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Question

Can Drugs Make Americans Lose Weight? Not Likely

Martha Rosenberg
Alternet
Mon, 26 Jul 2010 18:45 UTC
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Diet drugs have proven to be ineffective and sometimes dangerous. Yet more keep coming down the pipeline.
"I have taken this drug off and on for the past 10 years for weight loss. It works, but the results NEVER last, it makes you feel great for about six months, you lose weight, you have awesome energy to work out and then it begins to not work anymore. It's like you build up an immunity to it or something."
The comment is about phentermine (Fastin, Adipex, Ionamin), half of a new drug under consideration by the FDA, but it could apply to all the diet drugs. Thanks to human's "thrifty gene," diet drugs work until they don't work, say scientists. When the body senses it's losing its adipose stores, it actually changes the metabolic rules to retain saddlebags and love handles. Thanks for that.

So, even though two-thirds of American adults are overweight and a third obese, few drugs have been able to make a dent in our gross national product; they've proved to be ineffective and sometimes dangerous.

Fen-phen was withdrawn 13 years ago for killing at least 120 people...and it didn't even work that well, people say.
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Info

The Little Purple Pill Problem


Alliance for Natural Health
Tue, 27 Jul 2010 17:53 UTC
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© iStockphoto
Forbes magazine calls it "a parable of what's wrong with health care [costs]." We think that the popular drug Nexium is a scandal for a different reason - what it does to your digestion.

AstraZenica, the international pharmaceutical company worth $46.8 billion, began selling a drug called omeprazole in 1989 under the brand name Prilosec. It is a proton pump inhibitor, and it was marketed as a treatment for heartburn, peptic ulcer disease, and GERD (gastroesophageal reflux disease). Two years before the patent expired, AstraZeneca changed the formulation slightly and started selling it as a new patented drug, Nexium. What the drug company did not want was for consumers to stay with Prilosec, essentially identical to the new drug, once the old drug came off patent and the price collapsed.

This strategy worked. Nexium is easily AstraZeneca biggest seller, bringing in $5 billion so far. And part of that is its cost: $2,000 for a year's supply. While the drug company says an average consumer only pays a $30 co-pay for Nexium, a recent Forbes article points out that the rest of us are paying for it with higher health insurance rates.
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Heart

Babies Shown Affection 'Cope Better' as Adults

Rebecca Smith
Telegraph.co.uk
Tue, 27 Jul 2010 15:14 UTC
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© Reuters
Babies shown affection by their mothers grow up to cope with stress better, researchers have found.
Babies whose mothers shower them with affection are better at coping with stress when they grow up, researchers have said.

Nurturing and warmth in early life has "long-lasting positive effects on mental health well into adulthood", it was found.

Mothers were watched interacting with the babies at eight-months-old and were ranked according to number of times they were negative, warn, caressing or extravagant.
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Health

Educated people cope better with dementia

Kate Kelland
Reuters
Mon, 26 Jul 2010 14:28 UTC
dementia
© Unknown
Educated people are better able to cope with the physical effects of dementia, and even one extra year of education can significantly cut the risk of developing the brain-wasting disease, scientists said on Monday.

The findings by scientists from Britain and Finland could have important implications for public health at a time when populations in many countries are rapidly aging and dementia numbers are expected to rise sharply.

The researchers found that people who go on to university or college after leaving school appear to be less affected by the brain changes, or pathology, associated with dementia than those who stop education earlier.

"More education is not associated with any differences in the damage to the brain, but people with higher education can cope with that damage better," Hanna Keage from Cambridge University, who worked on the study with an Anglo-Finnish team, said in a telephone interview.
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Ambulance

Medical devices send 70000 American children to ER annually


Associated Press
Mon, 26 Jul 2010 13:43 UTC
Image
© Getty Images
More than 70,000 children and teens go to the emergency room each year for injuries and complications from medical devices, and contact lenses are the leading culprit, the first detailed national estimate suggests.

About one-fourth of the problems were things like infections and eye abrasions in contact lens wearers. These are sometimes preventable and can result from wearing contact lenses too long without cleaning them.

