August 21, 2009

Junk food: Greatest heart disease risk

TIMES OF INDIA   21 August 2009

Health freaks know that high levels of total cholesterol and LDL cholesterol can increase the risk of heart attacks. Now, scientists have 
discovered a little-known type of cholesterol which may prove to be the most lethal of all. 

Cholesterol called oxycholesterol is virtually unknown to the public and may be the most serious cardiovascular health threat of all. 

Fried and processed food, particularly fast food, contains high amounts of oxycholesterol. 

Scientists from China presented one of the first studies on the cholesterol-boosting effects of oxycholesterol at the 238th National Meeting of the American Chemical Society. 

The researchers hope their findings raise public awareness about oxycholesterol, including foods with the highest levels of the substance and other foods that can combat oxycholesterol's effects. 

"Total cholesterol, low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL), and the heart-healthy high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL) are still important health issues," says study leader Zhen-Yu Chen, Ph.D., of Chinese University of Hong Kong. 

"But the public should recognize that oxycholesterol is also important and cannot be ignored. Our work demonstrated that oxycholesterol boosts total cholesterol levels and promotes atherosclerosis ["hardening of the arteries"] more than non-oxidized cholesterol,” the expert added. 

In the study, Chen''s group measured the effects of a diet high in oxycholesterol on hamsters, often used as surrogates for humans in such research. Blood cholesterol in hamsters fed oxycholesterol rose up to 22 percent more than hamsters eating non-oxidized cholesterol. The oxycholesterol group showed greater deposition of cholesterol in the lining of their arteries and a tendency to develop larger deposits of cholesterol. These fatty deposits, called atherosclerotic plaques, increase the risk for heart attack and stroke. 

Most importantly, according to Chen, oxycholesterol had undesirable effects on "artery function." Oxycholesterol reduced the elasticity of arteries, impairing their ability to expand and carry more blood. That expansion can allow more blood to flow through arteries that are partially blocked by plaques, potentially reducing the risk that a clot will form and cause a heart attack or stroke. 

But a healthy diet rich in antioxidants can counter these effects, Chen said, noting that these substances may block the oxidation process that forms oxycholesterol. 

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/life-style/health-fitness/health/Junk-food-Greatest-heart-disease-risk-/articleshow/4919487.cms

Ancient Chinese herbs may help heart
United Press International 08-20-09
HOUSTON, Aug 20, 2009 (UPI via COMTEX) -- Ancient Chinese herbal formulas for heart disease may produce large amounts of artery-widening nitric oxide, U.S. researchers said.
Researchers at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston said nitric oxide is crucial to the cardiovascular system because it signals the inner walls of blood vessels to relax -- facilitating the flow of blood through the heart and circulatory system.
Senior author Nathan S. Bryan said the study reveals that ancient Chinese herbal formulas "have profound nitric oxide bioactivity primarily through the enhancement of nitric oxide in the inner walls of blood vessels, but also through their ability to convert nitrite and nitrate into nitric oxide."
Researchers performed laboratory tests on DanShen, GuaLou and other herbs purchased at a Houston store to assess their ability to produce nitric oxide. Ancient Chinese herbal formulas used primarily for cardiovascular indications are made up of three to 25 herbs -- used as tablets, elixirs, soups and teas.
Most Chinese herbal formulas sold in the United States are considered dietary supplements and are not regulated as strictly as drugs, Bryan said.
The study, published in the journal Free Radical Biology & Medicine, said further research should be considered in humans, particularly those with cardiac indications.
http://www.lef.org/news/LefDailyNews.htm?NewsID=8661&Section=Nutrition

Oxygen treatment hastens memory loss in Alzheimer's mice

NewsRx.com 08-20-09
A 65-year-old women goes into the hospital for routine hip surgery. Six months later, she develops memory loss and is later diagnosed with Alzheimer's Disease. Just a coincidence? Researchers at the University of South Florida and Vanderbilt University don't think so. They suspect that the culprit precipitating Alzheimer's disease in the elderly women may be a routine administration of high concentrations of oxygen for several hours during, or following, surgery - a hypothesis borne out in a recent animal model study (see also University of South Florida Health).
Dr. Gary Arendash of the Florida Alzheimer's Disease Research Center at USF and Dr. L. Jackson Roberts II at Vanderbilt University used mice genetically altered to develop abnormal levels of the protein beta amyloid, which deposits in the brain as plaques and eventually leads to Alzheimer's-like memory loss as the mice age. They found that young adult Alzheimer's mice exposed to 100-percent oxygen during several 3-hour sessions demonstrated substantial memory loss not otherwise present at their age. Young adult Alzheimer's mice exposed to normal air had no measurable memory loss, and neither did normal mice without any genetic predisposition for Alzheimer's disease.
The authors suggest that people genetically predisposed to Alzheimer's disease or with excessive amounts of beta amyloid in their brains are at increased risk of developing the disease earlier if they receive high concentrations of oxygen, known as hyperoxia. Their study is published online this month in NeuroReport.
"Although oxygen treatment beneficially increases the oxygen content of blood during or after major surgery, it also has several negative effects that we believe may trigger Alzheimer's symptoms in those destined to develop the disease," said USF neuroscientist Arendash, the study's lead author. "Our study suggests that the combination of brain beta amyloid and exposure to high concentrations of oxygen provides a perfect storm for speeding up the onset of memory loss associated with Alzheimer's Disease."
While postoperative confusion and memory problems are common and usually transient in elderly patients following surgery, some patients develop permanent Alzheimer's-like cognitive impairment that remains unexplained. Recent studies have indicated that general anesthesia administered during surgery may increase a patient's risk of Alzheimer's disease, but the laboratory studies did not use animals or people predisposed to develop the disease.
"Postoperative memory loss can be a fairly common and devastatingly irreversible problem in the elderly after major surgical procedures," said Roberts, an MD who holds an endowed chair in Pharmacology at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine. "There has been much speculation as to the cause of this memory loss, but the bottom line is that no one really knows why it happens. If all it takes to prevent this is reducing the exposure of patients to unnecessarily high concentrations of oxygen in the operating room, this would be a major contribution to geriatric medicine."
The USF-Vanderbilt study looked at 11 young adult mice genetically modified to develop memory problems as they aged, mimicking Alzheimer's disease. After behavioral tests confirmed the mice had not yet developed memory impairment at age 3 months - about age 40 in human years - the researchers exposed half the Alzheimer's mice to 100-percent oxygen for three hours, three times over the next several months. The protocol was intended to replicate initial and supplemental exposures of elderly patients in hospital operating rooms and recovery suites to high concentrations of oxygen. The other half of the mice were exposed to 21-percent oxygen, the concentration of oxygen in typical room air.
When researchers retested the mice after the final gas exposure, they found that Alzheimer's mice exposed to 100-percent oxygen performed much worse on tests measuring their memory and thinking skills than the Alzheimer's mice exposed to normal room air. In fact, the Alzheimer's mice exposed to room air demonstrated no memory loss. Moreover, exposure of young adult mice without beta amyloid protein deposited in their brains to 100-percent oxygen did not adversely affect their memories. This is consistent with studies in humans showing that exposure of young adults to high concentrations of oxygen has no harmful effects on memory.
The researchers also demonstrated that even a single 3-hour exposure to 100-percent oxygen caused memory deficits in the Alzheimer's mice. Furthermore, when they examined the brains of these mice, they found dramatic increases in levels of isofurans, products of oxygen-induced damage from toxic free radicals. The increase was not present in the brains of normal control mice exposed to the single hyperoxia treatment.
How might high concentrations of oxygen hasten memory impairment in those destined to develop Alzheimer's disease? The researchers suggest the striking increase of isofurans during surgery may be one triggering mechanism, particularly in cardiac bypass surgery where very high blood oxygen levels are routinely attained and permanent memory loss often occurs months after the surgery. Secondly, exposure to high concentrations of oxygen prompts abnormal swelling of brain cell terminals that transmit chemical messages from one brain cell to another and may further disrupt already frayed nerve cell connections in those at risk for Alzheimer's. Third, high concentrations of oxygen combined with beta amyloid plaques constricts blood vessels and decreases blood flow to the brain more than either one alone.
The authors caution that the study in mice may or may not accurately reflect the effects of hyperoxia in human surgery patients.
"Nonetheless, our results call into question the wide use of unnecessarily high concentrations of oxygen during and/or following major surgery in the elderly," Roberts said. "These oxygen concentrations often far exceed that required to maintain normal hemoglobin saturation in elderly patients undergoing surgery."
http://www.lef.org/news/LefDailyNews.htm?NewsID=8663&Section=Aging

Vitamin D may reduce pre-eclampsia risk: Study

Nutraingredients.com, 20-Aug-2009

Increased intakes of vitamin D during pregnancy may reduce the development by about 25 per cent, suggests a study with over 20,000 Norwegian women.
The risk of pre-eclampsia was 27 per cent lower in women who consumedvitamin D supplements with daily doses of 10 to 15 micrograms, compared to women who did not take supplements, according to researchers from the Norwegian Institute of Public Health.
However, a correlation between vitamin D intake and omega-3 fatty acid intake was observed, and the researchers noted that “further research is needed to disentangle the separate effects of these nutrients”.
Pre-eclampsia, affecting two to three per cent of all pregnancies, occurs when a mother's blood pressure rises to the hypertensive range, and excretion of protein in the urine becomes too high. It is estimated to be responsible for about 60,000 deaths worldwide.
It is not known why some expectant mothers develop pre-eclampsia, although oxidative stress has been proposed to play a part. The role of antioxidants to reduce oxidative stress had been supported by a small clinical trial that linked vitamin C and E intake to fewer biomarkers for pre-eclampsia for predominantly low-risk participants.
However, subsequent studies, including a study published in The New England Journal of Medicine (Vol. 354, pp. 1796-1806) and a Cochrane Systematic Review (2007, Issue 4), found that vitamins C and E had no effects on the risk of pre-eclampsia.
The new study, published in Epidemiology suggests that vitamin D supplementation may reduce the risk of developing the potentially fatal condition.
Led by Helle Margrete Meltzer, the researchers examined the relationship between vitamin D intakes during pregnancy and the risk of pre-eclampsia in 23,423 would-be first time mothers participating in the Norwegian Mother and Child Cohort Study.
The women answered a general health questionnaire at the fifteenth week of pregnancy and again at the thirtieth week, while a food frequency questionnaire was administered at week 22.
According to the Norwegian findings, women with a daily intake of between 15 and 20 micrograms of vitamin D from diet and supplements had a 24 per cent lower risk of developing pre-eclampsia compared to women who consumed less than 5 micrograms per day.
The overriding benefits were observed for vitamin D from supplements, with a daily dose of 10 to 15 micrograms linked to a 27 per cent reduction, compared to women who did not take supplements.
“These findings are consistent with other reports of a protective effect of vitamin D on pre-eclampsia development,” wrote Meltzer and her co-workers.
“However, because vitamin D intake is highly correlated with the intake of long chain omega-3 fatty acids in the Norwegian diet, further research is needed to disentangle the separate effects of these nutrients,” they concluded.
Source: Epidemiology
September 2009, Volume 20, Issue 5, Pages 720-726, doi: 10.1097/EDE.0b013e3181a70f08
“Vitamin D Supplementation and Reduced Risk of Preeclampsia in Nulliparous Women”
Authors: M. Haugen, A.L. Brantsaeter, L. Trogstad, J. Alexander, C. Roth, P. Magnus, H.M. Meltzer
http://www.nutraingredients.com/Research/Vitamin-D-may-reduce-pre-eclampsia-risk-Study

Even modest fitness may extend lifespan
Last Updated: 2009-08-21 9:47:08 -0400 (Reuters Health)
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - People who stay even moderately fit as they age may live longer than those who are out-of-shape, a new study suggests.
The study, of nearly 4,400 healthy U.S. adults, found that the roughly 20 percent with the lowest physical fitness levels were twice as likely to die over the next nine years as the 20 percent with the next-lowest fitness levels.
That was with factors like obesity, high blood pressure and diabetes taken into account -- underscoring the importance of physical fitness itself, researchers report in the journal Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise.
"Our findings suggest that sedentary lifestyle, rather than differences in cardiovascular risk factors or age, may explain (the) two-fold higher mortality rates in the least-fit versus slightly more fit healthy individuals," lead researcher Dr. Sandra Mandic, of the University of Otago in Dunedin, New Zealand, noted in an email to Reuters Health.
She pointed out that nearly two-thirds of the least-fit study participants were not getting the minimum recommended amount of exercise -- at least 30 minutes of moderate activity, like brisk walking, on five or more days a week.
"These results emphasize the importance of improving and maintaining high fitness levels by engaging in regular physical activity," Mandic said, "particularly in poorly fit individuals."
The study included 4,384 middle-aged and older adults whose fitness levels were assessed during exercise treadmill tests sometime between 1986 and 2006; they were then followed for an average of about nine years.
When Mandic's team separated the participants into five groups based on fitness levels, they found that one-quarter of the least-fit men and women had died during the study period, versus 13 percent of those who were slightly more in shape.
Among adults in the most-fit group, only 6 percent died during the follow-up period.
Overall, the five groups showed little difference in their reported exercise habits over their adult lives. Where they did differ was their activity levels in recent years.
"Since it is recent physical activity that offers protection," Mandic said, "it is important to maintain regular physical activity throughout life."
And since fitness is linked to longevity regardless of weight and health conditions like high blood pressure and high cholesterol, exercise is important for all, according to Mandic.
That, she said, includes people who are thin and in generally good health.
SOURCE: Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise, August 2009.
http://www.reutershealth.com/archive/2009/08/21/eline/links/20090821elin001.html

Daily drinking may raise risk of several cancers
Last Updated: 2009-08-21 9:52:38 -0400 (Reuters Health)
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Men who drink beer or liquor on a regular basis may face a heightened risk of several different types of cancer, a new study suggests.
Researchers found that among nearly 3,600 Canadian men ages 35 to 70, those who averaged at least a drink per day had higher risks of a number of cancers than men who drank occasionally or not at all -- including cancers of the esophagus, stomach, colon, lungs, pancreas, liver and prostate.
When the researchers looked at individual types of alcohol, though, only beer and "spirits" -- and not wine -- were linked to elevated cancer risks.
In general, the odds increased in tandem with the men's lifetime alcohol intake, according to findings published in the Cancer Prevention and Detection.
With several cancers, men who drank at least once per day tended to have higher risks than those who drank on a regular, but less-than-daily, basis.
When it came to esophageal cancer, for instance, men who drank one to six times per week had an 83 percent higher risk than teetotalers and less-frequent drinkers, while daily drinkers had a three-fold higher risk.
In addition, when the researchers looked only at daily drinkers, the risks generally increased with the number of years the men had been at it.
"Our results show that the heaviest consumers over the lifetime had the biggest increases in the risks of multiple sites of cancer," lead researcher Dr. Andrea Benedetti, of McGill University in Montreal, told Reuters Health in an email.
Many studies have suggested that moderate drinking -- usually defined as no more than a drink or two per day -- can be a healthy habit, particularly when it comes to heart disease risk.
But the current study suggests that even such moderate drinking levels are linked to higher risks of certain cancers, at least when the alcohol of choice is beer or liquor.
The question of whether moderate drinkers should cut down, however, cannot be answered by a single study, according to Benedetti.
"In terms of balancing this risk (of cancer) with risks of cardiovascular disease," she said, "people should talk with their doctor."
SOURCE: Cancer Prevention and Detection 2009.
http://www.reutershealth.com/archive/2009/08/21/eline/links/20090821elin023.html

Progesterone Leads To Inflammation, Scientists Find

ScienceDaily (Aug. 21, 2009) — Scientists at Michigan State University have found exposure to the hormone progesterone activates genes that trigger inflammation in the mammary gland.
This progesterone-induced inflammation may be a key factor in increasing the risk of breast cancer.
Progesterone is a naturally occurring steroid hormone and promotes development of the normal mammary gland. Progesterone previously has been identified as a risk factor for breast cancer, and in a study published in the Journal of Steroid Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, MSU scientists examined the genes activated by progesterone and the effects of their activation in a mouse model system.
Exposure to progesterone in normal amounts and in normal circumstances causes inflammation, which promotes breast development. However, exposure to progesterone in menopausal hormone therapy is known to increase breast cancer risk.
“Progesterone turns on a wide array of genes involved in several biological processes, including cell adhesion, cell survival and inflammation,” said physiology professor Sandra Haslam, co-author of the paper and director of the Breast Cancer and the Environment Research Center at MSU. “All of these processes may be relevant to the development of breast cancer.”
The study shows progesterone significantly regulates 162 genes in pubertal cells, 104 genes in adult cells and 68 genes at both developmental stages. A number of these genes make small proteins, called chemokines, which control the process of inflammation.
Inflammation is a process where white blood cells move into a tissue. One type of white blood cell which moves to the breast during inflammation is a macrophage. Macrophages normally enter growing glands and help them develop, building blood vessels and reshaping growing tissue.
“Macrophages also may promote the development of tumors, such as breast cancer, as they make blood vessels to deliver nutrients and can clear the way for tumors to grow,” Haslam said. “Long-term exposure to progesterone, such as that which occurs in menopausal hormone therapy, may encourage growth of tumors.”
Haslam noted that as the link between progesterone and increased breast cancer risk was identified in recent years, women have been taking less hormone therapy after menopause and the rate of breast cancer in older women has gone down.
“This study reveals the targets of a specific form of the progesterone receptor, called PRA, in mammary cell development,” said microbiology professor Richard Schwartz, a co-author of the paper and associate dean in the College of Natural Science. “The linkages identified provide targets for future work in reducing the influence progesterone has on developing breast cancer.
“Understanding the genes that regulate inflammation in the mammary gland will help us to better understand normal breast growth and also may help us devise better treatments for the abnormal growth in cancer.”
A collaborative team of 10 scientists in MSU’s departments of Physiology and Microbiology and Molecular Genetics contributed to the findings. The team’s work was published in the July 2009 issue of the journal.
The team of faculty is part of MSU’s Breast Cancer and the Environment Research Center, one of four centers nationwide funded by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and the National Cancer Institute. The center brings together researchers from MSU’s colleges of Natural Science and Human Medicine to study the impact of prenatal-to-adult environmental exposures that may predispose a woman to breast cancer, as well as researchers in the College of Communication Arts and Sciences to study how to best communicate breast cancer health messages to the public.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/08/090819135440.htm

Warning: Imaging Tests Can Damage Kidneys, Increase Stroke and Heart Attack Risk
S. L. Baker, NaturalNews.com  August 21, 2009 

(NaturalNews) No matter what your health complaint is, if you go see your doctor you might end up undergoing some kind of high tech imaging procedure such as cardiac angiography, CT (computed tomography) or MRI (magnetic resonance imaging). According to a study published last fall in the journal Health Affairs, medical imaging has soared over the last few years across all types of these tests, doubling the annual medical cost per patient. In fact, the study confirmed previous reports that patients are far-too-often being subjected to unnecessary imaging. 

At least, most of these tests are minimally invasive and thoroughly studied to make sure they carry few risks so they are safe, right? Unfortunately, the answer is no. New reports of lasting, health-harming effects from some imaging tests are accumulating. A case in point: a new study just published in the Clinical Journal of the American Society Nephrology (CJASN) warns that seemingly minor and reversible kidney damage injury which can arise after undergoing certain common medical imaging procedures is a serious health threat. The reason? It is linked to a greatly increased risk of stroke, heart attack and death.

University of Vermont physician Richard Solomon,MD, and his colleagues investigated 294 patients with kidney disease who were exposed to contrast agents during cardiac angiography. Patients in this study, dubbed the CARE (Cardiac Angiography in REnally Impaired Patients) trial, were randomly divided with half receiving the contrast agent iopamidol and the other receiving the contrast agent iodixanol. 

Many medical imaging techniques, including cardiac angiography and CT scans, often involve the use of contrast agents, substances that contain iodine (like iopamidol and iodixanol) and barium, because they enhance the contrast between body structures or fluids within the body. This allows blood vessels and changes in tissues to be more clearly visualized. 

When Dr. Solomon and his colleagues followed the CARE patients for one year or longer, they found that 92 (31 percent) of the research subjects experienced negative health effects after their imaging test. Their risk of having a stroke or heart attack over the next year or two after the test was elevated. Overall, 38 (13 percent) of the patients experienced a major event, such as death, stroke, heart attack, or end-stage renal disease. Those who developed contrast-induced kidney injuries had twice as many long-term negative health effects compared with patients who didn't suffer kidney damage. 

It isn't only people who already have problems with their kidneys who can be at risk from the imaging testing,either. Doctors have long known exposure to contrast agents can cause damage in seemingly healthy kidneys, but patients are usually assured this is just a temporary side effect that will resolve on its own. However, recent studies have suggested that contrast-induced kidney damage might actually be lasting and serious. In a statement to the media, the University of Vermont researchers said "the CARE trial findings should prompt investigators to design additional studies on the long-term negative health effects of contrast-induced kidney damage".

In addition to kidney damage, the contrast agent iopamidol has also been known to sometimes cause seizures in people with a history of epilepsy. However, in rare case reports, including one published earlier this year in the Internet Journal of Neurology, iopamidol has been found to cause severe seizures and respiratory arrest in non-epileptic patients undergoing imaging tests.

As reported in Natural News last April (http://www.naturalnews.com/026001.html), the use of contrast agents isn't the only potentially dangerous downside to some common imaging procedures. A study in the medical journal Radiology found that people who had numerous CT scans over their lifetime had a significantly increased risk of cancer. In fact, CT scans increased the risk of cancer by 2.7 to 12 percent.
http://www.naturalnews.com/026894_health_heart_attack_stroke.html

Drinking Cola Causes Muscle Weakness, Bone Loss
David Gutierrez, NaturalNews.com  August 21, 2009  

(NaturalNews) People who drink more than two quarts of cola per day may induce severe and possibly fatal potassium deficiency, according to a study conducted by researchers from the University of Ioannina, Greece, and published in the International Journal of Clinical Practice.

"We are consuming more soft drinks than ever before, and a number of health issues have already been identified including tooth problems, bone demineralization and the development of metabolic syndrome and diabetes," researcher Moses Elisaf said. "Evidence is increasing to suggest that excessive cola consumption can also lead to hypokalemia, in which the blood potassium levels fall, causing an adverse effect on vital muscle functions."

Researchers reviewed the cases of several patients who had consumed between two and 10 quarts of cola per day, including two pregnant women. One of these, a 21-year-old who drank as much as three quarts per day, was admitted to the hospital for persistent vomiting, fatigue and appetite loss. The other was admitted after drinking seven quarts per day for 10 months and suffering from progressive weakening of her muscles.

Both women recovered after they stopped drinking cola and were treated with intravenous or oral potassium.

Potassium plays a critical role in the functioning of the body's nerves, muscles and heart. Critical deficiency like that experienced by the patients in the University of Ioannina study can lead to cramping, paralysis, irregular heartbeat and even death. In one of the cases studied, a man suffered lung paralysis after drinking 10 quarts per day.

The researchers believe that both caffeine and sugar contributed to the observed potassium deficiency.

In an accompanying editorial, Clifford D. Packer at the Louis Stokes Cleveland VA Medical Center in Cleveland warned, "There is very little doubt that tens of millions of people in industrialized countries drink at least 2-3 [quarts] of cola per day. The soft drink industry needs to promote safe and moderate use of its products for all age groups, reduce serving sizes, and pay heed to the rising call for healthier drinks."
http://www.naturalnews.com/026892_cola_potassium_health.html

If You Have Chronic Fatigue, You Might Just Need L-Carnitine
Kerri Knox, NaturalNews.com  August 21, 2009 

(NaturalNews) Nearly everyone experiences fatigue at one time or another, but when that fatigue goes on for long periods of time or when it accompanies another health problem, it can be devastating. While there ARE many medical reasons for it, often those with persistent fatigue are left without a diagnosis, without answers and without hope. For many, however, the amino acid supplement L-Carnitine COULD just offer some hope for a normal life again.

L-Carnitine is an 'essential' amino acid, meaning that it must be supplied in the diet in order to meet the body's needs. While the majority of amino acids are used for protein synthesis, L-Carnitine is special; it is not required for protein synthesis, but is used as a carrier of fatty acids into the mitochondria, the energy production centers of every single cell in the entire body. The burning of fatty acids in these miniature cellular power plants supplies MOST of the energy for the body's skeletal muscles. While this points to the need for good quality fats in the diet, it ALSO highlights the vital function that L-Carnitine plays in producing energy.

"These findings suggest that L-Carnitine may be safely administered
at doses up to 3000 mg/day and that positive effects may be more
likely at relatively higher doses in this range."
'Safety, Tolerability and Symptom Outcomes Associated
with l-Carnitine Supplementation in Patients with Cancer,
Fatigue,and Carnitine Deficiency'

Since L-Carnitine is required to produce energy, the result of a deficiency is LACK of energy. While this is logical and there is plenty of research to back this up, doctors just simply do not look for L-Carnitine deficiency in their search for a cause of fatigue. This is a big mistake because studies have shown L-Carnitine to be effective in increasing energy, sometimes DRAMATICALLY so, in people with a wide variety of conditions including:

*Chronic Fatigue Syndrome
*Fibromyalgia
*Multiple Sclerosis
*Kidney Disease
*Cancer and Chemotherapy
*Advanced Age

It's puzzling, though, that doctors don't even LOOK for L-Carnitine deficiency in their long-suffering fatigued patients when there are both blood testsand urine tests that can accurately determine L-Carnitine levels. The authors of the research article, ' Acylcarnitine Deficiency in Chronic Fatigue Syndrome' state, "...the concentration of serum acylcarnitine in patients with CFS tended to increase to the normal level with the recovery of general fatigue. Therefore, the measurement of acylcarnitine would be a useful tool for the diagnosis and assessment of the degree of clinical manifestation in patients with CFS."

But even WITHOUT diagnostic testing, L-Carnitine appears to be effective for fatigue that doesn't respond to any other treatments. In the research paper, 'L-Carnitine as a Treatment of Lethargy in Children with Chronic Neurologic Handicaps', a group of profoundly lethargic disabled children clearly gained more energy after being given L-Carnitine despite the fact that their blood levels were normal! The authors concluded, "Serum levels may not be an accurate indication of bodily carnitine stores" and that they don't have an explanation as to WHY the L-Carnitine improved the childrens' functioning, only that it did. This may also explain the contradictory conclusions of differing research studies on chronic fatigue. Some studies simply gave the patients L- Carnitine and recorded the beneficial effects, while other studies analyzed serum Carnitine levels and determined that the amino acid would not be an effective treatment due to the fact that the study participants had normal levels.

