Health & WellnessS


Health

Nasal congestion can mean severe asthma


University of Gothenburg
Mon, 20 Dec 2010 16:16 UTC
flu
© Unknown
Nasal congestion can be a sign of severe asthma, which means that healthcare professionals should be extra vigilant when it comes to nasal complaints. Furthermore, more severe asthma appears to be more common than previously thought, reveals a study from the Sahlgrenska Academy's Krefting Research Centre.

Published in the online scientific journal Respiratory Research, the population study included 30,000 randomly selected participants from the west of Sweden and asked questions about different aspects of health.

"This is the first time that the prevalence of severe asthma has been estimated in a population study, documenting that approximately 2% of the population in the West Sweden is showing signs of severe asthma," says Jan Lötvall, one of the authors of the study and professor at the Sahlgrenska Academy's Krefting Research Centre. "This argues that more severe forms of asthma are far more common than previously believed, and that healthcare professionals should pay extra attention to patients with such symptoms.
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Bulb

Got the blues with running nose as an accompaniment? Link between depression and inflammatory response found in mice


Vanderbilt University Medical Center
Mon, 20 Dec 2010 15:39 UTC
flu
© Unknown
Vanderbilt study could lead to new treatments for mood disorders.

Vanderbilt University researchers may have found a clue to the blues that can come with the flu - depression may be triggered by the same mechanisms that enable the immune system to respond to infection.

In a study in the December issue of Neuropsychopharmacology, Chong-Bin Zhu, M.D., Ph.D., Randy Blakely, Ph.D., William Hewlett, M.D., Ph.D., and colleagues activated the immune system in mice to produce "despair-like" behavior that has similarities to depression in humans.

"Many people exhibit signs of lethargy and depressed mood during flu-like illnesses," said Blakely, director of the Vanderbilt Center for Molecular Neuroscience. "Generally these have been treated as just a consequence of being physically ill, but we think there is likely to be something more brain-centric at work here."
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Red Flag

Deadly Medicine

Donald L. Barlett & James B. Steele
Vanityfair.com
Mon, 20 Dec 2010 15:01 UTC
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© Jupiter Images, Vincent O’Byrne/Alamy; Jason Salmon/AlamyTAKE TWO ASPIRIN
More and more clinical trials for new drugs are being outsourced overseas and conducted by companies for hire. Is oversight even possible?
Prescription drugs kill some 200,000 Americans every year. Will that number go up, now that most clinical trials are conducted overseas - on sick Russians, homeless Poles, and slum-dwelling Chinese - in places where regulation is virtually nonexistent, the F.D.A. doesn't reach, and "mistakes" can end up in pauper's graves? The authors investigate the globalization of the pharmaceutical industry, and the U.S. Government's failure to rein in a lethal profit machine.

You wouldn't think the cities had much in common. Iaşi, with a population of 320,000, lies in the Moldavian region of Romania. Mégrine is a town of 24,000 in northern Tunisia, on the Mediterranean Sea. Tartu, Estonia, with a population of 100,000, is the oldest city in the Baltic States; it is sometimes called "the Athens on the Emajõgi." Shenyang, in northeastern China, is a major industrial center and transportation hub with a population of 7.2 million.

These places are not on anyone's Top 10 list of travel destinations. But the advance scouts of the pharmaceutical industry have visited all of them, and scores of similar cities and towns, large and small, in far-flung corners of the planet. They have gone there to find people willing to undergo clinical trials for new drugs, and thereby help persuade the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to declare the drugs safe and effective for Americans. It's the next big step in globalization, and there's good reason to wish that it weren't.
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Bad Guys

Why Taking Statins Might be Pointless - And Even Bad for You

John Naish
Daily Mail, UK
Mon, 20 Dec 2010 14:51 UTC
A few years ago many people would never have heard of statins. Now more than five million Britons take the cholesterol-lowering drugs every day to prevent heart attacks and strokes.

But do they actually work for many of us? A new study has raised serious questions about whether they do - meanwhile, other new evidence has linked ­statins with severe depression and suicide.

Statins have been hailed as 'wonder pills' by doctors and drug companies. They are prescribed to anyone in Britain who is believed to have more than a 20 per cent chance of having a heart attack or stroke over the next ten years. It is hoped that, by lowering their cholesterol, the patients' death risk will drop significantly.

Statins
© Daily Mail, UKExtreme: Some patients are being prescribed statins even if their cholesterol levels come under the traditional category of 'normal'.
The trend for believing that any cholesterol at all is automatically bad has intensified to the point where growing numbers of patients are being prescribed statins even if their cholesterol levels come into the traditional categories of 'normal' or even 'low'.

A new study by a prestigious U.S. university calls all this into question. The research suggests a great many people may not get any benefit from taking statins - that's because it's our calcium levels, not cholesterol, that really matter, claim the researchers.

Comment: So, it's calcium now. Soon they'll want to convince people to take drugs to lower their calcium!

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Arrow Down

Exposure to seasonal flu weakened armour against H1N1

Janelle Weaver
Nature.com
Mon, 20 Dec 2010 14:25 UTC
Faulty antibodies from previous infections boosted severity of swine flu in the middle-aged.

One of the puzzles of last year's H1N1 'swine flu' pandemic - which caused thousands of deaths worldwide - was that seemingly healthy middle-aged adults were hit hardest. A study has now shown that previous infection with other, seasonal, influenza strains primed patients' immune systems to harm their bodies rather than to mobilize against the new threat.

