A Natural Environmental Health Facts Ezine

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"A NATURAL ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH FACTS Ezine" Here to Inform and Help You Become Healthier and Happier while Achieving Quality Longevity!

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Friday March 17, 2006
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=> IN THIS ISSUE!
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==> Editors' Ranting & or Warnings
==> Something To Think About
==> Health Thought for the day!
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==> Today's Health Tip
==> Food of The Week
==> Health Today
==> Environmental Report
==> Life Changing Information

My feelings at this time is that there is no description for the sadness of a funeral for someone so young that should outlive you as my nephew should have... That was our chore today and not one that I'm happy with. Sadly illness is putting too many young people to sleep prematurely simply because people fail to look at all the aspects and know there are healthy alternatives available... It's our responsibility to take care of our body that has been given us and practice good health habits, giving us a chance to live out our intended life with quality... Click Here to see some of those health habits that makes a difference...

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Take charge of you and your family's health before it takes charge of you!
Lena

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Something To Think About
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AUSTRALIAN ONCOLOGISTS CRITICIZE CHEMOTHERAPY, PART TWO

To their credit, the Australian authors of the study on the effectiveness of chemotherapy address the issue of relative versus absolute risk. They suggest that the apparent gulf between the public perception of chemotherapy's effectiveness and its actual mediocre track record can largely be attributed to the tendency of both the media and the medical profession to express efficacy in terms of relative rather than absolute risk.

"The minimal impact on survival in the more common cancers conflicts with the perceptions of many patients who feel they are receiving a treatment that will significantly enhance their chances of cure," the authors wrote. "In part this represents the presentation of data as a reduction in risk rather than as an absolute survival benefit and by exaggerating the response rates by including 'stable disease.'"

As an example of how chemotherapy is oversold, they cite the treatment of breast cancer. In 1998 in Australia, out of the total of 10,661 women who were newly diagnosed with breast cancer, 4,638 women were considered eligible for chemotherapy. Of these 4,638 women, only 164 (3.5 percent) actually gained some survival benefit from chemotherapy. As the authors point out, the use of newer chemotherapy regimens including the taxanes and anthracyclines for breast cancer may raise survival by an estimated additional one percent - but this is achieved at the expense of an increased risk of cardiac toxicity and nerve damage.

"There is also no convincing evidence," they write, "that using regimens with newer and more expensive drugs is any more beneficial than the regimens used in the 1970s." They add that two systematic reviews of the evidence been not been able to demonstrate any survival benefit for chemotherapy in recurrent or metastatic breast cancer.

Another factor clouding the issue is the growing trend for clinical trials to use what are called 'surrogate end points,' as a yardstick by which to measure a chemotherapy regimen's effectiveness. This is instead of using the only real measures that matters to patients ? prolongation of life as measured by overall survival and improved quality of life. Surrogate end points such as 'progression-free survival,' 'disease-free survival' or 'recurrence-free survival' may only reflect temporary lulls in the progression of the disease. Such temporary stabilization of disease, if it occurs at all, seldom lasts for more than a few months at best. The cancer typically returns, sometimes with renewed vigor, and survival is not generally extended by such interventions. However, trials reported in terms of surrogate end points can create the illusion that the lives of desperately ill patients are being significantly extended or made more bearable by chemotherapy, when in reality this is not the case.

In summary, the authors state:

"The introduction of cytotoxic chemotherapy for solid tumors and the establishment of the sub-specialty of medical oncology have been accepted as an advance in cancer management. However, despite the early claims of chemotherapy as the panacea for curing all cancers, the impact of cytotoxic chemotherapy is limited to small subgroups of patients and mostly occurs in the less common malignancies."

Splitting Hairs

In view of the highly controversial nature of the study's findings, one might have expected it to receive enormous international attention. Instead, media reaction has been largely limited to the authors' native land of Australia; the study received almost no coverage whatsoever in the US. In fact, although the paper appeared in December 2004, there was limited coverage even Down Under. The authors were interviewed for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) program The Health Report in April 2005. But their landmark paper did not come to most doctors' attention until a widely distributed medical practice periodical, the Australian Prescriber, ran an editorial on the study early in 2006.

