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Alternative Medicine in the News
June 2009 edition 26
published weekly
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Greetings!
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Enjoy!
Didi
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Shattered Illusions: Ten Things about the Natural World You Thought You Knew, But Didn't
People tend to think that the things they believe are true. And even when they're terribly wrong, they still believe their fictions as if they were facts.
It's a healthy exercise to have your false beliefs challenged by reality, so today I'm doing my best to shatter ten false beliefs most people hold about the natural world -- food, animals, nature and so on.
Read the list below and see how many you used to believe.
#1) Quaker Oats was started by Quakers
Ummm, not really. In fact, the company has nothing to do with Quakers (a Protestant Christian sect). It was started in Pennsylvania in 1901 where there were lots of Quakers living. It was named for Quakers mostly due to the fact that Quakers were known as being honest.
But Quaker Oats isn't exactly honest. Today, it's actually owned by PepsiCo, and in the 1950s, Quaker Oats, Harvard University and MIT researchers conducted experiments on human children using radioactive elements to trace the flow of nutrients through their bodies. The children were invited to be part of a "special science club," but they weren't told they were being fed Quaker Oats laced with radioactive substances. Side effects of radioactive exposure include skin cell mutations and skin cancer.
When parents found out about the experiments, they sued, and Quaker Oats was eventually forced to pay out $1.85 million, but the case wasn't settled until decades later -- 1997, actually. It's all detailed in the book The State Boy's Rebellion by Michael D'Antonio. (http://www.amazon.com/State-Boys-Re...)
Sources:
MIT news: http://tech.mit.edu/V117/N65/bfernald.65n.html
(Note how arrogant this MIT news story is, implying it was okay to experiment on the children because the levels of radioactivity were so low.)
Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quaker_Oats
#2) Most of the Earth's oxygen is produced by the Amazon rainforest
Nope. Most of the Earth's oxygen is actually produced by marine algae, which generate more oxygen than all the trees and land plants in the world.
Called cyanobacteria, algae release oxygen as a byproduct of photosynthesis (the solar-powered process by which they produce energy).
Spirulina is an oxygen-producing alga that also produces food at the same time (70 percent protein, with anti-cancer nutrients to boot).
#3) The Great Wall of China is the largest man-made structure on Earth
Not even close. The distinction of being the largest man-made structure on Earth belongs to Fresh Kills, the Statin Island, New York landfill site.
It's 4.6 square miles in size, and so much garbage was dumped there that at its peak, the dump was 80 feet higher than the Statue of Liberty. Fresh Kills was closed in 2001, flattened and turned into a wildlife refuge. Let's hope the wildlife doesn't dig too deep there.
#4) 75% of the Earth is made of water
Far from it. In fact, on the basis of pure mass, only about half of one percent of planet Earth is made of water. The oceans occupy only a thin layer of water that sloshes around the upper crust of the planet. The vast majority of the Earth is made of other elements (99.5%), with about one-third of it being iron.
From space, the Earth looks like it's made mostly of water, and it's true that the surface area of the Earth has more water than land, but that's not what the planet is made of internally.
#5) Blue whales are the largest living things on Earth
Not even close. The largest living organism on Earth actually covers 2,200 acres and is nearly 3,000 years old. And yes, it's a single entity. What is it?
A mushroom. It's in the Malheur National Forest in Oregon. Most of the mushroom mass is located underground. For further reading, check out the fascinating book: Mycelium Running.
#6) Camels originated in the deserts of the Middle East
Nope. Camels came from North America, where they evolved twenty million years ago. They became extinct in North America during the last Ice Age, but continued to thrive elsewhere.
As stated on the source page (below):
...the origin of camels can be traced to the Protylopus, an animal that occupied the North American continent during the Eocene period. That the Camelidae eventually disappeared from the mother continent is part of the enigma surrounding the extinction of North American Pleistocene mammals. However, by this time Camelidae had already migrated across the Bering Straits to Asia during the late Pliocene or early Glacial epochs.
#7) Light always travels at a constant speed
This high school science myth persists, but it's not true. Light travels at different speeds depending on what it's traveling through. Light slows down when it hits water, for example, or even glass (which is why prisms work). When shone through a diamond, light slows to about half its normal speed.
In 2000, a Harvard University team of researchers were able to slow light to a transmission speed of zero by shining it into a Bose-Einstein condensate made from rubidium.
#8) Human beings have only five senses
The right answer? NINE (or more). In addition to touch, taste, smell, vision and olfactory senses, humans also have proprioception (body awareness), nociception (perception of pain), equilibrioception (sense of balance) and thermoception (sense of heat).
And that doesn't even count the typical "sixth sense" category such as intuition, precognition and other psychic sense. Nor does it consider hunger, thirst, empathy or the sense of electricity running through your skin (like when you touch a live electrical outlet). In truth, there are far more than five senses, and the actual number depends on who you ask.