"... we found statistically significant clinical improvement
in 12 of the 18 studied parameters after 8 weeks of treatment.
L-Carnitine is a safe and very well tolerated medicine which
improves the clinical status of CFS patients."
'Amantadine and L-carnitine treatment
of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.'

As an added bonus, side effects are virtually non-existent and researchers all declared L-Carnitine safe when used in children and adults. It posed virtually no side effects or complications in studies, even in the group of 100 year old centenarians who improved from L-Carnitine administration! Despite the research showing the effectiveness and safety of this readily available supplement, doctors do not test for it nor do they 'presume' L-carnitine deficiency in fatigue. Even patients with fatigue who take L-Carnitine depleting medications, such as the anti-seizure drug Valproic acid or the HIV drug AZT, are often left tired and hopeless. With such an excellent safety record, if patients were only Informed of these studies, they could decide for themselves whether a 2 month trial of L-Carnitine were worth it in order to have a CHANCE at improving their fatigue.
http://www.naturalnews.com/026893_L-carnitine_chronic_fatigue_medicine.html

Students who meditate are better off

Times of India,  August 2009, 12:00am IST
Students who meditate are better off when it comes to dealing with stress in college, according to a new research at American University. 

The study pointed out that such students also remain less fatigued and have more "integrated" brains. 

According to the researchers, transcendental Meditation may be an effective non-medicinal tool for students to buffer themselves against the intense stresses of college life. 

Titled ‘Effects of Transcendental Meditation practice on brain functioning and stress reactivity in college students’, the research is the first random assignment study of the effects of meditation practice on brain and physiological functioning in college students. 

For the study, the researchers roped in 50 students from American University and other Washington, D.C., area universities. 

They then probed the effects of 10-weeks of Transcendental Meditation (TM) practice on "Brain Integration Scale" scores (broadband frontal coherence, power ratios, and preparatory brain responses), electrodermal habituation to a stressful stimulus, and sleepiness in the participants. 

At pre-test, the researchers measured the physiological and psychological variables and then the students were randomly assigned to a TM or control group. Post-test was 10 weeks later-just before final exam week. 

At post-test, the meditating students had higher Brain Integration Scale scores, less sleepiness, and faster habituation to a loud tone-they were less jumpy and irritable. 

"The pressures of college can be overwhelming-44 percent of college students binge drink, 37 percent report use of illegal drugs, 19% report clinical depression, and 13 percent report high levels of anxiety," said Fred Travis, lead author and director of the MUM brain research center. 

He said that the data from the non-meditating control group showed the detrimental effects of college life on the students. 

"The control group had lower Brain Integration Scale scores, indicating their brain functioning was more fragmented-which can lead to more scattered and disorganized thinking and planning. The controls also showed an increase in sympathetic reactivity and sleepiness, which can correspond to greater anxiety, worry and irritability" he said. 

On the other hand, Transcendental Meditation practice appeared to buffer the effects of high stress. 

Travis said: "From pretest to posttest, Brain Integration Scale scores increased significantly, indicating greater breadth of planning, thinking, and perception of the environment. The sympathetic reactivity and sleepiness decreased among the TM group, which corresponds to greater emotional balance and wakefulness. 

"These statistically significant results among college students suggest that the practice of the Transcendental Meditation technique could be of substantial value for anyone facing an intense and challenging learning/working environment." 

The study was published in a recent issue of the peer-reviewed International Journal of Psychophysiology. 
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/life-style/spirituality/meditation/Students-who-meditate-are-better-off/articleshow/4193245.cms

Findings published in AMA journal call into question study linking melanoma to antioxidants

Life Extensions, August 19, 2009
The August, 2009 issue the American Medical Association journal Archives of Dermatology published the conclusion of researchers at Kaiser Permanente Northern California in Oakland that antioxidant supplements do not appear to be linked with a greater risk of melanoma, the most dangerous form of skin cancer. The finding contradicts the conclusion of an earlier study which reported an increased risk of the melanoma in association with vitamin C, vitamin E, beta-carotene, zinc and selenium supplementation among women who participated in the Supplementation in Vitamins and Mineral Antioxidants (SUVIMAX) study.
For the current investigation, Maryam M. Asgari, MD, MPH, and colleagues evaluated data from 69,671 participants in the Vitamins and Lifestyle (VITAL) study, which was designed to examine associations between supplement use and cancer risk. Questionnaires completed upon recruitment from 2000 and 2002 were analyzed for multivitamin intake over the previous ten years as well as intake of the antioxidants evaluated in the SUVIMAX study.
The researchers found no significant association between multivitamin use and the risk of melanoma. When individual beta-carotene and selenium supplements at doses similar to those evaluated in the SUVIMAX trial were separately analyzed, there was also no association revealed. The authors comment that the association found in the SUVIMAX trial between antioxidant supplement use and melanoma risk in women could be explained by methodological flaws.
"Consistent with the present results, case-control studies examining serologic levels of beta carotene, vitamin E and selenium did not find any association with subsequent risk of melanoma," the authors note. "Moreover, the Nurses' Health Study reported no association between intake of vitamins A, C and E and melanoma risk in 162,000 women during more than 1.6 million person-years of follow-up."
“The results of the SUVIMAX study should be interpreted with caution,” they conclude.
http://www.lef.org/whatshot/2009_08.htm#findings-published-in-AMA-journal-call-into-question-study-linking-melanoma-to-antioxidants

Whole Grains Reduces Heart Disease 30 percent, Diabetes In Women

McClatchy-Tribune Information Services -- 08-19-09
A book could easily be written on the topic of how the consumption of whole grains protects us from a myriad of chronic diseases. However, in this post, I will touch upon how whole grains affect the course of the top three diseases of the greatest concern in America and the West; and also on how whole grains can greatly alleviate the difficult symptoms often associated with menopause for many women. Most people have a notion that they should consume some whole grain foods, but fail to realize the pivotal role of regular whole grain consumption is creating long-term health. As this topic is very extensive, I will deliberately stick to just the key points here -- points worth remembering on your way to preventing deadly chronic diseases pro-actively:
1. WHOLE GRAINS EQUAL LESS HEART DISEASE: Several studies have helped us to understand and confirm the connection between whole grain consumption and reduced rates of heart disease. Studies published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) and the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition (AJCN) in 1999 reported that women in the Nurses' Health Study who ate the most whole grain foods (an average of 2.5 servings a day), were 30 percent less likely to develop heart disease than women eating the fewest (about 1 serving a week). It is estimated that eating a bowl of breakfast cereal that contains about 5 grams of fiber cuts the chance of heart disease by about one-third. These results are ratified by other high quality epidemiologic studies as well.
2. REGULAR WHOLE GRAIN CONSUMPTION SIGNIFICANTLY REDUCES THE RISK OF DEVELOPING TYPE 2 DIABETES: Epidemiologic research unequivocally suggests that whole grain consumption is fundamental to keeping the body's blood sugar levels in the ideal range. Harvard's Nurses' Health Study as well as the Health Professionals Follow-Up Study confirmed that those who ate the most cereal fiber from grains (about 7.5 grams per day -- which translates to approximately a bowl of oatmeal and 2 slices of whole grain bread) were 30 percent less likely to develop Type 2 diabetes as compared to those who ate the least grain fiber (less than 2.5 grams per day). Conversely, the consumption of a combination of low cereal fiber and a high sugar load (from white bread, colas, white rice, etc.) more than doubled the risk of developing Type 2 diabetes.
3. WHOLE GRAINS HELP WARD OFF MANY CANCERS: Meta-analyses (several "pooled" analyses) of many epidemiologic studies suggest clearly that whole-grain consumption reduces the risk of developing several cancers including stomach, colon, mouth, gall-bladder, and ovarian cancer(s). The pathways through which whole grains protect against all these conditions are not fully understood, but research suggests that the many components of whole grains such as B-vitamins, phytoestrogens, fiber, etc. may all be involved in offering protection against several cancers.
4. WHOLE GRAINS CAN HELP ALLEVIATE DIFFICULT MENOPAUSAL SYMPTOMS: For most women, one of the central problems associated with menopause is the fluctuation in estrogen levels that occurs during this stage of life, and the simultaneous bone-loss that often occurs. Research suggests that fortification of the diet during this time with high quality calcium and magnesium rich foods can help blunt bone-loss, relieve symptoms such as head-aches, and also regulate blood pressure levels. The bran layer of many whole grains contains essential minerals such as calcium, magnesium, copper, selenium, and manganese -- all of which play crucial roles in maintaining metabolic and hormonal health. Women going through menopause should therefore pay especially close attention to the regular consumption of whole grains.
PUTTING IT INTO PRACTICE
The points made above ought to motivate us all to make a more concerted effort to include a variety of whole grains in our meals. But, old habits often die hard, and most Americans are hard-wired to eating refined foods. Here are 5 simple suggestions that will help you make a jump-start on improving your whole grain consumption:
1. THINK BREAKFAST: Always start the day with a whole-grain based breakfast. You can have a bowl of cold whole-grain cereal or a hot cereal made with a mixture of whole grains. Numerous varieties are now available in whole-foods stores. Look for oats that have been steel-cut (rather than instant or quick oats) and/or other cereal mixes that contain whole wheat, barley, oats, or whole rye meal.
2. SNACK ON WHOLE GRAIN-BASED FOODS: A small lunch or snack can easily consist of a whole-wheat pita pocket with roasted red pepper (or other) hummus, avocado slices, and fresh lettuce/watercress/other greens. Also, look for 100 percent whole grain crackers and try them with a little organic goat cheese or freshly made hummus -- Delicious and Nutritious!
3. TRY HIGH QUALITY, WHOLE GRAIN PASTA: Do you think that whole grain pasta tastes too heavy? Here are a couple of ideas -- Try whole-wheat thin spaghetti or angel-hair pasta rather than "regular" spaghetti, and occasionally, try some of the imported Italian brands. The thinner versions of the pasta lighten the taste of the whole wheat, and for now, there appears to be a broader selection of these foods in the imported brands.
4. LOOK FOR 100 percent WHOLE GRAIN BREADS: With more customers asking for whole foods, American grocery stores are adding newer varieties of whole grain breads regularly. However, it can take a while to decipher the labels on breads. Whenever possible, buy breads that contain 100 percent stone-ground whole wheat or other grain flours (as the first ingredient), and look for varieties that are NOT loaded with enriched flour.
5. STRETCH AND EXPLORE UNFAMILIAR GRAINS: There is a whole world of fabulous whole grains out there. Sadly, most individuals in the West are not familiar with them. Growing up in India, I was exceptionally fortunate to learn how to use what (at that time) seemed like a nearly infinite variety of grains that were used in unimaginably delicious ways. Consequently, one of my passions is to share that wealth of knowledge with my Western friends and audiences. As both a passionate chef as well as a research-scientist, I see this knowledge as being of a kind that simply must be shared.
I'll conclude this post with a question that I have been asked more often than I can remember: "I want to eat whole grains, but, what exists past whole wheat flour?" To begin with, a treasure of grains such as whole barley, millet, rye, an unending variety of lentil flours, and combinations of lentil and whole grain flours used for making uncommonly delicious flat breads. All of these foods provide an unparalleled bounty of taste and health. I am aware that many of these foods may be alien to most in the West, but this is a treasure worth learning about and tapping into. In both my upcoming book, as well as in future posts, I will write frequently on the subject of whole foods. So, stay tuned for fabulous, one-of-a-kind mouth-watering whole foods recipes from around the globe, as well as other ideas on how to use whole grains and whole foods for creating a lifetime of vibrant health.
Until then, Bon Appetit!
Desiree Jones, PhD is a Doctor of Epidemiology, who speaks and writes on cutting-edge issues pertaining to chronic disease prevention in the Western, and the newly Westernizing nations. She has worked collaboratively with researchers at The University of Texas, Baylor College of Medicine, and Harvard University. Her first book is expected to arrive on the market by Spring 2010, and is entitled, HALTING THE DEATH MARCH: Why America and The Westernized World are Dying from Heart Disease, Cancer, Diabetes, and Other Chronic Diseases, And How to Stop It. Dr. Jones is the Founder of the blog site, The Prevention Revolution. This site brings medical/nutritional research and informed opinion on critical health-care issues to individuals and physicians, as well as to corporations facing high health-care costs. Dr. Jones focuses on translating evidence-based research into real-life choices pertaining to food and lifestyle that can help prevent deadly chronic diseases, and create lasting health.
Pesticide Use Raises Prostate Cancer Risk In Farmers
Study: Elevated Cholesterol Leads To 66 percent Risk Of Alzheimer's
http://www.lef.org/news/LefDailyNews.htm?NewsID=8660&Section=Nutrition

Study finds promise in estrogen treatment for breast cancer

Agence France-Presse 08-19-09
Low doses of estrogen could help treat some forms of breast cancer, according to a clinical study published on Tuesday.
The findings, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, could lead to a partial reversal in how metastatic breast cancer is currently treated using medicines to lower estrogen levels.
"When estrogen-lowering drugs no longer control metastatic breast cancer, the opposite strategy might work," said a statement from the Washington University School of Medicine, which carried out the tests.
Matthew Ellis, an oncologist who was the lead author of the study, said around a third of the women who did not respond to standard treatment reacted well to the new regimen.
"Raising estrogen levels benefited 30 percent of women whose metastatic breast cancer no longer responded to standard anti-estrogen treatment," he said.
Side effects from raising estrogen levels could include headaches, bloating, breast tenderness, fluid retention, nausea and vomiting, but Ellis said side effects were limited in comparison to other treatments.
"We found that estrogen treatment stopped disease progression in many patients and was much better tolerated than chemotherapy would have been."
"Overall, we demonstrated clearly that the low dose was better tolerated than the high dose and was just as effective for controlling metastatic disease."
http://www.lef.org/news/LefDailyNews.htm?NewsID=8659&Section=Disease

German firm claims new omega-3 source found

Nutraingredients.com, 20-Aug-2009

German biotech firm, InterMed Discovery (IMD), has licensed a“microbial source” form of omega-3 it says offers an alternative to existing fish, algae and plant sources.
IMD, which normally licenses ingredients from its 20,000-strong database of bioactives to other firms such as its partner Cognis to carry out development work, has turned developer on this occasion after signing an undisclosed deal with the University of Saarland.
However it may be some time until commercial realisation was achieved as little lab work has been done into how the extract may be incorporated into various food, food supplement and pharmaceutical matrices.
“We hope to carry out this kind of work with potential partners,’’ IMD head of business development, Erik Metz, told NutraIngredients.com. “But what we do know is that this is a potent source of EPA (eicosapentaenoic acid) and DHA(docosahexaenoic acid). We will continue to work with the University of Saarlandto develop this ingredient.”
He said the cost of the extract was comparable to other omega-3 sources.
Microbial sources
The company was unwilling to reveal details about the microbial source, which it noted did not face the sustainably issues that are raised in relation to fish sources, although that industry points out that omega-3 oils from fish are actually a by-product of the fish feed industry – which they argue are sustainably sourced.
While not previously aware of microbial options, its potential was recognised by Professor Jack Winkler, an omega-3 expert and director of the Nutrition Policy Unit at London Metropolitan University.
“This extends the range of technical options for sustainable (non-fish based) omega-3s beyond those that have become public so far – fermented algae, normal algae and GM plants (soy and rapeseed),” he said, adding in regard to price.
“They mention intending to enter the food market with these new omega-3s, extending their functional ingredients business. None of the other sustainable sources that I know of are intending to do that, or are too costly to compete there. Which suggests this is a low cost mode of production.”
Partners
In March, 2008, IMD entered into an arrangement that gave fellow German supplier, Cognis, access to its natural compounds database that is derived from a host of plants as well as edible materials such fruits, vegetables and mushrooms.
Cognis and IMD have been working on about 10 projects to bring some of those bioactives to market, with a weight management schizandra (Chinese mock-braberry)-based option the most advanced.
IMD, created in a management buy-out from BayerHealthCare in 2006, has divided its bioactives database into three core areas: brain, cardiovascular and weight management.
It recently joined with a Malaysian herbal specialist, Biotropics Malaysia Berhad, to “investigate and commercialise” botanicals in the sub-tropical jungle there.
Omega-3 is best known for its cognitive and heart health benefits.
http://www.nutraingredients.com/Industry/German-firm-claims-new-omega-3-source-found

Omega-3, vitamin E mix shows potential for autistic speech

Nutraingredients.com, 19-Aug-2009

A combination of omega-3 fatty acids and vitamin E may lead to speech improvements in autistic children with verbal disorders, suggests a new study.
Verbal apraxia is a speech disorder common in autism, and an estimated 50 per cent of children with autism have apraxia. Furthermore, many thousands more are reported to have apraxia but are not autistic.
According to new research published in the journal Alternative Therapies in Health and Medicine, daily supplements of omega-3 and vitamin E were associated with improvements in speech, imitation, eye contact, and behaviour.
Claudia Morris from the Children’s Hospital and Research Center Oakland (CHRCO) and Marilyn Agin from the Saint Vincent Medical Center in New York recruited families with experiences of omega-3 fatty acid and vitamin E supplementation. The majority of families used doses of 800 IU of vitamin E, while the average omega-3 consumption was 280 to 840 mg DHA and 695 to 2,085mg EPA.
The ratios and dosages determined through the work with the study led to a patent for Dr Morris through the CHRCO (US patent # 2008/002216). The patented formulation is licensed exclusively to Illinois-based NourishLife from CHRCO.
Kate Bolton, VP of speech nutrients at NourishLife, told NutraIngredients: “The results of the study are significant in that 97 per cent of the participants with apraxia and/or on the autism spectrum reported dramatic improvements while taking a combination of omega-3 fatty acids and vitamin E.
“The study represents the largest summary of children with apraxia to date,” she added.
“Antidotal evidence had previously shown that omega-3 can help children with apraxia and those known as ‘late talkers’. The researchers discovered that they symptoms presented by children with apraxia mirror those of vitamin E deficiency,” said Bolton. “The addition of high dose vitamin E with omega-3 fatty acids is the breakthrough.”
Study details
The researchers recruited 187 children with verbal apraxia who had received vitamin E plus polyunsaturated fatty acid supplementation. They noted that verbal apraxia is not only a speech disorder but rather a complex syndrome that affects a person’s neurologic function.
A subgroup of children emerged, characterised by autism, sensory issues, low muscle tone, food allergy, coordination problems, and impaired gastrointestinal function.
The presence of multiple allergies and intestinal problems are associated with nutritional deficiencies including vitamin E, omega-3, and carnitine. Following supplementation, 181 families (97 per cent) reported “dramatic improvements in a number of areas”, said the researchers. These included speech, behaviour, eye contact, and other sensory issues.
“We characterize a novel apraxia phenotype that responds to polyunsaturated fatty acids and vitamin E,” wrote the researchers.
“Appropriate screening may identify a subgroup of children with a previously unrecognized syndrome of allergy, apraxia, and malabsorption who are responsive to nutritional interventions in addition to traditional speech and occupational therapy,” they added.
“Controlled trials in apraxia and autism spectrum disorders are warranted,”concluded Morris and Agin.
Bolton confirmed that work is indeed ongoing in this area, with the a clinical study and protocol designed to continue to understand the impact omega-3 and vitamin E have on autism and verbal apraxia, and to begin to determine the underlying mechanisms in verbal apraxia. However, funding for the study is yet to be secured, she said.
Source: Alternative Therapies in Health and Medicine
July/August 2009, Volume 15, Number 4, Pages 34-43
"Syndrome of allergy, apraxia, and malabsorption: Characterisation of a neurodevelopmental phenotype that responds to omega-3 and vitamin E supplementation"
Authors: C.R. Morris, M.C. Agin
http://www.nutraingredients.com/Research/Omega-3-vitamin-E-mix-shows-potential-for-autistic-speech

Scientists Help Explain Effects Of Ancient Chinese Herbal Formulas On Heart Health

ScienceDaily (Aug. 20, 2009) — New research at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston suggests that ancient Chinese herbal formulas used primarily for cardiovascular indications including heart disease may produce large amounts of artery-widening nitric oxide. Findings of the preclinical study by scientists in the university's Brown Foundation Institute of Molecular Medicine for the Prevention of Human Diseases (IMM) appear in the Sept. 15 print issue of the journal Free Radical Biology & Medicine.
Nitric oxide is crucial to the cardiovascular system because it signals the inner walls of blood vessels to relax, which facilitates the flow of blood through the heart and circulatory system. The messenger molecule also eliminates dangerous clots, lowers high blood pressure and reduces artery-clogging plaque formation.
The results from this study reveal that ancient Chinese herbal formulas "have profound nitric oxide bioactivity primarily through the enhancement of nitric oxide in the inner walls of blood vessels, but also through their ability to convert nitrite and nitrate into nitric oxide," said Nathan S. Bryan, Ph.D., the study's senior author and an IMM assistant professor.
Herbal formulas are a major component of traditional Chinese medicines (TCMs), which also include acupuncture and massage. "TCMs have provided leads to safe medications in cancer, cardiovascular disease and diabetes," said C. Thomas Caskey, M.D., IMM director and CEO. "The opportunity for Dr. Bryan's work is outstanding given that cardiac disease is the No. 1 cause of death in the United States."
In the study, researchers performed laboratory tests on DanShen, GuaLou and other herbs purchased at a Houston store to assess their ability to produce nitric oxide. Ancient Chinese herbal formulas used primarily for cardiovascular indications are made up of three to 25 herbs. The formulas can be administered as tablets, elixirs, soups and teas.
Most Chinese herbal formulas marketed in the United States are not considered drugs by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, said Yong-Jian Geng, M.D., Ph.D., study co-author and cardiology professor at The University of Texas Medical School at Houston. They are considered dietary supplements and are not regulated as strictly as drugs.
Scientists also tested the capacity of the store-bought TCMs to widen blood vessels in an animal model. "Each of the TCMs tested in the assays relaxed vessels to various degrees," the authors stated.
"Further studies should be considered in humans, particularly those with cardiac indications," Geng said. "Hopefully, we will have more data to report in the near future."
While fully integrated into the healthcare systems in some parts of Asia, ancient Chinese herbal formulas are often considered alternative medicines in Western nations. Part of the reason, according to Bryan, may be that until recently little was known about how they work.
"The next step is to identify the active components of the TCMs that are responsible for producing the NO. We are currently trying to isolate and identify the active component or components," Bryan said.
Yaoping Tang, M.D., an IMM postdoctoral fellow, was the lead author of the study titled "Nitric oxide bioactivity of traditional Chinese medicines used for cardiovascular indications." Also collaborating on the study was Harsha Garg, an IMM senior research assistant.
Bryan is the editor of a new book titled "Food, Nutrition and the Nitric Oxide Pathway: Biochemistry and Bioactivity" published by DesTech Publishing and works in the IMM Center for Cell Signaling directed by Ferid Murad, M.D., Ph.D., who won the 1998 Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine for his work with nitric oxide as a signaling molecule in the cardiovascular system. Bryan and Geng are on the faculty of The University of Texas Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences at Houston.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/08/090818182055.htm

Climate Change Could Deepen Poverty In Developing Countries, Study Finds

ScienceDaily (Aug. 20, 2009) — Urban workers could suffer most from climate change as the cost of food drives them into poverty, according to a new study that quantifies the effects of climate on the world's poor populations.
A team led by Purdue University researchers examined the potential economic influence of adverse climate events, such as heat waves, drought and heavy rains, on those in 16 developing countries. Urban workers in Bangladesh, Mexico and Zambia were found to be the most at risk.
"Extreme weather affects agricultural productivity and can raise the price of staple foods, such as grains, that are important to poor households in developing countries," said Noah Diffenbaugh, the associate professor of earth and atmospheric sciences and interim director of Purdue's Climate Change Research Center who co-led the study. "Studies have shown global warming will likely increase the frequency and intensity of heat waves, drought and floods in many areas. It is important to understand which socioeconomic groups and countries could see changes in poverty rates in order to make informed policy decisions."
The team used data from the late 20th century and projections for the late 21st century to develop a framework that examined extreme climate events, comparable shocks to grain production and the impact on the number of impoverished people in each country.
Thomas Hertel, a distinguished professor of agricultural economics and co-leader of the study, said that although urban workers only contribute modestly to total poverty rates in the sample countries, they are the most vulnerable group to changes in grains production.
"Food is a major expenditure for the poor and, while those who work in agriculture would have some benefit from higher grains prices, the urban poor would only get the negative effects," said Hertel, who also is executive director of Purdue's Center for Global Trade Analysis. "This is an important finding given that the United Nations projects a continuing shift in population concentrations from rural to urban areas in virtually all of these developing countries."
With nearly 1 billion of the world's poor living on less than $1 a day, extreme events can have a devastating impact, he said.
"Bangladesh, Mexico and Zambia showed the greatest percentage of the population entering poverty in the wake of extreme drought, with an additional 1.4 percent, 1.8 percent and 4.6 percent of their populations being impoverished by future climate extremes, respectively," Hertel said. "This translates to an additional 1.8 million people impoverished per country for Bangladesh and Mexico and an additional half million people in Zambia."
A paper detailing the work will be published in Thursday's (Aug. 20) issue of Environmental Research Letters. In addition to Diffenbaugh and Hertel, Syud Amer Ahmed, a recent Purdue graduate and a member of the development research group for The World Bank, co-authored the paper. The World Bank's Trust Fund for Environmentally and Socially Sustainable Development funded the research.
The team identified the maximum rainfall, drought and heat wave for the 30-year periods of 1971-2000 and 2071-2100 and then compared the maximums for the two time periods.
The global climate model experiments developed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, were used for the future projections of extreme events. The team used an IPCC scenario that has greenhouse gas emissions continuing to follow the current trend, Diffenbaugh said.
"The occurrence and magnitude of what are currently the 30-year-maximum values for wet, dry and hot extremes are projected to substantially increase for much of the world," he said. "Heat waves and drought in the Mediterranean showed a potential 2700 percent and 800 percent increase in occurrence, respectively, and extreme rainfall in Southeast Asia was projected to potentially increase by 900 percent."
In addition, Southeast Asia showed a projected 40 percent increase in the magnitude of the worst rainfall; central Africa showed a projected 1000 percent increase in the magnitude of the worst heat wave; and the Mediterranean showed a projected 60 percent increase in the worst drought.
A statistical analysis was used to determine grain productivity shocks that would correspond in magnitude to the climate extremes, and then the economic impact of the supply shock was determined. Future predicted extreme climate events were compared to historical agricultural productivity extremes in order to assess the likely impact on agricultural production, prices and wages. Because the projected changes in extreme rainfall and heat wave events were too large for the current model to accept, only the extreme drought events were incorporated into the economic projections, making the projected poverty impacts a conservative estimate, he said.
To assess the potential economic impact of a given change in wages and grains prices, the team used data from each country's household survey. The estimates of likely wage and price changes following an extreme climate event were obtained from a global trade model, called the Global Trade Analysis Project, or GTAP, which is maintained by Purdue's agricultural economics department.
Purdue's GTAP framework is supported by an international consortium of 27 national and international agencies and is used by a network of 6,500 researchers in 140 countries.
Large reductions in grains productivity due to extreme climate events are supported by historical data. In 1991 grains productivity in Malawi and Zambia declined by about 50 percent when southern Africa experienced a severe drought.
Diffenbaugh said this is an initial quantification of how poverty is tied to climate fluctuations, and the team is working to improve the modeling and analysis system in order to enable more comprehensive assessments of the link between climate volatility and poverty vulnerability.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/08/090820082101.htm

