Tuesday, July 7, 2009

Stop New Bill (HR2749) Gives FDA Unheard-of Power over Small Farmers, Food and Supplement Producers

A new, long-awaited food safety bill is now before the US House of Representatives. It is the Food Safety Enhancement Act of 2009, or FSEA. Introduced by Reps. Henry Waxman (D–CA) and John Dingell (D–MI), the FSEA is meant to address food safety concerns. But as you will see, much of it is not about food safety at all. Food safety issues have arisen from large agricultural operations. But this bill places its harshest burdens on small food producers and supplement producers.

Take Action and let your Representative know you DO NOT support this bill

The Food Safety Enhancement Act:

gives the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) unprecedented scope, authority, and power over small farmers, food producers, and supplement producers, including the power to use vague language to intimidate and threaten;
imposes unjustifiably harsh criminal and civil penalties for even administrative violations; and
places undue economic hardship on small and mid-sized farms and food facilities (both organic and conventional), which could easily drive many of them out of business, and lead to monopoly control of food by large corporations.

Also known as the Waxman–Dingell bill, the Food Safety Enhancement Act has a number of provisions that would directly affect many of AAHF’s members. Although much of the bill’s language is vague—and, some worry, deliberately deceptive—it is clear that the FSEA provides for the following:

Sharply increased criminal and civil penalties for violations of FDA regulations.

The penalties include prison terms of up to ten years (jail time is currently capped at three years), and fines of up to $100,000 for individuals and $7.5 million for corporations, regardless of their size. The kicker is that these penalties are potentially applicable no matter what way you violate the FDA’s rules.

The application of those penalties to any food, drug, device, or cosmetic that is knowingly "adulterated or misbranded."

To our ears, “adulterated” means that it doesn’t meet good manufacturing practices, that the food itself is somehow tainted or injurious to health, or contains an ingredient that presents a significant or unreasonable risk of illness. And “misbranded” suggests deliberate misstatements about the efficacy of a product.

In FDA-speak, however, these words take on completely different meanings. For example, a food or supplement may be “adulterated” if some vague FDA rule is deemed by the FDA not to have been followed. “Misbranded” can mean that the producer makes a completely true statement about the product but without FDA permission. A cherry producer who cites peer-reviewed scientific research from prestigious universities on the health benefits of cherries would, in FDA-speak, have engaged in “false” and actionable “misbranding” which suddenly turns the cherries into drugs. Producers, of course, have the right to take cherries through the new drug approval process! In this and other ways, the FDA already censors science and quashes constitutionally protected free speech.

In this new bill, any violation of the new administrative requirements could make a product adulterated and/or misbranded. That is, an administrative violation (such as not keeping records exactly as required) that harms no one carries exactly the same penalty as a violation in which a product is adulterated during the manufacturing process and poses a significant risk of illness or ends up killing people.

The dramatic increase in jail time and fines will make supplement production an even riskier proposition than it is today. Supplement producers have to put some information on the bottle. They try their best to satisfy FDA rules, which can only be described as gray, not black and white. Now if they get it wrong in the eyes of the FDA, the potential penalties will be extremely severe.

Many on Capitol Hill are under the impression that the bill pertains only to food, but the FSEA language specifically names supplements as well, and this will have a huge potential impact on any small company brave enough to continue their manufacture and sale.

Large companies will probably be unaffected because they can afford the extensive legal staff needed. Moreover, the FDA does not try to put large companies with political clout out of business, much less put their executives in jail. General Mills (the manufacturer of Cheerios) was recently cited by the FDA for an unapproved health claim, even though the company was reporting good science. Under the new bill, General Mills could be fined $7.5 million, but based on past FDA performance this would be unlikely. If a tiny company were cited, the exact same fine would be applicable and the likelihood of being exacted would be much greater.

