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| Alternative Medicine in the News
October 2010 edition 97
published weekly |
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Monarch butterflies use medicinal plants to treat diseases in their offspring
What happens when animals get sick in the wild -- do they just fight off disease by themselves? It seems they may actively treat themselves, and their sick offspring, with natural therapies. If that sounds like a far-fetched idea, listen up. Although few studies have been conducted on self-medication by animals, researchers from Emory University in Atlanta theorize the practice may be far more widespread than humans have realized. In fact, they've just discovered that monarch butterflies use medicinal plants to treat their offspring for disease.
"We have shown that some species of milkweed, the larva's food plants, can reduce parasite infection in the monarchs," Jaap de Roode, the evolutionary biologist who led the study just published in the journal Ecology Letters, said in a statement to the media. "And we have also found that infected female butterflies prefer to lay their eggs on plants that will make their offspring less sick, suggesting that monarchs have evolved the ability to medicate their offspring. We believe that our experiments provide the best evidence to date that animals use medication."
Monarch butterflies, known for their beautiful wings which are streaked with orange, black and white designs, migrate from the United States to Mexico each year. Their striking coloration is a warning sign to birds and other predators that the butterflies are poisonous. That's because, as caterpillars, monarchs feed on milkweed plants which can contain high levels of phytochemicals called cardenolides. These chemicals don't hurt the caterpillars, but they make them toxic -- even when they transform into butterflies -- if eaten by other animals.
Earlier research concentrated on whether the butterflies fed off toxic species of milkweed to ward off predators. De Roode, however, questioned whether the choice could be related to parasites called Ophryocystis elektroscirrha that can invade the gut of caterpillars and persist when they turn into monarch butterflies. An infected female passes on the parasites to her offspring when she lays eggs and, if the monarch leaves the pupal stage with a severe parasitic infection, the butterfly begins oozing fluids from its body and dies. If infected butterflies manage to survive, they don't fly as well or live as long as their uninfected counterparts.
So, in experiments conducted in de Roode's lab, the Emory researchers found female butterflies infected with the parasites prefer to lay their eggs on a toxic species of milkweed, rather than a non-toxic species. On the other hand, uninfected female monarchs, showed no preference. That indicates the infected butterflies somehow knew to specifically protect their offspring by "treating" them with the toxic-to-parasites milkweed.
University of Michigan chemical ecologist Mark Hunter, who collaborated with de Roode's group on the butterfly research, said the monarch findings could have important implications for human health. "When I walk around outside, I think of the plants I see as a great, green pharmacy," Hunter said in a media statement. "But what also strikes me is how little we actually know about what that pharmacy has to offer. Studying organisms engaged in self-medication gives us a clue as to what compounds might be worth investigating for their potential as human medicines."
For more information:
http://esciencecommons.blogspot.com... |
Why McDonald's Happy Meal hamburgers won't decompose - the real story behind the story
NaturalNews.com
It's always entertaining when the mainstream media "discovers" something they think is new even though the natural health community has been talking about for years. The New York Times, for example, recently ran a story entitled When Drugs Cause Problems They Are Supposed to Prevent (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/17/h...). We've been covering the same topic for years, reporting on how chemotherapy causes cancer, osteoporosis drugs cause bone fractures and antidepressant drugs cause suicidal behavior.
The latest "new" discovery by the mainstream media is that McDonald's Happy Meal hamburgers and fries won't decompose, even if you leave them out for six months. This story has been picked up by CNN, the Washington Post and many other MSM outlets which appear startled that junk food from fast food chains won't decompose.
The funny thing about this is that the natural health industry already covered this topic years ago. Remember Len Foley's Bionic Burger video? It was posted in 2007 and eventually racked up a whopping 2 million views on YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYyD...). And this video shows a guy who bought his McDonald's hamburgers in 1989 -- burgers that still haven't decomposed in over two decades!
Now, he has an entire museum of non-decomposed burgers in his basement.
Did the mainstream media pick up on this story? Nope. Not a word. The story was completely ignored. It was only in 2010 when an artist posted a story about a non-decomposing McDonald's hamburger from six months ago that the news networks ran with the story.
Check out the video link above and you'll see an entire museum of Big Macs and hamburgers spanning the years -- none of which have decomposed.
This is especially interesting because the more recent "Happy Meal Project" which only tracks a burger for six months has drawn quite a lot of criticism from a few critics who say the burgers will decompose if you give them enough time. They obviously don't know about the mummified burger museum going all the way back to 1989. This stuff never seems to decompose!
