Health & WellnessS


Heart

High dose IV vitamin C kills cancer cells


Riordan Clinic
Sun, 09 Dec 2012 00:41 UTC
"...it takes much more than logic and clear-cut demonstrations to overcome the inertia and dogma of established thought." - Irving Stone
vitamin c
© Unknown
Irving Stone was an early thinker and writer about vitamin C (its scientific name is ascorbic acid). He knew it would be an uphill battle to change the way the medical profession viewed vitamin C. While most doctors accept that scurvy is a vitamin C deficiency illness, few have made the rather humongous jump to seeing high dose intravenous vitamin C as a major player in the management of cancer.

There is actually a wide spectrum of medical uses for vitamin C. Evidence exists documenting it as the best antiviral agent now available ... IF used at the proper dose. Vitamin C can neutralize and eliminate a wide range of toxins. Vitamin C will enhance host resistance, greatly augmenting the immune system's ability to neutralize bacterial and fungal infections. Now the National Institutes of Health has published evidence demonstrating vitamin C's anti-cancer properties. With so many medical benefits, why do so few doctors know of them?

One explanation stems from ascorbic acid's designation as a "vitamin." Consider Dorland's Illustrated Medical Dictionary's definition of vitamin: A general term for a number of unrelated organic substances that occur in many foods in small amounts that are necessary in trace amounts for the normal metabolic functioning of the body. As a vitamin, only a minuscule 60 mg of ascorbic acid is needed to prevent the emergence of scurvy symptoms. As a medical treatment for cancer and life-threatening infections and toxic exposures, tens of thousands of milligrams of ascorbic acid must be administered, often by the intravenous (IV) as well as the oral route.

Comment: For more information on the benefits of vitamin C, please read:
Vitamin C Prevents Radiation Damage
Two Vitamin C Tablets Every Day Could Save 200,000 Lives Every Year
High-Dose Vitamin C Therapy Proven Effective
Pauling's last legacy: a unified theory of cardiovascular disease
200 Reasons To Love Vitamin C

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Bacon

High-fat ketogenic diet: Fasting may benefit patients with epilepsy

Ekaterina Pesheva
Children's Hospital at Johns Hopkins
Thu, 06 Dec 2012 06:26 UTC
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© Children’s Hospital at Johns HopkinsAdam Hartman, M.D.
Children with persistent and drug-resistant seizures treated with the high-fat, low-carbohydrate ketogenic diet may get an added benefit from periodic fasting, according to a small Johns Hopkins Children's Center study.

The results, published online Dec. 3 in the journal Epilepsy Research, suggest the ketogenic diet and fasting can work in tandem to reduce seizures but appear do so through different mechanisms - a finding that challenges the longstanding assumption that the two share a common mechanism.

"Our findings suggest that fasting does not merely intensify the therapeutic effects of the ketogenic diet but may actually represent an entirely new way to change the metabolism of children with epilepsy," says lead investigator Adam Hartman, M.D., a pediatric neurologist at the Johns Hopkins Children's Center.

In the study, six children, ages 2 to 7, and all on the ketogenic diet, were asked to fast on alternate days. All six children had seizure disorders incompletely resolved by the diet alone. Four of the six children experienced between 50 percent and 99 percent fewer seizures after the fasts were added to the dietary regimen. Three of the six were able to continue the fasting regimen for two months or longer.

The Johns Hopkins investigators say while the results are preliminary, they do provide compelling evidence of the potential benefits of fasting. Periodic fasts, they add, may eventually prove to be an alternative standalone therapy in children with drug-resistant epilepsy.

The researchers caution that larger studies are needed to further elucidate the effects of fasting. They also warn that fasting should be done under the strict supervision of a pediatric neurologist.
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Ambulance

Severe acute kidney injuries rise rapidly in U.S.


ScienceDaily
Fri, 07 Dec 2012 17:41 UTC
Severe acute kidney injuries are becoming more common in the United States, rising 10 percent per year and doubling over the last decade, according to a retrospective study at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF).