On ABC's The Health Report, Prof. Morgan, the paper's principal author, reiterated the study's conclusions that chemotherapy had been oversold, and pointed to the fact that relative risk reduction is being used as the yardstick of efficacy, with its deceptively large percentage differences.

For balance, the show host, Norman Swan, interviewed Prof. Michael Boyer, chief of medical oncology at Australia's Royal Prince Albert Hospital, Sydney. Unable to deny the validity of the study's essential findings, Prof. Boyer instead attempted to nitpick the authors' methodology. He suggested that the figure for chemotherapy's efficacy was actually somewhat higher than the study had concluded. Yet even so, when pushed, the most favorable figure he could come up with was that chemotherapy might actually be effective in 5 or 6 percent of cases (instead of around 2 percent).

Interviewed by Australian Prescriber, Prof. Boyer similarly commented: "If you start...saying how much does chemotherapy add in the people that you might actually use it [in], the numbers start creeping up...to 5 percent or 6 percent" (Segelov 2006).

In my opinion, this sort of hair-splitting damns chemotherapy with faint praise. It actually confirms the central message of the three critics' study. If the best defense of chemotherapy that orthodox oncology can come up with is that it may actually be effective for 5 or 6 percent of cancer patients, rather than merely 2 percent, then surely it is high time for a radical reassessment of the widespread use of this toxic modality in cancer treatment. Either figure - 2 percent or 6 percent - will come as a shock to most patients offered this type of treatment, and ought to generate serious doubt in the minds of oncologists as to the ethics of offering chemotherapy without explicitly warning patients of its unlikely prospects for success.

It was also astonishing that the orthodox Prof. Boyer complained that one of the major shortcomings of the study was that it insisted on measuring absolute instead of relative benefits. Asked by the interviewer whether there weren't violations of informed consent implicit in the way that benefits of treatment were usually presented, Prof. Boyer defended the use of the more impressive-sounding relative risk reduction:

"One of the problems of this [Morgan, ed.] paper is it uses absolute benefits rather than relative benefits," he protested: "...the relative benefit is about a one third reduction in your risk of death."

This, of course, is precisely the reverse of the argument made by the study's authors, who clearly demonstrated the misleading nature of relative risk reduction as a means of describing the efficacy of chemotherapy.

Other Critics Emerge

Prof. Morgan and his Australian colleagues are not alone in criticizing the pervasive use of relative risk as a means of inflating treatment efficacy. There have been others in recent years who have also voiced concern about this trend. For example, in a letter to the editor of the medical practice journal American Family Physician, James McCormack, PharmD, a member of the faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences, University of British Columbia, made this same point about relative vs. absolute risk with great clarity.

Dr. McCormack took as an example the prescription of the bisphosphonate drugs in the treatment and prevention of osteoporosis...but identical issues apply to the use of anticancer drugs. The journal in question had written that one of those drugs produced almost "a 50 percent decrease" in the risk of new fractures. Addressing himself to a hypothetical patient, Dr. McCormack reinterpreted this statement in terms of absolute risk: "Mrs. Jones, your risk of developing a...fracture over the next three years is approximately 8 percent. If you take a drug daily for the next three years, that risk can be reduced from 8 percent to around 5 percent, or a difference of just over 3 percent." Of course that sounds far less impressive than saying that taking the drug will decrease the risk of fracture by almost half, even though technically both are mathematically accurate ways of expressing the benefit to be gained by the therapy.

The Good News and the Bad

News concerning conventional cancer treatments seems to come in two varieties: good and bad. Good news, meaning that conventional treatments work well, often generates widespread press coverage and enthusiastic statements from health officials. On the other hand, bad news, such as the fact that conventional treatments have generally been oversold, usually comes and goes unseen, attracting no media attention whatsoever.

An example of the first kind is the recent announcement that for the first time in 70 years, the absolute number of US cancer deaths had fallen. Andrew C. von Eschenbach, MD, director of the US National Cancer Institute (NCI), called this "momentous news." Similarly, Dr. Michael Thun, head of epidemiological research for the American Cancer Society, said it was "a notable milestone." How big was the celebrated decline? As we reported in a recent newsletter, deaths actually fell by a total of 370, from 557,272 in 2003 to 556,902 in 2004. Expressed as a percentage of the total, it represents a drop of seven hundredths of one percent (0.066 percent).

