman is not told is whether the pool contained all women with breast cancer or only those with receptor positive cancers. She is not being told the cell division rate of women in the pool. There is no information given in this statistic that is useful to an individual trying to make a determination about her life.

The statistical babble going on by oncologists is really not informative at all. It is actually just a sales pitch and an attempt to frighten and confuse at a time when you are most vulnerable. The cancer industry counts on the fact that people do not understand the nature of statistics and are confused and frightened by them. Oncologists know this and have been taught to use statistics to intimidate. If your oncologist seriously wanted to inform you of what was really going on, he would tell you that no matter how low or high your Nottingham Score, and no matter how many of your cells were in mitosis, he is going to do his best to convince you to submit to chemotherapy, radiation, and years of follow-drugs because that is how he makes his living.

Whether your cancer is the non-invasive in situ type, strongly or weakly expressing estrogen, progesterone or HER-2 receptors, or not expressing any receptors at all, he is going to try to convince you to submit to his treatments because that is the standard of care in America.

Many women who have had chemotherapy and radiation do not die of cancer. They die of the effects of these treatments. However, women who die from cancer treatments are not used in the statistical pools related to cancer deaths. For example, a woman who dies from liver or kidney damage following chemotherapy is counted as a liver or kidney related death, not a cancer death.

Take time to understand that cancer can be completely cured by building up the body, but not by tearing it down

Have the courage to tell your oncologist that you will not be rushed into making decisions about your health and your life. Tell your oncologist you will give him a call later if you decide to accept his treatments. Walk away from his office with your lab report in your hand and begin to learn about and understand your particular cancer and breast cancer in general. Once you have achieved knowledge and understanding, your fear will fall away.

Never before has there been such a wealth of information at your fingertips as there is now. Take the time and use this gift to learn about the treatments your oncologist is recommending. Realize that there are many other treatments available that will allow you to fully recover from your cancer with your organs and systems intact.

Take time to learn about the healing power of your own body. Realize that there is no other more potent healer on earth. Take time to understand that if you give your body and mind the support they need to achieve complete healing, vibrant health can again be yours.
http://www.naturalnews.com/z026536_cancer_brst_cancer_cancer_patients.html

Antibiotics Take Toll On Beneficial Microbes In Gut
ScienceDaily (July 2, 2009) — It’s common knowledge that a protective navy of bacteria normally floats in our intestinal tracts. Antibiotics at least temporarily disturb the normal balance. But it’s unclear which antibiotics are the most disruptive, and if the full array of “good bacteria” return promptly or remain altered for some time.
In studies in mice, University of Michigan scientists have shown for the first time that two different types of antibiotics can cause moderate to wide-ranging changes in the ranks of these helpful guardians in the gut. In the case of one of the antibiotics, the armada of “good bacteria” did not recover its former diversity even many weeks after a course of antibiotics was over.
The findings could eventually lead to better choices of antibiotics to minimize side effects of diarrhea, especially in vulnerable patients. They could also aid in understanding and treating inflammatory bowel disease, which affects an estimated 500,000 to 1 million Americans, and Clostridium difficile, a growing and serious infection problem for hospitals.
Normally, a set of thousands of different kinds of microbes lives in the gut – a distinctive mix for each person, and thought to be passed on from mother to baby. The microbes, including many different bacteria, aid digestion and nutrition, appear to help maintain a healthy immune system, and keep order when harmful microbes invade.
“Biodiversity is a well-known concept in the health of the world’s continents and oceans. Diversity is probably important in the gut microsystem as well,” says Vincent B. Young, M.D., Ph.D., senior author of the study, which appears in the June issue of Infection and Immunity.
The study results suggest that unless medical research discovers how to protect or revitalize the gut microbial community, “we may be doing long-term damage to our close friends,” says Young, assistant professor in the departments of internal medicine and microbiology and immunology at the U-M Medical School.
Study details
Young and his colleagues used a culture-independent technique, using sequence analysis of 16S rRNA-encoding gene libraries, to profile the bacterial communities in the gut. It allows them to look for many more kinds of microbes than was possible with more limited methods. The result is a much more complete picture of the diversity of microbes in the gut.
Mice, which normally develop a diverse set of microbes after being born without one, then were given either cefoperazone, a broad-spectrum cephalosporin antibiotic, or a combination of three antibiotics (amoxicillin, bismuth and metronidazole). The scientists then observed what changes in the gut microbiota occurred immediately after the antibiotics were stopped or six weeks following the end of treatment.
“Both antibiotic treatments caused significant changes in the gut microbial community. However, in the mice given cefoperazone, there was no recovery of normal diversity. In other mice given the amoxicillin-containing combination, the microbiota largely recovered, but not completely,” says Young.
However, Young’s team found that a little socializing sparked recovery in even the most severely affected mice. Some of the mice given cefoperazone soon recovered normal microbes after an untreated mouse was placed in the same cage. That wasn’t a complete surprise, since mice have a habit of eating the feces of their cage mates and therefore picked up normal gut microbes quickly.
Not a lesson applicable to humans? In patients with refractory antibiotic-associated diarrhea due to C. difficile, there have been limited trials of treatments using “fecal transplants” to replace lost gut microbiota. Although this is a pretty unpalatable treatment at first glance, the clinical response was quite remarkable, Young says.
Implications
Although cefaperazone is not commonly used in the United States, related drugs such as cefoxitin are. The study findings suggest that it is really important to use antibiotics only when indicated, especially in people with health problems that might already compromise their gut microbe health, Young says. Multiple rounds of antibiotics may also deserve concern.
The findings will guide Young in related work in which he is using mouse models to examine how changes in the microbiota in the gut may influence how inflammatory bowel disease develops and progresses. The study will also inform ongoing research in his lab to gain insights into colitis associated with C. difficile infection. The Young laboratory recently published a study that demonstrates that long-term decreases in gut microbe diversity from repeated antibiotics are associated with recurringC. difficile infection in human patients.
Young cautions against concluding that popular probiotics supplements necessarily are safe and effective for everyone looking for a way to restore healthy gut microbes. An individual’s specific health needs and vulnerabilities have to be considered.  “Probiotics may be part of the solution, but we don’t know that yet,” he says.
Other authors are: first author Dionysios A. Antonopoulos, Ph.D. Department of Internal Medicine, University of Michigan;  Susan M. Huse, Ph.D., Mitchell L. Sogin,Ph.D., and Hilary G. Morrison, Ph.D., Marine Biological Laboratory, Woods Hole, Mass.; and Thomas M. Schmidt, Ph.D., Michigan State University.
Funding for the study came from the National Institutes of Health.
Citation: Infection and Immunity, Vol. 77, Issue 6, June 2009
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/06/090618170026.htm

Biological 'Fountain Of Youth' Found In New World Bat Caves
ScienceDaily (July 1, 2009) — Scientists from Texas are batty over a new discovery which could lead to the single most important medical breakthrough in human history—significantly longer lifespans. The discovery, featured on the cover of the July 2009 print issue of The FASEB Journal, shows that proper protein folding over time in long-lived bats explains why they live significantly longer than other mammals of comparable size, such as mice.
"Ultimately we are trying to discover what underlying mechanisms allow for some animal species to live a very long time with the hope that we might be able to develop therapies that allow people to age more slowly," said Asish Chaudhuri, Professor of Biochemistry, VA Medical Center, San Antonio, Texas and the senior researcher involved in the work.
Asish and colleagues made their discovery by extracting proteins from the livers of two long-lived bat species (Tadarida brasiliensis and Myotis velifer) and young adult mice and exposed them to chemicals known to cause protein misfolding. After examining the proteins, the scientists found that the bat proteins exhibited less damage than those of the mice, indicating that bats have a mechanism for maintaining proper structure under extreme stress.
"Maybe Juan Ponce De León wasn't too far off the mark when he searched Florida for the Fountain of Youth," said Gerald Weissmann, M.D., Editor-in-Chief of The FASEB Journal. "As it turns out, one of these bat species lives out its long life in Florida. Since bats are rodents with wings, this chemical clue as to why bats beat out mice in the aging game should point scientists to the source of this elusive fountain."
Salmon et al. The long lifespan of two bat species is correlated with resistance to protein oxidation and enhanced protein homeostasis. The FASEB Journal, 2009; 23 (7): 2317 DOI: 10.1096/fj.08-122523
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/06/090630101229.htm