Whole Grain Cereals, Popcorn Rich In Antioxidants, Not Just Fiber, New Research Concludes

ScienceDaily (Aug. 19, 2009) — In a first-of-its kind study, scientists reported today at the 238th National Meeting of the American Chemical Society (ACS) that snack foods like popcorn and many popular breakfast cereals contain "surprisingly large" amounts of healthful antioxidant substances called "polyphenols."
Polyphenols are a major reason why fruits and vegetables — and foods like chocolate, wine, coffee, and tea — have become renowned for their potential role in reducing the risk of heart disease, cancer, and other diseases.
Until now, however, no one knew that commercial hot and cold whole grain cereals — regarded as healthful for their fiber content — and snack foods also were a source of polyphenols.
"Early researchers thought the fiber was the active ingredient for these benefits in whole grains, the reason why they may reduce the risk of cancer and coronary heart disease," said Joe Vinson, Ph.D., who headed the new study. "But recently, polyphenols emerged as potentially more important. Breakfast cereals, pasta, crackers, and salty snacks constitute over 66 percent of whole grain intake in the U.S. diet."
Vinson, a chemist at the University of Scranton in Pennsylvania, said "We found that, in fact, whole grain products have comparable antioxidants per gram to fruits and vegetables. This is the first study to examine total phenol antioxidants in breakfast cereals and snacks, whereas previous studies have measured free antioxidants in the products."
Polyphenols are a group of chemicals found in many fruits, vegetables, and other plants, such as berries, walnuts, olives, tea leaves and grapes. Known as antioxidants, they remove free radicals from the body. Free radicals are chemicals that have the potential to cause damage to cells and tissues in the body.
The whole grain cereal with the most antioxidants are made with wheat, with corn, oats and rice cereals following in descending order, according to Vinson. He also noted that raisin bran has the highest amount of antioxidants per serving, primarily due to the raisins.
Bran cereals made from wheat overall do not have more antioxidants than wheat cereals, though they do have more fiber, he said. In other findings, he said that whole grain flours are very high in antioxidants; whole grain snacks have slightly lower levels of antioxidants than cereals; of snacks, popcorn has the highest level of antioxidants; and there is a wide variation in the amount of antioxidants in each class of cold cereal.
Internal Funding for the study was from the University of Scranton.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/08/090818150011.htm

How Mercury Becomes Toxic In The Environment

ScienceDaily (Aug. 19, 2009) — Naturally occurring organic matter in water and sediment appears to play a key role in helping microbes convert tiny particles of mercury in the environment into a form that is dangerous to most living creatures.
This finding is important, say Duke University environmental engineers, because it could change the way mercury in the environment is measured and therefore regulated. This particularly harmful form of the element, known as methylmercury, is a potent toxin for nerve cells. When ingested by organisms, it is not excreted and builds up in tissues or organs.
In a series of laboratory experiments, Amrika Deonarine, a graduate student in civil and environmental engineering at Duke's Pratt School of Engineering, found that organic matter and chemical compounds containing sulfur – known as sulfides -- can readily bind to form mercury sulfide nanoparticles. Since they are more soluble than larger particles, these nanoparticles may be the precursors to a process known as methylation.
"When the organic material combines with the mercury, it prevents the particle from accumulating with other mercury particles and growing larger," said Deonarine, who presented the results of her analysis at the summer annual scientific sessions of the American Chemical Society (ACS) in Washington, D.C.
"Since the mercury remains in a nanoparticle size, it can easily collect on the surface of microbes where any mercury that dissolves can be taken in by the microbes," Deonarine said. "Without the organic matter, the mercury sulfide nanoparticles would grow too large and become insoluble, thus reducing the availability of mercury for microbial methylation."
It is while inside the microbe that the mercury is converted into the harmful methylmercury form, the researchers said.
These reactions can only take place in cold water environments with little to no oxygen, such as the zone of sediment just below the bottom of a body of water. Other such anaerobic environments can also be found in waste water and sewage treatment systems, the researchers said.
"The exposure rate of mercury in the U.S. is quite high," said Heileen Hsu-Kim, Duke assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering and senior member of the research team. "A recent epidemiological survey found that up 8 percent of women had mercury levels higher than national guidelines. Since humans are on top of the food chain, any mercury in our food accumulates in our body."
Because fish and shellfish have a natural tendency to store methylmercury in their organs, they are the leading source of mercury ingestion for humans. Mercury is extremely toxic and can lead to kidney dysfunctions, neurological disorders and even death. In particular, fetuses exposed to methylmercury can suffer from these same disorders as well as impaired learning abilities.
There are many ways mercury gets into the environment, with the primary sources being the combustion of coal, the refining of such metals as gold and other non-ferrous metals, and in the gases released during volcanic eruptions. The air-borne mercury from these sources eventually lands on lakes or ponds and can remain in the water or sediments.
"These initial laboratory findings could have far-reaching implications," Hsu-Kim said. "That these reactions can take places in anaerobic environments suggests that the old paradigm of testing for toxic metals in sediments may provide an incomplete picture of how much methylmercury is there."
The researchers plan to continue their studies with other types of organic matter and for longer periods of time.
For her presentation and paper, Deonarime was one of six recipients of the C. Ellen Gonter Environmental Chemistry Award, given annually to graduate students.
The research was supported by the federally funded Center for the Environmental Implications of NanoTechnology (CEINT), which is based at Duke, and the ACS's Petroleum Research fund.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/08/090818150020.htm

Low-income Kids Report First Sexual Intercourse At 12 Years Of Age In New National Study

ScienceDaily (Aug. 19, 2009) — As a new mother herself, Brenda Lohman admits to being shocked by the results of a new study she co-authored. It found that among nearly 1,000 low-income families in three major cities, one in four children between the ages of 11 and 16 reported having sex, with their first sexual intercourse experience occurring at the average age of 12.77.
"So if 12 years was the average age here, that meant that some kids were starting at 10 or younger," said Lohman, an Iowa State University associate professor of human development and family studies (HDFS). "A handful of kids reported having sex as early as 8 or 9. We know from our follow-up interviews that one boy who reported having sexual intercourse for the first time at age nine had fathered four children by the time he was 18."
"Those people who say that kids don't have sex at that young of age should think again," she said. "Definitely the age is the most shocking thing about this study."
Tina Jordahl, a former Iowa State HDFS and public policy graduate student who is now a market research specialist with Hospice of Central Iowa, collaborated with Lohman on the study. It analyzes data from the "Welfare, Children and Families: A Three-City Study" -- a six-year longitudinal investigation of low-income families living in Boston, Chicago and San Antonio. Their paper, titled "A biological analysis of risk and protective factors associated with early sexual intercourse of young adolescents," was posted online in the Children and Youth Services Review and will be published in an upcoming issue of the journal.
Interview data for the study was first collected in 1999 on youth between the ages of 10 and 14, and again in 2001. Lohman says she also has data collected in 2006 from the same subjects, who were between 16 and 20 by that time.
Boys having sex earlier, more often than girls
In the study, boys reported their first sexual intercourse at younger ages (averaging 12.48) than girls (13.16). Boys also had nearly 10 percent higher frequency of intercourse than girls and were also more likely to experience sexual debut (20 percent to 14 percent) between the two years when the first two waves of data were collected.
Recent national research has found that 13 percent of girls and 15 percent of boys have had sex by the time they're 16. Lohman says that means the rate of sex among her low-income sample is only slightly higher among the girls, but almost double among the boys
"The ages [of sexual debut] are a bit younger than the national samples, but not alarmingly so," she said.
African Americans also had 12 percent more early sexual intercourse than whites (29 to 17 percent respectively), although racial differences did not change the age of their first intercourse.
The authors report that periods of instability in family structure and welfare use serve as risk factors for early sexual activity. They found that additional maternal education -- beyond a high school level -- was found to inhibit some of that activity.
"That can be for multiple reasons," Lohman said. "It can be that mothers have better paying jobs and more stable home environment and they're less likely to be in stressful circumstances. It could also be that mothers then have greater cognitive capacities to sort of sit down and discuss the pros and cons of waiting to have sex until you're older."
For that reason, the researchers propose allotting public funding to increase maternal education as a way to reduce early sexual promiscuity among their children.
Juvenile deliquency increases early sexual activity
The study also found the youths' involvement in delinquent acts drastically increases the chances of early sexual activity.
Because of the gender differences in sexual debut, the authors also urge more gender-specific prevention programs that are implemented at earlier ages, especially among high risk populations.
"It may be that boys and girls, starting at younger ages, should have these programs that are designed separately by gender before they're moved back together over time," Lohman said. "And yes, they must start much, much younger than they do now. You have to start before those young kids -- 10 or even younger -- start becoming sexually active."
Lohman is currently working on research to determine the relationship between obesity and teen sexuality. She hopes to publish results from that study within the year.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/08/090817142855.htm

More Than One Third Of Homeowners In Foreclosure Suffer From Major Depression, Study Shows

ScienceDaily (Aug. 19, 2009) — The nation's home foreclosure epidemic may be taking its toll on Americans' health as well as their wallets. Nearly half of people studied while undergoing foreclosure reported depressive symptoms, and 37 percent met screening criteria for major depression, according to new University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine research published online this week in the American Journal of Public Health. Many also reported an inability to afford prescription drugs, and skipping meals. The authors say their findings should serve as a call for policy makers to tie health interventions into their response to the nation's ongoing housing crisis.
"The foreclosure crisis is also a health crisis," says lead author Craig E. Pollack, MD, MHS, who conducted the research while working as an internist and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Clinical Scholar at Penn. "We need to do more to ensure that if people lose their homes, they don't also lose their health."
In addition to the high number of participants reporting depression symptoms, the study of 250 Philadelphia homeowners undergoing foreclosure also shed light on other health care problems that may be spurred by difficulties keeping up with housing costs. The study participants were recruited with the Consumer Credit Counseling Service of Delaware Valley, a non-profit, U.S. Housing and Urban Development-approved mortgage counselor. The authors found that compared to a sample of residents in the general public, those in foreclosure were more likely to be uninsured (22 percent compared to 8 percent), though similar health problems were seen among both the insured and uninsured. Nearly 60 percent reported that they had skipped or delayed meals because they couldn't afford food, and people undergoing foreclosure were also more likely to have forgone filling a prescription because of the expense during the preceding year (48 percent vs. 15 percent). The study also revealed that for 9 percent of respondents, a medical condition in their family was the primary reason for the home foreclosure, and more than a quarter of those surveyed said they had significant unpaid medical bills.
Because the financial hardships of foreclosure may lead homeowners to cut back on health care spending that they consider "discretionary" – preventive care visits, healthy foods or drugs for chronic conditions like hypertension – Pollack theorizes that the prolonged period of time that most homeowners spend in foreclosure could have a serious effect on health outcomes. In addition, the stress of undergoing foreclosure may exacerbate health-undermining behaviors. Among the participants who smoke, for instance, 65 percent said they had been smoking more since they received notice of foreclosure.
The "exceptionally high" rate of depressive symptoms found in the study is especially concerning, Pollack says, compared to previous research showing that only about 12.8 percent of people living in poverty meet criteria for major depressive disorder.
"When people purchase homes, they are buying a piece of the American Dream," says co-author Julia Lynch, PhD, the Janice and Julian Bers Assistant Professor in the Social Sciences in Penn's department of political science. "Losing a home can be especially devastating because it means the loss of this dream. When this happens, there is reason to worry not only about the health of the home owner but also that of family members and the broader community they live in."
The authors say that the data collected in Philadelphia may be only the tip of the iceberg when compared to other cities that have experienced a sharp spike in housing foreclosures. Although foreclosure filings nearly doubled between 2007 and 2008 in Philadelphia, other large cities have higher unemployment and foreclosure rates.
To combat the health problems revealed in the study, Pollack and Lynch suggest that health care workers and mortgage counseling agencies coordinate their efforts to help people at risk of foreclosure access both medical and housing help. Doctors, they suggest, should ask their patients about their housing situation and steer them towards mortgage relief resources. Mortgage counselors, meanwhile, can provide information about how to access safety net health care, enroll in public insurance programs like SCHIP or Medicaid, or apply for nutritional assistance programs for pregnant and nursing mothers and their children. The implications for policy, too, are vast.
"This study raises the stakes of the housing crisis," Pollack says. "The policy push to get people into mortgage counseling should be combined with health outreach in order to fully help people during this tremendously difficult period in their lives."
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/08/090818182018.htm

Plastics In Oceans Decompose, Release Hazardous Chemicals, Surprising New Study Says

ScienceDaily (Aug. 19, 2009) — In the first study to look at what happens over the years to the billions of pounds of plastic waste floating in the world's oceans, scientists are reporting that plastics — reputed to be virtually indestructible — decompose with surprising speed and release potentially toxic substances into the water.
Reporting at the 238th National Meeting of the American Chemical Society (ACS), the researchers termed the discovery "surprising." Scientists always believed that plastics in the oceans were unsightly, but a hazard mainly to marine animals that eat or become ensnared in plastic objects.
"Plastics in daily use are generally assumed to be quite stable," said study lead researcher Katsuhiko Saido, Ph.D. "We found that plastic in the ocean actually decomposes as it is exposed to the rain and sun and other environmental conditions, giving rise to yet another source of global contamination that will continue into the future."
He said that polystyrene begins to decompose within one year, releasing components that are detectable in the parts-per-million range. Those chemicals also decompose in the open water and inside marine life. However, the volume of plastics in the ocean is increasing, so that decomposition products remain a potential problem.
Each year as much as 150,000 tons of plastic debris, most notably Styrofoam, wash up on the shores of Japan alone, Saido said. Vast expanses of waste, consisting mainly of plastic, float elsewhere in the oceans. The so-called Great Pacific Garbage Patch between California and Hawaii was twice the size of Texas and mainly plastic waste.
Saido, a chemist with the College of Pharmacy, Nihon University, Chiba, Japan, said his team found that when plastic decomposes it releases potentially toxic bisphenol A (BPA) and PS oligomer into the water, causing additional pollution. Plastics usually do not break down in an animal's body after being eaten. However, the substances released from decomposing plastic are absorbed and could have adverse effects. BPA and PS oligomer are sources of concern because they can disrupt the functioning of hormones in animals and can seriously affect reproductive systems.
Some studies suggest that low-level exposure to BPA released from certain plastic containers and the linings of cans may have adverse health effects.
Saido described a new method to simulate the breakdown of plastic products at low temperatures, such as those found in the oceans. The process involves modeling plastic decomposition at room temperature, removing heat from the plastic and then using a liquid to extract the BPA and PS oligomer. Typically, he said, Styrofoam is crushed into pieces in the ocean and finding these is no problem. But when the study team was able to degrade the plastic, it discovered that three new compounds not found in nature formed. They are styrene monomer (SM), styrene dimer (SD) and styrene trimer (ST). SM is a known carcinogen and SD and ST are suspected in causing cancer. BPA ands PS oligomer are not found naturally and, therefore, must have been created through the decomposition of the plastic, he said. Trimer yields SM and SD when it decomposes from heat, so trimer also threatens living creatures.
Funding for Saido's research came from Nihon University.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/08/090819234651.htm

Friendly Gut Bacteria Lend A Hand To Fight Infection, Study Suggests

ScienceDaily (Aug. 19, 2009) — Immunology researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center have found that bacteria present in the human gut help initiate the body's defense mechanisms against Toxoplasma gondii, the parasite responsible for toxoplasmosis.
Toxoplasmosis is generally a mild infection, but it can have serious and potentially fatal effects in pregnant women, their fetuses and others with weakened immune systems.
In mice, T gondii directly activates a specific immune protein in the host, called toll-like receptor 11 (TLR-11), which helps control the animals' immune response to the parasite. Humans, however, don't have an active form of this receptor. Exactly how the body senses T gondii has remained unclear because the parasite doesn't activate any of the functioning toll-like receptors that humans do possess.
In a new study appearing online and in the Aug. 20 issue of Cell Host & Microbe, researchers at UT Southwestern suggest that instead of activating toll-like receptors directly, T gondii's first interaction in the human gut is with the helpful bacteria that live inside us. Those bacteria then release signaling molecules, alerting the human host to the invader.
"While this is very early data, our results suggest that looking at the bacteria present in each patient's gut could help physicians understand their susceptibility to infectious diseases," said Dr. Felix Yarovinsky, assistant professor of immunology at UT Southwestern and senior author of the paper. "It also suggests the possibility of developing novel probiotic strategies for treating parasitic infections such as toxoplasmosis and cryptosporidiosis, a related disease caused by the parasite Cryptosporidium."
T gondii affects more than 1 billion people worldwide. The protozoan parasite can infect most warm-blooded animals, but the primary host is the house cat. Animals are generally infected with T gondii by ingesting contaminated meat, water or the feces of a cat that has recently been infected; however, the parasite also can be passed from mother to fetus.
Because toxoplasmosis is passed to humans through contaminated cat feces, pregnant women are encouraged to keep all house cats indoors and recruit someone who is not pregnant to clean the litter box daily. Once a person is infected, the parasite penetrates the intestine and spreads throughout all organs.
The researchers studied mice in which TLR-11 had been genetically eliminated. This mimics the human immune response to T gondii. They then infected the TRL-11-deficient mice with T gondii both orally and systemically by injection.
Even though the mice lacked their normal mechanism for fighting infection, they nonetheless mounted an attack against T gondii. The researchers found that the commensal – or good – bacteria in the gut activated their immune system, thereby inducing various inflammatory responses against the invading pathogen. In humans, he said, it is those helpful bacteria that send activating signals to the three toll-like receptors that are functional, inducing various inflammatory responses against invading pathogens like T gondii.
"This seems to be the first example of indirect pathogen recognition in vivo where activation of the immune system depends on indirect rather than direct sensing of a pathogen," Dr. Yarovinsky said.
The problem, Dr. Yarovinsky said, is that TLR-11 appears to cause more harm than good. Though the mice lacking the receptor – but with commensal bacteria – were able to mount enough signaling proteins to defeat the parasite, those with the receptor activated too many signaling proteins and developed severe inflammation in their small intestines. When infected with higher doses of T gondii, the mice with TLR-11 also died in much greater numbers because of the increased inflammatory response.
"We speculate that because commensal bacteria co-evolved with the host, they must have found this fine balance to induce the sufficient stimulatory effects of the immune system without causing illness or death," Dr. Yarovinsky said. "The fact that commensal bacteria vary dramatically from person to person might explain why therapeutic outcomes vary so much."
The next step, Dr. Yarovinsky said, is to determine whether particular species of commensal bacteria are more beneficial than others.
Other UT Southwestern researchers involved in the study were Alicia Benson, lead author and research assistant in immunology; Reed Pifer, research assistant in immunology; Cassie Behrendt, research technician for the Howard Hughes Medical Institute; and Dr. Lora Hooper, assistant professor of immunology and microbiology and an investigator for the Howard Hughes Medical Institute at UT Southwestern.
The work was supported by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/08/090819123937.htm

Farmed Fish Could Give Humans Mad Cow Disease

S. L. Baker, NaturalNews.com  August 20, 2009 

(NaturalNews) There is probably no illness that has more terrifying symptoms, or a more ghastly outcome, than variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD) -- best known as mad cow disease. Abnormal proteins called prions found in brain tissue of cows suffering from bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) can cause vCJD in humans who eat meat from the animals. These mad cow disease-causing prions can literally result in people losing their minds because the infectious particles eat away at the brain, leaving tiny sponge-like holes. There is no treatment available and death always follows.

With government regulations notoriously lax when it comes to testing for BSE in the food supply, many people have given up eating beef in hopes of protecting themselves from exposure to mad cow disease. But an article just published in the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease suggests there may be another, ticking time bomb source of vCJD -- farmed fish.

In a paper entitled Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy and Aquaculture, University of Kentucky neurologist Robert P. Friedland and colleagues point out that fish consumption is widely recommended because omega-3 fatty acids are known to reduce the risks of cardiovascular and Alzheimer's diseases. However, the scientists have doubts that the health benefits of farmed fish outweigh a potentially deadly danger. "We are concerned that consumption of farmed fish may provide a means of transmission of infectious prions from cows with bovine spongiform encephalopathy to humans, causing variant Creutzfeldt Jakob disease," they stated.

Dr. Friedland and his team point out that farmed fish are fed byproducts rendered from cows -- a totally unnatural source of food for fish. The risk of transmission of mad cow disease to humans who eat farmed fish would seem to be slim because there are often barriers between species that help prevent infections. But, according to the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease article, there are several reasons to be concerned about fish spreading mad cow to humans. 

First, fish could be carriers of the disease from eating infected meat products, even though the fish themselves are not obviously infected or sick. In addition, it is possible that eating prion-infected cow parts could result in fish experiencing pathological changes that permit the prion infection to be transmitted between the two species. Based on these worrisome possibilities, the scientists are calling for government regulators to ban feeding cow meat or bone meal to fish until this common practice can be shown to be safe.

"We have not proven that it's possible for fish to transmit the disease to humans. Still, we believe that out of reasonable caution for public health, the practice of feeding rendered cows to fish should be prohibited. Fish do very well in the seas without eating cows," Friedland said in an interview with the Kentucky Post newspaper. 

"The fact that no cases of Creutzfeldt Jakob disease have been linked to eating farmed fish does not assure that feeding rendered cow parts to fish is safe. The incubation period of these diseases may last for decades, which makes the association between feeding practices and infection difficult. Enhanced safeguards need to be put in place to protect the public," Friedland stated. 
http://www.naturalnews.com/026886_disease_farmed_fish_mad_cow.html

Eating Curry Fights Dementia

David Gutierrez, NaturalNews.com  August 20, 2009 

(NaturalNews) Regular consumption of curry could reduce the risk of Alzheimer's disease and other forms of dementia, according to a study conducted by researchers from Duke University and presented at the annual meeting of the Royal College of Psychiatrists.

"If you have a good diet and take plenty of exercise, eating curry regularly could help prevent dementia," researcher Murali Doraiswamy said.

Researchers conducted experiments on the effects of curcumin, a biologically active ingredient of the essential curry spice turmeric.

"There is very solid evidence that curcumin binds to plaques, and basic research on animals engineered to produce human amyloid plaques has shown benefits," Doraiswamy said. "You can modify a mouse so that at about 12 months its brain is riddled with plaques. If you feed this rat a curcumin-rich diet, it dissolves these plaques. The same diet prevented younger mice from forming new plaques."

Amyloid plaques and nerve fiber tangles are thought to be among the causative agents of the brain damage that produces the symptoms of dementia.

A clinical trial is currently underway at the University of California-Los Angeles to see if curcumin has the same benefits in human Alzheimer's patients as in mice. According to Doraiswamy, the evidence suggests that human beings would need to eat two to three meals of curry per week to lower their risk of dementia. 

Because it would take more than 100 grams of curry powder to get enough curcumin to count as a clinical dose, scientists are exploring the possibility of developing a curcumin pill.

Doraiswamy warned, however, that even consuming massive amounts of curcumin could not compensate for a bad diet and sedentary lifestyle, two of the biggest risk factors for Alzheimer's disease.

Previous research has shown that curcumin also improves the symptoms of cancer and arthritis, and may help suppress the growth of body fat.
http://www.naturalnews.com/026884_curry_curcumin_dementia.html

Top Ten Natural Ways to Remove Heavy Metals

Kirk Patrick, NaturalNews.com  August 20, 2009 

(NaturalNews) Toxic heavy metals such as aluminum, arsenic, cadmium, lead, mercury and uranium are pervasive in much of the environment. While it may not be possible to completely avoid exposure there are many safe, organic and affordable products that help detoxify and eliminate these toxins from the body. This article will provide ten such examples.

1) Bentonite (Clay) - Aluminium Phyllosilicate (Montmorillonite)
Bentonite clay is a form of volcanic ash that has the ability to physically remove from the body up to 25 times its weight in impurities through a process called adsorbtion. Bentonite has laxative properties and contains high levels of iron, magnesium and silicon. Available in two forms (sodium and calcium) bentonite clay is used in cement, ceramics, acne medication, facial clay, cat litter and to clarify wine. Higher grades of clay are safe for ingestion while lower grades are for external use only and thus are of questionable benefit.

2) Bladderwrack (Sea vegetable) - Fucus vesiculosus (Fucaceae)
Bladderwrack is a type of brown seaweed found in both the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. The stem is used medicinally while the thallas (air filled pods) help the algae float. Containing the active components iodine, fucoidan, alginic acid and phenols in varying amounts based on the water where it grew, bladderwrack is used to relieve heartburn and to stimulate both the immune system and thyroid. Bladderwrack has antibacterial and anti-inflammatory properties.

3) Blue Green Algae (Cyanobacteria) - Anabaena sphaerica (Cyanophata)
Blue green algae such as Chlorella contain chlorophyll, an antioxidant and deep green pigment. Bacteria such as Fecal Coliform cannot coexist with chlorophyll, which helps keep fresh water clear. Algae not only contain nearly every required vitamin and mineral, but also have the effect of increasing oxygen while reducing nitrogen and carbon. Chlorella appears to bind to heavy metals to both detoxify and remove them. Studies in Japan following the nuclear disasters at Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 showed that 8 grams of Chlorella daily caused a five-fold increase in the amounts of uranium, lead and cadmium that were eliminated.

4) Burdock (Root) - Arctium lappa (Compositae)
A potent blood purifier, burdock root removes heavy metals such as mercury along with other toxins. Containing up to 45% inulin along with arctiopicrin, arctiin, tannins and volatile oil, burdock is used to treat skin conditions such as acne. Burdock helps to purify the liver and is used as a natural cancer treatment. Burdock has antibacterial, anti-fungal and anti-tumor properties.