Contrast the wildly enthusiastic coverage given to this tiny improvement in the annual cancer death rate with the almost total media blackout (at least in North America) on this critical paper from Australia. Yet nothing can obscure the fact that chemotherapy, for most indications, has far less effectiveness than the public is being led to believe. Dr. Morgan and his colleagues deserve every reader's gratitude for having pointed this out to their colleagues around the world.

--Ralph W. Moss, Ph.D.

Should Periods Be Unnatural?

With the pills now available to stop a woman's monthly cycle from 12 a year to 4. Unnatural isn't healthy in most areas of our life and with women now given this option of another unnatural happening, is it safe? Will it harm the body? There are some real true health reasons not to take them. First they hold a higher risk for developing blood clots and they produce hypertension in some... Evolutionary biologist Margie Profet notes that a monthly period flushes pathogens and bacteria out of the reproductive system. And Dr. Susan Rako - author of the book "No More Periods" - states that during a normal menstrual cycle, blood pressure is naturally reduced two weeks every month. Menstruation also rids the body of excess iron, "a risk factor for cardiovascular disease, heart attacks and strokes." So why stop a healthy cycle that cleanses impurities from the body? No reason that I can find...

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Doubt Cited on Aspirin-Blood Thinner Combo
Mar 13, 2006
By MARILYNN MARCHIONE

ATLANTA (AP) - Some people taking the blood thinner Plavix on top of aspirin to try to prevent heart attacks, as many doctors recommend, now have good reason to stop.

The drug combination not only didn't help most people in a newly released study, but it unexpectedly almost doubled the risk of death, heart attack or stroke for those with no clogged arteries but with worrisome conditions like high blood pressure and high cholesterol.

"They actually were harmed," said Dr. Eric Topol. "This was a trial to determine the boundaries of benefit, and it did. You don't use this drug for patients without coronary artery disease."

Nothing in the study changes recommendations that people who recently have had heart attacks or a procedure to unclog an artery take those medicines. This study dealt with expanding use of the drug to other people.

Topol and Dr. Deepak Bhatt of the Cleveland Clinic led the study, which involved 15,603 people in 32 countries. Topol has since left the clinic and is at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland.

Results were reported Sunday at an American College of Cardiology conference whose organizers issued an "expression of concern" saying the drug's maker, Sanofi-Aventis SA (SNY), told some stock analysts the results of the study in advance, in violation of the conference's embargo policies.

However, Sanofi spokesman Michel Joly denied the claim Sunday, saying the company provided no results in advance.

Aspirin's ability to prevent heart attacks in men is legendary but it does little for their risk of stroke. In women, aspirin wards off strokes but only reduces heart attack risk in those 65 or older. Adding Plavix to aspirin for people being treated for a heart attack cuts their risk of a second one or death.

For these reasons, doctors thought the drug combination might prevent "heart attacks waiting to happen" in people with very clogged arteries or lots of risk factors like heavy smoking, diabetes and high cholesterol.

They gave everyone in the study low daily doses of aspirin plus Plavix or a dummy pill and looked at how they fared more than two years later.

Adding Plavix made little difference for the group as a whole except for slightly reducing hospitalizations. But for the 20 percent with no signs of heart disease, the drug combination proved dangerous. Heart-related deaths almost doubled, from 2.2 percent of those taking only aspirin to 3.9 percent of those who added Plavix.

The only people even modestly helped by adding Plavix were those with established heart disease. Their risk of heart attack, stroke or death was about 7 percent versus 8 percent for those taking aspirin alone.

Specialists said this was not enough to justify recommending the drug in light of the overall findings of no benefit.

The cost and risks of Plavix don't justify expanding its use for prevention, Dr. Marc Pfeffer of Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston and Dr. John Jarcho of the New England Journal of Medicine write in an editorial in the journal, which will be published along with the study results in the April 20 issue.

