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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Email Lena
928-636-9425
Sunday December 17, 2006
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I strive to bring you only the most timely, pro's & con's information for the betterment of your health without clogging the issue or your email box with a lot of advertising and other such junk!

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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
==> Monthly Spotlight Ads
==> Today's Health Tip
==> Food of The Week (Sunday only)
==> Health Today
==> Environmental Report
==> Life Changing Information

The snow that was suppose to blow in didn't hit us. It did get close as we can see it north of us... So we are in cold windy weather without the beauty of the white stuff... Enjoy your day and hope you have taken your day of rest for your body's sake!

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Remember ANEH Facts archives now exist Click Here
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Your Home Business Coach Archives Click Here

==> Find An Alternative Health Professional
==>Latest Product Recalls - I'm appalled at the number of things, particularly medications, recalled weekly/daily neither your doctor nor your news stations are telling you about, so how are you going to know? Look here for DAILY Product Recall Site
===> Help The World Without Spending!
http://www.unicefusa.org/emergencies/
===>Help Feed The Hungry Doesn't Cost You A Penny
http://www.thehungersite.com Share your LOVE here!

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Something To Think About
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Preventing the tragedy of misdiagnosis

New research that looked at more than 135,000 people over the course of 22 years has indicated that people who eat bacon five times a week or more are almost 60 percent more likely to develop bladder cancer. The study also showed that those who ate skinless chicken with a similar frequency had a 52 percent greater risk of developing the illness.

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We accept all advertisements in good faith, but the advertisers are completely responsible for the content and accuracy of their advertisements. We do not give any warranties and accept no responsibility. The editor and publisher suggest that you exercise due diligence!
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Salt is essential for life - you cannot live without it.

HOWEVER - most people simply don't realize that there are enormous differences between the standard, refined table and cooking salt most of you are accustomed to using and healthy natural salt.

These differences can have a major impact on your staying healthy, or increasing your risk of diseases you want to avoid..

If you want your body to function properly, you need holistic salt complete with all-natural elements. Today's common table salt is poison that has nothing in common with natural salt.

Most common table salt is made up of chemicals that pollute your body and wreak havoc on your health. Pure Himalayan Crystal Salt contains no toxins and all 84 minerals and elements necessary for your optimal health!

Your table salt is actually 97.5% sodium chloride and 2.5% chemicals such as moisture absorbents, and iodine. Dried at over 1,200 degrees Fahrenheit, the excessive heat alters the natural chemical structure of the salt causing the potential for a myriad of health problems in your body.

This song was around when I was a child and kids use to sing it and most of us had no idea why or what it meant!

Where, oh where,
Is dear little Nellie?
Where, oh where,
Is dear little Nellie?
Where, oh where,
Is dear little Nellie?
Way down yonder
In the pawpaw patch.

Come on, boys,
Let's go find her.
Come on, boys,
Let's go find her,
Come on, boys,
Let's go find her,
Way down yonder
In the pawpaw patch.

Pickin' up pawpaws,
Puttin' 'em in your pocket,
Pickin' up pawpaws,
Puttin' 'em in your pocket,
Pickin' up pawpaws,
Puttin' 'em in your pocket,
Way down yonder
In the pawpaw patch.

Paw Paw, pawpaw, Graviola and soursop, all the same. Is grown on a very small Graviola tree in the Amazon jungle and some of the Caribbean islands. The pawpaw is also said to be native to the woodlands of the eastern U.S. The American Indian is credited with spreading the pawpaw across the eastern U.S. to eastern Kansas and Texas, and from the Great Lakes almost to the Gulf. The graviola tree (Annona muricata) produces the delicious fruit commonly called paw-paw, which is widely consumed by indigenous peoples.

Individual fruits weigh 5 to 16 ounces and are 3 to 6 inches in length. The larger sizes will appear plump, similar to the mango. The fruit usually has 10 to 14 seeds in two rows. The brownish to blackish seeds are shaped like lima beans, with a length of 1/2 to 1-1/2 inches. Pawpaw fruits often occur as clusters of up to nine individual fruits. The ripe fruit is soft and thin skinned. Known in some circles as the "poor man's banana" lucky them!

A number of animals such as foxes, opossums, squirrels and raccoons will eat the fruit. But a great thing to grow around deer as goats, deer and rabbits will not eat the leaves or twigs. The Zebra Swallowtail butterfly's larvae feed exclusively on young, pawpaw foliage, but never in great numbers.