FDA control of farming standards and practices

Many people on Capitol Hill seem to believe that farms are exempted from the FSEA’s scope. That is false. On the contrary: the bill would empower the FDA to regulate how crops are raised and harvested. It puts the FDA, which knows nothing about farming, right on the farm, dictating to our farmers. Specifically, it allows the FDA to set “scientific and risk-based standards” for the use of fertilizers, harvesting and processing methods, transportation, etc. Any non-compliance means the food is to be considered “adulterated” (with fines of up to $100,000 per individual and $7.5 million per corporation, and a jail term of up to ten years).

For example, based on both its public statements and its record, the FDA is vehemently opposed to the consumption of raw milk (even in cheese) and would like to ban its distribution. If HR2749 becomes law, the agency would have much greater scope to go after raw milk than it did before, particularly targeting raw milk producers whose products cross state lines.

Raw milk is just one example. The FDA can decide that it doesn’t like anything under this bill. And we can be sure that large producers will have easy access to the agency to explain why competing products from small producers should be banned.

Moreover, the bill would give the FDA the power to order a quarantine of a geographic area. Under this provision, farmers markets and local food sources could be shut down, even if they are not the source of the contamination. The agency could halt all movement of all food in that geographic area.

The language is incredibly vague and does not distinguish between industrial-sized operations, organic farms, or smaller operations—the FDA could easily use its new authority to set requirements that only large corporate farmers can meet. While farms are exempt from some sections of the FSEA legislation, they are explicitly included in this all-important section. Smaller farmers who can’t meet the new FDA requirements will simply go out of business, unfairly creating monopolies for the huge corporations. We believe the FDA should not have this kind of authority over farms at all, but this one-size-fits-all approach has significant economic implications and could destroy a sustainable farm trying to comply with an inappropriate commercial standard.

An unequal burden for smaller and local food facilities

A food facility—defined as any factory, warehouse, or establishment that manufactures, processes, packs, or holds food—must, under the new bill, register and pay an annual registration fee of $500 (and that fee would be adjusted upward with inflation). Although farms and restaurants are exempt, the agency has defined “farm” narrowly, and people making small batches of foods such as lacto-fermented vegetables, cheeses, or breads would be required to register and pay the fee, which could drive start-up and small producers out of business during difficult economic times. A flat fee that does not take into account the size of the facility is good news for giant agribusinesses, but may represent a serious economic burden for some smaller companies struggling to make ends meet. How could the FDA think that the same fee (and penalties) are as appropriate for Mom-and-Pop operations as for ConAgra?

Moreover, FSEA provides for mandated electronic registration, which may be an issue for smaller producers, and is certainly a problem for Amish farmers, for whom the electronic filing requirement violates their religious beliefs. Failing to register a food facility would constitute “misbranding”; violators—you guessed it—would be subject to fines of up to $100,000 if the business is individually owned, $7.5 million if corporately owned, and/or ten years in jail.
Warrantless searches by the FDA

Under the bill, the FDA will have full authority to conduct random, warrantless searches of all records dealing with any aspect of a company’s production, manufacture, or distribution process. Under current law, the FDA only has access to records if it has “a reasonable belief that an article of food is adulterated” and presents “a threat of serious adverse health consequences or death to humans or animals.” Under the FSEA, however, the FDA has access to all records, at any time, and without any evidence whatsoever that there has been a violation. Warrantless searches are a powerful weapon of intimidation and harassment.

The bill also extends FDA’s authority to access records of a farm and restaurant—both of which are exempt from FDA’s reach under current law. Even farmers selling direct to consumers would have to provide the federal government with records on where they buy supplies, how they raise their crops, and a list of their customers.

The FSEA also gives the FDA complete control over recalls, seizures, detentions and quarantines—with no judicial oversight. For example, FSEA lowers the standard FDA must meet in order to conduct an administrative detention. Currently they must demonstrate “credible evidence” that a food presents a health threat before an administrative detention is allowed; the FSEA standard is “any reason to believe that an article of food is adulterated, misbranded, or otherwise in violation of this Act.”

Burdensome administrative requirements, including a new food tracing system
The FSEA requires all facilities, farms, and restaurants to implement new hazard analysis and risk-based preventive controls, food safety plans, and an extensive record maintenance program—again, without taking into account the differences between small facilities and large commercial facilities.