Stanford discovery pinpoints new connection between cancer cells, stem cells
Stanford University Medical Center,  July 1, 2009
STANFORD, Calif. — A molecule called telomerase, best known for enabling unlimited cell division of stem cells and cancer cells, has a surprising additional role in the expression of genes in an important stem cell regulatory pathway, say researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine. The unexpected finding may lead to new anticancer therapies and a greater understanding of how adult and embryonic stem cells divide and specialize.
"Telomerase is the factor that accounts for the unlimited division of cancer cells," said Steven Artandi, MD, PhD, associate professor of hematology, "and we're very excited about what this connection might mean in human disease." Artandi is the senior author of the research, which will be published in the July 2 issue of the journal Nature. He is also a member of Stanford's Cancer Center.
In many ways, telomerase is the quintessential molecule of mystery — hugely important and yet difficult to pin down. Telomerase was known to stabilize telomeres, special caps that protect the ends of chromosomes. It stitches short pieces of DNA on these chromosome ends in stem cells and some immune cells, conferring a capacity for unlimited cell division denied to most of the body's other cells. Its importance is highlighted by the fact that it is inappropriately activated in more than 90 percent of cancer cells, suggesting that drugs or treatments that block telomerase activity may be effective anticancer therapies. However, its vast size, many components and relative rarity — it is not expressed in most of the body's cells — hinder attempts to learn more about it.
Artandi and his lab have spent many years identifying and studying the components of the telomerase complex. In this most recent study, they were following up on a previous finding suggesting that one part, a protein called TERT, was involved in more than just maintaining telomeres. They had discovered that overexpressing TERT in the skin of mice stimulated formerly resting adult stem cells to divide — even in the absence of other telomerase components. "This was a pretty clear hint that TERT was involved in something more than just telomere maintenance," he said.
Artandi and his colleagues recognized that the cells' response to TERT mimicked that seen when another protein, beta-catenin, was overexpressed in mouse skin. Beta-catenin is a component of a vital signaling cascade known as the Wnt pathway, which is important in development, stem cell maintenance and stem cell activation. Stanford developmental biologist and professor Roeland Nusse, PhD, a collaborator on the current study, identified the first Wnt molecule in 1982.
In this study, Artandi and his colleagues purified the TERT protein from cultured human cells and found that it was associated with a chromatin-remodeling protein implicated in the Wnt pathway. They showed that overexpression of TERT in the presence of the remodeling protein enhanced the expression of Wnt-inducible genes. Finally, they found that TERT is required for mouse embryonic stem cells to respond appropriately to Wnt signals and that blocking TERT expression impairs the development of frog embryos.
"This is completely novel," said Artandi, who went on to show that TERT physically occupies the upstream promoter regions of the genes. "No one had any idea that TERT was directly regulating the Wnt pathway." He speculates that interfering with the protein's Wnt-associated activity may be a faster way to inhibit cancer cells than blocking telomerase activity, which depends on the gradual shortening of telomeres with each cell division.
"The Wnt pathway and telomerase activity are two separate but coherent functions in stem cell self-renewal and cancer cell proliferation," said Artandi. "Nature evolved a way to connect these two crucial functions by recruiting a component of telomerase directly into the Wnt pathway." The researchers are now investigating what role TERT may play in normal and cancerous cells.
###
In addition to Artandi and Nusse, other Stanford collaborators on the current study include postdoctoral scholars Jae-Il Park, PhD, Jinkuk Choi, PhD, and Marina Shkreli, PhD; graduate students Andrew Venteicher, PhD, and Peggie Cheung; and research assistants Sohee Jun and Woody Chang. The research was funded by the National Cancer Institute and the California Breast Cancer Research Program.
The Stanford University School of Medicine consistently ranks among the nation's top 10 medical schools, integrating research, medical education, patient care and community service. For more news about the school, please visit http://mednews.stanford.edu. The medical school is part of Stanford Medicine, which includes Stanford Hospital & Clinics and Lucile Packard Children's Hospital. For information about all three, please visithttp://stanfordmedicine.org/about/news.html.
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-07/sumc-sdp062909.php

Secrets revealed about how disease-causing DNA mutations occur
Pennsylvania State University,  July 1, 2009
A team of Penn State scientists has shed light on the processes that lead to certain human DNA mutations that are implicated in hundreds of inherited diseases such as tuberous sclerosis and neurofibromatosis type 1. The results one day could influence the way couples who seek to have children receive genetic counseling. The team, led by Kateryna Makova, an associate professor of biology, also includes Erika Kvikstad, a graduate student in the Department of Biology, and Francesca Chiaromonte, an associate professor of statistics. Their findings will be published in the July 2009 issue of the journal Genome Research.
The scientists examined insertions and deletions -- mutations in which small fragments of DNA are either added or subtracted from the genome -- and they found patterns in the DNA sequences immediately surrounding the mutations. "The patterns in the DNA sequences that surround insertions and deletions suggest mechanisms that may have generated the insertions and deletions," said Chiaromonte. According to the researchers, the study is the first to detect patterns in the DNA sequences adjacent to insertions and deletions of DNA fragments at the genome-wide scale.
The team also found striking differences between insertions and deletions. For example, they found that recognition sites for the enzyme topoisomerase, which is responsible for winding and unwinding DNA, were more prevalent near deletions than near insertions. "We were surprised to find that the patterns of DNA sequences surrounding insertions versus deletions are unique because scientists previously have lumped the two types of mutations together," said Kvikstad.
Scientists also previously had believed that insertions and deletions are formed mostly by errors taking place during DNA replication, but the team found that the mutations also can form by mechanisms related to recombination. "What's striking is that most insertions and deletions are thought to occur by replication errors and, while this is a primary source generating the mutations, we discovered that recombination also is very important," said Kvikstad.
For one of the first times in a genome-wide study, the team used a statistical method, called wavelet analysis, which allows scientists to look at variability in a sample at multiple scales simultaneously. For example, JPEG image files, which preserve an image's different qualities regardless of whether the image is made smaller or larger, use a similar wavelet-like method. According to Chiaromonte, "When you run a wavelet analysis you are characterizing the signals simultaneously at many scales. In our case, the signal was the composition of the DNA sequences surrounding insertions and deletions. To be able to look at these sequences with a multi-scale approach was really important for our ability to find interesting features."
Using the wavelet analysis, the team confirmed that scale is important in detecting patterns of DNA sequences adjacent to insertions and deletions. For example, they were able to detect an increased number of DNA sequences responsible for pausing DNA polymerase, an enzyme involved in DNA replication, at the finest scales (10 to 20 DNA base pairs), but not at larger scales.
Both replication and recombination errors can lead to disease-causing mutations in humans. According to the researchers, if we know that certain diseases are more likely to be caused by recombination than by replication errors, doctors can provide better advice to couples who want to have children. "For example, there is a difference among males and females in the number of replication rounds that their germline cells undergo. Males undergo more rounds of DNA replication than females and the number of replication rounds increases with a male's age. If we know that a disease is due to a replication error rather than a recombination error, doctors can provide better genetic counseling to couples," said Makova.
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-07/ps-sra062409.php

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/msid-4728789,prtpage-1.cms

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/msid-4725735,prtpage-1.cms

Hey Progressives, Join Forces to Fight the Health Insurance Industry!

By Karen Dolan, Institute for Policy Studies
Posted on June 29, 2009, Printed on July 1, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/140990/

“A ‘Public Plan’ is a sell-out, crafted to appease Big Pharma.”
“’Single Payer’ is politically impossible, and advocacy of it only weakens our one chance at real reform.” 
As our country once again tries to fix our unsustainable for-profit health care system, conflicting messages threaten to derail the whole process. Progressive advocates, progressive members of Congress, and health care providers need to provide a roadmap through the maze of conflicting perceptions.
Progressives have at least two remedies to the healthcare crisis:
1)   A “single-payer” system, which is most easily described as “Medicare for All.”  It is a publicly financed, privately delivered national healthcare system, This option makes healthcare a human right, granting universal coverage, eliminating out-of-pockets costs for consumers and slashes wasteful administration costs of our current patchwork for-profit system. As Physicians for a National Health Program reveals “The potential savings on paperwork, $350 billion per year, are enough to provide comprehensive coverage to everyone without paying more than we already do.” Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) has introduced a bill that calls for Single Payer.
2)   A “public option” system, which offers a public (government) health insurance option alongside the private, for-profit plans that make up our current system. It would compete with the for-profit plans, preserve the so-called “marketplace of competition,” but provide a guarantee of affordable, accessible high-quality healthcare to all. The Congressional Progressive Caucus has what seems to be the most progressive principles for such a public option.

One problem in progressive circles that contributes to the confusion is the perception, real or not, that single-payer and public option advocates are fighting each other, weakening support for both. Though some of that is going on, the greater problem is that peoplethink that's what's going on, and thereby try to push each other out of the room.

There are very few healthcare advocates who will tell you that a single-payer healthcare system is not the correct remedy for the U.S. health care crisis. What they instead will say is that single-payer is dead politically, and that Obama and the Progressive Democrats' public option is the only politically viable option.
Most smart single-payer advocates, like the California Nurses Association, Physicians for a National Health Program and Progressive Democrats for America, will tell you that the proposed public option won’t solve our healthcare crisis. But often they identify the real enemy as the for-profit health industry, not the incremental proposals that seek to address the crisis.

Like both camps above, I too believe that the only real solution to our health crisis is a universal, single-payer, “Medicare for All” approach. Only through a public system that puts patient care and not corporate profits as the bottom line can we achieve the promise of health care as a human right, and effectively bring down exponentially skyrocketing healthcare costs at the same time. Even the best public option runs the risk of being the dumping ground of the nation’s sickest people while only slightly cutting overall administrative costs. A public option system does not achieve the goal of health care as a universal human right.
But we remain divided.
Many progressives will point out that Conyers’ single-payer bill, H.R. 676, has only 90 cosponsors and can’t pass, while 120 Democrats have pledged not to pass any health reform bill that does not have a “robust public option.” They are buoyed by the notion that with that block holding steady, a huge leap forward from the status quo may finally be on the horizon. They are understandably nervous about anything that would threaten this possibility.