The skin of the green fruit usually lightens in color as it ripens and often develops blackish splotches which do not affect the flavor or edibility. The yellow flesh is custard like and highly nutritious. The best fruit has a complex, tropical flavor unlike any other temperate zone fruit. At present, the primary use of pawpaws is for fresh eating out of hand. The ripe fruit is very perishable with a shelf life of 2 or 3 days, but will keep up to 3 weeks if it is refrigerated at 40 - 45 F.

The name of this plant is sometimes spelled Papaw - and in that form is often confused with another fruit that sometimes goes by that name, the Papaya, Carica papaya. (The latter is in a totally different family than our Pawpaw, and can only grow in tropical areas.)

Native Americans used the fruits as food and the bark for medicine and fish nets. Extracts of paw paw have been used as an emetic (inducing vomiting), by Eli Lilly in 1898 - before deciding man could adulterate drugs that are better than nature!

Not only is the Pawpaw fruit tasty and healthy but the Pawpaw tree bark and twigs, may well prove to be the ultimate cancer-fighter. Studies by the National Cancer Institute already show that Graviola extract is 10,000 times stronger than top chemotherapy drugs...

Yet its incredible precision hunts down cancer cells while leaving healthy cells completely alone! Graviola just seems to 'know' which cells to kill and which to avoid. There's no nausea, no hair loss, no weight loss, no weakening of the immune system.

Could this prove to be "The magic bullet" scientists have been seeking for so long. Dr. Garland uses the PawPaw as a cancer treatment in a portion of his cancer patients, with great results! But I'm not sure the pharmaceutical world will home in on this inexpensive treatment!

The Pawpaw taste is a mix of banana, pineapple, and mango and contains a high level of amino acids, vitamins A and C, potassium, along with other nutrients still under study. According to the Purdue University Crop Fact Sheet, the Pawpaw is more nutritious than apples, peaches and grapes in most vitamins, minerals, amino acids, and food energy value. Nutrient rich in Vitamin A, C, Thiamin, Riboflavin, Niacin, Potassium, Calcium, Phosphorus, Magnesium, Iron, Zinc, Copper, Manganese, Essential amino acids, Histidine, Isoleucine, Leucine, Lysine, Methionine, Cystine, Phenylalanine, Tyrosine, Threonine, Tryptophan and Valine. Unless refrigerated, it lasts only two to three days but in the fridge it lasts up to three weeks. You can substitute pawpaws for bananas in many recipes including banana bread. Because of its custardy texture, it's ideal for drink mixes, baby food, and ice cream. Because of its blendability and aroma, it is used in cosmetics and skin products. According to one pawpaw expert on the Internet, "If you have tried them and don't like them, suspect your sample to have been unripe, or from an inferior tree.

Mashed paw paw also makes a great face mask and aids wound healing, while the liquid extract is made from the paw paw leaf and is a rich source of the antioxidant nutrients beta carotene and vitamin C, which explains its relevance in helping to prevent and treat cancer. Also several acetogenins have been isolated from Graviola (PawPaw tree twigs).

Its anti-tumor efficacy against human ovarian carcinoma in athymic mice were demonstrated in studies in 1993. There have been over 100 scientific papers published on the chemistry and biology of the paw paw compounds.

Paw paw is not toxic according to studies with beagles (dogs). It appears to be impossible to 'overdose', 32 capsules 4x/day were non toxic because it caused vomiting.

In clinical trials with human research subjects, generally using one capsule 4x/day, some breast cancer patients experienced partial or complete tumor reduction.

In men with prostate cancer, some patients experienced subjective benefits as well as tumor reduction and PSA decreases. One patient even took half the suggested dose (mistakenly) and still had great results.

There were good results with lymphoma - Non Hodgkins where white cell counts were reduced, as were lymphocytes. A patient with stage IV lung cancer also had subjective and objective results.

Hundreds of human research subjects have used paw paw, with many types of tumors. Significant reductions in tumor sizes has been seen (verified by CT, etc.) There have been reductions in tumor antigen levels (PSA, CA27/29, CA125, alkaline phosphatase, etc.)

There have been very few unwanted effects, some itching and some nausea/vomiting but many have reported 'increased energy'. There was no hair loss, no GI bleeding, no bone marrow depression.

Benefits have been seen with cold sores, shingles, toe nail fungus, acne, athlete's foot, eczema, cancer and psoriasis. PAW PAW tea and capsules are part of a cancer treatment protocol that is getting great results in this age of drug industry's push away from natural!

Consider a Paw Paw Pie?

ingredients:
1 cup sugar
1 egg
1/4 tsp salt
1 cup milk
1 1/2 cups pawpaws (peeled & seeded)

Place all of the ingredients into a sauce pan and stir together. Cook over medium heat until thickened. Pour into an unbaked pie shell and bake until the crust is done. Top it with whipped cream.