The study, to be published online this week in the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology, analyzed information from a national database that monitors all causes of hospitalizations and used this data to estimate the total number of acute kidney injuries in the United States that were severe enough to require a patient to be placed on dialysis.

The results showed that these injuries, caused by such incidents as major infections, trauma, complications following surgery and adverse reactions to drugs, increased by 10 percent per year from 2000 to 2009, from 222 to 533 cases per million people. The study also showed that the total number of deaths associated with acute kidney injury more than doubled during that time, from 18,000 in 2000 to nearly 39,000 in 2009.

"That was a staggering revelation of how increasingly common and how life-threatening acute kidney injury has become over the past decade in the United States," said Raymond K. Hsu, MD, a UCSF nephrologist who led the research.
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Info

Mind-control parasites hijack immune system, too

Stephanie Pappas
LiveScience
Thu, 06 Dec 2012 16:00 UTC
T.Gondii
© Ke Hu and John Murray, PLoSThe mind-altering parasite called Toxoplasma gondii has a unique apparatus that is likely used to invade host cells and for its own replication. Shown here, the parasite is building daughter scaffolds within the mother cell.
A parasite known for its ability to influence the minds of its hosts also hijacks the immune system, a new study finds. In fact, the parasite uses cells that would normally help defeat it as transport to get around the body.

Toxoplasma gondii is a tiny parasite that infects about a quarter of the world's population. Most human infections are asymptomatic, though research has hinted the parasite might have subtle behavioral influences.

Infected individuals are more likely to attempt suicide, for example, and T. gondii infection may increase brain cancer risk.

The parasite's real interests, however, are cats and rodents. T. gondii can live in any warm-blooded creature, but it prefers to end up in the gut of a cat, where it can breed.

To do so, the parasite takes control of the minds of its rodent hosts, making the smell of cat urine sexually appealing to them rather than scary. That ups the chances a rodent will cozy up to a cat and get scarfed down, along with the parasite.
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Magic Wand

From tomb to table: Cumin's health benefits rediscovered

Sayer Ji
Activist Post
Wed, 05 Dec 2012 14:15 UTC
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© greenmedinfo.com
Traded along spice routes separating ancient cultures by vast distances, spices like cumin were once worth their weight in gold. Has modern science now revealed why, beyond their remarkable aesthetic value, they were so highly prized?

Many spices are perfectly happy living a charmed life as seasonings, peppering things generously with flavor, and without ever arousing the suspicion that they may be capable of profound acts of healing, as well.

Meet cumin, a member of the parsley family, which is to say from a well-known family of healers native to the central Mediterranean region (southern Italy, Algeria and Tunisia).

Cumin's traditional use stretches back into prehistory, as evidenced by its presence in Egyptian tombs. The Greeks actually used it much like we use pepper today, keeping cumin at the dining table in its own container, which is still practiced by Moroccans to this day. It is also been used for millennia in India as a traditional ingredient of curry.
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Health

Gluten sensitivity induces GERD (Gastroesophageal reflux disease)

Dr. Osborne
Gluten Free Warrior
Thu, 06 Dec 2012 13:57 UTC
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Gluten - A Common Cause of Acid Reflux

A recent research study linked peptic disease (heartburn, GERD, stomach ulcer) to gluten exposure in patients with gluten sensitivity.
PD (peptic disease) is not uncommon in the presentation of CD (celiac disease). It is more likely to be found in the second decade of life. CD should be included in the differential diagnosis of patients with non-HP(H pylori) PD and we suggest routine CD serology and small bowel biopsy in patients with unexplained PD.
The authors of this study recommend that all patients with non infectious peptic disease be screened for celiac disease.

Source

Scand J Gastroenterol. 2009;44(12):1424-8.
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Bullseye

A gluten for punishment: The whole grain assault on health

Nathan Daley, MD, MPH
Greenmedinfo.com
Wed, 05 Dec 2012 12:44 UTC
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© greenmedinfo.com
From Few to You

Among thoughtful and informed medical providers and public alike, there is an ongoing transition toward recognizing adverse health effects from grains as being common and normal rather than rare and abnormal. Not all medical providers, of course, support this change in perspective and some are downright hostile toward it. Likewise, a segment of the public seems to be irritated by the gluten free trend and consider it just a silly fad.

