Vitamin Teamwork Helps Smokers

An old study but important in light of current findings at UW School of Medicine. I am waiting for UW lead investigator to reply to my query regarding what form of vitamin E was used. The kind of vitamin E is a crucial factor.

Vitamin Teamwork Helps Smokers

NEW YORK (Reuters) -- The protective effects of vitamins E, C, and beta-carotene against cancer and other diseases largely depend on teamwork between these vitamins, especially in smokers, researchers say. The new findings may help to explain a report published recently in The New England Journal of Medicine that said heavy smokers with high beta-carotene levels have an increased likelihood of developing lung cancer.

Dr. George Truscott of Keele University and Christie Hospital in Manchester, England, found that beta-carotene and other vitamin A compounds (including lycopene, the substance that colors tomatoes red) actually boost the efficiency of two other antioxidant vitamins -- C and E. But the researcher and his colleagues point out that vitamin C levels in the blood of smokers are often low. This may allow buildup of a potentially damaging form of beta-carotene known as carotene free radical.
The result is damage to the molecular structure of tissue cells, which can lead to tumors, particularly in the lungs. Now, in light of their study, Truscott and colleagues point to a simple preventive remedy for the situation in smokers: While taking beta-carotene, smokers should also take vitamin C to rid their bodies of the excess carotene free radicals. "The cooperative antioxidant properties of vitamins C and E with beta-carotene are much better understood as a result of this work," Truscott says. "Such information should have a bearing on recommendations for nutrient antioxidant intake designed to achieve optimum disease prevention in smokers and nonsmokers alike."

Journal of the American Chemical Society 1997;119: 621-622

Scientist Opens Door on Cellular Industry

Mobile phones - an inconvenient truth

WE ALL know that 'passive smoking' is bad for you - that's why lighting up is on the no-no list everywhere you go nowadays. But whayt about 'passive' radiation from other people's mobile phones and the masts which are springing up all over the porkin' place? Nothing to worry about? A stupid fuss about nothing?

Not according to Robert Kane, PhD, former Motorola Senior Research Scientist, who has gone public with his conscience: He says: "Recent research indicates that even short-term exposure to radiation power densities emanating from a nearby cell phone suffices to modify brainwaves, affect short-term memory, and modify an individual's ability to perform physical tasks such as driving an automobile."

"Every time someone in an automobile next to you activates his cell phone or someone at a table in a restaurant near to you activates her phone, your brain is being irradiated. The cell phone users also include everyone nearby by bringing everyone into the high-risk pool".

"The available research indicates that the operation of a nearby cell phone exposes a non-user to radiation, some of which is deposited into the brain of the non-user, at levels higher than necessary to elicit undesirable biological effects even though the phone may be more than ten feet away from him"

"After that cell phone user departs, he leaves behind, within the brain of every nearby person, the residual effects and damage. These are effects and damage known to the scientific community but not acknowledged by the industry placing their products into the commercial stream"

This ties in with the views of a group of European Doctors who in 2002 launched a global petition entitled "The Freiburger Appeal".

They wrote that they had observed "a dramatic rise in serious and chronic diseases" including extreme fluctuations in blood pressure, heart attacks and strokes among younger people, brain degeneration, leukaemia and brain tumours.

They put this down to "installation of a mobile telephone sending station in the near vicinity, intensive mobile telephone use, and installation of a Digital Cordless (DECT) phone at home or in the neighbourhood"

In other words if we think we can carry on like this, we all need our heads examining - in more ways than one!

For more info go to http://www.mastsanity.org

Corrupt legislation designed to benefit corrupt corporations against the public interest

Along the same lines of protecting telecommunications for their illicit role in spying on citizens.

Forcing drug companies to publish negative trial results ‘is against law’

David Rose

An election pledge to require drugs companies to publish full details of clinical trials for medicines cannot be fulfilled because it is illegal under EU law, the Government has admitted.

Psychiatrists and health campaigners renewed a call yesterday for all data on the effectiveness of medicines to be published after a review of clinical trials concluded that antidepressant drugs were no more effective than a placebo for patients suffering from depression.

The pharmaceutical industry is encouraged to publish findings of all clinical trials online but is still, to a large extent, allowed to regulate itself. Critics argue that this system is not enough to ensure that patients, doctors and watchdogs, such as the the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE), get the information that they need to assess the effectiveness of drugs properly.