A public option may indeed be crafted in such a way to become the wedge that ultimately wins the prize, as public plans under-price costly private plans. The public option could offer public plans designed to adhere strictly to the Congressional Progressive Caucus’ laudable principles of universality, affordability, equality. They could be carefully constructed as to be so cost effective that the Republicans fear that they will crowd out private insurance due to their affordability becomes a reality.
But a public option could also be crafted in such a way to expressly prohibit that outcome by allowing private insurers to cherry-pick the healthiest patients, eventually bankrupting a public plan stuck with the nation's sickest people. If private insurers are allowed to continue the current practice of cultivating and covering the healthiest Americans, the sickest will be dumped into a public plan, thus creating a financially unsustainable situation for the public plans.

These scenarios need to be aired, debated, and dealt with. The way that Obama and progressives on and off Capitol Hill have set the debate thus far, a "robust Public Option" is, effectively, the "left flank," and thereby the very most we can hope for. It becomes the goal rather than the compromise. Had single-payer not been off the table, it might have served as the "left flank," thus making a public option, crafted to lead to single payer, a more politically feasible option, more appealing as the compromise that it is.
Maybe the horse is already out of the gate, and the chance to set the finish line at single-payer has passed. But maybe not. Let the roadmap through the maze of misperceptions tell us this: The real enemy in the healthcare debate is the for-profit healthcare system, which vastly overspends on administration, leaves almost 50 million people uninsured -- and many more underinsured -- and makes profits a higher priority than patient care. With healthcare costs rising three times as fast as U.S. incomes, the private healthcare system can’t go on without major changes. 

Single-payer is the answer, and few progressives dispute this. Whether politically feasible or not, it should be on the table, in the street, and on the floor of the House and Senate.
Single-payer and public-option advocates should embrace. Single-payer advocates should see that, properly constructed, a public option could potentially hold the door open for single-payer health care. And public option proponents should see the value in having single-payer as its left flank, thereby presenting a "robust public option" as the politically feasible compromise that it is.

Karen Dolan is a fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington D.C. and a contributor to Foreign Policy In Focus. She directs the Institute's Cities for Progressproject.

Robert Kuttner

Co-Founder and Co-Editor of The American Prospect
Posted: June 21, 2009 09:59 PM

The Policy That Dare Not Speak Its Name

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Read More: Barack Obama, Health Care, Health Care Reform, Healthcare, Liberals, Medicare For All, Single Payer, Politics News

I'm sure I'm not the only reader who noticed the juxtaposition of two front page stories in Sunday's New York Times dealing with health care. The first article cited a new Times-CBS poll showing that 72 percent of Americans favored a government run health plan comparable to Medicare, which would be available to everyone.
The second reported on a rogue radiologist at a Philadelphia VA hospital who botched 92 prostate procedures.
The right will doubtless go to town on that one, as what we can expect of government-sponsored medicine. I'll have more to say about the VA in a moment, but first let's consider the poll findings.
The poll is relevant because Congress will soon decide whether to include the so-called "public option" in the Obama health reform bill. As drafted by three House leaders and unveiled last Wednesday, the 852-page bill would include a government-sponsored, Medicare-like public plan.
Republicans and the health industry have been kicking and screaming that this is socialistic. But the poll suggests that defenders of the public plan have nothing to fear politically, and that Republicans are in danger of getting on the wrong side of a popular issue.
However, that's only the beginning of the story. The reform package, as drafted by the Obama administration and the House leadership, is dubious legislation even with the inclusion of a public option. Basically, it leaves the two worst aspects of the system intact. First, private insurers will continue to dominate. Second, most people will continue to get their insurance through their employers. Given these two bedrock realities, there is no way that the bill can make serious inroads on cost without cutting back on care. The high cost of the approach is already causing key legislators to back off. The current system wastes huge sums, but because it is so fragmented the money flows to profit opportunities and not to the most cost-effective forms of health care.
Also, as my American Prospect colleague Paul Starr warns, a mixed system with a public option effectively invites the most expensive and hard-to-treat people to opt for the public plan, while private insurers will seek to insure the young and the healthy. This is a familiar problem known as adverse selection. The private insurers will then smugly point out that the public plan is less "efficient," when in fact it simply will have a more costly population. The only way to avoid this problem is to have everyone in the same universal plan--what's otherwise known as a single-payer plan.
The public option is a not-very-good second best--because our leading liberal politicians lack the nerve to embrace the one reform that simultaneously solves the problem of cost, quality, and universal inclusion. The policy that dare not speak its name is of course comprehensive national health insurance, or Medicare-for-All. I try to avoid using the term "single payer," because a technical, policy-wonk phrase not understood by most civilians has become insider shorthand for national health insurance. Let's call the thing by its rightful name. Medicare-for-All is something regular people understand.
The Times-CBS poll is evidence that this is what more than two Americans in three really want. Most voters have not followed the nuances of how the public option in the Obama plan would compete with private insurance. The poll simply indicates that voters want access to a straight-up, Medicare-style plan to be available to one and all. In past polls, when Times-CBS pollsters ask whether people favor national health insurance, responses generally favor Medicare-for-All by margins of about two-to-one.
In the current debate, liberals find themselves fighting to keep the public option alive, so that some form of efficient, publicly-run health insurance will stay in the mix--but knowing that it is embedded in a reform package that is far more costly and inefficient than it should have been. Instead of validating the common sense and reformist demands of ordinary Americans and identifying the insurance, drug, and corporate elites as the obstacles to real reform, too many of our liberal leaders from President Obama on down hope to co-opt business elites with a convoluted scheme that undermines the efficiencies of a comprehensive and universal system. And just wait until it gets watered down further in order to retain the support of these same elites. A plan that all of these groups would endorse would not be worth having.
So what's the matter with our politicians? Why are the people so far ahead of their elected leaders on this one? One reason, as usual, is money. The combination of the insurance industry, the drug industry, the American Medical Association, the hospital lobby--all of whom oppose Medicare-for-All--represents a huge amount of political spending. It takes a brave politician to face down all of these industries, even though the people are on the side of real reform. The AMA's position is especially shameful, since the professional societies that represent most actual physicians favor national health insurance.
The second reason that liberal politicians wimp out on single payer is that the self-styled realists in this debate have decided that Medicare-for-All, even if it's the first-best system, is too hard politically. But think about it. Has the administration picked up one Republican vote by supporting the present system plus a public option? Hardly. The current House leadership bill, offering a mixed system, with a robust public option, a requirement that employers provide good insurance or pay a tax, and that insurers not discriminate against pre-existing conditions, is just as heavy a political lift as national health insurance--and far inferior policy. So why not just go for the first-best?
The advocates of Medicare-for-All have become something of an embarrassment to the liberals. The White House forum on health reform on March 5th, which boasted a diverse range of viewpoints, including representatives of the Business Roundtable, the health insurance industry, the drug lobby, as well as a broad spectrum of business, labor and Congressional leaders, left advocates of Medicare-for-All banging on the door. None were included, despite requests for invitations.
When Sen. Bernie Sanders recently arranged for five prominent advocates of national health insurance to have a courtesy meeting with Senate Finance Committee Chair Max Baucus, the story was newsworthy because the political elite usually pretends that this viewpoint doesn't exist, much less that it represents the desires of two Americans in three. The mainstream media have also colluded in the general effort to keep the single-payer option out of the limelight. The organization FAIR recently published an important study in its heroic magazine, "Extra", titled "Media Blackout on Single-Payer Healthcare."
Indeed, the Sunday New York Times-CBS poll didn't even offer Medicare-for-All as a free-standing option. It took the Obama position as the left edge of the debate.
As for that rogue doctor at the Philadelphia veterans' hospital, quality control is not what it should be throughout our fragmented system. And the oases of public medicine are particularly starved for resources. Yet studies consistently find that on average, the VA does more with less than its private sector competitors. Phil Longman has written the definitive book on the subject, "Best Care Anywhere." Here is a summary.
In this case, the offending radiologist, Dr. Gary D. Kao, was actually a contract employee and not a VA physician.
Only by having a comprehensive system can we marry quality, cost-effective care, and universal access. One of these days, a national leader will have the nerve to embrace national health insurance and fight for it. Until then, we will keep paying more money for less care, and liberals will defend reforms they themselves scarcely believe in. 

Robert Kuttner is co-editor of The American Prospect, and senior fellow at Demos. His recent book is "Obama's Challenge".

American Doctors Busted for Fraud, Conspiracy in HIV Treatment Scam
by Mike Adams, NaturalNews Editor  NaturalNews.com  July 1, 2009

(NaturalNews) I've often asserted that doctors exploit people for personal profit, prescribing drugs and procedures that are medically unnecessary while raking in millions from health insurance companies, Medicare and Medicaid. This week, Miami doctor Roberto Rodriguez was sentenced to eight years in prison -- and ordered to pay $9 million back to Medicare -- for doing exactly that.