The study, published online today in Nature Medicine, began with a hunch that antibodies from past encounters with pathogens might have determined the severity of H1N1 cases.
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Health

Study: US Water Has Large Amounts of Likely Carcinogen


Agence France-Presse
Sun, 19 Dec 2010 19:07 UTC
glass of water
© unknown
A US environmental group has found that drinking water in 35 American cities contains hexavalent chromium, a probable carcinogen, The Washington Post reported Sunday.

The study by the Environmental Working Group -- the first nationwide analysis measuring the presence of the chemical in US water systems -- is to be made public on Monday, the daily reported.

The group found hexavalent chromium in the tap water of 31 out of 35 cities sampled. Of those, 25 had levels that exceeded the goal proposed in California, which has been trying aggressively to reduce the chemical in its water supply.

The federal Environmental Protection Agency is considering whether to set a limit for hexavalent chromium in tap water. The agency is reviewing the chemical after the National Institutes of Health, deemed it a "probable carcinogen" in 2008.

Hexavalent chromium has long been known to cause lung cancer when inhaled, and scientists recently found evidence that it causes cancer in laboratory animals when ingested. It has been linked in animals to liver and kidney damage as well as leukemia, stomach cancer and other cancers.
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Syringe

Scare Tactics: UK: Swine flu: Half of Worst Afflicted Were Previously in Good Health

Laura Donnelly
The Telegraph, UK
Sun, 19 Dec 2010 02:43 UTC
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© CatersFallon Devaney with her children, from left: Jordan, 4, Lauren, 2, Aylissa, 3, and Demi, 5
Fears of a major swine flu crisis were growing last night after a letter from the country's top doctor warned that half of the most severe cases have involved people who were previously healthy.

Professor Dame Sally Davies, the Government's chief medical officer, has written to all GPs and NHS hospitals warning of a "sharp increase" in the numbers of patients admitted to intensive care because swine flu has caused their lungs to fail.

The letter says pressures on critical care services are "significantly over and above" those expected at this time of year.

Crucially, the memo, written on Tuesday, says that while "half of patients requiring respiratory support have had recognised comorbidities [underlying health problems] which increase the risk for severe influenza, half have had no recognised comorbidities."

A spokesman for the Department of Health (DoH) confirmed that the presence of so many previously healthy people among those worst affected by the virus was "unusual" and said anyone concerned about worsening flu-like symptoms should contact their GP.

While overall flu levels remain normal for this time of year, the rate of flu has more than doubled in just seven days, latest figures show.

Comment: It is interesting to note that pregnant women are "being advised to be immunised." While there are studies coming out, pointing to the high rate of miscarriages caused by taking the H1N1 vaccines.

Thousands of US Pregnant Women Miscarry After the H1N1 Vaccine

Shocking Stories From Pregnant Women Who Have Had Miscarriages After Taking The Swine Flu Vaccine

Shocking Vaccine Miscarriage Horror Stories

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Sun

How Much Vitamin D? What's Missing From the New Recommendations

Dr. Mark Hyman
Huffington Post
Sat, 18 Dec 2010 17:41 UTC
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© newbedfordguide.com
One day, vitamin D seems like the cure for everything, and the next, we are inundated with warnings about dangers and lack of science. Confusion is rampant about the Dietary Reference Intakes (DRI's) for Calcium and Vitamin D recently released from the Institute of Medicine.

I have reviewed the report carefully and gathered input from international experts on vitamin D and the clinical team at my medical center - which includes four master's degrees in nutrition, authors of textbooks on nutrition, and international leaders in nutrition education for physicians and dietitians. Collectively we have 100 years of reviewing nutrition research and applying it with thousands of patients. Here is what I think about the new vitamin D recommendations based on a synthesis of all this information.
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Info

Is Butter Healthy?

Elizabeth Walling
livingthenourishedlife.com
Mon, 18 Oct 2010 11:31 UTC
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© n/a
Ah, butter. The old-fashioned fat. The perfect partner for a baked potato. My misunderstood friend. It's creamy, flavorful, and downright delicious on toast. But is butter healthy?

I started out writing a post on why butter is healthy, and quickly realized the merits of butter are so far-reaching it will take more than one post to even begin to delve into this controversial subject. After all, most of us have been told for decades that butter belongs on the top of the "do not eat" list. It takes more than one simple blog post to undo years of USDA propaganda.

Comment: For more information about Why Butter is Better read what the Weston A. Price Foundation says about nutrition and how butter can be a very healthy part of your diet.

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Heart

Broth: A Food That Heals


livingthenourishedlife.com
Thu, 17 Dec 2009 18:30 UTC
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© farmersfreshcsa.com
Homemade broth is one of those foods that anyone can make - and a food that everyone should make. Canned broth must have seemed like a great invention at the time, but stocks and broths found on grocery store shelves are devoid of nutrients and real flavor. Large amounts of refined salt and harmful additives like monosodium glutamate (MSG) are usually added to make these more palatable. Real broth made at home is filled with nutritionally valuable trace minerals in their natural state. And nothing can compare with the depth of rich flavor a homemade broth can bring to so many dishes.

The nutritional value of real broth was well-known in ancient cultures and is still revered in traditional communities today. Broth is often viewed as a powerful health elixir which can strengthen the joints and bones, prevent and cure illnesses, and provide ample amounts of energy and stamina. These claims are not antiquated myths, though it may seem like that if you try to cure modern ailments with canned broth. That won't work. But by preparing your own stock the old-fashioned way, you can reap many health benefits from it.
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