The FSEA also mandates an extensive food tracing system for all farms, or facilities that produce, process, or transport food, even if the food does not cross state lines, though at least “direct sales by farms” (i.e., sales directly to stores, restaurants, or consumers) are exempt—which means that most vendors who participate in a farmer’s market would not be affected. Each person in the production, manufacturing, processing, packing, transportation, or storage chain must “maintain the full pedigree of the origin and previous distribution history of the food” and must “establish and maintain a system for tracing the food that is interoperable with the systems established and maintained by other such persons.”

The bill does not explain how far the traceback will extend or how it will be done for multi-ingredient foods. With all these ambiguities, it's far from clear how much it will cost either the farmers or the taxpayers. Small farms may find this trackback system costly and time-consuming.

If the FSEA passes, only big businesses and large corporate farms will matter
With FDA having such vast control, authority, and access, globalization and harmonization of food quality is a step closer. HR2749 does not make any allowances for small- to mid-sized farms or facilities, which could mean economic ruin, closure, or dependence on large corporations or foreign food supply sources.

Let’s say you’re a small organic farmer, and you have a roadside stand on your own property. If this bill passes, you would now have to follow federally established standards for growing your produce, or your food would be considered adulterated. You could not, of course, say anything about the scientific basis for organic produce being healthier than conventionally farmed produce.

Further, you would be required to make your business records available to FDA inspectors. The inspectors would have the power to show up unannounced without a warrant to search your records without any evidence whatsoever that you have committed a violation of the law. If you refuse to let the inspector see your records, you would be guilty of adulteration.

If you’re a farmer who sells products direct to consumers, you would be forced to give the FDA any customer information you have in your records. No more customer privacy. Should you refuse, you’d face up to ten years’ imprisonment. The civil fines could be up to $100,000 if you’re an individual or $7.5 million if you incorporated your family farm as a business.

There is one bright note in a rider to the bill: HR2749 at least imposes a deadline on the Secretary of Health and Human Services to notify Congress by December 31, 2009, of the final determination on the safety of BPA (Bisphenol A) in food and beverage containers.

Please take action immediately!

We need every concerned American to contact his or her congressional representatives immediately and ask that HR2749 be defeated or, at the very least, amended.

Click here to be taken to our Action Alert and contact your Representative!

1-202-224-3121 – House Switchboard

1-202-225-3121 – House Switchboard

(202) 225-0100 - Speaker of the House Pelosi

Speaker Nancy Pelosi
http://speaker.house.gov/contact or http://www.speaker.gov/contact

If the web contact form doesn't work, use this email address:
AmericanVoices@mail.house.gov

Source: American Association for Health

Posted: True Health Is True Wealth

"Control oil and you control nations; control food and you control the people." …Henry Kissenger

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What You Don't Know Can Hurt You - Knowledge Is Power When It Comes To Healthcare The Drug Story
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The Neglected Nutritional Research of Dr. Weston Price, DDS
Big Red Juice
Sanoviv Medical Center
Welcome to Obama Theatre
Suzanne Somers on the Schwarzbein Principle - Bioidentical Hormone
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Michael Pollan's Prescription to Barack Obama

11 Health Myths That May Surprise You

Myths, half-truths and wives’ tales persist in medicine. Sometimes doctors and nurses believe things that aren’t true or at least are unproven. That’s the focus of a new book, “Don't Swallow Your Gum!: Myths, Half-Truths, and Outright Lies About Your Body and Health”
by Dr. Aaron E. Carroll and Dr. Rachel C. Vreeman

Two doctors tackle medical myths.

Dr. Carroll and Dr. Vreeman, both from the Indiana University School of Medicine, have written a lot about medical myths and misunderstandings. In December 2007, the pair published an article in the British Medical Journal about seven medical myths even doctors believe. A year later, they identified six medical myths for the holiday season.