Why don't McDonald's hamburgers decompose?
So why don't fast food burgers and fries decompose in the first place? The knee-jerk answer is often thought to be, "Well they must be made with so many chemicals that even mold won't eat them." While that's part of the answer, it's not the whole story.
The truth is many processed foods don't decompose and won't be eaten by molds, insects or even rodents. Try leaving a tub of margarine outside in your yard and see if anything bothers to eat it. You'll find that the margarine stays seems immortal, too!
Potato chips can last for decades. Frozen pizzas are remarkably resistant to decomposition. And you know those processed Christmas sausages and meats sold around the holiday season? You can keep them for years and they'll never rot.
With meats, the primary reason why they don't decompose is their high sodium content. Salt is a great preservative, as early humans have known for thousands of years. McDonald's meat patties are absolutely loaded with sodium -- so much so that they qualify as "preserved" meat, not even counting the chemicals you might find in the meat.
To me, there's not much mystery about the meat not decomposing. The real question in my mind is why don't the buns mold? That's the really scary part, since healthy bread begins to mold within days. What could possibly be in McDonald's hamburger buns that would ward off microscopic life for more than two decades?
As it turns out, unless you're a chemist you probably can't even read the ingredients list out loud. Here's what McDonald's own website says you'll find in their buns:
Enriched flour (bleached wheat flour, malted barley flour, niacin, reduced iron, thiamin mononitrate, riboflavin, folic acid, enzymes), water, high fructose corn syrup, sugar, yeast, soybean oil and/or partially hydrogenated soybean oil, contains 2% or less of the following: salt, calcium sulfate, calcium carbonate, wheat gluten, ammonium sulfate, ammonium chloride, dough conditioners (sodium stearoyl lactylate, datem, ascorbic acid, azodicarbonamide, mono- and diglycerides, ethoxylated monoglycerides, monocalcium phosphate, enzymes, guar gum, calcium peroxide, soy flour), calcium propionate and sodium propionate (preservatives), soy lecithin.
Great stuff, huh? You gotta especially love the HFCS (diabetes, anyone?), partially-hydrogenated soybean oil (anybody want heart disease?) and the long list of chemicals such as ammonium sulfate and sodium proprionate. Yum. I'm drooling just thinking about it.
Now here's the truly shocking part about all this: In my estimation, the reason nothing will eat a McDonald's hamburger bun (except a human) is because it's not food!
No normal animal will perceive a McDonald's hamburger bun as food, and as it turns out, neither will bacteria or fungi. To their senses, it's just not edible stuff. That's why these bionic burger buns just won't decompose.
Which brings me to my final point about this whole laughable distraction: There is only one species on planet Earth that's stupid enough to think a McDonald's hamburger is food. This species is suffering from skyrocketing rates of diabetes, cancer, heart disease, dementia and obesity. This species claims to be the most intelligent species on the planet, and yet it behaves in such a moronic way that it feeds its own children poisonous chemicals and such atrocious non-foods that even fungi won't eat it (and fungi will eat cow manure, just FYI).
Care to guess which species I'm talking about?
That's the real story here. It's not that McDonald's hamburgers won't decompose; it's that people are stupid enough to eat them. But you won't find CNN reporting that story any time soon.
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Missing the wrong kidney? Surgery mix-ups remain surprisingly common in U.S. hospitals
(NaturalNews) Three patients walk into a bar after recovering from foot amputation surgery due to diabetes. The first patient says, "My doctor did a great job with my amputation, but he left a little scarring that looks pretty ugly." The second patient says, "That's nothing. My doctor did a fantastic job with the amputation, but it was the wrong foot." The third patient shakes his head and blurts out, "You got off easy! My doctor amputated my foot with the skill of a master surgeon, but I'm not even diabetic and was only there for a prostate exam!"
It's all too common these days, it seems: Doctors are performing surgeries on the wrong organs and even on the wrong people. All it takes is a little paperwork mix-up -- a process at which hospitals seem to excel -- and you could wake up missing a perfectly good kidney, lung or foot. You might even end up having the wrong organ irradiated as a "cancer therapy."
It happens so often that the current phenomenon of surgical mishaps has been called "catastrophic" by surgeons themselves. Catastrophic surgical errors are "a lot more common than the public thinks," says Dr Martin Makary a professor of surgery at Johns Hopkins University. He wrote an editorial alongside the study that's now shedding light on the seriousness of this problem. The study, led by Dr Philip Stahel, was published in the October issue of the Archives of Surgery.