Yet, if medicine is to be science based, no credible medical provider can dismiss the possibility that a large proportion of the U.S. (and possibly world) population may be sensitive to certain molecules present in most grains. Similarly, those that belittle the gluten free movement as a fad might, in fact, be an unknowing victim of grain sensitivity.

Celiac disease may have been described by the ancient physician Aretaeus of Cappadocia in the first century CE. It was not until the 1940's, however, that the Dutch physician Willem Karel Dicke connected the disease to wheat as a result of the Dutch famine of 1944, in which wheat was scarce and those suffering from the disease seemed to dramatically improve. Since that time, modern medicine has narrowly defined the disease as an autoimmune disease resulting from the ingestion of gliadin, a component of wheat gluten.
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Beaker

Toxic scare: Yellow smog blankets Buenos Aires after chemical container explosion


RT
Thu, 06 Dec 2012 18:36 UTC
Mass evacuation ordered in Buenos Aires
© Twitter/@UnivisionNewsMass evacuation ordered in Buenos Aires after chemical container explodes
A chemical container has exploded in Buenos Aires, Argentina, blanketing the capital in a huge toxic cloud. Residents are being told to stay inside while a mass evacuation from the area surrounding the blast has been ordered, local media report.

The container filled with pesticide caught on fire after a chemical reaction between its contents and exploded. As the flames were put out, yellow smoke billowed out of it. City officials believe the container may have been transporting garbage.

"The pesticide presents a low level of danger and affects the respiratory tract," said Sergio Berni, the national Security Secretary, as quoted by C5N television channel.
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Attention

Crazy things pesticides are doing to your body

Leah Zerbe & Emily Main
Rodale.com
Sat, 01 Dec 2012 12:35 UTC
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© rodale.comPesticides aren't just on the food, the chemicals are inside food, too.
Agrochemicals, home bug sprays, and lawn treatments could be causing chronic illness in your family.

Pesticides are designed to kill, although the mode of action they use to put the stranglehold on pests varies. Whether it's nerve gas - like neurological disruption, the unbalancing of key hormones, or the stunting of a plant's ability to absorb life-sustaining trace minerals from the soil, none of the chemical interventions seems all that appetizing, especially considering that chemical residues routinely wind up on and even inside of the food we eat everyday. Pesticides are also blamed for diminishing mineral levels in foods.

Agrochemical supporters tend to fall back on a "the dose makes the poison" theory, assuming that small exposures aren't harmful. Increasingly, though, independent scientists are debunking that belief, even proving that incredibly tiny doses could set a person up for health problems later in life. Luckily, eating organic, less processed foods can cut back on your pesticide exposure.
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Blackbox

Nuclear nation? French sperm count 'falls by a third'


The Extinction Protocol
Wed, 05 Dec 2012 08:09 UTC
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The sperm count of French men fell by a third between 1989 and 2005, a study suggests. The semen of more than 26,600 French men was tested in the study, reported in the journal Human Reproduction. The number of millions of spermatozoa per milliliter fell by 32.3%, a rate of about 1.9% a year. And the percentage of normally shaped sperm fell by 33.4%. The average sperm count remained within the fertile range, but experts want to see more research into possible causes. One of the paper's authors, Dr Joelle Le Moal, an environmental health epidemiologist, said: "To our knowledge, this is the first study concluding a severe and general decrease in sperm concentration and morphology at the scale of a whole country over a substantial period.

This constitutes a serious public health warning." But Dr Allan Pacey, senior lecturer in andrology at the University of Sheffield, said: "The change in sperm concentration described, 73.6 to 49.9 million per milliliter [on average for a 35-year-old], is still well within the normal range and above the lower threshold of concern used by doctors which is suggestive of male infertility, 15 million per milliliter." There has much been much debate in the past 20 years over whether sperm quality has decreased, with research supporting both sides of the controversy. This latest research adds weight to the numerous European studies that suggest one in five young men has a sperm count low enough to impair fertility.
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