According to press reports, Dr. Rodriguez conspired with five other medical professionals to recruit patients, diagnose them with HIV, then forge false records for HIV treatment services that earned them millions of dollars in Medicare reimbursements. From October 2003 through February 2006, the team of doctors bilked Medicare (and taxpayers) for $20 million in false claims. (One of the co-conspirators -- Dr. Carmen del Cueto -- will be sentenced in September.)

But here's the best part: This fraud wasn't limited to just one medical clinic. Dr. Rodriguez was the medical director for five additional Miami-based HIV infusion clinics where the same fraud continued to the tune of millions of dollars.

As you learn all this, keep in mind that both of these fraudsters were state-licensed medical doctors, granted the right to prescribe dangerous (even deadly) chemicals to infants, children and senior citizens. These are people who went to medical school, who passed the graduation exams, and who were entrusted with the health of patients by "conventional medicine" licensing boards.

So how, then, could they have been such outrageous criminals, defrauding the taxpayers for millions of dollars while abandoning the real medical needs of their patients?
What's lacking in modern medicine: Ethics
The answer is that medical schools don't teach ethics. In fact, they have no interest in the subject. Med school students don't pursue the profession as a way to "explore the potential of ethical behavior;" they almost always pursue it out of ego and a desire for wealth. (A few exceptional doctors diverge from the majority and pursue it out of a genuine desire to help heal their fellow human beings, but those individuals are rare indeed.)

In our modern society, medicine is pursued primarily for personal profit by even those doctors who operate within the boundaries of the law. So why should we be surprised when two conventional doctors figure out a way to earn huge profits without engaging in any real medicine at all? The behavior, after all, is merely an extension of what they learned in medical school: Treat the symptoms, not the problem. Produce short-term results, not long-term solutions.

Earning "quick cash" is a lot like using pharmaceuticals to produce "quick results." They are shortcuts pursued by doctors with a shortcut mentality -- professionals who lack holistic thinking, who lack ethics, and who lack any real compassion for fellow human beings.

Sadly, these two criminal doctors reflect the dire lack of ethics in many of the physicians in the conventional medical community. This "make a quick buck at any cost" mentality dominates western medicine today, where the very idea of having compassion for a fellow human being is utterly alien to the most successful members of the profession. 

That these two doctors profited from the medical exploitation of patients is not surprising. That they got caught is! Consider this: For every doctor defrauding Medicare right now, bilking taxpayers for unjustified medical expenses, there are perhaps a hundred thousand prescriptions being filled for pharmaceuticals sold at profiteering monopoly prices, where drug companies routinely defraud states by illegally hiking up the prices for meds.

In fact, the price fraud found in the transactions between drug companies and government-run medical services is so deeply entrained in the system that it's virtually impossible to find a drug company that hasn't been hauled into court on price fraud (and then later settled with the state in question for a few million dollars). Fraud is endemic to the system of western medicine -- it's part of the very culture of so-called "health care" today.

Because let's face it: Medicine is a for-profit business. It's not a sector of the economy that was set up to heal people, or to end suffering, or to demonstrate compassion. It exists for one reason and no other: To generate profits for those hucksters who operate the scams. Those hucksters include cancer non-profits, drug companies, vaccine clinics, oncologists and practicing physicians. Take the profits out of health care, and ninety-nine percent of these people vanish into the hills. It is not health and healing that keeps them there; it is the weekly paycheck, and that paycheck is determined largely by how many people they can convince to undergo whatever medically useless "treatment" they offer: Pills, surgery, radiation or otherwise.

I wish I could report that these two criminal doctors who defrauded Medicare were an aberration of the system, a fluke that rarely surfaces. But that's not the case: I see reports on doctors caught in billing fraud almost every month, and I read about drug companies settling with states for price fixing almost every week. These accounts are frequent and ongoing. They describe not a fluke of the system of western medicine but rather a culture of crime and corruption that permeates the system.

And as long as medicine is based on profit rather than compassion, the hucksters and profiteers will continue to set the standard. That's why the single most important step in any meaningful health care reform is to take the profits out of health care by ending patents for pharmaceuticals and returning competition to the whole system by allowing customers to price-shop for medical services through the use of vouchers. 

These solutions (and many more) are described in detail in the Health Revolution Petition (www.HealthRevolutionPetition.org)

If you believe in putting the People back in charge of their health, and ending the corruption, crime and fraud that characterizes western medicine today, help support the Health Revolution Petition by signing the online petition at the website link above.
http://www.naturalnews.com/z026531_doctors_health_medicine.html

Are You Poisoning Yourself with Mercury in Fish?
byDavid Gutierrez, NaturalNews.com  July 1, 2009

(NaturalNews) In an attempt to gauge just how dangerous the mercury in fish is, writer David Ewing Duncan decided to measure his blood levels of the toxic metal both before and after gorging on various types of fish.

Mercury is a naturally occurring metal, but one that is highly toxic to the nervous systems of vertebrates, including humans. Studies have shown that it can cause damage to brain functioning, including memory, learning and behavior, and that it can also harm the heart and immune system. The developing nervous systems of children and fetuses are particularly susceptible to its effects.

Fish carry high body burdens of the metal because most of the mercury ejected into the air by the burning of coal eventually ends up in the ocean. There it is absorbed by plankton, which is eaten by successively larger forms of sea life all the way up the food chain to many of the animals commonly eaten by humans.

The EPA has set a maximum safe mercury blood concentration of 5.8 micrograms per liter. But critics allege that there is simply not enough understanding of the way that mercury interacts in the body to back this up.

"No amount of mercury is really safe," said mercury expert Leo Trasande of the Mount Sinai School of Medicine.

Further complicating matters, some people are more likely to absorb mercury into their bodies than others.

"Toxicologists say that 'the dose makes the poison,'" mercury expert Jane Hightower said, "but it's clear that some people are more sensitive to even small exposures than others."

To test his own susceptibility, Duncan carried out two different "fish gorge" experiments, one in 2006 and one a few years later. In the first, he found that eating store-bought fish caused his mercury blood levels to spike from 5 micrograms per liter before the meal to 12 micrograms per liter afterward. In his second experiment, two meals of wild-caught halibut sent his blood levels from 4 micrograms per liter to 13.

Concentrations as low as 5.8 micrograms per liter in can produce lower IQ scores in children.
http://www.naturalnews.com/z026528_mercury_blood_natural_health.html

Vaccine Expert Reveals What You Should Know Before You Roll Up Your Sleeve
Barbara Minton, NaturalNews.com  July 1, 2009

(NaturalNews) A study by the Harvard Medical School of Public Health confirmed that public health officials could convince most people in the U.S. to alter their daily lives, follow government mandates and do as they are told after only a small amount of hyping that a deadly global pandemic was eminent. It documented that people tend to look to the government as a sort of Big Daddy who has their best interests at heart. People think Big Daddy will take care of them and they don't have to bother taking care of themselves. This mentality has led to an open season of government and government backed corporate abuse resulting in a decline in the standard of life and health in America. It suggests that people will willingly takevaccines they believe have been sponsored by the government without investigating these vaccines on their own. However, a new paper from leading vaccine authority Dr. Sherri Tenpenny shows this may be unwise. She reveals that flu shots merit close examination by those wanting to retain theirhealth.

On June 11th, the decision was made by Dr. Margaret Chan, Director-General of the World Health Organization to declare a Level 6 Pandemic. This is apandemic alert of the highest order possible. Under Level 6 conditions, the Secretary of Health and Human Services (HSS) is able to declare mandatoryvaccination under the Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness Act (PREP). There is no criteria listed stating what constitutes a threat.

The HHS web site says the Secretary may "issue a declaration...that provides immunity from tort liability (except for willful misconduct) for claims of loss caused, arising out of, relating to, or resulting from administration or use of (vaccine or other pharmaceutical) countermeasures to diseases, threats and conditions determined by the Secretary to constitute a present, or credible risk of a future public health emergency..." This means that if you or your child is harmed by a vaccine during these conditions, there is nothing you can do about it.

With this declaration, Big Daddy has made it clear that it would rather protect corporate interests than your interests. This means it is time to stop giving the government your blind faith. It is time to become educated about flu vaccines.

Here are Dr. Tenpenny's well documented findings in the form of questions everyone should be asking.

What is in the regular flu shot?

What we have come to know as the seasonal flu shot is made from:

Egg proteins: including avian contaminated viruses

Gelatin: known to cause allergic reactions and anaphylaxis usually associated with sensitivity to egg or gelatin (anaphylaxis is a rapidly progressing, life-threatening allergic reaction)

Polysorbate 80, (trademarked at Tween 80): a preservative that can cause severe allergic reactions including anaphylaxis.

Formaldehyde: a known carcinogen.

The shot also contains Triton X100 (a strong detergent), table sugar, resin that is known to cause allergic reactions, and an antibiotic (Gentamycin). Multi-dose vials also contain thimerosal, a preservative made with mercury, a known neurotoxin. Infants and children are most at risk for neurological damage from mercury because their nervous systems are still developing. Neurological dysfunctions are also common in adults who have ingested mercury.

Do flu shots work?