#9) Ostriches bury their heads in the sand when danger approaches
Naw, that would be stupid. Ostriches run away from danger like everybody else. If they buried their heads in the sand, they would suffocate and die.
#10) Penicillin was first discovered by Sir Alexander Fleming
Not by a long shot (ahem). There are numerous accounts of penicillin being discovered and used decades -- even centuries -- earlier.
A scientist in Costa Rica, for example, named Clodomiro (Clorito) Picado Twight (1887-1944) discovered and documented penicillin in 1915, thirteen years before Fleming's "discovery" of 1928.
Earlier than that, Ernest Duchesne documented penicillin in a paper written in 1897, but his paper was rejected by the science journals at the time because he was thought too young to know anything about science. (Dang kids playing around with mold again!)
Even further back in time, the Bedouin tribes in North Africa have followed a process for well over 1,000 years that used mold to make a healing ointment (with antibacterial properties just like penicillin, no less).
Western medicine, of course, tends to believe it is the first to discover things, and it fails to give credit to the use of such medicines by indigenous cultures or discoverers outside academic circles.
More stuff you thought you knew, but didn't
These ten ideas can be found in the book The Book of General Ignorance. This is a fascinating book to check out if you're interested in learning things you thought you already knew, but didn't. Just be careful not to read it unless you want to shatter many illusions you might presently hold dear.
And while you're at it, if you're really looking to have your world rocked, pick up the book by Russ Kick called You Are STILL Being Lied To: The NEW Disinformation Guide to Media Distortion, Historical Whitewashes and Cultural Myths (http://www.amazon.com/You-STILL-Bei...)
Or even this little-known book on disinfo, called Spam Filters For Your Brain: How to navigate through the lies, hype and mind games of the food, drug and cosmetics industries: http://www.truthpublishing.com/
Bonus item: #11) Hitler was a vegetarian
Not unless you think someone who eats sausages and game birds is a vegetarian. Hitler was an avid eater of certain meats, and the idea that he was a vegetarian is a complete myth.
Hitler wasn't a vegetarian, but he was a Catholic, by the way. His soldiers even wore belt buckles with the inscription Gott mit uns (God is with us).
Bonus item: #12) Panthers are large black cats
Actually, there's no such thing as a panther. It's just a nick-name used by various people to describe a cougar, jaguar or leopard.
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Five things to change in your life to avert diabetes
Five things to change in your life to avert diabetes
30 April 2009
There are five simple lifestyle changes
you can make that will dramatically lower your risk of diabetes - and
may even mean you'll never develop it.
Researchers have
discovered there are five major risk factors for type II diabetes,
often referred to as the 'lifestyle disease', and each one on its own
can cause the disease. Eliminating, or making improvements, in all
five areas could bring your risk level to zero.
The five risk areas are:
· Eat dietary fibre and polyunsaturated fats;
· Eat less trans fat, starchy and sugary foods.
· Smoking: if you smoke, stop
· Alcohol: drink no more than two glasses of alcohol a day
· Weight:
get your weight down to a body mass index of less than 25, or a waist
measurement of less than 88 cm (34.6 inches) if you're a woman, and 92
cm (36.2 inches) for men.
Researchers from Harvard School
of Public Health discovered that the five lifestyle factors accounted
for nine out of 10 of all cases of diabetes when they tracked 4,883 men
and women aged 65 and older for 10 years. During the study period,
more than 300 of the participants developed diabetes.
The Harvard research team reckons that by improving each of the five lifestyle factors reduces the diabetes risk by 35 per cent.
(Source: Archives of Internal Medicine, 2009; 169: 798).
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Climate change diagnosed as biggest global health threat
"We have been ignoring the biggest global health threat of the 21st century." This was the message - or maybe confession - spelled out in a report launched by doctors and climatologists in London on Wednesday morning.
Over the coming century, climate change will worsen virtually every health problem we know of, from heart disease and heatstroke to salmonella and insect-borne infectious diseases.
"The health sector has in the past not only underestimated but completely neglected and ignored the issues," said Richard Horton, editor of The Lancet. "This has not been an issue on the agenda of any professional body in health over the last 10 years in any significant way." The Lancet commissioned the report from a panel of specialists at University College London.
Number one priority
The doctors said they felt the tide was turning, however. "It is true that the health sector is beginning to wake up to this," said Hugh Montgomery, director of UCL's Institute for Human Health and Performance. He cited the UK's Royal College of Physicians, whose president has made climate change "pretty much its number one priority".
Anthony Costello, director of UCL's Institute for Global Health, said that helping to write the report had been a personal wake-up call. "Eighteen months ago, I felt there were other priorities," he said. "I thought infant mortality was a much more immediate risk to the developing countries I visited, and thought climate change was something in the distance."
"I hadn't fully understood how a change of 2 °C - which seems like a pleasant summer afternoon - has such implications for ecosystems, for water, for storm damage." Costello said the report alerted him up to the fact that the world is facing a global crisis. "I want to retain some optimism. If we do act now, we can we can hold back this crisis."