5) Cilantro (Leaf and stem) - Coriandrum Sativum (Umbelliferae)
Cilantro contains the antioxidants camphor, carvone, elemol, geraniol and limonene. A natural deodorizer, Cilantro relieves nausea, indigestion and bloating. Consuming cilantro (the seeds of which are the spice Coriander) helps reduce cholesterol and blood sugar levels. Cilantro kills Salmonella and removes heavy metals such as mercury from the body. Cilantro has anti-inflammatory and antibacterial properties and can be easily grown in the home garden.

6) Garlic (Clove) - Allium Sativum (Liliaceae)
Garlic contains the antioxidant allicin, which is formed from alliin and allinase when the cloves are crushed. Garlic helps lower blood pressure and cholesterol while cleansing the liver. Offering unique health benefits when consumed in raw versus cooked or aged, Garlic has antiviral, antibacterial, antimicrobial and antifungal properties.

7) Glutathione (GSH)
Glutathione is a type of amino acid chain called a tripeptide. Glutathione modulates the order of cell life, a process called homeostasis. Glutathione is essential for handling environmental toxins as it detoxifies carcinogens (in particular arsenic) and helps the body to remove heavy metals such as cadmium, iron and mercury. This helps the metabolism and immune system by removing dead weight. GSH has antioxidant properties.

8) Onion (Bulb) - Allium Cepa (Liliaceae)
Onion contains the antioxidant quercetin. Onion relieves allergy symptoms and congestion along with helping reduce cholesterol. Onion can treat and prevent cataracts, atherosclerosis and coronary heart disease and helps remove heavy metals from the body. Onion has antimicrobial properties.

9) Selenium (Mineral)
Selenium is an essential trace mineral that functions as an antioxidant and promotes a healthy immune system. Required in remarkably small amounts (the RDA is measured in the millionths of a gram), selenium is highly toxic in larger amounts. Selenium has strong anti-cancer effects and is known to help detoxify the body and remove heavy metals including mercury.

10) Zeolite (Mineral)
Zeolite is a natural combination of volcanic ash and sea water. With a honeycomb-like structure it forms (teeny) tiny cage-like structures that physically trap heavy metals without removing critical minerals. Animal studies show zeolite to actually improve overall nutrition. A patented process purifies zeolite (since it is a heavy metal magnet it is already 'full' when found naturally). Purified zeolite has been shown to help prevent and reverse the growth of cancer cells. While it seems promising, it appears that more independent studies on zeolite are needed as most of the research is published on "Tribute to Zeolite" style web sites that enshrine the product.
http://www.naturalnews.com/026885_zeolite_heavy_metals_cilantro.html

DNA Evidence Can Be Fabricated, Scientists Show

NEW YORK TIMES, August 18, 2009
Scientists in Israel have demonstrated that it is possible to fabricate DNA evidence, undermining the credibility of what has been considered the gold standard of proof in criminal cases.
The scientists fabricated blood and saliva samples containing DNA from a person other than the donor of the blood and saliva. They also showed that if they had access to a DNA profile in a database, they could construct a sample of DNA to match that profile without obtaining any tissue from that person.
“You can just engineer a crime scene,” said Dan Frumkin, lead author of the paper, which has been published online by the journal Forensic Science International: Genetics. “Any biology undergraduate could perform this.”
Dr. Frumkin is a founder of Nucleix, a company based in Tel Aviv that has developed a test to distinguish real DNA samples from fake ones that it hopes to sell to forensics laboratories.
The planting of fabricated DNA evidence at a crime scene is only one implication of the findings. A potential invasion of personal privacy is another.
Using some of the same techniques, it may be possible to scavenge anyone’s DNA from a discarded drinking cup or cigarette butt and turn it into a saliva sample that could be submitted to a genetic testing company that measures ancestry or the risk of getting various diseases. Celebrities might have to fear “genetic paparazzi,” said Gail H. Javitt of the Genetics and Public Policy Center at Johns Hopkins University.
Tania Simoncelli, science adviser to the American Civil Liberties Union, said the findings were worrisome.
“DNA is a lot easier to plant at a crime scene than fingerprints,” she said. “We’re creating a criminal justice system that is increasingly relying on this technology.”
John M. Butler, leader of the human identity testing project at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, said he was “impressed at how well they were able to fabricate the fake DNA profiles.” However, he added, “I think your average criminal wouldn’t be able to do something like that.”
The scientists fabricated DNA samples two ways. One required a real, if tiny, DNA sample, perhaps from a strand of hair or drinking cup. They amplified the tiny sample into a large quantity of DNA using a standard technique called whole genome amplification.
Of course, a drinking cup or piece of hair might itself be left at a crime scene to frame someone, but blood or saliva may be more believable.
The authors of the paper took blood from a woman and centrifuged it to remove the white cells, which contain DNA. To the remaining red cells they added DNA that had been amplified from a man’s hair.
Since red cells do not contain DNA, all of the genetic material in the blood sample was from the man. The authors sent it to a leading American forensics laboratory, which analyzed it as if it were a normal sample of a man’s blood.
The other technique relied on DNA profiles, stored in law enforcement databases as a series of numbers and letters corresponding to variations at 13 spots in a person’s genome.
From a pooled sample of many people’s DNA, the scientists cloned tiny DNA snippets representing the common variants at each spot, creating a library of such snippets. To prepare a DNA sample matching any profile, they just mixed the proper snippets together. They said that a library of 425 different DNA snippets would be enough to cover every conceivable profile.
Nucleix’s test to tell if a sample has been fabricated relies on the fact that amplified DNA — which would be used in either deception — is not methylated, meaning it lacks certain molecules that are attached to the DNA at specific points, usually to inactivate genes.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/18/science/18dna.html?_r=2

Mercury-tainted fish found widely in U.S. streams

REUTERS, Wed Aug 19, 2009
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Scientists have detected mercury contamination in every one of hundreds of fish sampled from 291 freshwater streams, according to a U.S. government study released on Wednesday.
More than a quarter of those fish contained concentrations of mercury exceeding levels set by the Environmental Protection Agency for the protection of people who eat average amounts of fish, the U.S. Geological Survey report said.
More than two-thirds exceeded the EPA-set level of concern for fish-eating mammals.
"This study shows just how widespread mercury pollution has become in our air, watersheds, and many of our fish in freshwater streams," Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said in a statement. The USGS is part of the Interior Department.
The neurotoxin enters the environment chiefly as an air pollutant spewed into the atmosphere by industrial emissions, then falls back to the surface in precipitation and particulate matter carried over long distances.
The main source of atmospheric mercury, according to the EPA, is coal-fired power plants.
Conducted from 1998 through 2005, the USGS study is the first comprehensive survey of mercury contamination in the water, sediments and fish of rivers and creeks throughout the United States.
Most previous studies have focused on lakes, reservoirs and wetlands. Mercury contamination in ocean species such as tuna has also received widespread attention.
'BLACKWATER STREAMS'
Some of the highest levels of mercury in the latest study were found in the coastal "blackwater" streams of North and South Carolina, Georgia, Florida and Louisiana -- relatively undeveloped areas marked by abundant pine forests and wooded wetlands.
USGS hydrologist Barbara Scudder said those characteristics somehow enhance the conversion of mercury from its inorganic form in the atmosphere to a more toxic organic form, methylmercury, which accounts for at least 95 percent of the mercury found in fish.
"Just as there are members of the human population, such as children and developing babies, that are sensitive to the mercury that they get, there are some ecosystems that are also more susceptible to producing methylmercury," she said.
High concentrations also were found in some streams in the West fed by areas where mining had taken place, Scudder said.
As with many pollutants, mercury concentrates as it moves up the food chain, from algae, to insects to small fish and larger predators. The main source of mercury poisoning in humans is from eating fish and shellfish.
Scudder said researchers typically sampled about five fish from each of the 291 streams surveyed. They focused on bigger species such as largemouth bass because they are at the top of the in-stream food chain.
She suggested that people concerned about mercury contamination in stream-caught fish should eat more of the smaller pan species, such as perch, bluegill or crappie.
The EPA said this year that it intends to issue new rules under the Clean Air Act to control air emissions of mercury from coal-fired power plants.
http://www.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUSTRE57J01720090820

White food reduces resistance to Swine flu

TIMES OF INDIA  20 August 2009
Low immunity food items and diminishing proportions of turmeric in daily consumption especially in junk eatables, makes one more vulnerable to Swine-Flu like diseases, according to Ayurveda proponents. 

"Modern eating habits reduces our power to fight back the virus as items like Pizza and other fastfoods don't contain even a pinch of turmeric and increasing intake of 'white food' is worrisome as it does not help to boost the immunity," Ayurveda expert and faculty with Gomantak Ayurveda Mahavidyalaya and Research centre, Dr Nilesh Korde told PTI. 

"Turmeric, an ancient spice with medicinal properties, strengthens the immunity but the amount of turmeric in our diets is lessening which is a cause of concern," he said. 

Creepers like gulvel, which is abundantly found in our backyard can be used to avoid getting affected with Swine Flu, Korde said adding basic home remedies, which have been practiced since ages can help to curb the further spread of the disease. 

Goa already has 14 confirmed Swine Flu patients and the upcoming Ganesh Chaturthi festival has triggered fears of possible spread of H1N1 virus during the series of public functions lined up for the celebrations. 

The spread of Swine Flu in nearby Pune and Mumbai has increased the concern as many Goans working or studying in these metros would be back home for the festival.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/life-style/health-fitness/health/White-food-reduces-resistance-to-Swine-flu/articleshow/4914291.cms

Lung damage from inhaling nanoparticles

TIMES OF INDIA, 19 August 2009
A new study, which analyzed seven Chinese factory workers developing severe lung damage from inhaling nanoparticles, has triggered off debate over the environmental-health effects of nanotechnology. 

According to a report in Nature News, the study claims to be the first to document cases of ill health caused by nanoparticles in humans. 

“The study raises the bar for doing appropriate research as fast as possible to find out where the dangers might lie when working with nanomaterials,” said Andrew Maynard, a nanotechnology expert at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington DC. 

The study described seven women, aged 18–47 years, who worked in an unidentified printing factory in China. Two of them later died. 

They all had pleural granulomas — ball-like collections of immune cells in the lining of the lung that form when the immune system is unable to remove a foreign body. 

They also had excessive, discoloured fluid in the lung lining. Particles around 30 nanometres in diameter were found in lung fluid and tissue. 

According to the study, the symptoms were caused by inhaling fumes produced when the workers heated polystyrene boards to 75–100 degrees Celsius. 

The boards had previously been sprayed with a ‘paste material’ made from a plastic identified as a polyacrylate ester. 

The workroom, of around 70 square metres, had one door and no windows. The ventilation unit had broken down five months before symptoms started to manifest, and the door had been kept closed to keep the room warm. 

The workers wore cotton gauze masks only on an “occasional basis”. 

Electron microscopy found nanoparticles around 30 nanometres in diameter in the paste and in dust particles that had collected at the inlet of the broken ventilation unit. 

“It is obvious the disease is not due to microparticles or vapours, because the pulmonary epithelial cells are full of nanoparticles,” said lead author Yuguo Song, a clinical toxicologist at Beijing Chaoyang Hospital. 

Maynard said that the symptoms seen in the patients are “similar” to those seen in animals exposed to nanoparticles. 

He added that damage to the areas surrounding the lungs suggests that larger particles are not to blame, as these tend to be constrained within the lungs
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/life-style/health-fitness/health/Lung-damage-from-inhaling-nanoparticles/articleshow/4911559.cms

Tai Chi Master Hoping His "Moving Medication" Cuts Health-care Costs

The Kansas City Star, Mo. 08-17-09
KANSAS CITY, Mo. - Bill Douglas has two words for a country desperate to cut its skyrocketing health care costs. Tai chi. He's not kidding.
"If you look at a Kaiser Permanente study that says that 70 percent of illnesses are caused by stress, you're talking about a potential savings of trillions of dollars, year after year if we teach our citizens effective stress-management techniques on a massive scale."
For decades Douglas has believed that the regular practice of the Chinese martial art, meant to unblock the flow of energy though the body, can be used to treat and even prevent a wide range of illnesses.
The medical world is beginning to agree with him.
In a few weeks, Douglas will give a presentation to the National Institutes of Health focusing on tai chi as a modern health solution, the first ever. And thanks to what he calls a "groundbreaking tectonic shift in health care," he's taking some persuasive ammunition with him: a stamp of approval from Harvard Medical School.
The May 2009 Harvard Health Publication said that tai chi, often described as moving meditation, should more aptly be called moving medication.
Douglas is the 52-year-old tai chi instructor who started World Tai Chi Day 11 years ago in Kansas City, Mo.; the celebration is now observed in more than 65 countries. He has written the country's No. 1 selling book on the exercise, "The Complete Idiot's Guide to Tai Chi." He teaches a tai chi class at the Landon Center on Aging at KU Medical Center and has been a national source on the ancient art for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and Reader's Digest.
"There is growing evidence that this mind-body practice ... has value in treating or preventing many health problems," it said. "And you can get started even if you aren't in top shape, or the best of health."
The Harvard publication included the latest research on how tai chi could benefit patients with arthritis, breast cancer, heart disease, hypertension, Parkinson's disease, stroke, even sleep problems and low bone density.
"This is big," Douglas said. "It's like riding a tsunami wave into Washington, D.C."
Douglas thinks tai chi should be taught in hospitals, senior centers, even public schools. He's working on a grant to take tai chi classes to seniors around the city.
His students have felt the benefits.
Josephine Hicks, 57, of Kansas City, Mo., says tai chi has greatly reduced her pain.
"I've had arthritis in my knees and shoulders, and it has helped me be able to move easier," she said.
Nan Bowers of Shawnee, Kan., is also a tai chi fan.
"It's wonderful," she said. "I'm 82 years old, and it's helped me with balance and breathing. It just makes me feel relaxed. When Bill was giving the lesson it was almost like I was floating above myself looking down. It was just that I was in so much comfort."
There are other benefits. One study showed tai chi could boost immune system resistance to viral infection by 50 percent and improve sleep quality.
"Everything goes back to the fact that we are accumulating stress in our lives," Douglas said. "Instead of trying to treat the sick leaves on my tree, I decided to go to the root - the stress - and treat that."
For Douglas the struggle to get tai chi's full potential recognized is a personal one. He remembers when doctors dismissed it and remembers his mother and father, who both died in their early 50s from stress-related heart attacks. He plans to avoid a similar fate.
He tried to share tai chi with his parents, but there was no validation of its effectiveness at the time, and they didn't stick with it.
Douglas gave his mother a book on Chinese philosophy a day before she went in for a balloon angioplasty.
"Apparently she had a premonition of her death because after she passed away in surgery my sister found the book I had loaned her and there was a note in it that said, 'I wish I could go back a few years and learn the arts of relaxation junior had tried to teach me. I so would have loved to see my grandchildren grow up.'
"That note has steeled me to take tai chi into the halls of medical power when some people were kind of laughing at it."
Douglas began doing tai chi 30 years ago.
"I was going through a lot of what people are going through today - job changes, job stress and insomnia," he said. "I was feeling overwhelmed. Today on all levels of our life we are being pushed through faster and faster change, and that change is stressful - even good change."
Tai chi helps him cope.
"What tai chi is designed to do is to cleanse all the stress static out of the mind, the heart and the body," he said.
Douglas says he has found his peace and his power and has taught it to as many people as he can. Now he wants to make sure the medical community understands the full benefits of the ancient martial art, so that even more people can experience them .
http://www.lef.org/news/LefDailyNews.htm?NewsID=8651&Section=Aging

Study finds more than half of acutely ill patients are vitamin B2 deficient

Life Extensions, August 17, 2009
The results of a clinical trial described online on July 30, 2009 in the Journal of Parenteral and Enteral Nutrition found a high prevalence of insufficient levels of riboflavin, also known as vitamin B2, in acutely ill patients, a condition that was rapidly corrected with riboflavin supplements.
Salah Gariballa, MD of United Arab Emirates University’s Department of Internal Medicine, in collaboration with researchers at the University of Sheffield in England, randomized 297 acutely ill, hospitalized patients to receive 1.3 milligrams riboflavin or a placebo for 6 weeks. Blood samples were analyzed before and after the treatment period and at 6 months for riboflavin status.
Fifty-six percent of the participants were found to have suboptimal riboflavin levels at the beginning of the trial. Smokers and those with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) tended to have lower levels of the vitamin than nonsmokers and those without COPD. Among the group that received the vitamin, riboflavin status improved at the end of 6 weeks, but had deteriorated by 6 months after the subjects discontinued the supplements.
The study is the first to examine riboflavin deficiency in an acutely ill, hospitalized population, and to show that supplementation can improve their riboflavin status. In their discussion of the findings, the authors remark that subclinical riboflavin deficiency has been associated with cardiovascular disease, cancer, impaired iron handling and blindness.
“We found that a high proportion of acutely ill patients were biochemically deficient in riboflavin and that dietary supplementation at physiological concentrations significantly improved riboflavin status,” the authors conclude. “Although the improvement in riboflavin status was not sustained after the supplements were discontinued, the clinical significance of these findings during acute illness and convalescence/rehabilitation requires further investigation.”
http://www.lef.org/whatshot/2009_08.htm#study-finds-more-than-half-of-acutely-ill-patients-are-vitamin-B2-deficient

Antioxidants pose no cancer danger for skin

Nutraingredients.com, 18-Aug-2009

Supplements of antioxidant vitamins and minerals are not associated with an increased risk of skin cancer, despite reports to the contrary, says a new study.
Results of the 10-year study with almost 70,000 people found that intakes of multivitamins and supplements, including selenium and beta-carotene, were not associated with melanoma risk.
Concerns over antioxidants and their potential to increase the risk of skin cancerwere recently raised following publication of a randomized, primary prevention trial, called the Supplementation in Vitamins and Mineral Antioxidants (Suvimax) study.
Suvimax found that oral daily supplementation with vitamins C and E, beta-carotene, selenium, and zinc, may increase a woman’s skin cancer risk.
New findings, just published in the August issue of Archives of Dermatology, challenge the Suvimax findings, however.
“These data suggest no association between self-reported multivitamin use and supplemental selenium and beta carotene use similar to doses used in the Suvimax study and melanoma risk,” wrote the researchers, led by Maryam Asgari from Kaiser Permanente Northern California.
“Strengths of this investigation include its prospective design, its large cohort size (about 450 cases), and the availability of baseline information on major potential confounding factors.
“The results of the Suvimax study should be interpreted with caution,” they add.
Multivitamin use
According to a National Institutes of Health (NIH) State-of-the-Science Panel, half of the American population routinely use dietary supplements, with their annual spend estimated at over $20 billion.
Recent results of the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey showed that 48 to 55 per cent of the US adult population regularly consumes one or more types of multivitamin product (Am. J. Epidemiol., 2004, Vol. 160, Pages 339-349).
Study details
Because so many Americans are consuming supplements regularly, and the concerns raised by Suvimax, “the potential harmful effects of these nutrients is alarming”, said the authors.
Asgari and her co-workers used questionnaires to analyse the diet and supplement use of 69,671 women and men, as well as details about their lifestyle, health history, and other cancer risk factors using a questionnaire.
Intakes of both multivitamins and supplements during the previous 10 years, 451 cases of skin cancer were documented. When the researchers looked at the risk of melanoma associated with long-term supplement, including beta-carotene and selenium at doses comparable to the Suvimax study, no association was found.
"Consistent with the present results, case-control studies examining serologic [blood] levels of beta carotene, vitamin E and selenium did not find any association with subsequent risk of melanoma," wrote the authors. "Moreover, the Nurses' Health Study reported no association between intake of vitamins A, C and E and melanoma risk in 162,000 women during more than 1.6 million person-years of follow-up."
The study was funded by the National Institute of Arthritis Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases and the National Cancer Institute.
Source: Archives of Dermatology 2009, Volume 145, Issue 8, Pages 879-882 “Antioxidant Supplementation and Risk of Incident Melanomas: Results of a Large Prospective Cohort Study” Authors: M.M. Asgari, S.S. Maruti, L.H. Kushi, E. White
http://www.nutraingredients.com/Research/Antioxidants-pose-no-cancer-danger-for-skin

Chinese herb shows promise for rheumatoid arthritis
Last Updated: 2009-08-17 17:02:07 -0400 (Reuters Health)
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - The Chinese herb Tripterygium wilfordii Hook F (TwHF) proved more effective than the anti-inflammatory drug sulfasalazine in a study of patients with rheumatoid arthritis.
"The mechanism of action (of TwHF) is not fully understood but seems different from currently available drugs," Dr. Raphaela Goldbach-Mansky, from the National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland told Reuters Health.
TwHF, the researcher added, "may become an addition to the currently available treatment options for rheumatoid arthritis in the future."
Doctors often prescribe sulfasalazine or other anti-inflammatory drugs for the initial treatment of rheumatoid arthritis. However, many patients discontinue the drugs due to lack of improvement or side effects.
The Chinese herbal remedy TwHF (also known as "lei gong teng" or "thunder god vine") has shown promise in treating other "autoimmune" disorders and inflammatory conditions.
In the current study, reported Tuesday in the Annals of Internal Medicine, Goldbach-Mansky and colleagues randomly assigned 121 patients with rheumatoid arthritis to take either TwHF three times daily or sulfasalazine two times daily for 24 weeks.
Many patients in both groups discontinued treatment, the researchers report. However, among those who continued treatment for 24 weeks, improvement in joint symptoms was greater with TwHF (67%) than with sulfasalazine (36%) and adverse effects were similar.
The rapid improvement in joint symptoms may make TwHF extract an attractive and affordable alternative to anti-inflammatory drugs, the researchers conclude.
SOURCE: Annals of Internal Medicine, August 18, 2009.
http://www.reutershealth.com/archive/2009/08/17/eline/links/20090817elin028.html

Does Sugar Feed Cancer?

ScienceDaily (Aug. 17, 2009) — Researchers at Huntsman Cancer Institute at the University of Utah have uncovered new information on the notion that sugar "feeds" tumors. The findings may also have implications for other diseases such as diabetes. The research is published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
"It's been known since 1923 that tumor cells use a lot more glucose than normal cells. Our research helps show how this process takes place, and how it might be stopped to control tumor growth," says Don Ayer, Ph.D., a Huntsman Cancer Institute investigator and professor in the Department of Oncological Sciences at the University of Utah.
During both normal and cancerous cell growth, a cellular process takes place that involves both glucose (sugar) and glutamine (an amino acid). Glucose and glutamine are both essential for cell growth, and it was long assumed they operated independently, but Ayer's research shows they are inter-dependent. He discovered that by restricting glutamine availability, glucose utilization is also stopped. "Essentially, if you don't have glutamine, the cell is short circuited due to a lack of glucose, which halts the growth of the tumor cell" Ayer says.
The research, spearheaded by Mohan Kaadige, Ph.D., a postdoctoral fellow in Ayer's lab, focused on MondoA, a protein that is responsible for turning genes on and off. In the presence of glutamine, MondoA blocks the expression of a gene called TXNIP. TXNIP is thought to be a tumor suppressor, but when it's blocked by MondoA , it allows cells to take up glucose, which in turn drives tumor growth. Ayer's research could lead to new drugs that would target glutamine utilization, or target MondoA or TXNIP.
Ayer says the next step in his research is to develop animal models to test his ideas about how MondoA and TXNIP control cell growth. "If we can understand that, we can break the cycle of glucose utilization which could be beneficial in the treatment of cancer," Ayer says.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/08/090817184539.htm

One in Seven Scientists Say Colleagues Fake "Scientific" Study Results

David Gutierrez, NaturalNews.com August 18, 2009 

(NaturalNews) One in seven scientists report that they have known colleagues to falsify or slant the findings of their research, according to a study conducted by researchers from the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, and published in the journal PLoS One.

A number of scientific data falsification scandals have emerged in recent years, such as the case of a South Korean researcher who invented data on stem cell research. At the same time, increasing controversy over close industry ties to medical research has called into question whether researchers who take money from drug companies might be induced to falsify their data.

"Increasing evidence suggests that known frauds are just the tip of the iceberg and that many cases are never discovered," said researcher Daniele Fanelli.

The researchers reviewed the results of 21 different scientific misconduct surveys that had been performed between 1985 and 2005. All respondents were asked whether they or anyone they knew of had taken part in either fabrication (outright invention of data) or "questionable practices."

Questionable practices were any improper procedure short of fabrication, including failing to publish results contradicting one's prior research, modifying data based on a "gut feeling," changing conclusions after pressure from a funder or selectively choosing which data to include in an analysis.

One in seven scientists said that they were aware of colleagues who had engaged in fabrication, while nearly half -- 46 percent -- admitted to knowing of colleagues who had used questionable practices. Only two percent, however, admitted to fabricating results themselves.

While two percent is higher than previous estimates of the prevalence of data fabrication, researchers believe that the number is still too low. In all likelihood, it reflects both a reluctance by researchers to admit to serious misconduct and a tendency to interpret one's behavior as favorably as possible -- questionable instead of fabrication, or acceptable rather than questionable. 

Researchers in the medical and pharmacalogical fields were the most likely to admit to misconduct than researchers in other fields.
http://www.naturalnews.com/026865_natural_health_technology_renewable_energy.html

Five Cups and More of Green Tea Billed as Best Defense from Cancer, Says Japanese Research

Frank Mangano, NaturalNews.com August 17, 2009 

(NaturalNews) Moderation in all things may typically be the best route to all-around health, but when it comes to green tea consumption, moderation does not equal disease prevention. In fact, as many as five cups of green tea or more - clearly not a moderate amount - is believed to be the best defense from cancer.

If you`re looking to cut back on your five cups of coffee a day but are at a loss for what to replace your coffee-fill with, green tea is the perfect substitution solution.

The latest study to tout the benefits of green tea hails from the Tohoku School of Medicine based in Japan, a country whose population is awash in green tea consumption (the most commonly consumed beverage in a country of 127 million).

Charting how green tea affected cancer diagnoses of the nearly 42,000 men and women involved required a food frequency questionnaire, which was administered to the participants at the start of the nine-year study. The study`s researchers followed up with the participants throughout, charting both their health and their diets to see if what, if anything, changed.

In that nine-year period, things did change for about 320 of the participants. One hundred and ninety three of the men and women involved were stricken with blood cancer, and another 119 were stricken with a cancer of the lymph nodes.

When researchers looked at what the participants ate and drank over the near decade-long study, they found some commonalities in the drinking decisions of cancer-stricken participants and those unaffected.

Not so much what they drank, though, but rather how much.

Virtually all of the participants drank at least one cup of green tea per day, but the people who drank five cups or more were 40 percent less likely to be diagnosed with blood cancer and about 50 percent less likely to be diagnosed with cancer of the lymph nodes.