So not only is PawPaw great eating but great medicine as well! I'm sure we will hear much more about this down the road, if only the drug releases telling you it's not effective or some such thing!

Lena

Advisers Suggest Restricting Antibiotic
Dec 15, 2006
By ANDREW BRIDGES

WASHINGTON (AP) - Benefits of an antibiotic linked to rare reports of severe liver problems, including several deaths, outweigh its risks in treating pneumonia but not less serious bacterial infections like bronchitis and sinusitis, federal health advisers said Friday.

The nonbinding recommendations raise the prospect the Food and Drug Administration could modify its approval of the Sanofi-Aventis SA (SNY) drug, called Ketek, to exclude the treatment of the two lesser infections, which often clear up without drug treatment.

The FDA convened a two-day meeting of outside experts to discuss Ketek in light of concerns about its safety. An agency review found 13 reports of liver failure in patients treated with the drug through September. Reports of blurry vision also have been a concern. Doctors have prescribed the antibiotic more than 5.6 million times in the United States since the FDA approved it in 2004.

On Friday, the FDA panelists voted 16-3 to say Ketek's benefits outweigh its risks in treating pneumonia. In 17-2 votes, the outside advisers said that wasn't the case for bronchitis and sinusitis, which are less serious infections and often spontaneously resolve on their own.

Dr. John Jenkins, director of the FDA's office of new drugs, declined to say what action the agency would take. The FDA isn't bound to follow the advice of its outside experts, but usually does.

"We will be assessing the advice we received from the committee and discussing that very shortly," Jenkins said.

The panel also recommended Sanofi-Aventis develop a medication guide to be given to patients, a move backed by the company.

Dr. John Edwards, of Harbor-UCLA Medical Center in Torrance, Calif., and the panel's acting chairman, called the two-day meeting particularly challenging, since it came amid concern that companies have diminishing interest in developing new antibiotics and increased interest in safety issues linked to the drugs.

Many experts fear overuse of antibiotics is hastening the increasing resistance of many bacteria to older drugs, making the development of novel treatments critical. Some panelists suggested reserving Ketek for second-line use in treating pneumonia.

The label of the drug was changed in June to add a bold-type warning about the rare reports of liver failure and severe injury, some of them fatal. A majority of panel members said that cautionary language should be strengthened and placed in a so-called "black box" to warn doctors and patients of some of the risks associated with the drug.

The FDA's handling of Ketek remains under investigation by a Senate committee. Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, said this week the FDA intentionally withheld information from FDA advisers when they met in 2003 to consider recommending approval of the drug. FDA officials said they would comment after reviewing his allegations, contained in a 20-page letter sent to the agency.

Sanofi-Aventis said the risks associated with the drug, also known as telithromycin, appear to be comparable to those of other similar drugs and that it represents an important option in treating respiratory tract infections.

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Climate Change Melts Kilimanjaro's Snows
Dec 16, 2006
By CHARLES J. HANLEY

NARO MORU, Kenya (AP) - Rivers of ice at the Equator - foretold in the 2nd century, found in the 19th - are now melting away in this new century, returning to the realm of lore and fading photographs.

From mile-high Naro Moru, villagers have watched year by year as the great glaciers of Mount Kenya, glinting in the equatorial sun high above them, have retreated into shrunken white stains on the rocky shoulders of the 16,897-foot peak.

Climbing up, "you can hear the water running down beneath Diamond and Darwin," mountain guide Paul Nditiru said, speaking of two of 10 surviving glaciers.

Some 200 miles due south, the storied snows of Mount Kilimanjaro, the tropical glaciers first seen by disbelieving Europeans in 1848, are vanishing. And to the west, in the heart of equatorial Africa, the ice caps are shrinking fast atop Uganda's Rwenzoris - the "Mountains of the Moon" imagined by ancient Greeks as the source of the Nile River.

The total loss of ice masses ringing Africa's three highest peaks, projected by scientists to happen sometime in the next two to five decades, fits a global pattern playing out in South America's Andes Mountains, in Europe's Alps, in the Himalayas and beyond.

Almost every one of more than 300 large glaciers studied worldwide is in retreat, international glaciologists reported in October in the journal Geophysical Research Letters. This is "essentially a response to post-1970 global warming," they said.

Even such strong evidence may not sway every climate skeptic. Some say it's lower humidity, not higher temperatures, that is depleting Kilimanjaro's snows, for example.