Other common problems found by researchers at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration include puncture wounds from hypodermic needles breaking off in the skin while injecting medicine or illegal drugs; infections in young children with ear tubes; and skin tears from pelvic devices used during gynecological exams in teen girls.
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Newspaper

Sit More, Die More?


msnbc.com
Mon, 26 Jul 2010 00:00 UTC

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
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Health

Is Hidden Fungus Making You Ill?

Dr. Mark Hyman
Huffington Post
Sat, 24 Jul 2010 17:17 UTC
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© unknown
A hidden fungus may be making you ill. A 35-year-old recently walked into my office suffering from a whole list of health problems (which is why I often call myself a "whole-listic doctor"). She had chronic fatigue, recurrent yeast vaginal infections, itchy ears, dandruff, patchy itchy skin rashes, irritable bowel syndrome, muscle twitching, acne rosacea, malabsorption, headaches and more.

These symptoms can have multiple causes, but in her case all of these problems were related. They were symptoms of an overgrowth of yeast in and on her body. This patient had such a fungus problem that she was practically a walking mushroom!

The cause was clear. She had taken many, many courses of antibiotic over the years. She had been diagnosed with a mostly benign condition called mitral valve prolapse--a problem I believe is over diagnosed and over treated--and "needed" antibiotics every time she went to the dentist. In addition, she had many urinary tract infections for which she took many more courses of antibiotics.

Comment: For a more in depth look at the 'Hidden Fungus' that makes you ill read the following articles:
For a Celiac Sufferer, a New Mystery Illness
The Dark Side of Wheat - New Perspectives on Celiac Disease and Wheat Intolerance
Gluten: What You Don't Know Might Kill You

In addition read the following forum threads:
Candida - The Silent Epidemic
Anti-Candida, Inflammation, Heavy Metals Detox and Diet

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Info

FDA's Painkiller Abuse Plan Rejected

Matthew Perrone
Los Angeles Times
Fri, 23 Jul 2010 16:27 UTC
Federal health advisers said Friday a government proposal to curb misuse of powerful painkillers does not go far enough to fix a problem linked to hundreds of fatal overdoses annually.

The Food and Drug Administration summoned a panel of 35 outside experts to review its plan to reduce the misuse and abuse of long-acting pain relievers. The agency's plan consists mainly of educating doctors and patients about appropriate use of the drugs.

But the FDA panel voted 25-10 to reject the agency's proposal, saying more requirements and training are needed for health professionals who prescribe the drugs.
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Pills

Medicating the Military

Andrew Tilghman & Brendan McGarry
Armytimes.com
Wed, 17 Mar 2010 15:24 UTC
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© Steven Doll
Spc. Michael Kern has been prescribed a cocktail of drugs as part of his "Warrior in Transition" plan, as he deals with PTSD and other issues since his Iraq deployment.
Use of psychiatric drugs has spiked; concerns surface about suicide, other dangers

At least one in six service members is on some form of psychiatric drug.

And many troops are taking more than one kind, mixing several pills in daily "cocktails" - for example, an antidepressant with an antipsychotic to prevent nightmares, plus an anti-epileptic to reduce headaches - despite minimal clinical research testing such combinations.

The drugs come with serious side effects: They can impair motor skills, reduce reaction times and generally make a war fighter less effective. Some double the risk for suicide, prompting doctors - and Congress - to question whether these drugs are connected to the rising rate of military suicides.

"It's really a large-scale experiment. We are experimenting with changing people's cognition and behavior," said Dr. Grace Jackson, a former Navy psychiatrist.
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Attention

Government is daring to keep kids on drugs

Tom Lyons
Herald Tribune
Mon, 26 Jul 2010 15:06 UTC
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© nextstudent.com
Apparently the U.S. Food and Drug Administration had at least heard about the suicide of Gabriel Myers.

Myers' death by hanging happened in a Florida foster home last year, but that wasn't the main reason it triggered a major reaction at Florida's Department of Children and Families.

The real reason: He was 7 years old.

Whatever else might have helped lead such a young child toward ending his life, one detail was impossible to ignore: The boy was being treated with three different psychotropic medications.
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