The flu shot does not work for babies. In a review of 51 studies involving more than 294,000 children, it was found there was "no evidence that injecting children 6 to 24 months of age with a flu shot was any more effective than a placebo. In children over the age of 2 years, it was effective only 33% of the time in preventing the flu. ("Vaccines for preventing influenza in health children", The Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, 2008)

The flu shot does not work in children with asthma. In a study of 800 children with asthma in which one half were vaccinated and the other half were not, the two groups were compared with respect to clinic visits, emergency department visits, and hospitalizations for asthma. The researchers concluded that no evidence was provided that the influenza vaccine prevented pediatric asthma exacerbations (Christly, C. et al, "Effectiveness of influenza vaccine for the prevention of asthma exacerbations." Arch Dis Child, August, 2004, 734-5)

"The inactivated flu vaccine, Flumist, does not prevent influenza-related hospitalizations in children, especially the ones with asthma...In fact, children who get the flu vaccine are more at risk for hospitalization than children who do not get the vaccine." (The American Thoracic Society's International Conference, May 15-20, 2009, San Diego)

Adults are also not protected by flu vaccine. In a review of 48 reports including more than 66,000 adults, "Vaccination of healthy adults only reduced risk of influenza by 6%, and reduced the number of missed work days by less than one day (0.16). It did not change the number of people needing to go to a hospital or take time off work." ("Vaccines for preventing influenza in healthy adults," The Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, 2006)

Although the hype is that the elderly must be protected, in a review of 64 studies in 98 flu seasons, for elderly living in nursing homes, flu shots were non-significant for preventing the flu. For elderly living in the community, vaccines were not significantly effective against influenza, ILI or pneumonia. ("Vaccines for preventing influenza in the elderly," The Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, 2006)

What about the new "Swine Flu" shot?

A new report from a World Health Organization advisory group predicts that global production of vaccine for the novel H1N1 influenza virus could be as much as 4.9 billion doses a year, far higher than previous estimates. The new H1N1 ("swine flu") vaccine is being made by the pharmaceutical company Novartis. It will contain MF59, a potentially debilitating adjuvant.

MF-59 is oil-based and composed of squalene, Tween 80 and Span85. All oil adjuvants injected into rats were found to be toxic. All rats injected developed a disease similar to multiple sclerosis which left them crippled and dragging their paralyzed hindquarters across their cages. (Kenney, RT. Edleman, R. "Survey of human-use adjuvants," Expert Review of Vaccines, 2003 p171)

Squalene causes severe arthritis (3 on a scale of 4). Squalene in humans at 10-20 parts per billion leads to severe immune responses, such as autoimmune arthritis and lupus. (Matsumoto, Gary. Vaccine A: The Covert Government Experiment That's Killing Our Soldiers and Why GI's Are Only the First Victims of this Vaccine, New York: Basic Books. P54)

Federal health officials will probably recommend that most Americans get three flu shots this fall: one regular flu shot and two doses of any vaccine made against the new swine flu strain. (Washington Post, Wednesday, May 6)

HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius is talking to school superintendents around the country, urging them to spend the summer planning what to do if the government decides it needs their buildings for mass vaccinations and the vaccinations of children first. (CBS News, June 12)

Is mandatory vaccination possible?

In 1946, the U.S. Public Health Service was established and Executive Order 9708 was signed, listing the communicable diseases where quarantines could be used. Between 1946 and 2003, cholera, diphtheria, TB, typhoid, small pox, yellow fever, and viral hemorrhagic fevers were added to the list. In April, 2003, SARS was also added through Executive Order 13295.

In January, 2003, Project BioShield was introduced during Bush's State of the Union Address. This created permanent and indefinite funding authority to develop "medical countermeasures". The National Institute of Health was authorized to speed approval of drugs and vaccines. Emergency approval of a "fast tracked" drug and vaccine can be given without the regular course of safety testing.

In April, 2005, Executive Order 13295 added "Influenza caused by novel or re-emergent influenza viruses that are causing, or have the potential to cause, a pandemic." Under this order, the president gave the secretary of HHS the power to quarantine, at his or her discretion.

The secretary of HHS has the power to arrange for the "apprehension and examination of persons reasonably thought to be infected." A cough or a fever could put a person at risk for being quarantined for an extended period of time without recourse.

December 17, 2006, Division E: The Public readiness and Emergency Preparedness Act was added as an addendum to Defense Appropriations Bill HR 2863 at 11:20 on Saturday night, long after House Committee members had signed off on the bill and gone home for the holidays. Section (b)(1) states that the secretary of HHS can make a determination that a "disease, health condition or threat" constitutes a public health emergency. He or she may then recommend "the manufacture, testing, development, administration, or use of one or more covered counter measures..." A covered countermeasure is defined as a "pandemic product, vaccine or drug."

Division E also provides complete liability protection for all drugs, vaccines or biological products deemed a "covered counter measure" and used for an outbreak of any kind. Complete liability protection has been given to drug companies for any product used for any public health emergency declared by the secretary of HHS. This means that pharmaceutical companies are now protected from all accountability, unless "criminal intent to do harm" can be proven by the injured party. They are protected from liability even if they know the drug will be harmful.
http://www.naturalnews.com/z026526_health_influenza_vaccines.html

Vegetarians 'avoid more cancers'
Vegetarians are generally less likely than meat eaters to develop cancer but this does not apply to all forms of the disease, a major study has found.
The study involving 60,000 people found those who followed a vegetarian diet developed notably fewer cancers of the blood, bladder and stomach.
But the apparently protective effect of vegetarian did not seem to stretch to bowel cancer, a major killer.
The study is published in the British Journal of Cancer.
Researchers from universities in the UK and New Zealand followed 61,566 British men and women. They included meat-eaters, those who ate fish but not meat, and those who ate neither meat nor fish.
VEGETARIANS GOT NOTABLY FEWER OF THESE CANCERS: 
   Stomach
   Bladder
   Non-Hodgkin's lymphoma
   Multiple myeloma
Overall, their results suggested that while in the general population about 33 people in 100 will develop cancer during their lifetime, for those who do not eat meat that risk is reduced to about 29 in 100.
Special protection?
The researchers said they found marked differences between meat-eaters and vegetarians in the propensity to cancers of the lymph and the blood, with vegetarians just over half as likely to develop these forms of the disease.
In the case of multiple myeloma, a relatively rare cancer of the bone marrow, vegetarians were 75% less likely to develop the disease than meat-eaters.
“ At the moment these findings are not strong enough to ask for particularly large changes in the diets of people following an average balanced diet ” 
Professor Tim Key Report author
The reduction was less notable for fish-eaters with these cancers. The reasons, researchers said, were unclear, but potential mechanisms could include viruses and mutation-causing compounds in meat - or alternatively that vegetables confer special protection.
There were also striking differences in rates of stomach cancer. Although the numbers of cases were small, fish-eaters and vegetarians were about a third as likely to develop the disease as meat-eaters.
Previous research has already implicated processed meats in stomach cancer, so these findings were not entirely surprising. It is thought N-nitroso compounds found in these meats may damage DNA, while the high temperatures they are cooked at may also produce carcinogens.
But the same reduction for vegetarians was not found with cancers of the bowel, one of the most common forms of the disease. The vegetarians in the group in fact had a slightly higher rate of cancers of the colon and the rectum, although not significantly so.
But the relative risk for fish-eaters and vegetarians of cervical cancer was twice that of meat-eaters. The number of cases was small, and could be down to chance but the researchers said it was possible that dietary factors influenced the virus behind cervical cancer.
Professor Tim Key, the lead author, said it was impossible to draw strong conclusions from this one single study.
"At the moment these findings are not strong enough to ask for particularly large changes in the diets of people following an average balanced diet."
Vegetarian diets tend be lower in fat and higher in fibre, but they can require careful planning to ensure necessary protein and vitamins - notably B12, which is mainly derived from animal products - are taken in sufficient amounts.
'Complex process'
A spokesperson for Cancer Research UK, which funded the research, said: "These interesting results add to the evidence that what we eat affects our chances of developing cancer. We know that eating a lot of red and processed meat increases the risk of stomach cancer.
"But the links between diet and cancer risk are complex and more research is needed to see how big a part diet plays and which specific dietary factors are most important.
Myeloma UK said this was the first data of its kind for the bone marrow cancer "and for that reason we are treating it with caution.
"Dietary advice to myeloma patients remains aligned with national guidance - that they should eat a healthy, balanced diet high in fibre, fruit and vegetables and low in saturated fat, salt and red and processed meat."
Dr Panagiota Mitrou, Science and Research Programme Manager for the World Cancer Research Fund, said: "The suggestion that vegetarians might be at reduced risk of blood cancers is particularly interesting.
"However, this finding should be treated with caution since not much is known about the link between diet and these types of cancer. Further studies of vegetarians are needed before we can be confident this is actually the case."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/8127215.stm