Now, “Don’t Swallow Your Gum” offers a fun collection of numerous medical myths that are likely familiar to most of us. The book is organized to focus on various types of myths, including myths about your body (you should poop at least once a day), myths about disease and illness (cold weather makes you sick), myths about sex and pregnancy (twins skip a generation) and myths about what we eat and drink (gum stays in your stomach for seven years.)

It’s a fun read, and chances are you will stumble across several medical myths you’ve always believed. Here are a few medical myths that may surprise you:

1. Cold weather makes you sick. In studies of cold transmission, people who are chilled are no more likely to get sick than those who were not. It may be that cold weather keeps people indoors, where germs are more likely to catch up with you.

2. Green mucus indicates a sinus infection. The importance of mucus color is a medical myth even doctors believe, the authors say. “There is no evidence…that antibiotics shorten the duration of an illness when green snot is a symptom,” they write.

3. You lose most of your body heat through your head. There is nothing special about the head and heat loss. You will lose heat through any uncovered body part.

4. Milk makes you phlegmy. In a study of 330 patients, nearly two out of three believed milk increases phlegm production. But it’s not true. In one experiment, volunteers were infected with the cold virus, and some of them drank a lot of milk as well. The weight of the nasal secretions did not increase in those who drank more milk, nor was it associated with cough or congestion.

5. Cracking your knuckles will cause arthritis. Knuckle-crackers are no more likely to have arthritis than those who don’t make annoying popping sounds with their fingers.

6. Birth control pills don’t work as well with antibiotics. A review of the literature concluded that common antibiotics don’t affect birth control pills. “It is much more important to take your birth control pill every day at the same time than to spend time worrying about your antibiotics,” the authors write.

7. Singles have better sex lives than married people. You may think your bachelor friends are having all the fun, but single people also go through a lot of dry spells when they aren’t dating anyone. The result — married people typically have more sex in a given year than single people. In one survey, 43 percent of married men reported having sex two to three times per week, compared to only 26 percent of single men. The numbers were slightly lower but similar for women. Married people are also more likely to have orgasms and give and receive oral sex.

8. Sugar makes kids hyper. Numerous studies show sugar doesn’t affect behavior, but most parents don’t believe this. In one study, parents were told their kids had sugar and they were more likely to report problem behavior — but in reality, the kids had consumed a sugar-free drink.

9. You should poop at least once a day. A half-truth, say the authors. Regular bowel movements prevent discomfort and constipation, but a perfectly healthy person may not move their bowels every day. Constipation is defined as having fewer than three stools per week.

10. It’s okay to double dip in the chip dip. In one study, scientists took a bite of cracker and then dipped it into salsa, cheese dip, chocolate syrup and water. They did the same test with a fresh, unbitten cracker. Then they measured bacteria in the dips and the volunteers’ mouths. On average, three to six double dips transferred about 10,000 bacteria from the eater’s mouth to the dip. And each cracker picked up between one and two grams of dip. Salsa picked up the most germs from double dipping.

11. Food quickly picked up from the floor is safe to eat. Scientists have put the commonly-cited five-second rule to the test. They found that food that comes into contact with a tile or wood floor does pick up large amounts of bacteria. Food doesn’t pick up many germs when it hits carpet, but it does pick up carpet fuzz.

By TARA PARKER-POPE – On Health

Posted: True Health Is True Wealth

Monday, July 6, 2009

6 (New) Ultimate Flat-Belly Summer Foods

It’s summertime—are you in swimsuit shape?

Even if you’ve spent the past months dieting yourself into fit form, a few poor food choices each week can quickly add up to a juggernaut of jiggle well before Labor Day. Don’t believe us? Consider the caloric damage of typical summer activities—weekly backyard BBQs provide pounds of juicy burgers topped with gobs of high-calorie condiments; ice cream dates offer options of double and triple scoops, smothered in sugar-packed and fat-blasted toppings; and seasonal drink choices (the kind you add umbrellas to and sip from faux-coconuts) guarantee you’ll wash it all down with hundreds of extra calories. Not exactly flat-belly fare.