The data used in the study were gleaned from a review of the database records of a medical malpractice company that insures doctors and surgeons. These records revealed that patients sometimes had entire organs removed (such as the prostate gland) after medical personnel mixed up biopsy samples and diagnosed a perfectly healthy male patient as having prostate cancer.
Catastrophic medical errors were surprisingly common, and one-third of them led to patient harm, the study authors found. Only about twenty percent resulted in malpractice claims or lawsuits, however, meaning that in about 80 percent of the cases, patients just suffered the consequences with no compensation.
This is yet another good reason, by the way, that holistic medicine is so much better for you. Even if a holistic naturopathic physician treats the wrong part of your body, the treatments are supportive, natural and non-invasive, so there's no harm done. Given that the first principle of medicine is supposed to be "do no harm," it's astonishing that conventional doctors and surgeons end up harming so many people.
How to protect yourself from medical numbskulls
So how can you protect yourself from overzealous surgeons who want to start cutting into you immediately upon diagnosing you with some disease you might not even have? (I've heard stories of cancer surgeons scaring people into undergoing radical procedures on a same-day basis...)
First of all, don't believe any diagnosis without a second opinion. Doctors are wrong all the time. Labs mix up results all the time. Paperwork gets shuffled around, data entry errors take place, and overworked medical staff make regrettable errors with astonishing frequency. Never take a single medical opinion as medical fact. You may find that your first doctor is full of bunk (or even that they're all full of bunk if you're in a cancer clinic).
Secondly, before your next surgical procedure (should you for some reason choose to undergo one), use a magic marker to write, in big letters, "WRONG LEG" on the leg your doctors shouldn't amputate (for example). You literally need to spell it out for these people because they're only going on what the computer records tell them, and those records might be wrong. Because you're already unconscious under anesthesia by the time they start cutting, you have no way to tell them to stop, and a few hours later you might wake up to discover that they removed your one good kidney while leaving behind your diseased one.
Thirdly, try not to have surgery in the first place! Most conventional surgeries are medically unnecessary. From hysterectomies and tonsillectomies to mastectomies and coronary bypass surgery, most of these medical procedures are based on nothing more than pure quackery backed by no real science. They make millions of dollars for surgeons and hospitals, but scientifically speaking they offer no real benefit to patients. Most (but not all) surgical procedures can be either prevented or entirely avoided with more natural approaches to health.
The bottom line to all this is to be careful when choosing surgery because surgical mistakes are a lot more common than you might suspect. In fact, they are apparently more common than most doctors would even suspect. As Dr Makary wrote in his editorial, "Each hospital, whether they publicly admit it or not, and whether or not it's discoverable in a lawsuit, has an episode of wrong-site or wrong-patient surgery either every year or once every few years."
Don't let that catastrophic mistake happen to you.
Sources for this story include:
CNN.com
http://edition.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/...
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Naturally Healthy Baby: Probiotic Supplements Bring Health to Infants
(NaturalNews) When it comes to giving baby the best start in life, probiotics isn't usually the first word to come to mind. However, the gut of babies is the center of their immune system and will affect their health every day for the rest of their lives. Nourishing the delicate ecosystem in your baby's gastrointestinal tract is one of the most important ways you can protect your baby's health, and infant probiotic supplements may be just what the doctor ordered.
Starting Life With a Compromised Gut
Babies inherit gut flora from their mother via the birth canal. If the mother has gut imbalances, so will baby. The balance of flora in babies' guts plays a crucial role in their immunity, their brain development and their digestion. Digestive difficulties will manifest as allergies, bloating, gas, constipation, colic and reflux. These may be signs of poor gut health that can affect other areas of your baby's health and development.
Scientific Research Confirms Importance of Probiotics for Babies- A study in Italy found that supplementing with probiotics reduced symptoms of colic in 95 perfect of infants who participated.
- A similar Swedish study found probiotics reduced crying time in colicky infants.
- Researchers in Finland concluded that probiotics administered to infants reduced the incidence of respiratory illness.
- Other research indicates that probiotic supplements given to pre-term infants may promote weight gain.
Building An Army of Good Bacteria
If you suspect your baby has gut imbalances, probiotic supplements for infants provide the good bacteria needed to establish a colony of beneficial flora in your baby's gastrointestinal system. By treating the problem as early as possible, you pave the way for your baby to have a strong digestive system and immune system. Both of these systems are the foundation of healthy growth and development in children, since illness and poor digestion rob the body of energy that should be spent growing healthy brains and bodies.