Clear and present danger
Every society has a range of temperatures within which it can cope, the researchers said. Outside that range, infrastructures become overloaded. A classic example was the 2003 European heatwave, which killed up to 70,000 people. Yet by 2040, Europe's average summer temperatures will equal those it experienced in 2003.
The doctors and researchers listed shortages of water and food, along with war and ecological collapse, as the most pressing health threats posed by climate change.
Climate and health researchers have previously pointed out the health effects of climate change. Infectious diseases like malaria and dengue are expected to spread, and kidney stones could become more frequent.
In the US and Australia, drought has already contributed to a spread of water-borne illnesses by forcing people to collect and store water in tanks for longer than they otherwise would. In India, hospital deaths have risen in recent weeks as the nation battles a heatwave.
Doctors' predicament
The message does not appear to have filtered through to the foot soldiers of human health: the family doctors and health policy-makers whose job it is to save lives.
"Think of the average general practitioner," said Mark Maslin, a climatologist at UCL. Between short appointments and struggling to keep up with medical journals, they have little time to factor climate change into their long list of responsibilities.
"This report says the medical profession has to wake up," said Maslin. "Pulling our hair out, saying we're all going to die horribly does not save lives."
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Cola drinks can cause paralysis
20 May 2009
Cola drinks, such as Coca Cola and Pepsi,
can cause diabetes and muscle problems ranging from weakness to
paralysis, new research has discovered.
The drinks can cause potassium levels in the blood to drop, which can lead to serious muscle problems such as hypokalaemia.
Researchers
from the University of Ioannina in Greece discovered that people who
drank excessive amounts of cola drinks were liable to suffer problems
such as paralysis. The victims made a full recovery after they stopped
drinking the colas and were put on potassium drips or supplements.
One
of the victims was drinking between two and nine litres of cola a day.
The average consumption is less than half a litre a day.
(Source: International Journal of Clinical Practice, June 2009; doi: 10.1111/j.1742-1241.2009).
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Free Viagra for the unemployed, says Pfizer
FREE Viagra for the unemployed! Pharmaceutical company Pfizer earned this catchy headline this week with its plans to make 70 products free to US residents who have lost their job.
Anybody who has been taking one of the 70 drugs for at least three months and became unemployed after 1 January this year can apply.
"We all know people who have been laid off recently and have lost their health insurance, making it difficult for them to pay for healthcare," says company executive Jorge Puente.
The decision is not all about patients, however. It also reflects Pfizer's concern for the bottom line: people cut costs when they lose their job, which may involve switching to a competitor's drugs.
Many of the drugs on the list, including painkiller Celebrex, face competition from rival products. A generic version of another Pfizer top-earner, the cholesterol medicine Lipitor, is set to be introduced in 2011.
By giving away some drugs for a limited period, market analysts say Pfizer will keep patients loyal to its brand during hard times.
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Scientists Developing Memory-Erasing Drug
Scientists have renewed the controversy over the bounds to which
psychiatric drugs should be allowed to go, with research into a drug
designed to erase unpleasant memories.
"Removing bad memories is
not like removing a wart or a mole," said medical ethics lecturer
Daniel Sokol of St. George's, University of London. "It will change our
personal identity, since who we are is linked to our memories. It may
perhaps be beneficial in some cases, but before eradicating memories,
we must reflect on the knock-on effects that this will have on
individuals, society and our sense of humanity."
Researchers
have said that the new drug could help in the treatment of phobias,
post-traumatic stress disorder or other memory-related psychological
distress.
The drugs in question are actually simple beta-blockers,
commonly used in the treatment of heart disease. Researchers from
Amsterdam University recently tested the drugs by first inducing a
spider-related anxiety in 60 men and women -- exposing them to electric
shocks while showing them pictures of spiders and encouraging them to
"actively remember" the pictures. The next day, half the participants
were given a beta-blocker. All were then shown pictures of spiders
again, while the researchers played a sudden noise.
The
researchers found that participants on beta-blockers showed less
fearful reactions -- measured by blinking rates -- than those given a
placebo. This effect persisted the next day, even without a reuse of
the drugs.
The researchers hypothesize that this occurs
because the beta-blockers interfered with the recreation of the
original fearful memory, but some are skeptical.
"All they've
shown so far is that the increased ability to startle someone if they
are feeling a bit anxious is reduced," said Neil Burgess of the
Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience.
But the very prospect of
such a drug has raised concern among bioethics experts. Potential
complications might include people interfering with the criminal
justice process either accidentally or deliberately by erasing their
own memories, while side-effects might include the erasure of positive
memories or disruption of the learning process.
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Medical Disclaimer:
The information contained within does not take the place of medical diagnosis or
prescription. See your health care provider in case of sickness.
Editorial Disclaimer: Publication of these articles are to promote food for thought. The opinions expressed in these articles may not be the opinion of editors.
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