The review referred to trials submitted in the 1980s and 1990s when four antidepressant medications were being licensed by the US Food and Drug Administration.
Related Links

* Anti-depression drugs 'no better than a placebo'

* Pressures of consumerism make children depressed

The team, led by Irving Kirsch at the University of Hull, examined published and unpublished data from clinical trials obtained under Freedom of Information rules in the United States.

NICE said that it will consider the findings when it reviews its guidance on treatments for depression in December.

It is a criminal offence to withold information about safety issues or adverse drug reactions to the European Medicines Agency or the Medicines and Healthcare Regulatory

Authority, which licence medicines. But companies can still choose to not publish negative studies or supply full details to NICE, which rates the clinical effectiveness and value-for-money of treatments.

The 2005 election manifesto of Labour promised to “require registration of all clinical trials and publication of their findings for all trials of medicinal products with a marketing authorisation in the UK”. But the Department of Health said that it would be illegal, under European regulations, to make companies do this.

Tim Kendall, deputy director of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, who helped to create NICE’s guidance on treating depression, said: “We have called on the Government to change this and it is extraordinary that we did not know about this legal barrier before.”

A spokesman for the Department of Health said: “We planned to support the principle of mandatory registration of clinical trials but legal advice stated this would be illegal under EU law. For that reason we have adopted a voluntary approach in the UK.”

The spokesman said that the department had created a register of trials, which was available publicly, and that it was encouraging the EU to make public its medicines agency register.

The Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry said that since 2005 all its members have been required to publish findings online within a year of clinical trials taking place.

In the review Professor Kirsch and his team found that even trials suggesting benefit for the depressed did not provide evidence of clear clinical benefit when compared with a placebo.

Louis Appleby, the National Clinical director for Mental Health, said: “New guidance on the treatment of depression will be issued later in the year. Until then the message to patients and doctors remains that antidepressants are an appropriate treatment.”

Heart Health, Heart Risk

On a daily basis I work with people who have complex and complicated health conditions. I see things that few see in my process of uncovering what may be the best approach for a client, based on their biochemistry, doctor's diagnosis (or even too often, no dx), and other factors.

Generally I rely on nutrition, the use of supplements and herbs. I may use or suggest other therapies, especially for the emotional and spiritual component so important for health. I am partial to energy medicine and homeopathy, but it seems few people choose this approach, at least in the US where it is mostly unknown.

As I always tell people, natural healing takes time. There is a lot of coaching on my part because people are used to a pill for a symptom so they seem to feel better.

Feeling better is not always a good thing. Sometimes it seems as if it is one step back before two forward.

Patience surely wins out in the end. Just this week I have reports from two clients with serious heart problems and other health problems. Neither of these two people are taking aspirin. It has taken some months to see the improvement but here is one with a BNP reduced from 200 to 128 in three months. The other client suffered from a clot secondary to atrial fibrillation because of hyperthyroidism with severe low adrenal function. Now her thyroid is normal without radiation and she won't have to see the cardiologist for a year.

There are good benefits from vitamin E (the correct kind), nattokinase, magnesium, herbs with blood thinning properties like garlic, red clover, gingko, or hawthorne. I try to stay away from aspirin, for reasons I've know a long time, and as reported below.

I use NON-SOY vitamin E with tocotrienols and hawthorne as a first line of defense. This is based on science, decades and hundreds of years old.

I always hope my clients are a bridge to the medical community to help open eyes, minds too.

Aspirin doesn't always help heart attacks
Published: Feb. 27, 2008

BUFFALO, N.Y., Feb. 27 (UPI) -- A U.S. study has found up to 20 percent of patients may not benefit from taking aspirin to prevent second heart attacks and strokes.

The study, published online in advance of print in the Journal of Clinical Pharmacology, found about 20 percent of patients don't have have the anti-platelet response from aspirin -- the effect thought to protect against a second stroke, second heart attack or second episode of peripheral artery disease.

"In those three indications, it's crystal clear that aspirin reduces the risk of a second heart attack or stroke in most patients," lead study researcher Francis Gengo of the University of Buffalo said in a statement.

"But we have known for years that in some stroke and heart attack patients, aspirin has no preventive effect."

If blood drawn from a patient taking aspirin shows the aspirin isn't helping -- platelets are still aggregating -- a patient is diagnosed as being aspirin resistant. If a stroke patient has a second stroke while on aspirin, the patient has experienced what is known as clinical aspirin failure.

"We found, across the board, about 80 percent of the patients in our study were aspirin sensitive -- their platelets did not aggregate in arteries -- and 20 percent were aspirin resistant," Gengo said.