Using Probiotics for Infants- A probiotic specially designed for infants should be used for babies, since they require different amounts and strains of flora than adults.
- Probiotics should be given with food to increase absorption and aid digestion.
- Probiotics from food sources (such as naturally cultured sauerkraut juice) are also recommended as baby becomes old enough to introduce solid foods. Continue to introduce probiotic foods to your child as appropriate for age and development.
- Probiotics--whether in food or supplement form--should always be introduced slowly to avoid die-off symptoms that occur when pathogenic bacteria are killed off rapidly.
- Breastmilk contains beneficial bacteria that helps establish healthy gut flora, especially if the mother's gut health is in good shape. Breastfeeding is always recommended whenever possible.
For More Information:
http://bodyecology.com/07/09/20/int...
http://www.nutraingredients-usa.com...
http://www.parenting.com/article/Ba...
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Thyroid cancer patients turned into walking dirty bombs after drinking radioactive poison as cancer therapy
(NaturalNews) My, you look glowing today! Cancer patients who receive radiation of their thyroid glands by being given radioactive iodine are highly radioactive for up to a week following their release from the hospital -- and they end up irradiating not just hospital rooms but also other patients, friends and family members. Radiation levels are so high in these people that they have set off radiation alarms designed to detect terrorist threats, says a congressional report.
Pregnant women, elderly patients and cancer patients of all ages are right now being exposed to harmful levels of ionizing radiation from these "walking dirty bombs" known as thyroid cancer patients. A part of their "cancer treatment," they are instructed by doctors to drink a radioactive liquid containing iodine-131 (a radioisotope of iodine) which travels to their thyroid gland and burns it out with radiation. Believe it or not, this is called "scientific medicine." Really.
It might as well just be called a Weapon of Mass Destruction given how it indiscriminately harms anyone who happens to be standing nearby. Iodine-131, by the way, is why the Chernobyl nuclear power plant disaster in the former Soviet Union was so deadly: it's a product of uranium fission and is extremely potent at causing cell mutation and death (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iodine-131). It has a half-life of 8 days, meaning that the amount of radiation it gives off drops by half every 8 days.
Why the Nuclear Regulatory Commission allows cancer clinics to turn patients into walking dirty bombs
Actual terrorists, by the way, have no doubt figured out that if they want to sneak a dirty bomb into any U.S. city, all they need is a note from their doctor saying they've undergone radioactive thyroid treatment. Oh, that's why there's so much radiation coming from you! You're from the cancer clinic!
But if radioactive cancer patients -- also known as "medical dirty bomb carriers" -- are so dangerous to the people around them, why are doctors sending them out into the world immediately following their radioactive treatments? It all has to do with the loosey-goosey rules of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which says it's fine for highly radioactive patients to be released from the hospital. So now, about 40,000 walking "dirty bomb" patients are released onto the streets each year. And the damage they can cause around them will astound you:
According to the congressional report put together by Congressman Ed Markey (Massachusetts), one radioactive patient boarded a bus in New York, setting off radiation detectors in the Lincoln Tunnel. State police halted the bus to look for terrorists but only found a thyroid cancer patient, who apparently ignored advice to avoid public transportation. (Should it be a crime to irradiate other passengers on a public bus? If terrorists did it, they'd be rotting away in a secret offshore prison somewhere... so why are doctors allowed to cause this?)
This report also found that about 7 percent of radioactive patients go directly to hotels after being treated. There, they irradiate bed linens and towels which get washed together with other linens and towels, turning the entire hotel into a radioactive dirty bomb. How do investigators know this? Because in one instance, nuclear plant workers just happened to be staying at just such a hotel, and they absorbed enough radiation to actually set off radiation alarms as they reported to work the next day!
Yet another way the cancer industry threatens the health of Americans
The upshot of all this is that making cancer patients drink radioactive liquids is truly a questionable way to "treat" anybody. It's not only disastrously bad for the patient; it also harms the public by exposing countless others to ionizing radiation. This exposure, of course, promotes more cancer and therefore more repeat business for cancer clinics. So the more people the cancer industry treats with radiation and unleashes onto the streets, the more new business they'll have walking through their doors.
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Drug companies lied to women about HRT risks for nine years
20 October 2010
(WTDDTY) Drug companies have tried for nearly a decade to downplay the breast cancer risks of their HRT treatment and so keep sales up - but this week their lies and spin have been uncovered.