"Plavix should not be used for prevention," said Dr. Elizabeth Nabel, director of the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute. "Aspirin alone is sufficient."

The study was paid for by Sanofi and Bristol-Myers Squibb, which sell Plavix in the United States for about $4 a pill. Outside the U.S. the drug is sold as Iscover. Many of the researchers have ties to the companies or others that make heart drugs.

Also at the conference, the third study in roughly a year confirmed that a different strategy to prevent heart attacks - folic acid and vitamin B supplements - doesn't work.

These lower homocysteine, a blood substance that can make arteries stiffen and clog.

Dr. Eva Lonn of McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, and colleagues gave 5,522 people with clogged arteries or diabetes these vitamins or phony pills for five years. Homocysteine dropped in people given the supplements, but not the risk of heart attack or death. Vitamin takers suffered slightly fewer strokes than the others, but they also were more likely to be hospitalized for chest pains.

Results were released by the New England Journal, which will publish them in print later.

New England Journal Of Medicine

Heart Meeting Notes

Unique and Interesting; While most everyone who eats it regularly say it's the sweetest best tasting fruit that exists!

Annonaceae most commonly known as Cherimoya (U.S., Latin America), Custard Apple (U.K. and Commonwealth), Chirimoya, Chirimolla.

A mouthwateringly delicious, sweet, creamy, subtropical fruit combining the exotic flavors of pineapple, papaya, passionfruit, banana, mango and lemon in one luscious bite. The cherimoya is believed to be native to the inter-Andean valleys of Ecuador, Colombia and Peru. Seeds from Mexico were planted in California (Carpinteria) in 1871.

Conical or somewhat heart-shaped, 4 to 8 inches long and up to 4 inches in width, weighing on the average 5-1/2 to 18 ounces, but the largest fruits may reach 5 pounds in weight. The skin, thin or thick, may be smooth with fingerprint-like markings or covered with conical or rounded protuberances. The sweet, juicy, white flesh is melting, subacid and very fragrant. The fruit is of a primitive form with spirally arranged carpels, resembling a raspberry. Each segment of flesh surrounds a single hard black bean-like seed. The fruit size is generally proportional to the number of seeds within. They ripen October to May.

The fruit turns a pale green or creamy yellow color as they reach maturity. Color change is not marked in cool weather. They should be picked when still firm and allowed to soften at room temperature. Ripe fruit will give to soft pressure. Overripe fruit will be dark brown. Fruit left on the tree too long will usually crack or split and begin to decay. If you are lucky enough to have one of these trees growing in you yard you should know how to pick the fruit It should be clipped rather than pulled from the tree. Cut the stem close to the fruit so it won't puncture other fruit during storage.

Lots of good nutrients such as vitamins A, C, D, E, B6, B12, K, Retinol, Alpha Carotene, Beta Carotene, Lycopene, Lutein+Zeaxanthin, Beta, Gamma and Delta Tocopherols, Thiamin, Riboflavin, Niacin, Folate and Pantothenic Acid. Not too shabby in minerals department either, with Calcium, Iron, Magnesium, Phosphorus, Potassium, Sodium, Zinc, Copper, Manganese and Selenium.

This fruit is very rich in amino acids making them digestive joys and healthy with; Tryptophan, Threonine, Isoleucine, Leucine, Lysine, Methionine, Cystine, Phenylalanine, Tyrosine, Valine, Arginine, Histidine, Alanine, Aspartic acid, Glutamic acid, Glycine, Proline, Serine and Hydroxyproline.

Toxic Seeds:
The seeds are crushed and used as insecticide. Some have said they have witnessed blindness resulting from "the juice of the crushed seeds coming in contact with the eyes." I cannot say if that is true or just a tale that has gone around over the centuries. The seeds do contain several alkaloids: caffeine, reticuline, anonaine, liriodenine, and lanuginosine.

In Mexico, rural people toast, peel and pulverize 1 or 2 seeds and take the powder with water or milk as a potent emetic and cathartic. Mixed seed powder with grease and used to kill lice and is applied on skin disorders caused from parasites. A decoction of the skin of the fruit is taken to relieve pneumonia.