Two-thirds of American adults are too fat: study
Reuters, Wed Jul 1, 2009 10:51am EDT
CHICAGO (Reuters) - Obesity rates continued to climb in the past year with 23 U.S. states reporting adults in their states are fatter now than they were a year ago, two advocacy groups said on Wednesday.
Two-thirds of American adults are either obese or overweight, and the groups warned that the U.S. obesity epidemic could derail efforts by lawmakers to reform the nation's health system.
"Our health care costs have grown along with our waist lines," said Jeff Levi, executive director of Trust for America's health, which released the report along with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
The report also calls for a national strategy to combat obesity, which causes heart disease, diabetes and cancer.
"The obesity epidemic is a big contributor to the skyrocketing health care costs in the United States. How are we going to compete with the rest of the world if our economy and workforce are weighed down by bad health?" Levi said in a statement.
The annual ranking of obesity rates in U.S. states found Mississippi continues as the state with the fattest residents, with nearly a third of adults considered obese. The U.S. state has topped the list for the past five years.
Three other states -- West Virginia, Alabama, and Tennessee -- now have obesity rates above 30 percent, according to the report.
Among U.S. children, obesity rates held steady, but at still alarmingly high levels, with 30 states reporting the percentage of obese or overweight children at above 30 percent.
A report last year in the Journal of the American Medical Association found the U.S. childhood obesity epidemic leveled off this decade after surging for about 20 years, but a worrisome number of young people remain obese, risking serious health problems.
Childhood and adult obesity has emerged as a growing problem not only in the United States but in many countries around the world.
Obese children are more likely to be saddled with risk factors associated with cardiovascular disease such as high blood pressure and high cholesterol, as well as type 2 diabetes. They also are at higher risk for asthma.
They also are much more likely to be obese in adulthood, when they may face the many health problems linked to obesity such as heart disease, stroke, diabetes and some cancers.
http://www.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUSTRE5603EG20090701

The drugs don't work
The number of people on antidepressants is soaring – we may be more miserable, but let's swap the pills for support and care
The Guardian UK, June 29, 2009

It may have been the happiest day of the year on 19 June, but we are already into the hangover. Figures obtained by the Liberal Democrats reveal that antidepressant prescription numbers are going through the roof – 36m scripts were handed out to patients in England last year, a rise of 2.1m on 2007. That's almost one for every adult. Lib Dem health spokesman Norman Lamb is right to describe the figures as "deeply disturbing".
Lamb has demanded improved help for people whose problems are recession-related. It's true that financial woes create more distress, but we shouldn't use the economy as a smokescreen for what is a longer-term malaise. Antidepressant use has been going up for years – prescriptions have more than tripled since the early 1990s. We have not become a Prozac nation overnight.
So what is going on? Are we genuinely becoming more miserable? That's part of the story – according to official statistics, the percentage of people with a "common mental disorder (pdf)" increased from 15.5% in 1993 to 17.6% in 2007 (that's a million extra unhappy people across the UK). Some of these inevitably wind up at the GP surgery, seeking relief.
But perhaps more instructive is what happens next. Most GPs respond to mental health problems by reaching for the prescription pad, even though guidelines from the National Institute For Clinical Excellence generally recommend psychological therapies. To some extent, doctors do this because they have little choice – more than three-quarters haveprescribed medication despite thinking an alternative would be more appropriate. Most do so because there are no other options available – decent psychotherapy services are still few and far between, and often have long waiting lists.
However, medics also prescribe drugs because that's what they are trained to do – pills have long been their (and our) default response to depression. The dominant view of psychiatric illness is that chemical imbalances in the brain are mostly to blame, and that they can be controlled with pharmaceuticals. This line has been peddled hard by drug companies, and for a long time it was accepted almost without question — the reception which greeted the arrival of Prozac and the other SSRI antidepressants (which were supposed to counter the "imbalances") was nothing short of hysterical. Reality has been more prosaic: a recent review found the SSRIs barely more effective than a placebo pill. Still, the NHS bill (pdf) for prescribing them runs into hundreds of millions of pounds a year.
It's a crazy situation, and the tide may be turning. The dubious tricks used by drug companies to make their products seem more effective are becoming widely known (thanks in part to vocal critics from inside medicine, such as this paper's Ben Goldacre), while the government is beginning to invest in proven non-drug alternatives, such as psychotherapy. Research into the biological bases of mental ill-health is floundering – a study just released casts serious doubt on the existence of a previously heralded "depression risk gene". Meanwhile, there is a growing evidence base for simple, socially based steps everyone can take to improve their wellbeing. These include building good relationships, lifelong learning, being kind to others and exercise – not rocket science, but somehow we seem to have forgotten them.
And this week, renowned clinical psychologist Richard Bentall publishes Doctoring The Mind: Why Psychiatric Treatments Fail. In meticulously referenced detail, Bentall documents the shocking failures of biological psychiatry and the drug-based mental health system it perpetuates, and calls for an evidence-based alternative that offers patients support, care and respect. The book effects a courageous, comprehensive demolition of the status quo, and offers a radical vision of a more humane future for services – it should be required reading for everyone with a hand in mental health policy.
It won't be easy to make such radical changes in the way we approach wellbeing. It means giving up hope of medical "quick fixes", at least until they are as good as their makers claim, and turning instead towards methods that are far less financially profitable, and which require hard work on the part of professionals, patients, government and the rest of us. As well as an overhaul of services, it means tackling social fragmentation, greed-based economics and the stress created by a speedy, sensationalist culture. And it means starting a mature debate based on understanding rather than fear of the mind, promoting the ways we can look after our psychological as well as our physical health. That may sound like a tall order, but until we make a start, the queue of glum-looking folk at the chemist will just keep on getting longer.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jun/29/antidepressants-drugs

Curcumin and resveratrol exert synergistic effects against cancer cells

LIFE EXTENSIONS  July 1, 2009
In the July, 2009 issue of the journal Nutrition and Cancer, researchers at the Veterans Administration Medical Center, Karmanos Cancer Center and Wayne State University in Detroit report that a combination of curcumin and resveratrol showed greater inhibitory effects against cancer cells compared with either agent used alone.
Adhip P. N. Majumdar and colleagues incubated human colon cancer cells with varying concentrations of curcumin, resveratrol or both agents combined. Untreated cells served as controls. Although both agents inhibited cell growth dose-dependently, the combination of curcumin and resveratrol elicited a greater effect than either extract used separately, suggesting a synergistic benefit.
Further experimentation showed that the synergism was effective in both p53 positive and p53 negative colon cancer cells. While curcumin or resveratrol alone inhibited the growth of these cells by 15 to 30 percent, the combination resulted in a 40 percent inhibition compared to the control cells.
In another experiment in which colon cancer cells were grated into mice, the combination of resveratrol and curcumin once again was associated with greater tumor growth inhibition than either therapy alone. The number of cells undergoing apoptosis in response to the curcumin/resveratrol combination was found to be double that of treatment with either agent by itself. Activation of the transcription factor nuclear factor kappa-beta (NF-kB), which stimulates the transcription of genes involved in cell survival, was similarly decreased by the administration of curcumin and resveratrol.
“Our data show that the combination therapy of curcumin and resveratrol is highly effective in inhibiting the growth of colon cancer cells in vitro and in vivo, which could be attributed to inhibition of proliferation and stimulation of apoptosis resulting from attenuation of nuclear NF-kb activity,” the authors write. “The combination of curcumin and resveratrol could be an effective preventive/therapeutic strategy for colon cancer,” they conclude.
http://www.lef.org/whatshot/2009_07.htm#curcumin-resveratrol-exert-synergistic-effects-against-cancer-cells

Study backs diabetes benefits of Indian plant extract

Nutraingredients.com, 01-Jul-2009

A patented extract of the Gymnema sylvestre plant has been found to stimulate insulin secretion in lab tests, opening the way for further research into its diabetes benefits.
A study published in the peer-reviewed journal Cellular Physiology and Biochemistry examined the effect of the plant extract on mouse and human cellsin vitro.
Sponsored by Wisconsin-based ingredient firm Ayurvedic-Life International, the study used its patented Gymnema sylvestre (GS) isolate – termed OSA – which was found to “significantly” stimulate insulin secretion without compromising pancreatic beta cell viability.
"If the stimulatory effect of OSA also occurs in vivo it would be expected to result in a reduction in blood glucose levels," said study leader Shanta Persaud.
Gymnema sylvestre, grown primarily in the Indian sub-continent, has been used India for centuries as a traditional folk remedy to help maintain optimal health.
Ayurvedic-Life claims its isolate stimulates insulin secretion similar to sulphonylureas and meglitinide analogues that are currently used for the treatment of Type 2 Diabetes.
Stimulatory effect
“We found that the extract may help regulate blood glucose levels through a direct effect on the pancreatic beta cells to stimulate insulin release,” Persaud told NutraIngredients.com.
Persaud and colleagues from Kings’ College London tested the isolate in vitro on both mouse and human beta cells, which are the pancreatic cells that secrete insulin.
Mouse beta cells were incubated for 30 minutes in the presence of 0.06-2mg/ml OSA at both 2mM and 20mM glucose. Changes in insulin output were measured using the radioimmunoassay method.
Human islets – which are cell clusters containing the beta cells – were isolated and transferred to chambers containing 2mM or 20mM glucose, either in the absence or presence of OSA at 0.125 or 0.25mg/ml. Insulin content was again determined by radioimmunoassay.
“Static incubation experiments with [mouse beta cells] indicated that OSA (0.06-2mg/ml) significantly stimulated insulin secretion at 2mM glucose and potentiated 20mM glucose-stimulated insulin secretion with maximum stimulatory effects at 0.25-0.5mg/ml,” wrote the researchers.
“OSA also stimulated insulin secretion from isolated human islets of Langerhans in vitro. Thus, it can be seen (…) that the profile of insulin release from human islets at 2mM glucose response to 0.125mg/ml OSA was rapid in onset, sustained, and fully reversible upon withdrawal of OSA,” they wrote, adding that human islets showed “significant further increase” in insulin secretion in response to 20mM glucose following a sustained secretory response to 0.125mg/ml OSA at 2mM glucose.
Clinical use
According to the researcher, their demonstration on the effects of OSA in human cells “validates its development for clinical use”.
They added that identification of the OSA component(s) that stimulates regulated insulin exocytosis may provide promising lead targets for type 2 diabetestherapy.
Persaud told NutraIngredients.com that the study was not conducted with drug development in mind, but that it “may be” possible to transfer the findings to the use of the extract in supplements. “The next step is to conduct in vivo tests”.
Source: Characterisation of the Insulinotropic Activity of an Aqueous Extract ofGymnema Sylvestre in Mouse β-Cells and Human Islets of Langerhans
Cellular Physiology and Biochemistry 2009;23:125-132
Authors: Bo Liu, Henry Asare-Anane, Altaf Al-Romaiyan, GuoCai Huang, Stephanie A Amiel, Peter M Jones, Shanta J Persaud
http://www.nutraingredients.com/Research/Study-backs-diabetes-benefits-of-Indian-plant-extract