The Japanese study - published in the American Journal of Epidemiology - does not go so far as to say there`s a causal relationship between green tea consumption and cancer diagnosis (i.e. that drinking more directly impacts the risk of being diagnosed with cancer), but it might as well have, for this study is the latest one to be added to the scores of studies that link cancer prevention with green tea consumption. Past studies have linked green tea consumption to ovarian cancer prevention, prostate cancer prevention, bladder cancer prevention, breast cancer prevention, even lung cancer prevention (the deadliest form of cancer).

The study did not make any conclusions as to what component of green tea has anti-cancer properties, but past studies indicate its likely green tea`s high polyphenol content. Besides green tea leaves, polyphenols are found in the skins of various fruits and vegetables and are extolled for their disease-fighting prowess, Alzheimer`s and heart disease among them.

There are many green teas from which to choose, some every bit as good as others. Always opt for organically brewed tea, paying special attention to its "Sell By" date. For the sake of taste - not to mention nutrition - you don`t want anything that`s been sitting on the shelf unopened for more than six months. The further the "Sell By" date is from the date in which you`re purchasing, the better. Once opened, the shelf-life reduces even further.
http://www.naturalnews.com/026862_cancer_green_tea_health.html

Vitamin D3 and Curcumin Offer Hope to Alzheimer's Patients

Barbi Trejo, NaturalNews.com August 17, 2009 

(NaturalNews) New information which was published in the Journal of Alzheimer`s Disease, may help in the search for an answer to preventing Alzheimer`s. Promising results were obtained, using D3 alone or together with curcumin, an active ingredient in turmeric and curry. There is new hope that these two natural occurring substances may help boost the immune system and thus clear the brain of amloid-beta, which forms plaque, therefore giving hope and relief to Alzheimer`s patients.

Over 13 million people suffer from some sort of dementia associated with Alzheimer`s disease. This is caused by a build up of plaque from the deposits of amyloid-beta, causing an increase in cell damage. With this new study, there is hope for millions. There are many studies in the work that have found curcumin to be highly successful with animals and are now being tested on humans. They hope to have the results on humans very soon, so that it can be recommended to the general public. These studies have shown that D3 and curcumin together have reduced the oxidized damage tothe brain and also decreased the inflammation.

In the past, scientists have found that two different groups of Alzheimer`s patients reacted differently: Type 1 patients responded to the curcumnoids and type 2 did not respond positively. These two types of patient results depend on the genes MGATIII and TLR-3, which allows theimmune system to work properly and thus enables the immune system to ingest amyloid-beta.

"Since vitamin D and curcumin work differently with the immune system, we may find that a combination of the two or each used alone may be more effective - depending on the individual patient," said Fiala.

According to the UCLA team of researchers it is too early to be recommended at this point or to say what dose should be recommended. They also stated that more studies are in the works. The cost of Alzheimer`s disease is in excess of one hundred billion dollars in the US, so the fact of being able to use curcumin as an aide in the prevention is extremely exciting. Curcumin is very inexpensive and along with the necessity of D3, the cost to the patient could be minimal.

"We hope that vitamin D3 and curcumin, both naturally occurring nutrients, may offer new preventive and treatment possibilities for Alzheimer`s disease," said Dr Milan Fiala from the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA).

Curcumin has been used for thousands of years in Asian countries as a food spice and has many health benefits, from protecting against cancer to mild psychological effects. It is also being used for the reduction in pain. Many call this the Asian Aspirin. If a person understood the many benefits of curcumin, they would be rushing to buy it right now. Some of the benefits are:

Prevention for cancer

Anti inflammatory properties

Cardiovascular benefits

Aides in the prevention of high cholesterol

Rheumatoid Arthritis benefits

Vitamin D3 is a necessary part of any diet

Many studies have shown that D3 is an important part of any diet, especially in the Swine Flu prevention. Vitamin D3 deficiency will cause such problems as cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, osteoporosis, depression and gum diseases. All these conditions contribute to dementia.

Dr. Donald Miller M.D., University of Washington in Seattle, stated that anyone who decides against the swine flu vaccine, should take 5000iu`s ofVitamin D every day as a preventative. The benefits of both Vitamin D3 and curcumin are offering us hope and excitement about the upcoming trial results, but in the meantime they are indeed a necessary supplement for any diet.
http://www.naturalnews.com/026861_curcumin_vitamin_D3_disease.html

A sweeter broccoli to cut heart diseases

Times of India 17 August 2009
MELBOURNE: Scientists claimed to have developed a new variety of broccoli that is not only grown naturally, but also tastes sweeter and has 40 per cent more anti-oxidants than the normal to reduce risks of heart disease and cancer. 

Scientists at Victoria's Department of Primary Industries (DPI), have discovered "Booster Broccoli", a new variety that is the first in the group of super vegetables and contains more anti-oxidants than the usual variety, the ABC report said on Monday. 
DPI's leading scientist Rod Jones said that the new broccoli is not the result of genetic engineering. 

"All we've done is gone back and minded nature's natural diversity," he said. 

Jones also said that DPI had partnerships with large companies and had tested 400 varieties of broccoli before selecting the one that had the highest anti-oxidant content and now they have decided to breed the "Booster Broccoli". 

"It's also about improving the health of our population in general by getting people to eat vegetables that we know are very good for them," he added. 

"It's a premium branded product so the returns to growers should be higher," Jones said.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/news/health-science/health/A-sweeter-broccoli-to-cut-heart-diseases/articleshow/4901158.cms

Indian wonder herb can treat male infertility

Times of India  15 August 2009
LUCKNOW: Infertile men can be treated effectively with extracts obtained from seeds of Mucuna pruriens, a plant popularly known as velvet bean, a new study has found. 

Scientists in the biochemstry department at the Chhatrapati Shahuji Maharaj Medical University (CSMMU) here say they have treated a number of male infertility cases using specific doses of seeds from the plant which is readily available in India. 

"We have got encouraging results and observations while offering the treatment to as many as 400 infertile men in a phased manner with the seed extract of Mucuna for at least six months," Abbas Mahdi, a senior faculty member at CSMMU and a member of the research team said. 

After the treatment the researchers noticed remarkable improvement in the factors responsible for fertility. 

The infertile men were in the age group of 25-40 years. 

"We were just elated to observe increased sperm concentration, motility and improved semen quality in the infertile groups," added Mahdi. 

According to researchers, Mucuna's seed extract also recovered the levels of lipids, anti-oxidants, vitamins and fructose, in the seminal plasma that are essential for normal sperm metabolism. 

The researchers say Mucuna seed extract derives its potency to treat male infertility from a number of bioactive constituents, particularly L-DOPA (Dopamine) that acts on the hypothalamus and anterior pituitary portions of the brain that work together in controlling spermatogenesis (formation of sperm). 

It's the dopamine that plays an important role in mediating male sexual behaviour. An increase of dopamine in the brain results in increased libido. 

Explaining Mucuna's role in male infertility treatment, Mahdi said: "Mucuna's mechanism to treat infertility can be outlined in a few steps. The high-level of L-DOPA in Mucuna stimulates the hypothalamus and forebrain to secrete GnRH (a hormone). 

This, in turn, regulates the anterior pituitary gland to secrete the follicle stimulating hormone (FSH) and luteinizing hormone (LH) causing increased synthesis of testosterone by the testes. Therefore, increased dopamine levels optimize the production of hormones, including testosterone, leading to an increased sexual drive and improved performance." 

According to the researchers, Mucuna also contributes to reducing psychological stress in infertile men by restoring the anti-oxidant levels in them. 

Taking into account the therapeutic properties of Mucuna, CSMMU researchers have further undertaken a project to study its benefits in more detail. 

"Fertility and Sterility - the official journal of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine - has accepted our work for publication," said Mahdi.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/news/health-science/health/Indian-wonder-herb-can-treat-male-infertility-/articleshow/4896312.cms

High fat diet leads to short-term memory loss

Times of India,  13 August 2009
WASHINGTON: Eating hotdogs and French fries might be a great treat. However, these high fat diets can significantly reduce our exercising ability and lead to short term memory loss, reveals a new study. The research conducted using a mouse model, showed that in less than 10 days of eating a high-fat diet, rats had a decreased ability to exercise and experienced significant short-term memory loss. 

"Western diets are typically high in fat and are associated with long-term complications, such as obesity, diabetes, and heart failure, yet the short-term consequences of such diets have been given relatively little attention," said Andrew Murray, co-author of the study and currently at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom. 

"We hope that the findings of our study will help people to think seriously about reducing the fat content of their daily food intake to the immediate benefit of their general health, well-being, and alertness," he added. 

Study leader Murray fed rats with low-fat diet (7.5 percent of calories as fat) and high-fat diet (55 percent of calories as fat). He discovered that the muscles of the rats eating the high-fat diet for four days were less able to use oxygen to make the energy needed to exercise, causing their hearts to worker harder-and increase in size. 

After nine days on a high-fat diet, the rats took longer to complete a maze and made more mistakes in the process than their low-fat-diet counterparts. 

The researchers also studied the cellular causes of these problems, particularly in the mitochondria of muscle cells. They found increased levels of a protein called uncoupling protein 3, which made them less efficient at using oxygen needed to make the energy required for running. 

The new research is published online in The FASEB Journal.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/news/health-science/health/High-fat-diet-leads-to-short-term-memory-loss/articleshow/4889211.cms

Wheat gets worse as CO2 rises

New Scientist 10:32 17 August 2009

CO2 will take its toll on wheat nutrients (Image: RESO / Rex Features)
You may have thought that the silver lining of rising carbon dioxide levels would be a boost in crop yields. But evidence is mounting that we may trade quantity for quality.
The discovery that staple crops like wheat have less protein when grown in high concentrations of CO2 has already caused concern, but the bad news doesn't stop there.
Ramping up CO2 also changes the balance of amino acids and several trace elements, saysPetra Högy from the University of Hohenheim in Germany.
Together with Andreas Fangmeier, also at the University of Hohenheim, and his team, Högy grew wheat in open fields over three years while blowing extra CO2 over the plots to achieve the concentrations of the gas that are expected to be reached by around 2050.
They found several changes in the wheat grains, including an 8 per cent drop in iron and a 14 per cent increase in lead.
"Both of these changes would be bad for human health. The drop in iron is particularly worrisome as half of the world's population are already iron deficient, and this is going to get worse," says Högy.
The team also looked again at the drop in protein that had already been seen and found that essential amino acids – including those important for children – are affected by it, not just non-essential protein components.
In addition, wheat grown under high-carbon conditions was worth less money, with smaller grains that are harder to sell for good prices and different dough properties due to the changed protein composition.
The researchers do not know all the reasons for the changed balance of nutrients and minerals but argue that other experiments show that simply increasing nitrogen fertiliser is unlikely to restore the lack in grain protein.
Not all the changes are bad however, says Högy: "The heavy metal cadmium also decreased by 14 per cent, which might be positive," she says.
Iraki Loladze of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, who predicted that rising CO2 would lead to smaller amounts of micronutrients in crops almost seven years ago (PDF), says he is concerned by the continuing lack of awareness of this problem: "The effect of rising CO2 on our food quality is [one of] stealth – it's there, but our scientific radars are not tuned to it.
"This study is important because it brings into sharp focus this effect on wheat – one of the largest sources of calories and nutrients for humans."
Wheat is not the only crop to suffer carbon-induced changes beyond having less protein. Ros Gleadow of Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, who recently reported rising cyanide levels in cassava, says that plants such as eucalyptus respond to rising CO2 levels by making more defensive chemicals, which may make the plants a worse food source for farm animals and wildlife in the future.
Journal reference: Plant Biology, DOI: 10.1111/j.1438-8677.2009.00230.x

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17617-wheat-gets-worse-as-co2-rises.html?full=true&print=true

Popular herbicide more deadly to liver cells than its active chemical alone.

Environmental Health News, Aug 18, 2009
Gasniera C, C Dumontb, N Benachoura, E Claira, MC Chagnonb and GE Séralini. 2009. Glyphosate-based herbicides are toxic and endocrine disruptors in human cell lines. 2009.06.006.

Very low doses of some types of the herbicide Roundup can disrupt human liver cell function; the formulations' toxicity may be tied to their "inactive" ingredients rather than the active weed-killing ingredient glyphosate.
French scientists report that a number of Roundup formulations tested at very dilute concentrations can alter hormone actions and cause human liver cells to die within 24 hours of treatment.
The toxicity of some of the formulations was independent of how much glyphosate – the active herbicide in Roundup – they contained, suggesting it is other "inert" ingredients that may alone – or in combination with each other and/or the weedkiller – assault the cells. This study's results are similar to prior studies – as reported in a recent Environmental Health News article – that find human embryo cells are affected more by the Roundup formulations and an inert ingredient than by the active ingredient.
The levels of Roundup used in this study are similar to what is typically found in food crops or animal feed treated with Roundup. Because of this, it is possible that people, livestock and wildlife may be exposed to levels of the herbicide mix that can damage cells.
Glyphosate is harmful to humans and animals even at a very low dose. It is often tested by itself in regulatory studies to determine if the Roundup formulation is toxic.
However, according to this study, levels of glyphosate in Roundup formulations are not good indicators of toxicity.
The ingredients responsible for the increased potency of Roundup formulations seen in this study – as compared to purified glyphosate – remain unknown. The chemical formulas of herbicide additives are generally protected as trade secrets, and the researchers did not try to chemically identify them. Therefore, their effects cannot be easily investigated and they remain undetected in the environment.
Roundup was developed as a weapon against weeds. Many genetically modified (GM) plants have been developed to tolerate Roundup. Today, Roundup is the most widely used weedkiller in the world and 75 percent of all GM plants are engineered to resist the herbicide. Monsanto agricultural company produces both Roundup and Roundup-resistant GM plants.
Four Roundup formulations – Roundup Express 7.2 (R7.2), Bioforce (R360), Grands Travaux (R400) and Grands Travaux Plus (R450) – were tested in this study. All formulations were more potent than purified glyphosate (at similar levels to R360) in causing cell death. Surprisingly, R400 containing less glyphosate was more toxic to human liver cells than R450.
In the study, exposure of a single gene regulated by either estrogen or androgen hormones demonstrated that all formulations disrupt hormone function more efficiently than purified glyphosate. The findings show that the formulations act against the hormones to produce anti-estrogenic and anti-androgenic effects.

http://www.environmentalhealthnews.org/ehs/newscience/roundup-mix-more-toxic-to-liver-cells-than-glyphosate/

Rural well water linked to Parkinson’s; California study implicates farm pesticides

Environmental Health News Aug. 5, 2009

Rural residents who drink water from private wells are much more likely to have Parkinson’s disease, a finding that bolsters theories that farm pesticides may be partially to blame, according to a new study. The risk to people in California's Central Valley was 90 percent higher for those who had private wells near fields sprayed with certain insecticides. People with the incurable neurological disease “were more likely to have consumed private well water, and had consumed it on average 4.3 years longer,” UCLA scientists reported. Unlike municipal water supplies, private wells are largely unregulated and are not monitored for contaminants.

Rural residents who drink water from private wells are much more likely to have Parkinson’s disease, a finding that bolsters theories that farm pesticides may be partially to blame, according to a new California study.
Nearly one million people in the United States--one of every 300--have the incurable neurological disease. Beginning with a slight tremor, Parkinson’s often progresses to severe muscle control problems that leave patients struggling to walk and talk.
Over the past few years, a growing body of evidence has led experts to suspect that agricultural pesticides can attack developing brains, perhaps in the womb or infancy, leading to Parkinson's disease later in life. Many insecticides widely used on farms are potent neurotoxins, and lab animals exposed to mixes of them develop Parkinson’s symptoms. In addition, several previous studies of farmers and rural residents have reported a link.
The new study of more than 700 people in California’s Central Valley found that those who likely consumed contaminated private well water had a higher rate of Parkinson’s.
The risk was around 90 percent higher for those who had private wells near fields sprayed with the widely used insecticides propargite or chlorpyrifos.
People with Parkinson’s “were more likely to have consumed private well water, and had consumed it on average 4.3 years longer” than those who did not have the disease, said the scientists, led by UCLA epidemiology professor Beate Ritz, in their study published online last week in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives.
Unlike municipal water supplies, private wells are largely unregulated and are not monitored for contaminants. Many are dug at shallow depths of less than 20 yards, and some of the crop chemicals used to kill pests and weeds can seep into ground water.
The study participants lived in Fresno, Kern and Tulare counties—the heart of California’s farm belt. About 17 percent reported drinking private well water during the study period from 1974 through 1999.
Previous studies have reported connections between Parkinson’s and consumption of rural well water and pesticide use. The UCLA research, however, is the first to examine people’s proximity to specific chemicals and estimate their exposure. Incorporating a geographic information system and land use maps, the researchers based their analysis on California’s pesticide use records.
A weakness of the research is that the scientists do not know exactly what each person in the study was exposed to because private wells are not tested. Close proximity to sprayed fields does not necessarily mean their wells were contaminated.
The UCLA team examined state records identifying where pesticides were used between 1974 and 1999. They then compared the address of each participant in the study to those records. From that, they estimated each person’s exposure via the air and the water based on how much pesticide was used within 500 meters of their homes.
Jonathan Chevrier, a University of California at Berkeley postdoctoral researcher in epidemiology who did not participate in the research, said the new effort "is an interesting study" that “goes further than prior research” in connecting pesticides to Parkinson’s.
Most other studies had no exposure information at all, while the UCLA scientists tapped into the historical data, which Chevrier called “a major strength.” Nevertheless, he added, “it is important to note that the authors did not measure the water concentration of pesticides or determine the amount of well water participants consumed.”
Twenty-six farm pesticides were included in the study, although six with widespread use were studied individually to look for connections to Parkinson’s. The goal was to identify specific pesticides that may warrant further investigation.
People drinking well water within 500 meters of a dozen or more of the pesticides had a 66 percent greater rate of Parkinson’s, the study says. Airborne exposure only slightly increased the risk.
The strongest link to the disease was for propargite. Those who had wells near fields sprayed with the chemical had a 90 percent higher risk of having Parkinson's, according to the study.
About half a million pounds of propargite were sprayed on California crops in 2007, mostly on nuts, corn and grapes, according to the California Department of Pesticide Regulation’s database.
Propargite, sold under the names Omite and Comite, has been used on crops since 1969, but many uses, including the spraying of many fruits and beans, were rescinded by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in 1996 due to the cancer risk. The EPA, however, in 2001 approved its continued use on restricted crops and reported that levels in drinking water are below levels of concern based on the cancer risk.
Other strong links were found for the insecticides methomyl and chlorpyrifos, which increased the risk of Parkinson’s by 67 percent and 87 percent. Chlorpyrifos, sold under the names Dursban and Lorsban, was banned in the United States for residential use in 2001 but is still widely used on cotton, corn, fruit trees and other crops. Methomyl is highly restricted because of its toxicity and is mostly used on alfalfa.
In recent years, scientists have gathered a large amount of human and animal evidence suggesting that exposure to agricultural pesticides, particularly early in life, may play a major role in who gets Parkinson’s.
University of Rochester scientists found that newborn mice exposed to a mix of two commonly used pesticides—maneb and paraquat—developed Parkinson’s symptoms as they aged. Earlier this year, Ritz and colleagues reported similar human results after investigating Central Valley residents exposed to those same two pesticides.
Parkinson’s is caused when nerve cells die in an area of the brain, called the substantia nigra, that produces dopamine. As dopamine decreases, messages from the brain that control how and when the body moves are blocked.
Only a small percentage of those with the disease share a gene or family history of the disease. Experts say the cause of the vast majority is probably due to a combination of genetic and environmental factors.
http://www.environmentalhealthnews.org/ehs/news/parkinsons-and-pesticides

Global warming benefits to Tibet: Chinese official
(AFP)  August 18, 2009
BEIJING — Global warming could prove devastating for the Tibetan plateau, the world's third-largest store of ice, but it helps farming and tourism, Chinese state media said Tuesday, citing a leading expert.
Qin Dahe, the former head of the China Meteorological Administration, made the comment in an otherwise gloomy assessment of the impact that rising temperatures will have on Tibet, according to the China Daily newspaper.
"Warming is good for agriculture and tourism. It has increased the growing season of crops," said Qin, now a researcher with the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
China is banking on tourism to help fund development in Tibet, one of its poorest regions, hoping that a railway to the region's capital Lhasa will boost visitor numbers.
From January to July this year, more than 2.7 million tourists visited Tibet, nearly triple the number in the same period of 2008, the Tibet Daily said recently.
While agriculture and tourism stand to benefit, Qin underlined a series of negative consequences that global warming will have in Tibet and surrounding areas.
Temperatures are rising four times faster than elsewhere in China, and the Tibetan glaciers are retreating at a higher speed than in any other part of the world, he told the paper.
"In the short term, this will cause lakes to expand and bring floods and mudflows," Qin told the paper.
"In the long run, the glaciers are vital lifelines for Asian rivers, including the Indus and the Ganges. Once they vanish, water supplies in those regions will be in peril."

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5g1eE4Xw3njaW1MKpJRYOch4hOdLQ

Children risk cancer by eating salami and ham, warns charity

The Guardian, Monday 17 August 2009

Parents should not put ham or salami in their children's packed lunches because processed meat increases the risk of developing cancer, experts in the disease are warning.
The World Cancer Research Fund (WCRF) wants families to instead use poultry, fish, low-fat cheese, hummus or small amounts of lean meat as sandwich fillings when making up school lunchboxes.
Children should avoid eating processed meat altogether because unhealthy habits acquired while young can have serious consequences later, said the WCRF.
"Including sandwich fillers such as ham and salami could mean children get into habits that increase their risk of developing cancer later in life," the charity said.
"It makes sense for children to adopt a healthy adult eating pattern from the age of five. WCRF advises it is best to avoid it [processed meat] as well as many of the habits we develop as children last into adulthood."
If everyone ate no more than 70g of processed meat – the equivalent of three rashers of bacon – a week, about 3,700 fewer people a year in Britain would be diagnosed withbowel cancer, according to the WCRF.
In 2007 the charity there was convincing scientific evidence that consumption of processed meat increases the risk of bowel cancer. Although research had only studied its impact on adults, children should avoid it too, said the WCRF.
Marni Craze, the charity's children's education manager, said: "If children have processed meat in their lunch every day then over the course of a school year they will be eating quite a lot of it. It is better if children learn to view processed meat as an occasional treat if it is eaten at all."
The charity also wants parents to avoid giving their children high-fat or high-calorie foods in their packed lunch, such as sugary drinks, because they could help make them overweight. Excess weight is increasingly viewed by scientists as a major contributory factor to cancer after smoking.
Some high-energy products are promoted as ideal for children's lunchboxes, it points out. For example, Sainsbury's has Peperami in the lunchbox section of its website, despite the product containing 44% fat.
John Bullock, of BPEX, which represents British meat producers, said: "The amounts of these products in children's lunchboxes will be very small. The WCRF's global study in 2007 said there may be a link between eating processed meat and the risk of cancer, but we need more scientific evidence to tell us definitely whether or not that's the case.
In a separate study published today, Cancer Research says widespread ignorance about the symptoms of cancer is contributing to people dying of the disease.
One in seven people in Britain (14%) could not name a single sign of cancer and only small numbers of people named moles (16%), weight loss (16% of men and 22% of women), skin problems (25%) and bowel, urinary or toilet difficulties (19%), the charity found. In a poll of 3,947 people, 54% identified a lump as a being a possible indicator of cancer.
Sara Hiom, of Cancer Research, said up to 5,000 cancer deaths a year could be avoided if cancers were diagnosed earlier. The charity is working with the Department of Health on a major project to improve people's chances of surviving cancer through earlier diagnosis, by increasing public awareness of signs and symptoms of the disease.
"We're not expecting people to be able to recall every symptom, but being generally aware of changes that could be a sign of cancer could make a crucial difference for people who do develop the disease," said Hiom.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2009/aug/17/cancer-processed-meat-childrens-lunch

Asia faces food shortage without water reform: UN

Seed Daily, Stockholm (AFP) Aug 17, 2009
Asia could face chronic food shortages and social unrest if the region fails to improve its management of water and farming, according to a UN report published on Monday.
An extra 1.5 billion people will live in Asia by 2050, putting even more pressure on already scarce food supplies, said the study, issued by the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the International Water Management Institute (IWMI).
There is little scope to expand arable land in most parts of Asia, which means that growing the extra food required can only be achieved with better management of land and water supplies, it found.
The report warns many developing nations in the region are facing by 2050 the prospect of importing more than a quarter of the rice, wheat and maize needed to feed their populations.
At the same time, their is a heightened risk that cereal prices will continue to rise due to increasingly volatile international markets.
"Asia's food and feed demand is expected to double by 2050. Relying on trade to meet a large part of this demand will impose a huge and politically untenable burden on the economies of many developing countries," said IWMI director general Colin Chartres.
"The best bet for Asia lies in revitalising its vast irrigation systems, which account for 70 percent of the world's total irrigated land," he said.
The report says millions of farmers have taken the responsibility for irrigation into their own hands, mainly using out-of-date and inefficient pump technology.
This means they can extract as much water as they like from their land, draining a precious natural resource.
"Governments' inability to regulate this practice is giving rise to scary scenarios of groundwater over-exploitation, which could lead to regional food crises and widespread social unrest," said the IWMI's Tushaar Shah, a co-author of the report.
Asian governments must join with the private sector to invest in modern, and more efficient methods of using water, the study concluded.
"Without water productivity gains, South Asia would need 57 percent more water for irrigated agriculture and East Asia 70 percent more," the study found. "Given the scarcity of land and water, and growing water needs for cities, such a scenario is untenable."
The scenarios forecast do not factor in the impact of global warming, which will likely make rainfall more erratic and less plentiful in some agricultural regions over the coming decades.
http://www.seeddaily.com/reports/Asia_faces_food_shortage_without_water_reform_UN_999.html

India's thirsty farms drain rocks dry

New Scientist,  17 August 2009 by Fred Pearce

India, a land of famine until half a century ago, could soon go hungry again for want of water to grow crops.
"Some areas of India are going to run out of water, with very severe economic and social consequences," says the chief author of a UN-backed study of water supplies for Asian agriculture, published this week.
Indian farmers now pump 60 per cent of their water from underground reserves beneath their landbecause irrigation canals are emptying the country's rivers, says Colin Chartres, head of the International Water Management Institute, a non-profit research centre based in Colombo, Sri Lanka.
But water tables are falling fast. "The situation is especially bad in southern India. They will run out of water first, because the hard rocks [there] have much less capacity to store the monsoon rains," says Chartres.
Half of all the water pumped from underground worldwide is in south Asia, he says. To keep bellies full, India will have to double the amount of food it produces for a given amount of water.
The famine warning comes days after it emerged that the loss of underground water in India is so great it can be measured by satellites tracking changes in the Earth's gravitational field.
Virendra Tiwari of the National Geophysical Research Institute in Hyderabad, India, said NASA satellites had found that the amount of water beneath northern India – one of the most densely populated and heavily irrigated region in the world – declined by more than 300 cubic kilometres between 2002 and 2008.
Journal reference: Geophysical Research Letters, DOI: 10.1029/2009GL040090, in press

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17620-indias-thirsty-farms-drain-rocks-dry.html

Your Body Literally Glows With Light
Dr. Mercola Newsletter, August 17, 2009
The human body literally glows, emitting a visible light in extremely small quantities at levels that rise and fall with the day.
Past research has shown that the body emits visible light, 1,000 times less intense than the levels which can be seen with the naked eye. In fact, virtually all living creatures emit very weak light.
To learn more about this faint visible light, scientists in Japan employed extraordinarily sensitive cameras capable of detecting single photons. Five healthy male volunteers in their 20’s were placed bare-chested in front of the cameras in complete darkness in light-tight rooms for 20 minutes every three hours.
The researchers found the body glow rose and fell over the day, with its lowest point at 10 AM and its peak at 4 PM, dropping gradually after that. These findings suggest there is light emission linked to the body clock, most likely due to how metabolic rhythms fluctuate over the course of the day.
Faces glowed more than the rest of the body. This might be because faces are more tanned than the rest of the body, since they get more exposure to sunlight.

