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 August 25, 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!
==> Showcase Health Spotlight
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==> Today's Health Tip
==> Food of The Week (Sunday only)
==> Health Today
==> Environmental Report
==> Life Changing Information

You are going to find lots of my comments following today's columns. Some pertinent health information being given that includes false thinking, so pay attention!

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Something To Think About
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Popular curry spice is a brain booster
04 August 2006

Call it yellow ginger, haldi, turmeric or E100, the yellow root of Curcuma longa, a staple ingredient in curry, is turning out to be gratifyingly healthy. Now Tze-Pin Ng and colleagues at the National University of Singapore have discovered that curry eating seems to boost brain power in elderly people.

Curcumin, a constituent of turmeric, is an antioxidant, and reports have suggested that it inhibits the build-up of amyloid plaques in people with Alzheimer's. Ng's team looked at the curry-eating habits of 1010 Asian people unaffected by Alzheimer's and aged between 60 and 93, and compared their performance in a standard test of cognitive function, the Mini Mental State Examination. Those people who consumed curry "occasionally" (once or more in 6 months but less than once a month) and "often" (more than once a month) had better MMSE results than those who only ate curry "never or rarely" (American Journal of Epidemiology, DOI: 10.1093/aje/kwj267).

"What is remarkable is that apparently one needs only to consume curry once in a while for the better cognitive performance to be evidenced," says Ng, who says he wants to confirm the results, possibly in a controlled clinical trial comparing curcumin and a placebo.

From issue 2563 of New Scientist magazine, 04 August 2006, page 18

LENA'S COMMENT: I cannot take pain medications without really severe side effects so I don't... Several years ago I was talking to a friend from India and I was in the throes of pain from post-surgery on my neck following a fractured C-7 and he told me to take 2 teaspoons of curry powder to a cup of hot water or warm milk, stir vigorously and drink done every hour for two or three hours and I would find relief... I did and it worked so curry has many uses other than for tasty food...

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THOUGHT FOR THE DAY!
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You've heard that cooking removes vitamins from a lot of foods, but did you know it could also effect the minerals in the food? The European Journal of Cancer Prevention reports that the Department of Biomedical Sciences, Modena University in Italy, decided to make a dinner to see what would happen to the nutritional value of meat, fish, vegetables and fruit. None of the foods they cooked -- beef, filet of sole, cauliflower and vegetable soup -- had any folic acid left after preparation. But the fish still had 94 percent of its original retinol levels, even after it was grilled. Copper levels in cauliflower dropped 37 percent as a result of cooking, but almost all the foods retained more than 90 percent of their iron content. And while orange juice retained its vitamin C levels, fruit salad lost its vitamin C content very rapidly.

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Accutane Linked Heart, Liver Woes
Aug 22, 2006
By CARLA K. JOHNSON

CHICAGO (AP) - Accutane, the powerful acne drug already known to cause birth defects, seems to raise the risk for potential heart and liver problems more than doctors had expected, according to a new study.

The findings came from lab tests on 13,772 patients taking the popular acne drug and underscore the need to closely monitor people taking isotretinoin, which is sold as Accutane and in three generic versions. Abnormal results for cholesterol and liver function were more common than expected.

While those conditions can lead to problems over the long term, abnormal lab tests don't necessarily mean patients will develop heart or liver problems, said study co-author Dr. Lee Zane of the University of California, San Francisco.

"An elevation in cholesterol doesn't guarantee a heart attack. A high level of liver enzymes doesn't mean cirrhosis of the liver," Zane said.

Further studies would be needed to determine any long-term health effects, he said, but in the current study, most patients' abnormal lab tests returned to normal when they quit taking the drug.

Patients usually take it for less than a year at a cost of $10 to $15 per daily pill. It's considered one of the most effective treatments for the severest acne.

On March 1, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration began requiring patients and doctors to register their use of the drug, a program intended to stop birth defects.

Isotretinoin can cause brain and heart defects in infants if a woman takes it during or immediately before pregnancy. More than 71,000 patients have registered in the FDA's registry. Women who take it must have pregnancy tests and use birth control or abstain from sex.

Most dermatologists already knew the drug also could increase levels of cholesterol, liver enzymes and blood fats called triglycerides that can raise the risk of heart disease. But the new study found higher than expected percentages of patients developing these abnormal lab results.

Among patients with normal lab tests before they started taking the drug, 44 percent developed high levels of triglycerides. The package insert, by contrast, cites high triglycerides in 25 percent of patients.

Thirty-one percent of healthy patients in the study developed high cholesterol levels and 11 percent developed abnormal liver tests.

The patients ranged in age from 13 to 50 and were treated between March 1995 and September 2002. They were all members of the Kaiser Permanente health plan in northern California. The findings were published in Monday's Archives of Dermatology.

Some patients in the study had more lab tests than others during their treatment with the acne drug, but, for their analysis, the researchers used only the most abnormal test result for each different test each patient had.

The researchers also looked at lab tests for levels of white blood cells, hemoglobin and platelets. They found these were rarely abnormal.