The cherimoya flesh, when ripe, is most commonly eaten out of hand or scooped with a spoon from a cut open fruit. It really needs no embellishment but some people like to add a few drops of lime juice. Occasionally it is seeded and added to fruit salads or used for making sherbet or ice cream. Something I, as yet, have not tried. Another really refreshing and healthful use is as a Colombian type drink; crushed and strained juice, add a slice of lemon and dilute with ice-water to make a refreshing soft drink. The fruit has also been fermented to produce an alcoholic beverage in some cultures. Although it is best eaten straight out of its skin here is a really exotic salad that is found in some high end restaurants;

Cherimoya Fruit Salad
1 cherimoya
2 oranges
2 apples
2 avocados

Peel, seed and cut cherimoya into chunks. Wash and cut apples into eighths (do not remove skin) and core fruit. Peel oranges and cut into slices. Cut slices in half, forming half-circles of orange. Peel and pit avocados and cut into eighths. On a bed of lettuce, arrange alternating slices of apple, orange and avocado in a circle. Top with cherimoya chunks. Serve with poppy seed or light vinaigrette dressing. Or try this dressing: Combine 1/4 cup each; plain yogurt and mayonnaise; add 4 tablespoons cherimoya puree. Makes 6-8 servings.

Interesting and very tasty fruit, try it!

Study: Exercises Can Prevent Fainting
Mar 13, 2006
By MARILYNN MARCHIONE

ATLANTA (AP) - Feeling faint? Cross your ankles. Squeeze your knees. Grip a ball. Simple muscle-tensing exercises like these can keep you from passing out, say researchers who did a scientific study of the problem.

Lots of people have fainted at least once in their life, usually with little consequence other than embarrassment.

But for some, it's a frequent occurrence that is especially dangerous if it happens while they are driving or if they have jobs like piloting airplanes.

"If they have one episode during a flight, they have a problem," said Dr. Nynke van Dijk of the University of Amsterdam, who led the study with financing from the Netherlands Heart Foundation and presented results at a meeting of heart doctors in Atlanta.

Exercise has many benefits, but this is the first scientific study testing specific techniques for fainting.

"They are very cheap, have no known side effects as far as we know and are very easy to teach patients," she said.

Fainting is a reflex that can be triggered by stress, dehydration, low blood pressure, certain medications and many other factors. The heart strenuously contracts, the heart rate falls and blood pressure drops. Blood drains from the head and pools in the abdomen, causing the patient to lose consciousness and collapse.

"It's a very common complaint in doctors' offices," and a problem that many patients find frightening, said Dr. Matthew Wolff, cardiology chief at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Van Dijk and fellow scientists wanted to see if people who feel a fainting spell coming on could do exercises to raise blood pressure and abort it.

They studied 223 frequent fainters ages 16 to 70. About half were given the usual counseling about avoiding stress and other triggers of fainting and increasing salt and water intake to raise their blood pressure.

Others were taught three exercises:

- Leg crossing, at the ankles while squeezing the thighs together and tensing abdominal muscles.
- Hand gripping, by interlocking fingertips and pulling arms in opposite directions.
- Arm tensing, by rhythmically squeezing a soft ball while also tensing thighs and abs.

Over the next 14 months, about one-third of those taught the exercises had a fainting spell compared with half of those who weren't taught the muscle-tensing methods.

People who learned the exercises actually described using them to cut short a spell of lightheadedness, van Dijk said.

She taught her patients the exercises in half an hour, and said many variations are possible - tighten your thighs and butt "like dancing the tango," she recommended.

"The stuff really works," and doesn't involve drugs or any risk, said Dr. James Stein, another University of Wisconsin cardiologist.

Heart Conference

LENA'S COMMENT: I have not read the particulars of this study so I'm simply reporting their findings but not saying it is accurate. If at a later date I read the particulars and find them in error you will hear about it, but I feel it has enough credence to be plausible therefore want to pass it on... I do know that exercise prevents a lot of illness and diseases as well as helps restore the body when ravaged by them so who knows, this could be just another plus for exercise... Sadly it's the one deterrent that so many do anything in the world get out of doing...

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