Gone are the days when words like “life energy” and “aura” were relegated to a few books in a tiny section of some New Age store. Today, scientists across the world are investigating the energies that propel, and likely even rule, life itself and hence have profound impact on your health.
Eastern medical traditions have operated on this premise for thousands of years, but Western medicine in its myopic focus on dissected parts has been slow to adapt these ancient truths.
Energy Medicine – Ancient Knowledge Gets a Facelift
There is an emerging trend of clinicians who recognize that a far more powerful approach to healing is one that is based on physics and not on chemistry.
Many natural health experts believe that your body is not only made up of tissue, blood vessels and organs. It’s also composed of energy, or chi as it’s called in traditional Chinese medicine (TCM). 

This energy is circulated through your body along specific meridians, and when points on your skin that correspond to certain meridians are manipulated, the energy circulation and your internal organs are affected. Acupuncture is one well-known modality used to manipulate the flow of your meridians, but there are others.
The term “energy medicine” and modalities such as meridian tapping techniques have become more and more widespread, even though conventional medicine still largely ignores it.
alt="Schematic illustration of experimental setup that found the human body, especially the face, emits visible light in small quantities that vary during the day. B is one fo the test subjects. The other images show the weak emissions of visible light during totally dark conditions. The chart corresponds to the images and shows how the emissions varied during the day. The last image (I) is an infrared image of the subject showing heat emissions. Credit: Kyoto University; Tohoku Institute of Technology; PLoS ONE" v:shapes="_x0000_i1025">
Schematic illustration of experimental setup that found the human body, especially the face, emits visible light in small quantities that vary during the day. B is one of the test subjects. The other images show the weak emissions of visible light during totally dark conditions. The chart corresponds to the images and shows how the emissions varied during the day. The last image (I) is an infrared image of the subject showing heat emissions. Credit: Kyoto University; Tohoku Institute of Technology; PLoS ONE
But your body is also surrounded by light, or energy.
As mentioned in the article above, earlier research has confirmed that your body emits light that is 1,000 times less intense than what your naked eyes are sensitive to. (Some people, however, are able to see this emitted light or “aura,” and some can even distinguish colors.)
What’s really interesting about this study is that they discovered these light emissions appear to be linked to your body clock and the rhythmic fluctuations of your metabolism over the course of the day.
This suggests that you could detect medical conditions with the use of highly light-sensitive cameras.
 "If you can see the glimmer from the body's surface, you could see the whole body condition,” said researcher Hitoshi Okamura, a circadian biologist at Kyoto University in Japan.
There are other devices that can accomplish a similar feat already, such as electrodermal screening, which measures your electrical skin resistance to gain information about your chi flow.
If an electrodermal screening finds that certain meridian points are out of balance there are numerous non-invasive ways, such as massage therapy, herbal medicine and homeopathy, to bring them back into homeostasis.
Your Biophoton Field Holds the Key to Your Health
Others have explained the existence of light and energy around your body in terms of a “biophoton field.”
Dr. Dietrich Klinghardt discusses this field in The Five Levels of Healing, which is based on a healing model developed some 12,000 years ago. This energetic model for health has influenced Tibetan medicine, traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), and Ayurvedic medicine as well.
The existence of the biophoton field was scientifically proven by Dr. Fritz-Albert Popp in 1974.
Your physical health is dependent not only on what goes on inside of your body, but is also interconnected with and dependent on other non-physical levels of energy, such as the energy surrounding your body, called the biophoton field. 

In highly simplistic terms, your biophoton field can be viewed as a highly sophisticated computer that processes, stores and retrieves information that is then used to regulate your biological processes.  
It is known in biology that every cell in your body has over 100,000 biochemical reactions per second, all of which must be carefully timed and sequenced with each other. Many (mostly European) scientists have investigated the organizing principle behind this sophisticated dance.  
Dr. Popp also proved that biophotons originate from your DNA and that they are laser-like in nature. He developed the biophoton theory to explain their biological role and the ways in which they help control your biochemical processes.  
How Your Biophoton Field Regulates Your Physical Health 
The DNA inside each cell in your body vibrates at a frequency of several billion hertz (which is unfortunately the same range at which modern cell phone communication systems also work).
This vibration is created through the coil-like contraction and extension of your DNA -- which occurs several billion times per second -- and every time it contracts, it squeezes out one single biophoton; a light particle.  
That photon contains all the information on everything going on in your DNA at that moment. One single biophoton can carry more than four megabytes of information, and relays this information to other biophotons it crosses in the biophoton field outside your body. 
All the photons that are emitted from your body communicate with each other in this highly structured light field that surrounds your body.  
This light field also regulates the activity of your metabolic enzymes. This corresponds nicely with the findings in the study above that show your light field ebbs and flows along with your metabolic rhythm. 
The information transfer on biophotons is bidirectional, which means your DNA sends information out on a photon, and on the same photon the information of all the biophotons from your body is broadcast back to your cells, and to your tubulin, which are light conductive molecules in your connective tissue.  
The tubulin, in turn, receives the information-carrying light impulse and conducts it at the speed of light throughout your body, where it is translated inside each cell into activating or inactivating certain metabolic enzymes.  
Have You Ingested Healthy Light Today?
A fascinating alternative practice that Dr. Klinghardt has started using, based on this premise, is to use tools that work with light to influence your biophoton field in beneficial ways.
For example, transmitting the information of nutrients in the form of light into your biophotons field can affect your body in the same way as eating the actual nutrient!
Biophoton research also puts a whole new spin on the impact of environmental toxins.
Mercury, for example, destroys your tubulins at extremely low concentrations. Remember, tubulins are the light-conductive molecules in your connective tissues, so by disrupting these all-important light transmissions from your biophoton field to your cells to your metabolic enzymes, mercury effectively disconnects the intelligent force that organizes your biochemistry.
All the more reason to avoid those thimerosal-laden flu shots!
Raw Food = Live Food = Healthy Light Particles
Biophoton research also explains the underlying principles of why it’s so vital to eat a diet of mostly RAW food.
As you know, without the sun it is virtually impossible for most life forms to exist. For example, we now know that without appropriate sun exposure, you will become deficient in vitamin D, which will have very far ranging consequences for your health. Vitamin D influences at least 2,000-3,000 genes (that we know of), and without sufficient amounts of vitamin D, your body becomes susceptible to a staggering amount of diseases.
But you can absorb sun energy via your food as well as through your skin (although this should not be confused with being able to alter your vitamin D status).
Dr. Johanna Budwig from Germany has stated that live foods are electron-rich, and act as high-powered electron donors and “solar resonance fields” in your body to attract, store, and conduct the sun's energy in your body.
The greater your store of light energy, the greater the power of your overall electromagnetic field, and consequently the more energy is available for healing and maintenance of optimal health.
Every living organism emits biophotons or low-level luminescence, and the higher the level of light a cell emits, the greater its vitality and the potential for the transfer of that energy to the individual who eats it.
Hence, the more light a food is able to store, the more nutritious it is. Naturally grown fresh vegetables, for example, and sun-ripened fruits, are rich in light energy.
The capacity to store biophotons is therefore a measure of the quality of your food.
I firmly believe it’s only a matter of time before these truths will become common scientific- and medical knowledge. You can help speed things up by sharing what you know with your family and friends.
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2009/08/15/Your-Body-Literally-Glows-With-Light.aspx

Mayo Clinic DEAD Wrong on Diabetic Recommendations

Dr. Mercola Newsletter, August 17, 2009
Researchers from North Carolina State University and the Mayo Clinic have developed a computer model that is intended to determine the best time to begin using statin therapy in diabetes patients to help prevent heart disease and stroke.
According to the lead author, "The research is significant because patients with diabetes are at high risk for cardiovascular disease and statins are the single most commonly used treatment for patients at risk of heart disease and/or stroke."
The new model incorporates patient-specific data. An established risk model calculates each patient's probability of heart attack and stroke based on risk factors, such as their cholesterol, blood pressure, etc. This overall risk "score" is used to weigh the medical advantages of beginning statin therapy against the financial cost of the statins.

Statins, which are a class of drugs used to lower your cholesterol, are among the most commonly prescribed medications in the world, and I believe, one of the most unnecessary drugs there are.
This is one class of drugs that I am dedicated to sound the alarm about. We are actually in the process of seeking to replicate a campaign similar to what was done to raise awareness of the dangers of smoking, to inform the public about the dangers and combat the media fraud, deception and manipulation that causes people to believe otherwise.
They could have saved loads of time and money here by reading this website, because the answer to the question, “When should you begin taking a statin?” is “never.” No computer models required.
Why?
Because it’s safe to say that a drug intended to prevent heart disease which actually causes heart failure is not the right treatment for most people. Statin drugs offer a “cure” that is far worse than the disease.
Why It’s Highly Unlikely You’ll Ever Need a Statin Drug
At least 12 million Americans are already taking statins, and based on new expert recommendations another 23 million “should” be taking them.
Now, there are a small group of people with genetic enzyme defects that have cholesterols levels above 325-350 who seem to benefit from statins. However, in my clinical experience over more than two decades and tens of thousands of patients, there have been a grand total of three patients that required statins to control this relatively uncommon genetic problem.
What This Computer Model Will NOT Tell You
It’s the emergence of these kinds of dangerous diagnostic strategies that make it so important to remain educated on this issue and not simply go along with what the media and professionals claim.. Especially since statin drugs are linked to many, many dangerous side effects. And I can guarantee you this computer model will not evaluate your risk of being harmed by the drug, even though there are over 900 studies showing statin drugs to be dangerous.
For example, Bayer's statin, Baycol, was pulled from the market in 2001 after 31 people died from rhabdomyolysis, a condition in which muscle tissue breaks down resulting in kidney failure.
Other serious and potentially life threatening side effects include, but are not limited to:

• Polyneuropathy, also known as peripheral neuropathy, which is characterized by weakness, tingling and pain in the hands and feet, as well as difficulty walking
• Heart failure
• An increase in cancer risk
• Immune system suppression
• Potential increase in liver enzymes, so patients must be monitored for normal liver function

Another example is Zetia, a cholesterol-lowering drug prescribed to about 1 million people each week. It was not only found to haveno medical benefits, but the trial also discovered that arterial plaque growth increased, growing nearly twice as fast in patients taking Vytorin, a drug that combines Zetia with Zocor (another statin drug).
Despite these disturbing facts, Zetia and Vytorin account for about 20 percent of the cholesterol drugs on the U.S. market.
What You Need to Know About Cholesterol in Order to Understand the Dangers of Statins
Statin drugs work by preventing the formation of cholesterol, and reduce LDL cholesterol, which is considered the "bad" cholesterol.
There is no argument that these drugs do work very well at lowering your cholesterol levels. However, was has not been proven is that they significantly lower your risk of dying from heart disease. In no way, shape or form, do they treat the cause of your problem. They are nothing more than a toxic band-aid.
So just what makes statins so dangerous, and why are they not the answer for managing your cholesterol levels?
First you need to understand the biological workings of cholesterol.
In fact, there is no such thing as “good” or “bad” cholesterol. Both HDL and LDL cholesterol perform vital functions in your body, which is why it’s actually dangerous to bring your LDL levels down too low.
HDL (high density lipoprotein) and LDL (low density lipoprotein) are actually proteins that transport the cholesterol to and from your tissues.
Cholesterol in turn is a precursor to steroid hormones. For example, you can’t make testosterone or estrogen, cortisol, DHEA or pregnenolone, or a multitude of other steroid hormones that are necessary for health, without cholesterol.
Even more importantly, your cells cannot regenerate their membranes without it. The reason you have LDL to begin with is to transport the cholesterol to the tissues in order to make new cells and repair damaged ones.
However, there are different sizes of LDL particles and it’s the LDL particle size that is relevant, and statins do not modulate the size of the particles. Unfortunately, most people don’t know about that part, and very rarely, if ever, get tested for particle size.
The particles are sticky, so very small LDL’s can easily get stuck in different areas, and the build-up eventually causes inflammation and damage.
The only way to make sure your LDL particles are large enough to not cause damage is through your diet. In fact, it’s one of the major functions of insulin.
Conveniently enough, a healthy diet is also the answer for type 2 diabetes, so by focusing on what you eat, you’re treating both your diabetes and your cholesterol levels, and reducing your associated risk of heart disease.
If you eat properly, which is really the only known good way to regulate LDL particle size, then it does the right thing; it takes the cholesterol to your tissues, the HDL takes it back to your liver, and no plaque is formed.
The second thing you need to know is that statins work by reducing the enzyme that causes your liver to make cholesterol when it is stimulated by high insulin levels.
Again, you can achieve the same, or better, result by simply reducing your insulin levels by eliminating sugar and most grains, which is also what you need to do to successfully address type 2 diabetes.
What Most Doctors Fail to Tell You When Prescribing Statins
Another important aspect that most doctors fail to tell you about is that statins are non-specific inhibitors of not just one, but a number of very important liver enzymes, one of of the most important being Coenzyme Q10.
CoQ10 is a vital enzyme that your body needs for energy and cardiovascular health.
It is widely recommended to repair heart damage, boost the function of the heart and acts as a protectant against heart attacks and valve damage. Additionally, CoQ10 has been shown to be beneficial in heart and lung cancer, as well as maintain cognitive function.
Thus, when you take statins your production of this enzyme is dramatically depleted and you do not reap the health benefits associated with it. Unfortunately, few patients are ever told about this fact and their health suffers accordingly.
How to Normalize Your Cholesterol Without Dangerous Drugs
Just about every person, other than thesmall minority with the genetic enzyme defects mentioned above, can normalize their cholesterol levels with the Total Health Program, which includes modifying your eating habits based on your body's unique nutritional type.
If you truly want to normalize your cholesterol levels, following these simple lifestyle changes can get you there:

• Normalize your insulin levels by eliminating sugar and grains.
• Take a high-quality animal-based omega-3 fat like krill oil or fish oil
• Most men, and women who is in menopause, should check your iron levels as elevated levels of iron can cause major oxidative damage in the blood vessels, heart and other organs. Excess iron is also one of the major contributing factors of cancer risk
• Regular exercise is another important tool that can help
• Energy Psychology methods such as meridian tapping techniques can also be helpful for cholesterol. Read this press releasefor the possibilities.

As I stated earlier this week, one of our top priority goals is to spread the message that statin drugs are clearly not the weapon of choice for high cholesterol. I urge you to share this information as well, by forwarding this article to your friends and family.
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2009/08/15/Mayo-Clinic-DEAD-Wrong-on-Diabetic-Recommendations.aspx

Study: High Glycemic Foods Lead To Heart Disease

Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News 08-14-09
Aug. 12--A landmark research study by Dr. Michael Shechter of Tel Aviv University's Sackler School of Medicine and the Heart Institute of Sheba Medical Center, with collaboration of the Endocrinology Institute, shows exactly how high carbohydrate foods increase the risk for heart problems.
Researchers looked at four groups of volunteers who were given different breakfasts:
--cornflake mush mixed with milk- not unlike the typical American breakfast
--a pure sugar mixture
--bran flakes
--a placebo (water)
Over four weeks, Dr. Shechter applied a test that allows researchers to visualize how the arteries are functioning. It's called "brachial reactive testing" and it uses a cuff on the arm, like those used to measure blood pressure, which can visualize arterial function in real time.
The results were dramatic. Before any of the patients ate, arterial function was essentially the same. After eating, except for the placebo group (who drank water), all had reduced functioning. Enormous peaks indicating arterial stress were found in the high glycemic index groups: the cornflakes and sugar group.
"We knew high glycemic foods were bad for the heart. Now we have a mechanism that shows how," says Dr. Shechter. "Foods like cornflakes, white bread, French fries, and sweetened soda all put undue stress on our arteries. We've explained for the first time how high glycemic carbs can affect the progression of heart disease."
During the consumption of foods high in sugar, there appears to be a temporary and sudden dysfunction in the endothelial walls of the arteries.
Endothelial health can be traced back to almost every disorder and disease in the body. It is "the riskiest of the risk factors," says Dr. Shechter.
Dr. Shechter recommends sticking to foods like oatmeal, fruits and vegetables, legumes and nuts, which have a low glycemic index. Exercising every day for at least 30 minutes, he adds, is an extra heart-smart action to take.
http://www.lef.org/news/LefDailyNews.htm?NewsID=8648&Section=Nutrition

Quitting smoking causes quick drop in inflammation
Last Updated: 2009-08-14 13:55:09 -0400 (Reuters Health)
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Just weeks after quitting smoking, women show major reductions in several markers of inflammation associated with heart disease risk, new research shows.
The findings point the way to a strategy for encouraging people at risk of heart disease to kick the habit, the study's authors say.
Smoking is known to promote inflammation, while quitting cuts the risk of developing and dying from heart and lung disease, Dr. Christine N. Metz of the Feinstein Institute for Medical Research in Manhasset, New York, and her colleagues write in the medical journal Chest. However, it's unknown whether benefits are seen immediately after a person quits.
To investigate, they performed blood tests for several markers of inflammation, including C-reactive protein (CRP), tumor necrosis factor (TNF), and other substances, in 36 women participating in a smoking cessation program. The women were tested four times over 6 to 7 weeks.
Levels of TNF and two related substances fell steadily through the course of the study, the researchers found. Levels of CRP and interleukin-6 also fell.
Informing people about the "age and health" of their lungs is known to help encourage them to quit smoking, Metz and her team note, and using markers of inflammation like those measured in the current study could provide similar information on cardiovascular health.
"Quantifiable information reflecting cardiovascular health may act as positive reinforcement for those trying to quit and remain smoke free," they add.
"We propose the identification of a panel of inflammatory biomarkers that could be used as measurable milestones for persons quitting smoking in a smoking cessation program focused on improving cardiovascular health for smokers who are at risk," they conclude.
SOURCE: Chest, July 2009.
http://www.reutershealth.com/archive/2009/08/14/eline/links/20090814elin001.html

Osteoporosis-linked fracture rates up dramatically
Last Updated: 2009-08-14 12:41:38 -0400 (Reuters Health)
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - The number of Americans hospitalized for osteoporosis-related fractures and other injuries has climbed 55 percent since 1995, a U.S. government report finds.
In 2006, Americans had more than 254,000 hospital stays for injuries related to the bone-thinning disease -- with fractures of the hip, spine and ribs among the most common, according to the study by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ).
The figure represents a considerable increase in the rate of such hospitalizations over just one decade. In 1995, the rate of hospital stays for osteoporosis-related injuries was 55 per 100,000 people; in 2006, it was 85 per 100,000.
"This is a fairly alarming increase," said Dr. Anne Elixhauser, a senior research scientist with the AHRQ.
The reasons, she told Reuters Health, are not known, but a number of factors could be involved.
One is the aging of the population, Elixhauser said, though this alone cannot account for the 55 percent increase.
Other culprits include lack of exercise, which helps build and preserve bone mass, and inadequate intake of calcium and vitamin D -- two nutrients crucial to bone health.
Another potential factor, according to Elixhauser, is increased use of certain medications that can lower bone mass, such as diuretics to treat high blood pressure and proton-pump inhibitors used to treat acid reflux.
Not surprisingly, most of the hospitalizations for osteoporosis-related injuries in 2006 involved older women, who are at increased risk of developing osteoporosis. Women accounted for nearly 89 percent of hospital stays in 2006, and adults older than 65 accounted for about 90 percent.
But while osteoporosis-related hospitalizations are mostly among older adults, women, as well as men, should start thinking about osteoporosis prevention early on, Elixhauser advised.
That, she said, means not smoking, drinking alcohol only in moderation and getting adequate calcium and vitamin D through food or, if necessary, supplements. Lifelong exercise -- especially weight-bearing activities that put the bones under some stress, like jogging, jumping and brisk walking -- will also help build and maintain bone mass.
People who already have osteoporosis should talk with their doctors about the best ways to lower their risk of fractures, Elixhauser said.
Doing so may also make a difference in terms of healthcare dollars. In 2006, the AHRQ study found, osteoporosis-related injuries carried a price tag of $2.4 billion in hospital costs.
http://www.reutershealth.com/archive/2009/08/14/eline/links/20090814elin005.html

Obama says insurance companies holding U.S. hostage
Last Updated: 2009-08-14 16:16:10 -0400 (Reuters Health)
BELGRADE, Montana (Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama, pushing for healthcare reform during a trip to conservative Montana, said on Friday the country was "held hostage" by insurance companies that deny coverage to sick people.
Obama, on a multi-state swing to tamp down vociferous opposition to his top domestic priority, targeted insurance companies for dropping customers who become sick or forcing patients to cover huge costs.
"We are held hostage at any given moment by health insurance companies that deny coverage or drop coverage or charge fees that people can't afford," Obama told a crowd of some 1,000 people in Montana.
"It's wrong. It's bankrupting families. It's bankrupting businesses. And we are going to fix it when we pass health insurance reform this year," he said.
In a half-work, half-play trip with his family that will include stops at the Grand Canyon and other national parks, Obama, a Democrat, aims to emphasize the benefits of his $1 trillion plan to overhaul the insurance industry, expand healthcare coverage and cut costs to consumers.
Protesters and supporters lined up outside the venue for his first town hall-style meeting in Montana, where the White House said he would make remarks on insurance company reform before taking an hour of questions from the audience.
Obama has been fighting against Republican criticism that his plan amounts to a government takeover. The issue has sparked emotional and sometimes hostile questioning from citizens at similar question-and-answer sessions with lawmakers across the country.
"I hope in answering concerns he changes minds," White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said on Friday.
Montana supported Republican presidential candidate John McCain in the 2008 election.
Obama's town hall meetings in Montana on Friday and Colorado on Saturday will be his second and third such events in less than a week, after a meeting in New Hampshire on Tuesday.
They come as poll numbers reflect concern about the U.S. budget deficit and Republicans contend that the plan would be an expensive mistake, especially as the country tries to emerge from the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.
"People are concerned about several things: one the cost, and number two, they won't have free choice," said Montana Republican Party Chairman Will Deschamps in telephone interview with Reuters.
"This thing is sinking like a rock in a stream," he said.
Screaming demonstrators have disrupted some recent public meetings on healthcare held by members of Congress from Obama's Democratic Party. They captured media attention and overshadowed debate on the plan's complex details.
"The people that make the most noise get the most press," said David O'Connor, 63, a Democrat at the Montana event. "I think we definitely need healthcare reform of some kind."
Even some healthcare supporters have faulted Obama for relying too heavily on others to make his case, and criticized the White House for letting healthcare opponents dominate the discussion.
"It's OK if the fringes believe certain things, but you don't want their ideas creeping into the mainstream," said Darrell West of the Brookings Institution in Washington.
http://www.reutershealth.com/archive/2009/08/14/eline/links/20090814elin014.html

Chocolate again linked to better heart health

Nutraingredients.com, 17-Aug-2009

Increased intakes of chocolate may decrease the risk of a heart attack victim from dying from heart-related problems, according to a joint US-Swedish study.
Eating chocolate two or more times per week was associated with a 66 per cent reduction in cardiac mortality, while less frequent consumption was also associated with smaller decreased risks, say the researchers in the Journal of Internal Medicine.
The study is said to be the first to assess the possible effects of chocolate consumption on the prognosis of men and women following a heart attack.
The health benefits of antioxidant-rich chocolate have received much recognition in recent years, with positive findings from a number of studies impacting on consumer awareness. Chocolate manufacturers are using high cocoa content (over 70 per cent) as a means of differentiation, and cocoa has also received attention for its potential in functional food applications.
The new study, however, did not differentiate between the different types of chocolate, be it milk or dark. “In the European Union, milk chocolate has to contain a minimum of 25 per cent of cocoa solids, dark chocolate 35 per cent,”explained the researchers. “The corresponding proportions in United States are 10 per cent and 15 per cent.
“According to the main chocolate producer (Marabou owned by Kraft Foods Sverige AB, Sweden) in the decade of the 1990s, about 90 per cent of the consumption was milk chocolate in Sweden and Swedish milk chocolate normally contains about 30 per cent cocoa solids,” they stated.
Study details
The researchers followed 1,169 non-diabetic people hospitalised after their first heart attack, and participating in the Stockholm Heart Epidemiology Program. After completing a questionnaire to assess chocolate consumption over the course of 12 months, the participants were then followed to eight years.
According to the results, consuming chocolate less than once per month, up to once per week and twice or more per week was associated with 27, 44, and 66 per cent reductions in cardiac mortality, respectively.
“Chocolate consumption generally had an inverse but weak association with total mortality and nonfatal outcomes,” said the researchers.
On the other hand, intakes of sweets and candies were not linked to any changes in cardiac or total mortality risk, added the researchers.
“Chocolate consumption was associated with lower cardiac mortality in a dose dependent manner in patients free of diabetes surviving their first acute myocardial infarction,” wrote the researchers.
“Although our findings support increasing evidence that chocolate is a rich source of beneficial bioactive compounds, confirmation of this strong inverse relationship from other observational studies or large-scale, long-term, controlled randomized trials is needed,” they concluded.
The researchers were affiliated with Karolinska Institute, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, The National Board of Health and Welfare (Stockholm), and Uppsala University.
Source: Journal of Internal Medicine
Volume 266, Pages 248-257, doi: 10.1111/j.1365-2796.2009.02088.x
"Chocolate consumption and mortality following a first acute myocardial infarction: the Stockholm Heart Epidemiology Program"
Authors: I. Janszky, K.J. Mukamal, R. Ljung, S. Ahnve, A. Ahlbom, J. Hallqvist
http://www.nutraingredients.com/Research/Chocolate-again-linked-to-better-heart-health

Swine Flu Could Combine With Hospital Superbugs to Kill Thousands

David Gutierrez, NaturalNews.com  August 17, 2009 

(NaturalNews) The combination of H1N1 swine flu and antibiotic-resistant staph bacteria could lead to a deadly form of pneumonia that kills half the people it infects within three days, according to a study published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases.