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/msid-4722922,prtpage-1.cms

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/msid-4722869,prtpage-1.cms

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/msid-4723677,prtpage-1.cms

Orange Juice Worse For Teeth Than Whitening Agents, Study Finds

ScienceDaily (July 1, 2009) — With the increasing popularity of whitening one’s teeth, researchers at the Eastman Institute for Oral Health, part of the University of Rochester Medical Center, set out to learn if there are negative effects on the tooth from using whitening products.
Eastman Institute’s YanFang Ren, DDS, PhD, and his team determined that the effects of 6 percent hydrogen peroxide, the common ingredient in professional and over-the-counter whitening products, are insignificant compared to acidic fruit juices. Orange juice markedly decreased hardness and increased roughness of tooth enamel.
Unlike ever before, researchers were able to see extensive surface detail thanks to a new focus-variation vertical scanning microscope. “The acid is so strong that the tooth is literally washed away,” said Ren, whose findings were recently published in Journal of Dentistry. “The orange juice decreased enamel hardness by 84 percent.”  No significant change in hardness or surface enamel was found from whitening.
Weakened and eroded enamel may speed up the wear of the tooth and increase the risk for tooth decay to quickly develop and spread. “Most soft drinks, including sodas and fruit juices, are acidic in nature,” Ren said. “Our studies demonstrated that the orange juice, as an example, can potentially cause significant erosion of teeth.”
It’s long been known that juice and sodas have high acid content, and can negatively affect enamel hardness. “There are also some studies that showed whitening can affect the hardness of dental enamel, but until now, nobody had compared the two,” Ren explained. “This study allowed us to understand the effect of whitening on enamel relative to the effect of a daily dietary activity, such as drinking juices.
“It’s potentially a very serious problem for people who drink sodas and fruit juices daily,” said Ren, who added that dental researchers nationwide are increasingly studying tooth erosion, and are investing significant resources into possible preventions and treatments. “We do not yet have an effective tool to avert the erosive effects, although there are early indications that higher levels of fluoride may help slow down the erosion.”
A Texas-based company, Beyond Dental and Health, sponsored the trial in part by providing the 6 percent hydrogen peroxide.
In the meantime, Ren advises that consumers be aware of the acidic nature of beverages, including sodas, fruit juices, sports and energy drinks. The longer teeth are in contact with the acidic drinks, the more severe the erosion will be. People who sip their drinks slowly over 20 minutes are more likely to have tooth erosion than those who finish a drink quickly. It’s also very important to keep good oral hygiene practices, Ren added, by brushing twice daily with fluoride toothpaste, and see a dentist for a fluoride treatment at least once a year if you are at risk.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/06/090630132007.htm

Peptic Ulcer Bacterium Alters The Body's Defense System

ScienceDaily (July 1, 2009) — Helicobacter pylori survives in the body by manipulating important immune system cells. This is shown in a thesis from the Sahlgrenska Academy. The discovery may lead to new treatments against the common peptic ulcer bacterium.
About half of the world’s population carries Helicobacter pylori, mainly in the stomach. Most infected individuals never experience any symptoms, but around 10% get peptic ulcers and around 1% develop stomach cancer. ’Carriers were often infected as children and if not treated with antibiotics, the bacterium remains in the body for life. The immune system alone is unable to eliminate the bacterium, and now we understand better why’, says biologist Bert Kindlund, the author of the thesis.
The study shows that a type of cells in the immune system called regulatory T cells down-regulate the body’s defence against Helicobacter pylori and thereby enable the bacterium to develop a chronic infection. ’If we could control the regulatory T cells, we could strengthen the immune system and help the body eliminate the bacterium. This could be a new treatment strategy against Helicobacter pylori’, Kindlund continues.
In addition, the bacterium makes the immune system increase the number of regulatory T cells in the lining of the stomach. This also occurs with stomach cancer. ’An important question is where the increased number of regulatory T cells in the stomach lining come from. Knowing the answer to this question could help us develop a treatment for stomach cancer. What we have found so far is that the regulatory T cells are actively recruited from the bloodstream into the tumour, and once there they start multiplying faster’, says Kindlund.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/06/090629112825.htm

Vegetarian Diets Can Help Prevent Chronic Diseases, American Dietetic Association Says
ScienceDaily (July 1, 2009) — The American Dietetic Association has released an updated position paper on vegetarian diets that concludes such diets, if well-planned, are healthful and nutritious for adults, infants, children and adolescents and can help prevent and treat chronic diseases including heart disease, cancer, obesity and diabetes.
ADA's position, published in the July issue of the Journal of the American Dietetic Association, represents the Association's official stance on vegetarian diets:
"It is the position of the American Dietetic Association that appropriately planned vegetarian diets, including total vegetarian or vegan diets, are healthful, nutritionally adequate and may provide health benefits in the prevention and treatment of certain diseases. Well-planned vegetarian diets are appropriate for individuals during all stages of the life-cycle including pregnancy, lactation, infancy, childhood and adolescence and for athletes."
ADA's position and accompanying paper were written by Winston Craig, PhD, MPH, RD, professor and chair of the department of nutrition and wellness at Andrews University; and Reed Mangels, PhD, RD, nutrition advisor at the Vegetarian Resource Group, Baltimore, Md.
The revised position paper incorporates new topics and additional information on key nutrients for vegetarians, vegetarian diets in the life cycle and the use of vegetarian diets in prevention and treatment of chronic diseases. "Vegetarian diets are appropriate for all stages of the life cycle," according to ADA's position. "There are many reasons for the rising interest in vegetarian diets. The number of vegetarians in the United States is expected to increase over the next decade."
Vegetarian diets are often associated with health advantages including lower blood cholesterol levels, lower risk of heart disease, lower blood pressure levels and lower risk of hypertension and type 2 diabetes, according to ADA's position. "Vegetarians tend to have a lower body mass index and lower overall cancer rates. Vegetarian diets tend to be lower in saturated fat and cholesterol and have higher levels of dietary fiber, magnesium and potassium, vitamins C and E, folate, carotenoids, flavonoids and other phytochemicals. These nutritional differences may explain some of the health advantages of those following a varied, balanced vegetarian diet."
The position paper draws on results from ADA's evidence analysis process and information from the ADA Evidence Analysis Library to show vegetarian diets can be nutritionally adequate in pregnancy and result in positive maternal and infant health outcomes. Additionally, an evidence-based review showed a vegetarian diet is associated with a lower risk of death from ischemic heart disease.
A section in ADA's paper on vegetarian diets and cancer has been significantly expanded to provide details on cancer-protective factors in vegetarian diets. An expanded section on osteoporosis includes roles of fruits, vegetables, soy products, protein, calcium, vitamins D and K and potassium in bone health. "Registered dietitians can provide information about key nutrients, modify vegetarian diets to meet the needs of those with dietary restrictions due to disease or allergies and supply guidelines to meet needs of clients in different areas of the life cycle," the authors said.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/07/090701103002.htm