© 2008 United Press International.

A new note on hawthorne

If you had a heart ailment during Shakespeare's era your doctor might have given you an extract of hawthorn, a flowering shrub that grows wild throughout Europe. In fact, hawthorn was probably the statin drug of its day – automatically prescribed to improve heart health.

Over the past four centuries, scientists have shown that hawthorn extract is rich in flavonoids, which help dilate arteries, improve blood flow, and lower blood pressure.

These actions clearly benefit the heart, but could hawthorn help treat patients with a health challenge as severe as chronic heart failure? That's a tall order, but a new study shows that hawthorn is up to the task.

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Symptom control
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Last year, in the e-Alert "Relaxed and Flexible" (4/9/07), I told you about a 2003 study in which more than 200 patients with chronic congestive heart failure (CHF) were divided into three groups to receive either 900 mg or 1,800 mg of hawthorn extract daily or placebo. After 16 weeks, maximum exercise tolerance increased significantly in the high- dose group compared to the other two groups, and heart failure symptoms improved in both of the extract groups, but not the placebo group.

That study was probably included in an Exeter University meta-analysis of clinical trials in which hawthorn was tested on hundreds of patients.

STUDY PROFILE
Researchers combed through five medical databases looking for randomized, double- blind, placebo controlled trials in which extracts of hawthorn leaf and flower were tested on CHF patients Fourteen trials, which included more than 1,100 subjects, met the criteria for inclusion In most of the trials hawthorn was used as a complementary treatment along with conventional drug treatments for CHF As in the trial mentioned above, exercise tolerance was significantly improved by hawthorn intervention, as was maximal workload and pressure-heart rate product (an index of cardiac oxygen consumption) Analysis showed that CHF symptoms such as shortness of breath and fatigue also improved In the most recent issue of the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, the Exeter team writes: "These results suggest that there is a significant benefit in symptom control and physiologic outcomes from hawthorn extract as an adjunctive treatment for chronic heart failure."

Adverse side effects were described as "infrequent, mild, and transient."

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Working daily miracles
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Some heart specialists would have you believe that the Exeter results are of no significance.

In a MedPage Today report about the trial, Gregg Fonarow, M.D., director of the heart failure program at UCLA described hawthorn as safe but "not particularly helpful." He based his assessment on a large, two-year trial that I told you about in "Relaxed and Flexible." In that study, more than 2,600 subjects with advanced CHF were given either 900 mg of hawthorn daily or a placebo. Results showed that the extract didn't prevent death associated with cardiac events and didn't prevent non-fatal cardiac events.

Do you get the feeling Dr. Gonarow is missing the point?

The Exeter study shows that hawthorn extract may improve quality of life measures for CHF patients. Granted, hawthorn may not actually save the lives of gravely ill patients, but many CHF patients will likely find the extract to be "particularly helpful" in coping with the day-to-day challenges of their disease.

It should also be noted that at the 18-month follow up assessment in the 2007 study, patients who were taking the extract had a 20 percent reduced risk of CHF-related death compared to placebo – a difference that equaled four additional months of survival time.

Talk to your doctor before adding hawthorn to your daily regimen. CHF patients might want to consult with an experienced herbalist to make sure they receive a potent, high- quality hawthorn extract.

Depressed people can improve without chemical treatments

A very good study and an important one for sure. With so many events surrounding the use of the SSRI calss of drugs this study tells us a very important thing; people can improve without dugs.

For people like me it is important support for the benefit of the work I do, especially when it applies to uncovering the nutritional deficiencies leading to depression.

The long time benefit of a sound food plan and the orthomolecular approach, now with some 60 + years of use, study and effectiveness without side effects and murderous incidents, we can certainly offer more hope to people suffering with depression and other mental health concerns.

I feel as good about this study as I did in the 70s when I refused to participate in ECT at the psych hospital where I worked. An unsettling move for vested interests unwilling to see beyond a limited horizon of drugs are the only hope or ECT is good.

Depression drugs 'little better than placebos' by Katherine Haddon

Best-selling anti-depressants like Prozac and Seroxat are barely more effective than placebos in treating most people with depression, according to a study published on Tuesday.

The research, which analysed 47 clinical trials, breaks new ground by incorporating data not previously released by drug companies which researchers obtained under US freedom of information laws.

Its findings prompted some academics and mental health campaigners to question whether people with mild and moderate depression should be prescribed drugs like Prozac, which has been taken by 40 million people worldwide.