Researchers analyzed two patients who had experienced bacterial pneumonia that led to blood poisoning, concluding that the culprit was community acquired methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (CA-MRSA), the form of MRSA that occurs outside of health care settings like hospitals and nursing homes. 

"The threat from CA-MRSA in the USA is very serious concern, especially if there is a flu epidemic as this could trigger a large number of cases of necrotizing pneumonia, which has a mortality rate of more than 50 percent in 72 hours," said Richard James, of the University of Nottingham.

MRSA is already a highly lethal bacteria, because its resistance to first-line antibiotics makes it more likely to cause complications such as blood or organ infections, boils or even skin necrosis. The bacteria kills more people each year in the United States than AIDS.

CA-MRSA cases are sharply on the rise, with more and more cases being reported in settings gyms, schools and prisons.

"The concern is that this may be the start of an exponential increase as we saw with hospital MRSA infections in the 1990s," James said. "It took the UK 13 years to get to grips with hospital-acquired MRSA infections; we are not equipped to deal with large numbers of CA-MRSA infections in the community." 

CA-MRSA appears to be particularly likely to cause pneumonia when it infects people who are recovering from a flu infection.

"Bacterial pneumonia following influenza can be very serious and in some cases fatal," said MRSA expert Mark Enright, of Imperial College London. "CA-MRSA pneumonia is particularly dangerous due to the rapid, aggressive nature of the infection and the difficulty in providing effective chemotherapy. The emergence of pandemic influenza and increased prevalence of CA-MRSA in many countries may cause increased morbidity and mortality in infected individuals." 
http://www.naturalnews.com/026858_MRSA_hospital_swine_flu.html

Hypothyroidism Reaches Epidemic Proportions, Causing Fatigue and Weight Gain

Barbara L. Minton, NaturalNews.com  August 17, 2009 

(NaturalNews) Is the average temperature of the human body still 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit? This often quoted average was determined in the nineteenth century. A more recent study has reported an average temperature of 98.2, and experts believe the decrease in body heat is the result of an epidemic of mild or moderate hypothyroidism. Some believe we are evolving into a population with the propensity for low thyroid function because antibiotics have allowed people who would have died from pneumonia and other diseases associated with hypothyroidism to remain alive and reproduce. Others see rising hypothyroidism rates as the result of diet and environmental factors. Whatever the answer is, one thing is sure. More people than ever are suffering from the myriad of symptoms associated with low thyroid levels, especially women.

Thyroid is the most important hormone in the body. Because it stimulates the production of cellular energy, production of all other hormones will be negatively impacted when thyroid hormone levels are less than optimal. Every aspect of health is affected by low thyroid function.

Hypothyroidism is behind many disease states

Hypothyroidism is signaled by fatigue and loss of energy. People with the disease don't have any sparkle in the morning, and as the day goes on they find themselves falling asleep sitting in meetings or while driving on the highway, reading or watching TV. The only time they feel energized is from continuous movement, such as jogging or doing housework. As soon as the task is completed and they sit down, chances are good they will start to nod off.

Yet while they are fatigued, low thyroid people are often hyperactive at the same time. Thyroid expert Dr. Alan Gaby reported a study of 49 people diagnosed with hypothyroidism. Among them, 61 percent met diagnostic criteria for attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder. When thyroid hormone is deficient, the nerves require abnormal stimulation to function or the body produces excess adrenalin to keep it going. The result is people become tired and tense at the same time, according to Dr. Gaby.

People with low thyroid exhibit many of the characteristics that are blamed on aging, with difficulty concentrating being the most blatant. They tend to flit from task to task and often accomplish little they set out to do. They can find themselves standing in front of an open refrigerator, unable to remember what they are looking for. They may have difficulty reading, needing to read sentences again because their mind wandered off the first time.

Low thyroid suffers are always the coldest people in the room, and their body temperatures can go down to 95 degree (F) in the cold winter months. People with moderate levels of low thyroid can experience the cold as extremely painful, and they plan their activities with minimizing exposure to cold weather as a priority. They also have trouble dealing with heat, and usually find comfort only in a very narrow range of temperatures, usually in the lower 70s. They are quite uncomfortable in overly heated rooms.

Other symptoms include inexplicable weight gain, painful premenstrual periods, fertility problems, muscle weakness and cramps, dry skin, yellow bumps on the eyelids, hair loss that includes the lower third of the eyebrows, susceptibility to infection, migraines, hoarseness, constipation, depression, difficulty getting words out when speaking, and goiter.

Miscarriage, fibrocystic breast disease, ovarian fibroids, cystic ovaries, endometriosis, and PMS are caused or aggravated by hypothyroidism, especially when it's coupled with estrogen dominance, a condition of hormone imbalance that happens as progesterone levels decline starting as early as the late 20s. This is because estrogen inhibits thyroid secretion, while progesterone stimulates it.

A newly released study to determine the prevalence of hypothyroidism in patients with benign breast disorders found that 23.2% of the women tested had unsuspected hypothyroidism. Symptoms of benign breast disease were alleviated in 83% of the patients with hypothyroidism through the use of only thyroxine replacement. (World Journal of Surgery, July 30)

Although the common perception of low thyroid people is that they are overweight, many people with low thyroid are underweight, so weight alone is not a determining factor. If the person is overweight, most of the extra weight is in water, not fat. People with low thyroid can drink and drink, but hardly ever need to urinate. Thyroid treatment can help an anorexic or other sick person gain weight.

Sleep is a problem for the person with low thyroid who may fall asleep easily but awaken after only a few hours and be unable to return to sleep for the rest of the night. Headaches can often plague low thyroid sufferers, not only migraines but stress and tension headaches.

There is a connection between multiple sclerosis (MS) and low thyroid. In a study by thyroid researcher Dr. Ray Peat, it was found that thyroid therapy caused MS symptoms to disappear in patients who had no other obvious causes such as heavy metal poisoning.

Depression is a classic symptom of low thyroid. Women with low thyroid are the most susceptible to severe bouts of post-partum depression following childbirth, and thyroid treatment helps restore their emotional equilibrium. Low thyroid can contribute to inability to let go of old hurts and angers, particularly against one's mate.

Adrenalin and its synthetic drug copies, such as the inhalers used for asthma, are toxic when used continuously in response to the stress of hypothyroidism and endurance exercise. Excess adrenalin is toxic to the heart because it damages heart mitochondria. According to Dr. Peat, this is due to abnormally rapid mobilization and oxidation of unsaturated fatty acids leading to peroxidation aggravated by inadequate antioxidant protection. Dr. Broda Barnes, who runs a not-for-profit organization dedicated to research in the field of thyroid and metabolic balance, has found that the cardiovascular complications of diabetes are due to low thyroid function rather than insulin.

Researchers in Italy have just released results from their study to determine the effect of hypothyroidism on coronary artery disease. They examined the occurrence of the disease and long-term prognosis in patients without a history of primary thyroid disease, myocardial infarction, or chronic heart failure to determine if their disease related to serum levels of biologically active thyroid hormone. They found that levels of the active thyroid hormone (T3) were inversely correlated to the presence of coronary artery disease. Low T3 syndrome conferred an adverse prognosis, even after adjusting for traditional coronary risk factors. (Clinical Cardiology, July)

Dr. Barnes has concluded that cancer risk increases in male and female hypothyroid patients. He sees this as directly related to hormone imbalance with increased production of estrogen and decreased production of the primary anti-aging steroids from cholesterol: pregnenolone, progesterone and DHEA, all of which are thyroid dependent.

Researchers in Spain studied the relationship between thyroid hormone and tumor development. They found mixed results. Although hypothyroidism might be a risk factor for liver and breast cancer in humans, a lower incidence of breast carcinoma has been reported in hypothyroid patients. Changes in the stromal cells of people with hypothyroidism can modulate tumor progression and metastatic growth independently of the presence of thyroid receptors on the tumor cells. However, they also found that hypothyroidism can promote tumor growth and invasiveness. (PLoS One, July 29)

Hypothyroidism can be life threatening

A rare condition that can result from long-term undiagnosed hypothyroidism is called myxedema coma. The coma can occur during illness, after an accident, from exposure to cold, as a result of the ingestion of narcotics and/or sedatives, or when the body temperature drifts below 95 degrees (F). It is a medical emergency that requires immediate treatment.

Diet and environment have major impact on thyroid function

What is happening to our thyroids to cause such problems? Putting the natural selection theory aside, Dr. Lita Lee reporting on the work of Drs. Peat and Barnes says that the majority of people seen in doctor's offices have some form of thyroid dysfunction. She notes radiation is the greatest environmental cause of hypothyroidism and other thyroid problems, including tumors and thyroid cancer. Since Chernobyl, radioactive fallout has become a worldwide phenomenon. Her hypothesis remains unproven for lack of an unexposed control group.

Epidemiological studies of radiation downwinders show many of the symptoms of hypothyroidism including chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia. According to Dr. Peat, fibromyalgia is a combination of edema, inflammation and low blood sugar, all symptoms of hypothyroidism. He too believes that radiation is a major culprit in the hypothyroid epidemic.

"Organic animal protein is essential for the production of thyroid hormone and its conversion to the active form in the liver. Veganism leads to low thyroid function and low cholesterol which can lead to all of the major chronic degenerative diseases," says Dr. Lee. She sees women as especially vulnerable because their low thyroid function goes hand in hand with hormone imbalance. Because pesticides mimic unbalanced estrogen in the body, she urges people to consume only organic produce.

Use of polyunsaturated oils contributes to low thyroid function whether the oils are processed or not. These include soybean, canola, safflower, corn, flax, fish, evening primrose and borage. According to Dr. Peat, the more unsaturated the oil is, the more strongly it interferes with thyroid secretion, the transport of thyroid hormone in the blood, and the response of the tissue thyroid receptors." Olive oil, coconut oil and saturated fats do not compromise thyroid health.

Dr. John Lee, famed Harvard Medical School Professor and author, cautioned that soy products contain goitrogens, substances which inhibit thyroid function and the conversion of T4, the inactive form of thyroid hormone to T3, the active form of thyroid hormone. Genistein, an isoflavone found in soybeans, can block thyroid hormone production. Phytate found in unsoaked nuts and legumes including beans can accentuate these effects because it binds zinc and copper, leaving little of these important minerals available for the production of thyroid hormone. A transport protein called GLUT1 is shut down by genistein. This protein sends glucose into the cells where it is used to generate energy. Slowing the transport of glucose means less energy production not only of thyroid hormone, but of every other action in the body.

Fluoride from water, foods and toothpaste causes severe hypothyroidism.

Synthetic and genetically engineered hormones used in birth control pills, hormone drug therapy, and as growth stimulants in the non-organic production of food animals block the release of thyroid hormone from the thyroid gland.

While some iodine is critical to thyroid functioning, too much can become a powerful thyroid inhibitor.

How to determine if you have a sluggish thyroid

There is no accurate medical test for thyroid function, according to Dr. Lita Lee. Anyone having high cholesterol is practically assured of having hypothyroidism, because thyroid hormone controls the conversion of cholesterol to important anti-aging hormones and to bile salts. The lack of this conversion causes cholesterol levels to rise. However, many people with low cholesterol from a depressed immune system or from eating a low protein diet may also have hypothyroidism.

Dr. Barnes introduced the basal temperature test as a way to determine adequate thyroid function. The oral temperature is measured with an oral digital thermometer immediately after waking in the morning. This temperature should be 98.0 degrees F. It should then rise to 98.6 to 99 degrees during the daylight hours, and the resting pulse should be about 85 beats per minute. If temperature and pulse rates are below these levels, hypothyroidism is indicated.
http://www.naturalnews.com/026853_thyroid_hypothyroidism_disease.html

Purple Carrots in High Demand as Natural Food Coloring

David Gutierrez, NaturalNews.com  August 17, 2009 

(NaturalNews) Producers of purple carrots are anticipating a massive surge in demand as consumers and governments become increasingly wary of artificial food colorings.

For decades, food producers have used petroleum-based dyes to give their products bright colors, sometimes reminiscent of the flavors the food is supposed to carry. 

"We eat with our eyes, and the first thing you evaluate is color," said Stephen Lauro of natural colors manufacturer ColorMaker.

After researchers linked artificial colors to hyperactivity in children, however, the United Kingdom began making plans to ban a number of the additives. The European Union responded to growing concern among scientists, consumers and health professionals by passing a law requiring all food containing artificial colors to carry a warning label reading, "May have an adverse effect on activity and attention in children."

This law, which goes into force on January 1, has fueled an already growing demand for natural food coloring.

"There's a mad dash in Europe to get synthetic dyes out and put natural ones in, and it's coming across the Atlantic," Lauro said. "It was dumb luck and we stepped into it."

Now being explored as a source of such dyes is the purple carrot, ancient ancestor to the modern, orange version. Originally used as a clothing dye by Afghan royalty, the purple carrot is now being investigated as a potential source of food colorings. Researchers are at work to stabilize the purple pigment in the vegetables, which can turn brown when heated, red in acidic foods and blue in alkaline ones.

The carrots are given their purple color by anthocyanin, a powerful antioxidant that also gives blueberries and red grapes their color.

"Mom always said vegetables are good for you but didn't know why," said Paul Verderber of Grimmway Farms, which grows organic purple carrots. "The colors are causing the goodness."
http://www.naturalnews.com/026850_food_carrots_purple_carrots.html

Why doctors are not as clever as they used to be

Steve Doughty
MAIL UK,  15th August 2009
Leading professionals are becoming less intelligent, researchers said yesterday. Lawyers, doctors, accountants and bankers were all cleverer a generation ago, a study found. 
The startling conclusion was reached by academics looking into social mobility. They wanted to find out why those born into poor families in the 1970s were much less successful than those born in the 1950s. 
The research found that as poor children in the 1970s lost the chance of a good education - often blamed on the abolition of grammar schools - they were not able to reach the top professions. 
Instead, the places were filled by those from wealthier families - who were not always as naturally gifted.
The researchers from Bristol University based their findings on IQ tests taken by ten and 11-year-olds as part of two major surveys into the lives of children born in 1958 and 1970. 
They found a decline in IQ among those in the best-rewarded and highest-status professions between the two generations. It means professionals now in their 50s are likely to be brighter than those in their late 30s. 
Ratings from the tests give someone of exactly average intelligence a score of 100, with broadly average intelligence running from 90 to 109. Between 110 and 140 is regarded as superior intelligence. 
It found that lawyers born in 1958 had IQs about 10.5 per cent above the average when tested as children - in the superior bracket. But those born in 1970 had IQs nearer to 7.5 per cent above the norm, putting them into the average bracket. 
Similarly, accountants from 1958 were nearly 10 per cent above average, but only 6 per cent above average in 1970. 
Bankers' IQs fell from 7.5 per cent above average to 6.5 per cent, while university lecturers dropped from 9 to 7.5 per cent above average. Doctors were 12.5 per cent above average in 1958, but 11 per cent above average in 1970. 
A handful of professions showed that the 1970 generation were at the same level or more intelligent than their older colleagues. 
These tended to be those of lesser status, with less clearly laid out career paths, or with more egalitarian traditions. They included nursing, science, engineering, art and journalism. 
However, the researchers - led by Lindsey Macmillan from the Centre for Market and Public Organisation at Bristol University - offered a crumb of comfort to those who worry about whether their GP is up to the job. 
'Somewhat reassuringly,' the study said, 'doctors and scientists and other medical professionals exhibit the highest IQ test scores over time.' 
Labour has consistently blamed the fall in social mobility on universities shutting out youngsters from less wealthy backgrounds. 
But critics say the problem lies with comprehensive schools that fail to help poor pupils develop and achieve good grades. 
They point out that the major difference between the two generations born in 1958 and 1970 is that the former were educated in the era of grammar schools. 
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1206681/Why-doctors-clever-used-be.html#

As U.S. health row rages, many seek care in Mexico

REUTERS  Fri Aug 14, 2009 1:13am EDT
NACO, Mexico (Reuters) - Retired police officer Bob Ritz has health insurance that covers his medical and dental care in the United States.
But every few months he drives from his home in Tombstone, Arizona, to this small town in northern Mexico to avoid the healthcare costs that aren't paid by insurance.
"I pay $400 a month for my health insurance, and it's still cheaper to come to Mexico," says Ritz, 60, as he stood outside a sun-bleached pharmacy in Naco, a few hours drive southeast of Phoenix.
President Barack Obama is locked in a bitter fight to overhaul U.S. healthcare, as he seeks to increase the number of Americans getting coverage and drive down costs of around $2.5 trillion a year.
Republican critics charge that Obama and his Democratic allies in Congress are seeking a government takeover of healthcare that will drive up the budget deficit.
With Washington bickering over how to reform the system and contain its spiraling costs, many Americans like Ritz simply head to Mexico to get care they can afford.
The total number making the trip is unclear. But a recent study by the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research estimated that nearly 1 million people from California alone seek medical, dental or prescription services in Mexico each year.
Some making the trek have little or no medical coverage. Others like Ritz are on fixed incomes and want to avoid so-called co-pays and deductibles charged by U.S. insurers on top of policies that routinely cost from a few hundred dollars to a few thousand each month.
"The very wealthy can afford whatever they want, the very poor get it through aid, but the working and the middle-class have to struggle to pay insurance," said Ritz, who worked as a police officer in Chicago for 28 years.
"I'm very lucky to live near enough to Mexico to get good healthcare at a reasonable price," he added.
BROKEN BONES AND BRONCHITIS
Healthcare reform is the flagship domestic policy drive of Obama's first year in office.
He wants coverage for around 46 million uninsured Americans and to rein in rising medical costs, and regulate insurers that already provide care to millions more.
Republican opponents say Obama's plan amounts to socialism by stealth and argue that its trillion-dollar price tag will hurt the economy as the United States remains mired in the worst recession in decades.
While the bitter row continues to rage at town hall meetings across the United States, signs of the U.S. system's failings are visible in Mexican border cities, where cut-price pharmacies, dental clinics and doctors' surgeries vie for business from Americans who can't afford treatment at home.
In Tijuana, where medical tourism from neighboring San Diego is big business, clinics offer operations ranging from cut-rate cosmetic procedures to hysterectomies and bariatric surgery to curb obesity.
"I waste up to four hours coming to an appointment, but it's worth it as we'll save thousands of dollars," said Beatriz Iturriaga, a 26-year-old mother of two from Eastlake, south of San Diego, who paid $6,500 for bariatric surgery at a Tijuana clinic that would cost up to $40,000 stateside.
At the other end of the cost spectrum in Naco, Mexican physician Sixto de la Pena Cortes charges the 15 or so Americans that trek to his clinic-cum-pharmacy each week $20 for a check-up -- the cost of an average co-pay in the United States.
"Most common (ailments) are bronchitis, pneumonia and stomach problems," said de la Pena Cortes, 62, who said he has also set broken bones and arranged for an appendix to be removed at a hospital in nearby Agua Prieta at a cost of around $2,000.
http://www.reuters.com/article/healthNews/idUSTRE57C40C20090814

Cat's Claw: Rainforest Plant Kills Cancer Cells and Provides Hope for Arthritis Relief

Melanie Grimes, NaturalNews.com  August 15, 2009 

(NaturalNews) Cat's claw, also know as Uncaria tomentosa and una de gato, is a vine from the Peruvian jungle. This plant has been used as medicine for over two thousand years by the Peruvian tribe, the Ashaninka. It is known by them as the "Sacred Herb of the Rain Forest." Cat's claw contains compounds called pentcyclic oxindole alkaloids (POAs) that have been shown to support the immune system, prevent cancers, and possibly treat AIDS. In Europe, the bark is combined with the AIDS drug AZT in some clinical trials.

Cat's claw is sold as an herbal tonic in various forms: leaves, bark, and twigs. But the part of the cat's claw plant that contains the most medicine is the roots, even though the plant is named for thorns at the base of the leaves that resemble cat claws. Because of these thorns, the plant can grow as tall as 100 feet, vining around the trunk of large trees.

Homeopathically, Cat's Claw is used to treat gastric disturbances, such as ulcers, parasites diverticulitis, leaky gut syndrome, and Crohn's disease and Alzheimer's. In herbal medicine, Cat's Claw has been used to treat hormonal problems, such as PMS, CFS and prostate problems, and there has been some success in treating diabetes as well.

The POAs in Cat's Claw work by supporting the white blood cells (WBC). These are the cells that help with immunity. One of the functions of the WBC is to gobble up, and eliminate bacteria and viruses. POA does this by increasing the production of interleukin by the WBC. POAs also help a type of cell called B cells. B cells create antibodies against one type of virus or bacteria. After taking Cat's claw, research discovered an increase in the number of B cells. This is an important function, especially with new viruses mutating, such as Swine Flu H1N1.

Cat's Claw also helps the body create more T cells. T cells attack cancer cells and also AIDS viruses found in the blood stream.

Some Cat's claw plants do not contain POAs, but instead contain an alkaloid called tetracyclic oxindole (TOAs). This substance does not have the beneficial health effects of the POAs, so it is important to read the labels on supplements to make sure the product has the requisite amount of active substance.

Studies are underway at the National Institute on Aging that are investigating the role of Cat's Claw on the brain and in treating Alzheimer's disease.

Some of the compounds in the Cat's Claw plant are able to block inflammation and tumor necrosis factor (TNF). Scientists are therefore hopeful that this will lead to a cure for arthritis.

Side effects for Cat's Claw are few, but do include dizziness, vomiting and headaches. It can cause abortion, so pregnant women, or those hoping to become pregnant, should avoid it.
http://www.naturalnews.com/026854_cats_claw_cancer_arthritis.html

The Rumsfeld Plague: Aspartame Brings Horror (Opinion)

Hesh Goldstein, NaturalNews.com  August 15, 2009 

(NaturalNews) The aspartame horror began in 1981 due to Donald Rumsfeld, as head of the G.D. Searle pharmaceutical company, when he used his political clout to put a known carcinogen on the market to poison a nation all in the name of money.

In a Washington Post article of December 12, 2001 about Donald Rumsfeld, there was a one liner that was so incredibly relevant. That sentence was:

"He could be swilling Diet Coke with the secure knowledge that if not for his turnaround of Big Pharma giant G.D.Searle & Co. and successful touting of the sweetener aspartame, the beverage would not be possible".

If Donald Rumsfeld had never been born think of how many millions of people the world over would not suffer headaches and dizziness. Thousands blind from the free methyl alcohol in aspartame would have sight, and there would be much fewer cases of optic neuritis and macular degeneration. Millions suffering seizures would live normal lives and wouldn`t be taking anti-seizure medication that won`t work because aspartame interacts with drugs andvaccines. Think of the runner, Flo Jo, who drank Diet Coke and died of a grand mal seizure. She, no doubt, would still be alive. Brain fog and memory loss, skyrocketing symptoms of aspartame disease, would not be epidemic.

Millions suffer insomnia because of the depletion of serotonin. Think of Heath Ledger. He took that horrible drug, Ambian CR for sleep, which makes your optic nerve and face swell and gives you horrible headaches. Plus, he drank Diet Coke and took other drugs and died of polypharmacy.

Since aspartame has been proven to be a multi potential carcinogen, would Farrah Fawcett still be alive?

Consider the constant plague of fallen athletes. Aspartame triggers an irregular heart rhythm and interacts with all cardiac medication. It damages the cardiac conduction system and causes sudden death. Thousands of athletes have fallen. Doctors H.J. Roberts and Russell Blaylock wrote these alerts:
http://www.wnho.net/aspartame msg scd.htm
and
http://www.wnho.net/aspartame and arrhythmias.htm

Epidemiological studies should be done on MS and lupus because of their link to aspartame use. Hundreds of thousands of people suffer from aspartame induced multiple sclerosis and lupus, and if not warned in time could lose their lives as many have. Hospice nurses have reported Alzheimer`s disease in 30 year olds as it skyrockets from Rumsfeld`s plague. Think of Michael Jackson, a former Diet Pepsi spokesman. He developed lupus, then came the drugs, then came the serious joint pain, and then he died of cardiac arrest which aspartame causes.

As the phenylalanine in aspartame deletes serotonin, it triggers all kinds of psychiatric and behavioral problems. The mental hospitals are full of patients who are nothing but aspartame victims. If Donald Rumsfeld had never been born, the revoked petition for approval of aspartame would have been signed by FDA commissioner Jere Goyan and the mental hospitals would house probably 50% less victims. Jere Goyan would never have been fired at 3:00 AM by the Reagan transition Team to over-rule the Board of Inquiry. Instead, FDA commissioner Jere Goyan would have signed the revoked petition into law. See: http:/www.mpwhi.com/fda petition1.doc. The FDA today would still be Big Pharma`s adversary instead of being their "hooker".

If aspartame had not been approved, Lou Gehrig`s Disease, Parkinson`s and other neuro-degenerative diseases would not be knocking off the public in record numbers. Michael Fox, a Diet Pepsi spokesman, would never have gotten Parkinson`s at age 30. He would probably still be making movies, young and healthy. Aspartame interacts with L-dopa and other Parkinson drugs. Parcopa has aspartame in it and the pharmaceutical company refuses to remove it.

One has to take a deep breath when you think how heartless it is that there is not even a warning for pregnant women. Aspartame triggers every kind of birth defect from autism and Tourettes` Syndrome to cleft palate. Aspartame is an abortifacient (a drug that induces abortion). As an example, out of 9 pregnancies, 8 were lost and the one that survived is schizophrenic. Multiply that all over the world due to Rumsfeld`s Plague. ADD and ADHD would be rare instead of rampant.

It`s normal for young girls to look forward to marriage and children. Yet, many sip on diet soda or use aspartame products not realizing that aspartame is an endocrine disrupting agent, stimulating prolactin, which is a pituitary hormone that stimulates milk production at childbirth, changes the menstrual flow and causes infertility. Many go through life never knowing why they couldn`t have children. Aspartame even destroys marriages because it causes male sexual dysfunction and ruins female response.