Stefan Hastenrath of the University of Wisconsin, who has climbed, poked, photographed and measured east Africa's glaciers for four decades, says what's happening is complex and needs more study. But on a continent where climatologists say temperatures have risen an average 1 degree Fahrenheit in the past century, global warming plays a role, he says.

"The onset of glacier recession in east Africa has causes different from other equatorial regions. It's a complicated sort of affair," he said by telephone from Madison. But "that is not something to be taken as an argument against the global warming notions."

In Kampala, Uganda's capital, veteran meteorologist Abushen Majugu agreed. "There's generally been a constant rise in temperatures. To some degree the reduction of the glaciers must be connected to warming," he said.

It was 10 years ago, on the 100th anniversary of the Italian first expedition to the Rwenzoris, that Majugu and colleagues were struck by an Italian gift to Uganda: photographs from 1896 showing extensive glaciers atop the spectacular, remote, 3-mile-high mountains.

In a scientific paper this May, Majugu and British and Ugandan co-authors reported that this ice, which covered 2.5 square miles a century ago, has diminished to less than a half-square-mile today.

The glaciers are "expected to disappear within the next two decades," they concluded. And because the 2nd century Greeks were right, that means a secondary source of Nile River waters will also disappear.

At Mount Kenya, too, "it's a dying glacier," Hastenrath said, referring to its big Lewis Glacier, once a mile-long tongue of ice draped over a saddle between peaks. "At the rate at which it goes, the end could come soon," he said.

In a meticulous new summary, the Wisconsin scientist, who first investigated Mount Kenya in 1971, shows that its ice fields have shrunk from an estimated 400 acres to less than one-fifth that area in the past century. After decades of work, he concludes a complex of phenomena was responsible.

In the early years, sparser clouds and precipitation in east Africa allowed solar radiation to evaporate exposed areas of ice, which then wasn't adequately replenished, Hastenrath says. But more recently the reduction in ice thickness has been uniform, pointing to general warmth, not limited sun exposure, as the cause. Eight of 18 glaciers are already gone.

"Northey's gone. Gregory's about finished," said John Maina, as if mourning old friends. The 56-year-old guide knows Mount Kenya's glaciers and peaks well, having led climbers up its face since he was a teenager. As he readied for yet another trek from Naro Moru, he recalled how it was.

"We used to be able to ski on Lewis, but now it's all crevasses. We would climb all the way up Lewis on ice to Lenana peak, but now it's climbing on rocks. And the ice is weak. We're seeing blue ice, weak ice."

Up at 10,000 feet, where he mans a weather station in the clouds, another longtime guide, Joseph Mwangi, 45, makes his own projections. "In five years, Lewis Glacier will be gone," he said.

He worries that the water loss may unravel a unique ecosystem that surrounds him - of high-altitude trees and bamboo groves, blue monkeys and giant forest hogs. "The lobelia trees might die," he said.

Animals are already dying in the foothills and plains below.

Glaciologists say "terminal" glaciers often discharge - and waste - large amounts of water in the early years, followed by declining runoff from shrunken ice fields. Villagers here seem to confirm that: The Naro Moru River and other streams off Mount Kenya ran very high some years back, they say, but are now growing thin. A years-long drought magnifies the problem.

"The more the snow goes down, the lower the rivers," said Roy Mwangi, area water officer here.

The trouble has already begun, he said. Miles downstream on the Naro Moru, where the river now vanishes in the dry season, livestock are dying of thirst. Desperate nomadic herdsmen have raided points upriver, blocking intakes for farm irrigation systems, he said.

"There's a lot of suffering on the lower side. These are armed men. I'm afraid there will be conflict," Mwangi said.

Hardships may spread even to Nairobi, Kenya's metropolis. Most of this country's shaky electric grid relies on hydropower, and much of that is drawn from waters streaming off Mount Kenya. In a U.N. study issued in early November, scientists predicted that the glacial rivers of Mount Kenya and the rest of east Africa may dry up in 15 years.

"The repercussions on people living down the slopes will be terrible," said Kenyan environmentalist Grace Akumu.

Scientists say such repercussions would multiply across a world where human settlements have come to depend on steady runoffs from healthy glaciers - in Peru and Bolivia, India and China. And it would extend beyond that, they say, to coastal settlements everywhere, as oceans rise from heat expansion and the melting of land ice.

The October journal report, by European and North American glaciologists, estimates that glacier melt contributed up to one-third of the 1-to-2-inch rise in global sea levels in the past decade. And that contribution is accelerating. Since 2001, they report, dying glaciers apparently have doubled their runoff into the world's rising seas.