"The difference in improvement between patients taking placebos and patients taking anti-depressants is not very great," said Professor Irving Kirsch of Hull University, who led the team.

"This means that depressed people can improve without chemical treatments.

"Given these results, there seems little reason to prescribe antidepressant medication to any but the most severely depressed patients unless alternative treatments have failed to provide a benefit."

The study, published in the journal PLoS (Public Library of Science) Medicine, looked at Prozac, Seroxat, Effexor and Serzone and found the drugs were only better than a placebo for some people with severe depression.

Kirsch's team said it was one of the most thorough probes into the impact of new generation anti-depressants or selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs).

Drug companies strongly questioned the findings.

A spokesman for Eli Lilly, which makes Prozac, said that "extensive scientific and medical experience" had shown it is "an effective anti-depressant".

And GlaxoSmithKline, which makes Seroxat, said the study had not acknowledged the "very positive benefits" of the drugs.

"Their conclusions are at odds with what has been seen in actual clinical practice," a spokesman said.

"It is widely recognised by experts in the field that studies in depression are challenging and very difficult to conduct."

One leading academic who has studied why drug companies only publish some of their data on new drugs said in the wake of the findings they should be obliged to do so.

Doctor Tim Kendall, deputy director of the Royal College of Psychiatrists research unit, said the study was "fantastically important".

"I think it's too dangerous to allow drug companies -- where profit is a key factor -- to be able to withhold data which shows that a drug is ineffective or harmful," he said.

Alison Cobb, of mental health charity Mind, hailed the findings as "a serious challenge to the predominance of drugs in treating depression".

"Anti-depressants do help many people but by no means all and some people experience severe side-effects with them," she said.

"Nine out of 10 GPs say they've been forced to dish out drugs because they don't have proper access to 'talking treatments' such as cognitive behavioural therapy, which are recommended as the first-line treatment for mild to moderate depression."

Another mental health charity, Sane, warned the findings "could remove what has been seen as a vital choice for thousands," adding people should not stop taking their drugs immediately.

Copyright © 2008 Agence France Presse.

Hawaii attempts what failed in New Mexico-BAN ASPARTAME

Already banned in the Philippines, Hawaii may become the first state in the US to ban neurotoxic aspartame. A previous effort in New Mexico failed. During the heated debate, New Mexico governor Bill Richardson allegedly accepted a $10,000 contribution from Ajinmoto, a company that manufactures aspartame.

I am for this ban.

If you are trying to stay healthy, you want to avoid it at any cost.

From the Hawaii Reporter:Health Concerns Warrant the Removal of Aspartame Products Should Be Removed from Hawaii Marketplace
By H. J. Roberts, M.D., 2/25/2008 8:43:47 AM

I strongly urge the removal of aspartame products from the market in Hawaii, based on clinical observations and extensive corporate-neutral research on aspartame disease for over a quarter century.

The medical and public health basis for this recommendation has been detailed in my numerous original articles/letters and four books -- including the 1000-page text "Aspartame Disease: An Ignored Epidemic."

The widespread existence of severe reactions to aspartame products remains a tragedy and disgrace that not only has endangered our population, but also future generations.

The FDA has failed to act on the matter notwithstanding an enormous amount of clinical and scientific evidence. My data base alone reflects over 1,400 victims.

I admire the courage of Hawaii lawmakers in tackling this issue despite the inevitable corporate and political pressures to ignore it.

Hawaii lawmakers, should they pass this proposal this legislative session, are essentially pioneering the correction of a major public health problem for the entire country... and the world.

H. J. Roberts, M.D., FACP, FCCP is from West Palm Beach, Florida

Help for those of us who are attacked

Natural health care professionals are attacked in various ways, and have been over more than a century. The core issue is control.

Many doctors and others who are 'licensed' often are the main group attacked or subjected to abuses by licensing agencies and propaganda mills in efforts to discredit the work we do, and THE SCIENCE BEHIND THE BENEFITS OF NATURAL HEALTH CARE.

One long time advocate against these unfounded attacks by bureaucrats with no knowledge of the field is Tim Bolen.

Tim is back with some new information about Barrett and his ridiculous group of alleged "quackbusters".

What Tim has to say and the updates he offers is enlightening. His information may make you wake up to realize that the busters are the real quacks. The information they promulgate is not based in fact, yet they have some sort of reliability factor that always makes me scratch my head. I wonder how journalists and others can take them on face value as 'experts' with no further investigation.

The Bolen Report