Aspartame causes every type of blood disorder from a low blood platelet count to leukemia. Because aspartame can precipitate diabetes the disease is epidemic. To make matters worse, it can simulate and aggravate diabetic retinopathy and neuopathy, destroy the optic nerve, cause diabetics to go into convulsions and interact with insulin. Diabetics lose limbs from the free methyl alcohol; professional organizations like the American Diabetes Association push and defend this poison because they take money from the manufactures. How many millions would not have diabetes if Rumsfeld had never been born?

Aspartame (NutraSweet/Equal/Spoonful/E951/Candere/Benevia, etc) and MSG, another one of Ajinomoto`s horrors, are responsible for the epidemic of obesity the world over. Why? Because aspartame makes you crave carbohydrates and causes great toxicity to the liver.
http:/www.mpwhi.com/ aspartame makes you fatter.htm

The FDA report lists 92 symptoms from unconsciousness and coma to shortness of breath and shock. Medical texts list even more: "Aspartame Disease: An Ignored Epidemic", www.sunsetpress.com by H.J. Roberts, M.D., and "Excitotoxins: The Taste That Kills" by neurosurgeon Russell Blaylock, M.D., www.russellblaylockmd.com. There is simply no end to the horrors triggered by this literal addictive, excitoneurotoxic, genetically engineered carcinogenic drug. This chemical poison is so deadly that Dr. Bill Deagle, www.nutrimedical.com , a noted Virologist once said it was worse than depleted uranium because it is found everywhere in food.

The formaldehyde converted from the free methyl alcohol embalms living tissue and damages DNA according to the Trocho Study done in Barcelona in 1998. Even with this devastating study showing how serious a chemical poison aspartame is, the FDA has turned a blind eye and a deaf ear to it. WithMonsanto attorney Michael Taylor now appointed as Deputy Commissioner to the FDA by Obama, it`s nothing more than Monsanto`s Washington Branch Office. Even before the Ramazzini Studies showing aspartame to be a multi-potential carcinogen, the FDA knew it. Their own toxicologist, Dr. Adrian Gross, even admitted that it violated the Delaney Amendment because of the brain tumors and brain cancer. Therefore, no allowable daily intake ever should have been able to be established. Aspartame caused all types of tumors from mammary, uterine, ovarian, pancreatic and thyroid to testicular and pituitary. Dr. Alemany, who did the Trocho Study, commented that aspartame could kill 200 million people. When you damage DNA you can destroy humanity.

Dr. James Bowen told the FDA over 20 years ago that aspartame is mass poisoning the American public and likewise in more than 70 countries of the world. No wonder it`s called "Rumsfeld`s Plague".

Big Pharma knows all about aspartame and they add it to drugs, including the ones used to treat the problems caused by aspartame. Big Pharma has made America a fascist government. People are so sick from aspartame and yet they keep selling these dangerous pharmaceuticals at outrageous prices.

Dr. H.J. Roberts said in one of his books that you have to consider aspartame with killing children. We are talking about a drug that changes brain chemistry. Today children are medicated instead of educated.

Death and disability is what Donald Rumsfeld has heaped on consumers just to make money. Think of the death of Charles Fleming who used to drink about 10 diet sodas a day. Then he used creatine on top of this, which interacts, and is considered the actual cause of death. Yet his wife, Diane Fleming, remains in a prison in Virginia convicted of his death, despite being the very one who tried to get her husband to stop using these dangerous products containing aspartame in the first place.

The list never ends. At least six American Airlines` pilots, who were heavy users of aspartame, have died with one in flight drinking a Diet Coke. When American Airlines was written about removing aspartame they said, "leave the flying to us". Pilots too are sick and dying on aspartame, and when you fly your life is in the hands of the pilot. There was a case with a Delta pilot that died from esophageal cancer and had a history of consuming huge quantities of diet sodas. This was brought to the attention of the Delta management that refused the pilot`s wife`s request to alert other pilots.

Then there`s the Persian Gulf where diet sodas sat on pallets daily in temperatures in the 100 to 120 degree range for as long as 9 weeks at a time before the soldiers drank them all day long. Remember, aspartame converts to formaldehyde at 86 degrees; it interacts with vaccines and damages the mitochondria or life of the cell, and the whole molecule breaks down to a brain tumor agent.

There`s a book out there called, "Rumsfeld, His Rise, Fall and Catastrophic Legacy", by Andrew Cockburn that will substantiate all of this. And fittingly, Rumsfeld appropriately lives in a place called Mount Misery.

In the video, "Sweet Misery: A Poisoned World", which you can view at www.healthtalkhawaii.com, attorney James Turner explains how Rumsfeld got his poison marketed for human consumption. To learn about how the CDC investigation was covered up - The Rumsfeld-Pepsi-Nixon Connection, go tohttp://www.sweetremedy.tv/pages/rum... or view it in its entirety at www.healthtalkhawaii.com.

For over a quarter of a century there has been mass poisoning of the public in over 100 countries of the world by aspartame because Donald Rumsfeld, as he put it, "called in his markers". The aspartame industry has paid front groups and professional organizations to defend them and push it on the very people it can cause the most harm to. A suit was filed against the American Diabetes Association in 2004 for racketeering but they got out of it.

The hands of physicians are tied. Most are clueless that a patient is using aspartame, and the drugs used to treat the aspartame problem will probably interact and may even contain aspartame. This is the world that Donald Rumsfeld is responsible for!
http://www.naturalnews.com/026849_aspartame_health_Donald_Rumsfeld.html

Carnitine Supplements Reverse Glucose Intolerance In Animals

ScienceDaily (Aug. 17, 2009) — Supplementing obese rats with the nutrient carnitine helps the animals to clear the extra sugar in their blood, something they had trouble doing on their own, researchers at Duke University Medical Center report.
A team led by Deborah Muoio (Moo-ee-oo), Ph.D., of the Duke Sarah W. Stedman Nutrition and Metabolism Center, also performed tests on human muscle cells that showed supplementing with carnitine might help older people with prediabetes, diabetes, and other disorders that make glucose (sugar) metabolism difficult.
Carnitine is made in the liver and recycled by the kidney, but in some cases when this is insufficient, dietary carnitine from red meat and other animal foods can compensate for the shortfall.
After just eight weeks of supplementation with carnitine, the obese rats restored their cells' fuel- burning capacity (which was shut down by a lack of natural carnitine) and improved their glucose tolerance, a health outcome that indicates a lower risk of diabetes.
These results offer hope for a new therapeutic option for people with glucose intolerance, older people, people with kidney disease, and those with type 2 diabetes (what used to be called adult-onset diabetes).
Muoio said that soon her team of researchers will begin a small clinical trial of carnitine supplementation in people who fit the profile of those who might benefit from additional carnitine – older people (60 to 80 years) with glucose intolerance.
The study is published in the Aug. 21 issue of the Journal of Biological Chemistry.
The Duke researchers began studying carnitine more closely when abnormalities in the nutrient emerged from blood chemistry profiles of obese and old animals. These chemical profiles report on hundreds of byproducts of cell metabolism called metabolites and give scientists an opportunity to identify markers of disease states.
Carnitine is a natural compound known for helping fatty acids enter the mitochondria, the powerhouses of cells, where fatty acids are "burned" to give cells energy for their various tasks. Carnitine also helps move excess fuel from cells into the circulating blood, which then redistributes this energy source to needier organs or to the kidneys for removal. These processes occur through the formation of acylcarnitine molecules, energy molecules that can cross membrane barriers that encase all cells.
Researchers at Duke had observed that skeletal muscle of obese rats produced high amounts of the acylcarnitines, which requires free carnitine. As these molecules started to accumulate, the availability of free, unprocessed carnitine decreased. This imbalance was linked to fuel-burning problems, that is, impairments in the cells' combustion of both fat and glucose fuel.
"We suspected that persistent increases in acylcarnitines in the rats were causing problems, and we could also see that the availability of free carnitine was decreasing with weight gain and aging," said Muoio. "It appeared that carnitine could no longer do its job when chronic metabolic disruptions were stressing the system. That's when we designed an experiment to add extra carnitine to the rats' diet."
Muoio is also a professor in the departments of medicine, pharmacology and cancer biology.
Other study authors included Robert C. Noland, Sarah E. Seiler, Helen Lum, Olga Ilkayeva, Robert Stevens, and Timothy R. Koves of the Sarah W. Stedman Nutrition and Metabolism Center. Koves is also with the Duke Department of Medicine. Robert M. Lust is with the Department of Physiology at East Carolina University in Greenville, N.C., and Fausto G. Hegardt is with the CIBER division Fisiopatología de la Obesidad y la Nutrición of the Instituto de Salud Carlos III in Spain.
The work was supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health, and the American Diabetes Association, and a John A. Hartford Duke Center for Excellence Award.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/08/090812143948.htm

Up To 90 Percent Of US Paper Money Contains Traces Of Cocaine, Study Finds

ScienceDaily (Aug. 17, 2009) — You probably have cocaine in your wallet, purse, or pocket. Sound unlikely or outrageous? Think again! In what researchers describe as the largest, most comprehensive analysis to date of cocaine contamination in banknotes, scientists are reporting that cocaine is present in up to 90 percent of paper money in the United States, particularly in large cities such as Baltimore, Boston, and Detroit. The scientists found traces of cocaine in 95 percent of the banknotes analyzed from Washington, D.C., alone.
Presented at the 238th National Meeting of the American Chemical Society, the new study suggests that cocaine abuse is still widespread and may be on the rise in some areas. It could help raise public awareness about cocaine use and lead to greater emphasis on curbing its abuse, the researchers say.
The scientists tested banknotes from more than 30 cities in five countries, including the U.S., Canada, Brazil, China, and Japan, and found "alarming" evidence of cocaine use in many areas. The U.S. and Canada had the highest levels, with an average contamination rate of between 85 and 90 percent, while China and Japan had the lowest, between 12 and 20 percent contamination. The study is the first report about cocaine contamination in Chinese and Japanese currencies, they say.
"To my surprise, we're finding more and more cocaine in banknotes," said study leader Yuegang Zuo, Ph.D., of the University of Massachusetts in Dartmouth.
Zuo says that the high percentage of contaminated U.S. currency observed in the current study represents nearly a 20 percent jump in comparison to a similar study he conducted two years ago. That earlier study indicated that 67 percent of bills in the U.S. contained traces of cocaine.
"I'm not sure why we've seen this apparent increase, but it could be related to the economic downturn, with stressed people turning to cocaine," Zuo says. Such studies are useful, he noted, because the data can help law enforcement agencies and forensic specialists identify patterns of drug use in a community.
Scientists have known for years that paper money can become contaminated with cocaine during drug deals and directly through drug use such as snorting cocaine through rolled bills. Contamination can spread to banknotes not involved in the illicit drug culture because bills are processed in banks' currency-counting machines.
Previous studies on cocaine in banknotes, however, had several drawbacks. They often were based on sampling only a small number of banknotes, for instance. Some tests destroyed the currency.
In the new study, Zuo and colleagues describe use of a modified form of a standard laboratory instrument termed a gas chromatograph-mass spectrometer. It allows a faster, simpler and more accurate measurement of cocaine contamination than other methods, without destroying the currency. The researchers used the method to analyze banknotes of several different denominations from the five countries surveyed.
The U.S. had the highest levels. The scientists analyzed a total of 234 banknotes from the U.S. and found that up to 90 percent of the banknotes contain traces of cocaine. Amounts ranged from .006 micrograms (several thousands of times smaller than a single grain of sand) to over 1,240 micrograms of cocaine per banknote (about 50 grains of sand). For comparison: A grain of sand weighs approximately 23 micrograms; there are one million micrograms in a gram and 28 grams in an ounce.
The scientists collected U.S. banknotes from 17 U.S. cities and found that larger cities like Baltimore, Boston, and Detroit had among the highest average cocaine levels. Washington, D.C., ranked above the average, with 95 percent of the banknotes sampled contaminated with the drug. The lowest average cocaine levels in U.S. currency appeared in bills collected from Salt Lake City.
The researchers studied 27 banknotes from Canada and found that 85 percent were contaminated with cocaine, with amounts ranging from 2.4 micrograms to over 2,530 micrograms of coke per banknote. The researchers analyzed 10 banknotes from Brazil and found that 80 percent were contaminated with cocaine, still high but lower than the U.S. and Canada.
China and Japan had the lowest levels. The researchers analyzed 112 banknotes from China and found that about 20 percent were contaminated with cocaine. Of the 16 banknotes analyzed from Japan, only about 12 percent were contaminated with cocaine, the researchers say.
Despite the high percentage of cocaine-contaminated banknotes, Zuo points out that the amount of cocaine found on most notes was so small that consumers should not have any health or legal concerns about handling paper money.
"For the most part, you can't get high by sniffing a regular banknote, unless it was used directly in drug uptake or during a drug exchange," Zuo said. "It also won't affect your health and is unlikely interfere with blood and urine tests used for drug detection." This study was partly funded by the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/08/090816211843.htm

Low Choline Levels In Pregnant Women Raise Babies' Risk For Brain And Spinal-cord Defects, Study Shows

ScienceDaily (Aug. 17, 2009) — A newborn’s risk for brain and spinal-cord defects rises if the mother has low blood levels of the nutrient choline during pregnancy, researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine have discovered.
The scientists used a collection of 180,000 blood samples from pregnant California women to look for risk factors for two neural tube birth defects: anencephaly, a lethal condition in which the brain and skull do not develop, and spina bifida, a spinal-cord malformation that causes paralysis and lifelong disability. Neural tube defects have become less common since the 1996 decision to fortify the U.S. food supply with folic acid, a B-vitamin shown to prevent the defects, but they have not disappeared.
“Families whose infants die or suffer permanent disability from NTDs still feel the burden of these defects,” said Gary Shaw, DrPH, professor of neonatology and primary author of the new research, which will appear Aug. 14 in Epidemiology.
About 500 pregnancies per year are affected by neural tube defects in California alone, noted Shaw. “We’re keen on understanding what risk factors explain the continued disease.”
Shaw’s study targeted a group of nutrients suspected to promote brain and spinal-cord development. In early pregnancy, a sealed tube forms along the embryo’s back that later grows into the brain and spinal cord. Neural tube defects occur if the tube does not seal correctly. Based on prior research on folic acid, scientists believe that development of the neural tube may depend on a specific biochemical pathway that requires several vitamins and essential nutrients to operate properly. Shaw’s team measured blood levels of 13 of these nutrients in two groups of women who participated in California’s prenatal birth-defect screening program.
From 180,000 pregnant women screened between 2003 and 2005, the researchers identified 80 whose pregnancies were affected by neural tube defects. Their blood samples were compared to 409 samples randomly selected from among the women whose infants had no structural birth defects.
Choline, an essential nutrient found in egg yolks, soy, wheat germ and meats, was the only nutrient measured whose blood levels were linked to risk of neural tube defects.
“As choline levels went up, risk went down,” Shaw said. Risk for neural tube defects was 2.4 times higher in women with the lowest blood choline levels compared to women with average blood choline levels. The highest blood choline levels were associated with the lowest risk. A previous study by Shaw’s group showed that consumption of choline-rich foods was associated with lower risk for neural tube defects, but this is the first study to evaluate blood levels of choline and NTD risk.
Shaw’s work provides a promising target for future clinical trials on neural tube defect prevention, said Louanne Hudgins, MD, division chief of medical genetics at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital, who did not participate in the study. Hudgins, who is also a professor of pediatric genetics at the medical school, regularly counsels families facing prenatal diagnoses of neural tube defects. “You can’t change an individual’s genetic predisposition to these defects. But nutrition components to NTD risk are ripe for therapy,” she said.
Shaw cautioned that the blood samples tested were obtained between the 15th and 18th week of pregnancy, well after formation of the neural tube, which seals around the sixth week of pregnancy. Future research will be needed to examine blood choline levels in early pregnancy, he said. Researchers also need to test whether choline supplements given in early pregnancy reduce the rates of neural tube defects. Right now, prenatal multivitamins contain little or no choline.
For women who want to become pregnant, “the best source for choline is still eating a variety of foods,” Shaw concluded. Women of reproductive age should also follow U.S. Public Health Service recommendations to take a multivitamin containing other nutrients previously shown to promote healthy pregnancies, he said.
The study was funded by grants from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, and the Foundation to Promote Research into Functional Vitamin B12 Deficiency.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/08/090816220424.htm

Scientists Advance Understanding Of Cell Death

ScienceDaily (Aug. 16, 2009) — Medical Research Council (MRC) scientists have made an important advance in understanding the biological processes involved when cells are prompted to die. The work may help scientists to eventually develop new treatments for the many common diseases and conditions which occur when cell death goes wrong.
The research, published in the journal Molecular Cell, was carried out by a team of scientists, at the MRC Toxicology Unit at the University of Leicester and a subsequent patent application has been filed by MRC Technology, the commercial arm of the MRC.
Cells in the human body are continually dying and most of these cells kill themselves by a form of cell death, commonly referred to as apoptosis. In a healthy body, the number of cells stays constant. Millions of new cells are produced every second, and millions of others are lost or kill themselves. Failure of the normal apoptosis process plays a role in different diseases including cancer, certain neurodegenerative disorders such as Parkinson's and immune diseases, such as autoimmune lymphoproliferative syndrome (ALPS).
One of the study's authors, Dr Marion MacFarlane, MRC Toxicology Unit, explained: "This new research takes us a step closer to understanding how the DISC triggers cells to die. The challenge now is to try and use this fundamental knowledge to help work towards finding better treatments for conditions which occur when DISC-mediated cell death goes wrong."
Previous research has shown that a complex called the 'DISC', which is made up of different proteins and is formed following activation of molecules called 'Death Receptors', can trigger apoptosis by 'switching on' key players in the cell death process. However, previous research has found that the DISC can also activate cell survival, thus raising the question as to how paradoxically the 'DISC' can trigger these opposing cellular outcomes?
Now, scientists at the MRC Toxicology Unit have found that the DISC can trigger cell death or cell survival by switching the activity of key death-promoting molecules. Stopping the 'DISC' from functioning properly prevents the cell death programme from being carried out efficiently and instead results in cell survival. Thus, in diseases such as ALPS, where a crucial death-promoting protein is often not active the DISC fails to function properly.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/08/090813142347.htm

New 'Biofactories' Produce Rare Healing Substances In Endangered Devil's Claw Plant

ScienceDaily (Aug. 16, 2009) — Deep in Africa's Kalahari Desert lies the "Devil's claw," a plant that may hold the key to effective treatments for arthritis, tendonitis and other illnesses that affect millions each year. Unfortunately, years of drought have pushed the Devil's claw toward extinction, so scientists are scrambling to devise new ways to produce the valuable medicinal chemicals of the Devil's claw and other rare plants.
One group of scientists reported a major advance toward that goal at the 238th National Meeting of the American Chemical Society (ACS). They described the first successful method of producing the active ingredients in Devil's claw — ingredients that have made the Devil's claw a sensation in alternative medicine in Europe. Their technique may eventually lead to the development of "biofactories" that could produce huge quantities of rare plant extracts quickly and at little cost.
Milen I. Georgiev, Ph.D., who delivered the report, pointed out that for thousands of years, native populations in Southern Africa have used the Devil's claw as a remedy for a huge number of ailments, including fever, diarrhea and blood diseases. Today, there are dozens of medicinal and herbal products around the world that are based on chemicals derived from the Devil's claw.
In particular, studies suggest that two chemicals — the so-called iridoid glycosides harpagoside and harpagide — may have beneficial effects in the treatment of degenerative rheumatoid arthritis, osteoarthritis, tendonitis, and other conditions, Georgiev said.
"In Germany, 57 pharmaceutical products based on Devil's claw, marketed by 46 different companies, have cumulative sales volumes alone worth more than $40 million." Georgiev noted. In the United States, Devil's claw extracts are in phase II clinical trials for the treatment of hip and knee arthritis. Other promising uses are not far behind. But while the demand for these beneficial compounds is increasing, the supply of natural Devil's claw is dwindling.
"The Devil's Claw faces significant problems with its natural renewal, especially low rainfall," Georgiev notes. "These problems are driving efforts to find alternative ways to produce high value compounds from the plant, independent of geographical and climatic factors," he says.
Currently, more than 25 percent of all prescribed medicines used in industrialized countries are derived either directly or indirectly from plants, many of which are rare and sometimes endangered. "Hairy root," an infectious plant disease caused by the soil bacteria Agrobacterium rhizogenes, is at the core of a promising new technique that could one day lead to "biofactories" that produce medicines derived from rare plants in huge quantities at a low cost. Georgiev notes that hairy roots are a big improvement over traditional, greenhouse-based plant culturing.
"The transformed root cultures possess fast growth rates, genetic and biochemical stability and the capacity for synthesis of plant metabolites. It should be also mentioned that the amount of active metabolites in naturally grown plants in greenhouses significantly vary seasonally," notes Georgiev. Hairy root biofactories, on the other hand, could produce consistently high levels of plant metabolites year round.
Georgiev and his team are the first to induce hairy root cultures of Devil's claw. They took the roots of the Devil's claw and infected them with the A. rhizogenes soil bacteria — a natural genetic engineer — to create a system of hairy roots to produce the plant's key medicinal chemicals. Their studies demonstrated stable growth and high production of both iridoid glycosides harpagoside and harpagide. Previous studies were only capable of producing one of these two compounds.
Georgiev notes that there is a long way to go before hairy root biofactories become commercialized, but he hopes to make the technology ready for use within a few years.
"Our target aim is to develop such technology, so we are paying attention not only to fundamental scientific tasks, but also to those related to some of the technological problems associated with hairy root biofactories," Georgiev said. "It is the desire of each scientist is to see the fruits of his work. In the current case, we hope to be able to develop cost-effective laboratory technology for production of these pharmaceutically-important metabolites within the next five years."
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/08/090816170921.htm

'Killer Spices' Provide Eco-friendly Pesticides For Organic Fruits And Veggies

ScienceDaily (Aug. 16, 2009) — Mention rosemary, thyme, clove, and mint and most people think of a delicious meal. Think bigger…acres bigger. These well-known spices are now becoming organic agriculture's key weapons against insect pests as the industry tries to satisfy demands for fruits and veggies among the growing portion of consumers who want food produced in more natural ways.
In a study presented at the American Chemical Society's 238th National Meeting, scientists in Canada are reporting exciting new research on these so-called "essential oil pesticides" or "killer spices." These substances represent a relatively new class of natural insecticides that show promise as an environmentally-friendly alternative to conventional pesticides while also posing less risk to human and animal health, the researcher says.
"We are exploring the potential use of natural pesticides based on plant essential oils — commonly used in foods and beverages as flavorings," says study presenter Murray Isman, Ph.D., of the University of British Columbia. These new pesticides are generally a mixture of tiny amounts of two to four different spices diluted in water. Some kill insects outright, while others repel them.
Over the past decade, Isman and colleagues tested many plant essential oils and found that they have a broad range of insecticidal activity against agricultural pests. Some spiced-based commercial products now being used by farmers have already shown success in protecting organic strawberry, spinach, and tomato crops against destructive aphids and mites, the researcher says.
"These products expand the limited arsenal of organic growers to combat pests," explains Isman. "They're still only a small piece of the insecticide market, but they're growing and gaining momentum."
The natural pesticides have several advantages. Unlike conventional pesticides, these "killer spices" do not require extensive regulatory approval and are readily available. An additional advantage is that insects are less likely to evolve resistance — the ability to shrug off once-effective toxins — Isman says. They're also safer for farm workers, who are at high risk for pesticide exposure, he notes.
But the new pesticides also have shortcomings. Since essential oils tend to evaporate quickly and degrade rapidly in sunlight, farmers need to apply the spice-based pesticides to crops more frequently than conventional pesticides. Some last only a few hours, compared to days or even months for conventional pesticides. As these natural pesticides are generally less potent than conventional pesticides, they also must be applied in higher concentrations to achieve acceptable levels of pest control, Isman says. Researchers are now seeking ways of making the natural pesticides longer-lasting and more potent, he notes.
"They're not a panacea for pest control," cautions Isman. Conventional pesticides are still the most effective way to control caterpillars, grasshoppers, beetles and other large insects on commercial food crops, he says. "But at the end of the day, it comes down to what's good for the environment and what's good for human health."
The "killer spices" aren't just limited to agricultural use. Some show promise in the home as eco-friendly toxins and repellents against mosquitoes, flies, and roaches. Unlike conventional bug sprays, which have a harsh odor, these natural pesticides tend to have a pleasant, spicy aroma. Many contain the same oils that are used in aromatherapy products, including cinnamon and peppermint, Isman notes.
Manufacturers have already developed spice-based products that can repel ticks and fleas on dogs and cats without harming the animals. Researchers are now exploring the use of other spice-based products for use on fruits and vegetables to destroy microbes, such as E. coil and Salmonella, which cause food poisoning.
Other scientists are currently exploring the insect-fighting potential of lavender, basil, bergamot, patchouli oil, and at least a dozen other oils from exotic plant sources in China. Funding for this study was provided by EcoSMART®, a botanical pesticide company based in Alpharetta, Ga.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/08/090816170910.htm

Antarctic Glacier Thinning At Alarming Rate

ScienceDaily (Aug. 15, 2009) — The thinning of a gigantic glacier in Antarctica is accelerating, scientists report. The Pine Island Glacier in West Antarctica, which is around twice the size of Scotland, is losing ice four times as fast as it was a decade years ago.
The research, published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, also reveals that ice thinning is now occurring much further inland. At this rate scientists estimate that the main section of the glacier will have disappeared in just 100 years, six times sooner than was previously thought.
The Pine Island Glacier is located within the most inaccessible area of Antarctica – over 1000 km from the nearest research base – and was for many years overlooked. Now, scientists have been able to track the glacier's development using continuous satellite measurements over the past 15 years.
"Accelerated thinning of the Pine Island Glacier represents perhaps the greatest imbalance in the cryosphere today, and yet we would not have known about it if it weren't for a succession of satellite instruments," says Professor Andrew Shepherd, a co-author of the research from the School of Earth and Environment at the University of Leeds.
"Being able to assemble a continuous record of measurements over the past 15 years has provided us with the remarkable ability to identify both subtle and dramatic changes in ice that were previously hidden," he adds.
Scientists believe that the retreat of glaciers in this sector of Antarctica is caused by warming of the surrounding oceans, though it is too early to link such a trend to global warming.
The 5,400 km squared region of the Pine Island Glacier affected today is big enough to impact the rate at which sea level rise around the world.
"Because the Pine Island Glacier contains enough ice to almost double the IPCC's best estimate of 21st century sea level rise, the manner in which the glacier will respond to the accelerated thinning is a matter of great concern," says Professor Shepherd.
The research was led by Professor Duncan Wingham at University College London, and was funded by the UK Natural Environment Research Council.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/08/090814100105.htm