"The study won't change medical practice because dermatologists already carefully test patients taking Accutane," said Dr. John Strauss, professor emeritus at the University of Iowa College of Medicine. Strauss is a former consultant for Roche Laboratories Inc., the maker of Accutane, he said.

Roche representatives did not reply to an e-mail seeking comment on the study.

The drug is sometimes the only way to treat severely disfiguring acne, Strauss said. Some risk could be acceptable for patients whose acne is severe, he said.

"I've got patients who have said to me, 'You've saved my life with this drug,'" Strauss said.

Archives of Dermatology

LENA'S COMMENT: "The study won't change medical practice because dermatologists already carefully test patients taking Accutane," said Dr. John Strauss... It would be so nice if that was the case but the majority do no more than ask the patient if they have a history of certain illnesses or drug interactions or allergies! I fail to see how that can be called testing?

Prescriptions: Doctors' lack of drug training puts patients at risk
August 17, 2006
by Healthy News Service

Most doctors agree that their role has been reduced from healer to that of drug peddler - and it seems they aren't very good at that, either.

Doctors' lack of knowledge of drugs and their use is so bad that the lives of patients is constantly put at risk, a group of leading pharmacologists has claimed.

Even the most conservative figures suggest that 1 in 16 hospital admissions is the result of an avoidable adverse reaction to a drug. Once there, up to 10 per cent of those will suffer another adverse drug reaction while in the care of a hospital doctor.

It's all the fault of the training hospitals, which are no longer teaching basic pharmacology and prescribing. "The competence of young doctors in prescribing is a very serious problem," says Prof Sir Michael Rawlins, chairman of the UK medical standards group, National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE).

Ultimately, the blame lies with the General Medical Council, he says, which has changed the emphasis of doctor training to "problem solving" rather than learning the basics.

The GMC issued its new teaching edict around 16 years ago, around the time when drug companies were coming up with more complex medications. The problem has been exacerbated more recently by the UK government's obsession with performance targets.

As a result, many clinical pharmacology departments had closed down, and there are just 68 specialists who practise clinical pharmacology and therapeutics in Britain, a fall of 24 per cent over the last 10 years. Of those that are left, half will retire in the next 10 years, and are unlikely to be replaced.

Prof David Webb, chairman of the Scottish Medicines Consortium, said medical students were privately expressing concerns at their lack of knowledge about drugs. "Patients are becoming ill and some are dying as a result of poor prescribing. There is no doubt about that. A substantial proportion of that is undoubtedly avoidable," he said.

This all bodes well for the drugs industry. With the last keeper of the gate removed, they can foist any new drug on the public without sufficient regard as to its safety. And they do.

(Source: Daily Telegraph, July 19, 2006; BBC news broadcast).

LENA'S COMMENT: U.S. citizens may say well this is from the UK and not true here... WRONG, it's true all over the world. There are so many prescriptions that doctors simply cannot keep up with them and depend on the next drug company's representative who comes into their office to tell them what is what... That representative doesn't have the whole story and can't possibly fill the doctor in on what he/she doesn't know! If he/she did know and passed it on they would lose their job...

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Scientists Add Years to Ozone Recovery
Aug 18, 2006
By ELIANE ENGELER

GENEVA (AP) - The atmosphere will take up to 15 years longer than previously expected to recover from pollution and repair its ozone hole over the southern hemisphere, the United Nations' weather organization said Friday.

Thinning in the ozone layer - due to chemical compounds leaked from refrigerators, air conditioners and other devices - exposes the Earth to harmful solar rays. Too much ultraviolet radiation can cause skin cancer and destroy tiny plants at the beginning of the food chain.

Scientists said Friday it would take until 2065, instead of 2050 as previously expected, for the ozone layer to recover and the hole over the Antarctic to close.

"The Antarctic ozone hole has not become more severe since the late 1990s, but large ozone holes are expected to occur for decades to come," ozone specialist Geir Braathen told reporters in summarizing a new report by the World Meteorological Organization and the U.N. Environment Program. The report will be released next year.

The ozone hole, a thinner-than-normal area in the upper stratosphere's radiation-absorbing gases, has formed each year since the mid-1980s at the end of the Antarctic winter in August, and generally is at its biggest in late September.

Experts said they extended the projected recovery because chlorofluorocarbons, or CFCs, would continue to leak into the atmosphere from air conditioners, aerosol spray cans and other equipment for years to come.

But there was cause for celebration, they said, noting a decline in CFCs in the first two atmospheric layers above Earth.

"The level of ozone-depleting substances continues to decline from its 1992-1994 peak in the troposphere and the late 1990s peak in the stratosphere," WMO secretary-general Michel Jarraud said in a statement.

Less of these chemicals are used every year, he said, after 180 countries in 1997 committed to reducing CFCs under the Montreal Protocal.

"This shows that the Montreal Protocol is effective and is working," he said.

Last year, the ozone hole reached about 10 million square miles on Sept. 20 - just below its largest size in 2003 of about 11.2 million square miles, WMO experts said.