Nine years ago, research discovered that the drugs caused breast cancer - and the drug companies countered that the cancers were not aggressive and were easily treatable. Now the same researchers have discovered that the claim is not true - HRT causes advanced and life-threatening breast cancer.
In those nine years, doctors have continued to prescribe HRT to many thousands of women, who have been unnecessarily exposed to the risk of developing an aggressive form of breast cancer.
Researchers from the Women's Health Initiative (WHI) - who first raised the alarm about HRT's risks nine years ago - have this week published their latest discovery.
After tracking the health of 16,608 post-menopausal women for nearly eight years, the researchers found that the combined estrogen plus progestin HRT therapy dramatically increased the breast cancer risk. Contrary to the drug companies' claims, the cancers were aggressive, and doubled the numbers who died from the disease compared to healthy controls.
(Source: Journal of the American Medical Association, 2010; 304: 1684-92).
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Walk today and stay mentally sharp tomorrow
20 October 2010
(WTDDTY) If you want to stay mentally sharp into old age, start walking. People who walk at least six miles a week have larger brains and better memories by the time they reach retirement age.
Walking has a direct positive effect on our brain and mental capacities, researchers from the University of Pittsburgh discovered when they assessed the walking habits of 299 healthy volunteers for four years.
At the end of the four-year trial, 40 per cent of the volunteers had developed some cognitive impairment or dementia - but those who walked the most cut their risks in half.
Those who walked at least 72 blocks a week - roughly six to nine miles - had bigger brains compared to those who didn't walk as much.
(Source: Neurology, 2010; doi: 10.1212/WNL.0b013e3181f88359). |
South Africa: Hidden Toll From TB
http://allafrica.com/stories/201006230672.html
Johannesburg - Shocking results from a study involving post-mortem examinations at a hospital in KwaZulu-Natal Province have revealed the extent to which tuberculosis (TB) is taking a toll on the lives of young, HIV-positive South Africans.
The study, published in the 22 June issue of the PLoS Medicine journal, found that out of 240 inpatients aged between 20 and 45 - who died after being admitted to Edendale Hospital between October 2008 and August 2009 - 94 percent were HIV-positive and half had TB.
South Africa is battling devastating dual epidemics of HIV and TB, with 80 percent of TB cases occurring in people who are also HIV-infected. While TB is known to be the country's leading cause of death, the difficulty of diagnosing the disease in HIV-positive people makes it hard to determine the true number of TB-related deaths.
KwaZulu-Natal has the country's highest HIV prevalence and greatest TB burden; even so, the results were a surprise. "Young people were coming in and dying, but we didn't know how many cases of TB we were missing," Dr Douglas Wilson, head of medicine at Edendale Hospital and one of the study's co-authors, told IRIN/PlusNews. "We were absolutely staggered by the amount of TB we found."
We didn't know how many cases of TB we were missing. We were absolutely staggered by the amount of TB we found
Of the 50 percent of patients in the sample being treated for TB, 58 percent of these were still culture-positive when they died, meaning that active TB was detected by culture testing their tissue samples.
The majority (70 percent) did not have drug-resistant strains of TB, so prompt treatment with a six-month course of first-line TB drugs could probably have saved their lives. "They just started [treatment] too late," said Wilson.
In the 17 percent of patients who were on antiretroviral (ARV) treatment when they died, the proportion of culture-positive TB was about the same. ARV treatment prevents TB when started early enough, so the finding implies that these patients also started ARV treatment too late.
Since the study, the South African government has revised its HIV/AIDS treatment guidelines to recommend that patients co-infected with TB start ARV treatment earlier; Edendale has already implemented the change.
Wilson said he would also like to see earlier diagnosis, particularly at primary care clinics, where most TB cases are handled.
He said a major public health campaign should encourage people to ask for a sputum test and chest x-ray if they experienced any of the common symptoms of TB. "We need patient activism to increase on this," he said.
Hidden burden of MDR-TB
Seventeen percent of the patients in the study who had TB were found to have multi-drug resistant (MDR) strains, despite a significant portion being on their first course of TB treatment.
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Genetic Breakthrough in Malaria
http://www.amref.org/news/
In a massive discovery of recent time related to malaria, scientists have found out the way the parasite that causes malaria is able to resist the drug that is used to fight it. The discovery was made by researchers at the University of Edinburgh.
The scientists have taken a note of the gene that is responsible for the resistance that is shown by the parasite and the infection it causes. The parasite is known to counter the drug artemisinin.
Full Article at:
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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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