Acid-reducing Medicines May Lead To Dependency

ScienceDaily (July 1, 2009) — Treatment with proton pump inhibitors (PPIs) for eight weeks induces acid-related symptoms like heartburn, acid regurgitation and dyspepsia once treatment is withdrawn in healthy individuals, according to a new study in Gastroenterology, the official journal of the American Gastroenterological Association (AGA) Institute.
"The observation that more than 40 percent of healthy volunteers, who have never been bothered by heartburn, acid regurgitation or dyspepsia, develop such symptoms in the weeks after cessation of PPIs is remarkable and has potentially important clinical and economic implications," said Christina Reimer, MD, of Copenhagen University and lead author of the study. "This study indicates unrecognized aspects of PPI withdrawal and is a very strong indication of a clinically significant acid rebound phenomenon that needs to be investigated in proper patient populations."
The use of PPIs for acid-related symptoms and disorders is extensive and rapidly escalating. While the incidence of new patients being treated with PPIs remains stable, the prevalence of long-term treatment is rising, the reasons for which are not fully known. Studies have shown that up to 33 percent of patients who initiate PPI treatment continue to refill their prescriptions without an obvious indication for maintenance therapy. Rebound acid hypersecretion, defined as an increase in gastric acid secretion above pre-treatment levels following antisecretory therapy, is observed within two weeks after withdrawal of treatment and could theoretically lead to acid-related symptoms such as heartburn, acid regurgitation or dyspepsia that might result in resumption of therapy.
In a randomized double-blind placebo-controlled trial, researchers aimed to determine the clinical relevance of rebound acid hypersecretion in order to establish if long-term treatment with a PPI creates a need for continuous treatment. A total of 120 healthy participants were randomized to 12 weeks of placebo or eight weeks of esomeprazole (40 mg per day) followed by four weeks with placebo. The Gastrointestinal Symptom Rating Scale (GSRS) was filled out weekly.
The symptoms observed in this trial caused mild to moderate discomfort and appeared for the majority of subjects in the first two weeks after withdrawal of therapy. While there were no significant differences between the groups in GSRS scores at baseline, GSRS scores for acid-related symptoms were significantly higher in the PPI group in weeks 10, 11 and 12. Of those randomized to PPIs, 44 percent reported at least one relevant acid-related symptom in weeks nine through 12 compared to 15 percent in the placebo group. The proportion reporting dyspepsia, heartburn or acid regurgitation in the PPI group was 22 percent in week 10, 22 percent in week 11 and 21 percent in week 12. Corresponding figures in the placebo group were 7 percent, 5 percent and 2 percent.
"We find it highly likely that the symptoms observed in this trial are caused by rebound acid hypersecretion and that this phenomenon is equally relevant in patients treated long term with PPIs. If rebound acid hypersecretion induces acid-related symptoms, this might lead to PPI dependency. Our results justify the speculation that PPI dependency could be one of the explanations for the rapidly and continuously increasing use of PPIs," Dr. Reimer added.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/07/090701082909.htm

People Sometimes Seek The Truth, But Most Prefer Like-minded Views

ScienceDaily (July 1, 2009) — We swim in a sea of information, but filter out most of what we see and hear. A new analysis of data from dozens of studies sheds new light on how we choose what we do and do not hear. The study found that while people tend to avoid information that contradicts what they already think or believe, certain factors can cause them to seek out, or at least consider, other points of view.
The analysis, reported this month in Psychological Bulletin, was led by researchers at the University of Illinois and the University of Florida, and included data from 91 studies involving nearly 8,000 participants. It puts to rest a longstanding debate over whether people actively avoid information that contradicts what they believe, or whether they are simply exposed more often to ideas that conform to their own because they tend to be surrounded by like-minded people.
"We wanted to see exactly across the board to what extent people are willing to seek out the truth versus just stay comfortable with what they know," said University of Illinois psychology professor Dolores Albarracín, who led the study with University of Florida researcher William Hart. The team also included researchers from Northwestern University and Ohio University.
The studies they reviewed generally asked participants about their views on a given topic and then allowed them to choose whether they wanted to view or read information supporting their own or an opposing point of view.
The researchers found that people are about twice as likely to select information that supports their own point of view (67 percent) as to consider an opposing idea (33 percent). Certain individuals, those with close-minded personalities, are even more reluctant to expose themselves to differing perspectives, Albarracín said. They will opt for the information that corresponds to their views nearly 75 percent of the time.
The researchers also found, not surprisingly, that people are more resistant to new points of view when their own ideas are associated with political, religious or ethical values.
"If you are really committed to your own attitude – for example, if you are a very committed Democrat – you are more likely to seek congenial information, that is, information that corresponds with your views," Albarracín said. "If the issues concern moral values or politics, about 70 percent of the time you will choose congenial information, versus about 60 percent of the time if the issues are not related to values."
Perhaps more surprisingly, people who have little confidence in their own beliefs are less likely to expose themselves to contrary views than people who are very confident in their own ideas, Albarracín said.
Certain factors can also induce people to seek out opposing points of view, she said. Those who may have to publicly defend their ideas, such as politicians, for example, are more motivated to learn about the views of those who oppose them. In the process, she said, they sometimes find that their own ideas evolve.
People are also more likely to expose themselves to opposing ideas when it is useful to them in some way, Albarracín said.
"If you're going to buy a house and you really like the house, you're still going to have it inspected," she said. Similarly, no matter how much you like your surgeon, you may seek out a second opinion before scheduling a major operation, she said.
"For the most part it seems that people tend to stay with their own beliefs and attitudes because changing those might prevent them from living the lives they're living," Albarracín said. "But it's good news that one out of three times, or close to that, they are willing to seek out the other side.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/07/090701082720.htm

Music May Have A Future Role In Heart And Stroke Patient Rehabilitation
ScienceDaily (June 30, 2009) — Blood flow and respiratory rates can synch with music, indicating that music could one day be a therapeutic tool for blood pressure control and rehabilitation, according to a study by Italian researchers published in Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association.
The researchers found in an earlier study (Heart. 2006 Apr;92(4):445-52) that music with faster tempos resulted in increased breathing, heart rate and blood pressure. When the music was paused, breathing, heart rate and blood pressure decreased, sometimes below the beginning rate. Slower music caused declines in heart rates.
In an extension of those findings, researchers recently discovered swelling crescendos appear to induce moderate arousal while decrescendos induce relaxation. In music, a crescendo is a gradual volume increase, and a decrescendo is a gradual volume decrease.
“Music induces a continuous, dynamic — and to some extent predictable — change in the cardiovascular system,” said Luciano Bernardi, M.D., lead researcher of the study and professor of Internal Medicine at Pavia University in Pavia, Italy. “It is not only the emotion that creates the cardiovascular changes, but this study suggests that also the opposite might be possible, that cardiovascular changes may be the substrate for emotions, likely in a bi-directional way.”
Researchers studied 24 healthy Caucasians matched for age and sex — 24 to 26 years old with 12 experienced singers (nine women) and 12 participants (seven women) who had no previous musical training. Study participants were fitted with headphones and were attached to electrocardiogram (ECG) and monitors to measure blood pressure, cerebral artery flow, respiration and narrowing of blood vessels on the skin.
Five random tracks of classical music were played — including selections from Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony; an aria from Puccini’s Turandot; a Bach cantata (BMW 169); Va Pensiero from Nabucco; Libiam Nei Lieti Calici from La Traviata — as well as two minutes of silence.
Researchers found:

• Every crescendo led to increased narrowing of blood vessels under the skin, increased blood pressure and heart rate and increased respiration amplitude. In each music track the extent of the effect was proportional to the change in music profile.
• During the silent pause, changes decreased, with blood vessels under the skin dilating and marked reductions in heart rate and blood pressure. Unlike with music, silence reduced heart rate and other variables, indicating relaxation.
• Music phrases around 10 seconds long, like those used in “Va Pensiero” and “Libiam Nei Lieti Calici,” synchronized inherent cardiovascular rhythm, thus modulating cardiovascular control.

“The profile of music (crescendo or decrescendo) is continuously tracked by the cardiovascular and respiratory systems,” Bernardi said. “This is particularly evident when music is rich in emphasis, like in operatic music. These findings increase our understanding of how music could be used in rehabilitative medicine.”
Previous studies have shown that music reduces stress, boosts athletic performance and enhances motor skills of people with neurological impairments. Bernardi noted that music more frequently is being used as a therapeutic tool for different diseases. In addition, the distracting effect of music can also prolong exercise by increasing the threshold for pain or labored breathing.
“What we are learning from the present and previous study is that alternating between fast and slow music (crescendo and decrescendo within the same music track) may be potentially more effective,” Bernardi said.
Music can induce physiologic changes that may precede the psychological appreciation. Such autonomic modulations could be of practical use to induce body sensation which might reach the level of consciousness, or at least create a continuous stimulus to the upper brain; moreover, the inter-individual synchronization of body physiology mediated by music could aid in strengthening the sense of sharing within the human relationship.
All this may better explain the efficacy of music therapy in pathologic conditions like stroke, and open new areas for music therapy in rehabilitative medicine.
Among the study’s limitations, there were only 24 subjects, all of whom were similar in age, education and ethnicity. Different responses might have come from older subjects, or subjects accustomed to different styles of music, said researchers, who used only few well-known tracks by a small number of classical composers.
Co-authors are Cesare Porta, M.D.; Gaia Casucci, M.D.; Rossella Balsamo, M.D.; Nicolò F. Bernardi, M.Sc.; Roberto Fogari, M.D.; and Peter Sleight, M.D. Individual author disclosures can be found on the manuscript.
The Signe and Ane Gyllenberg Foundation in Helsinki, Finland funded the study.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/06/090622163025.htm