That’s why Eat This Not That! The Best (and Worst )! has developed this list of 6 essential summer foods. The more of these bulge-battlers you eat, the better your chances of keeping those abs flat throughout this skin-baring season.

QUINOA

Per ¼ cup:

170 calories
2.5 g fat
7 g protein
3 g fiber

For starters, anytime you choose a whole-grain product over one made from nutrient-stripped white flour, you wage war against belly fat. Penn State researchers found that dieters who ate whole-grains lost twice as much belly fat as those who stuck to white-flour products—even though they’d consumed the same number of calories. What’s more, quinoa contains twice the belly-filling protein as regular cereal grains, fewer glucose-raising carbohydrates, and even a handful of healthy fats. So start your day off with a cup of cooked quinoa combined with a ½ cup of milk and ½ cup of blueberries—microwave for 60 seconds, and you have a delicious (and slimming) alternative to your traditional oatmeal. Bob’s Red Mill Organic Quinoa won “Best Grain” in the Men’s Health 125 Best Foods For Men Awards 2009. See the other Best Foods For Men winners here.

GREEN TEA

0 calories

Catechins, the powerful antioxidants found in green tea, are known to increase metabolism. A study by Japanese researchers found that participants who consumed 690 milligrams of catechins from green tea daily had significantly lower body mass indexes and smaller waist measurements than those in a control group. It’s safe to say that green tea is one of the best beverages for your health.

KEFIR

Per cup:

174 calories
2 g fat
14 g protein
3 g fiber

Think of kefir as drinkable yogurt, or an extra-thick, protein-packed smoothie. In either case, this delicious dairy product is a belly-blasting essential. Beyond the satiety-inducing protein, the probiotics in kefir may also speed weight loss. British scientists found that these active organisms boosted the breakdown of fat molecules in mice, preventing the rodents from gaining weight. The researchers still need to prove the finding in humans, but there’s no danger in downing probiotic-packed products. We like Lifeway Lowfat Blueberry Kefir—it contains L. casei, the same probiotic used in the study.

AVOCADO

Per avocado:

322 calories
29 g fat (4 g saturated, 20 g monounsaturated)
13 g fiber
4 g protein

Never fear this full-fat Mediterranean-diet staple: It’s teeming with healthy monounsaturated fats (also found in olive oil), which have been linked to lowered LDL cholesterol levels and weight-loss. In fact, a recent longitudinal study published in The New England Journal of Medicine found that the healthy-fat Mediterranean diet was more effective than a diet that avoided fats altogether—so go ahead and indulge! (The fats you should not indulge in, however, are artery-clogging trans-fats.

EGGS

Per 1 large scrambled egg:

102 calories
7 g fat (2 g saturated)
7 g protein

A British study found that people who increased the percentage of protein-based calories in their diet burned 71 more calories a day (that’s 7.4 pounds a year!). Jump-start your metabolism as soon as you wake up with a protein-rich breakfast of scrambled eggs.

GRAPEFRUIT

Per grapefruit:

104 calories
4 g fiber
2 g protein

A grapefruit a day in addition to your regular meals can speed weight loss. The fruit’s acidity slows digestion, meaning it takes longer to move through your system, and you’ll end up feeling fuller, and more satisfied, for longer. And the vitamin C-packed grapefruit works to lower cholesterol and decrease risk of stroke, heart disease, and some types of cancer.

By Dave Zinczenko and Matt Goulding, Men's Health

Posted: True Health Is True Wealth

Related Resources: More Healthy Eating Advice

Saturday, July 4, 2009

Michael Jackson set to be embalmed at the O2 Centre after missing the deadline for cryogenic freezing

Michael Jackson will live on as a 'plastinated' creature preserved by German doctor Gunther von Hagens.

Von Hagens has caused controversy with everyone from the Pope to the chief rabbi in Israel with his practice of embalming corpses with preserving polyurethane.

Yesterday, he declared: 'An agreement is in place to plastinate the King of Pop.'

German anatomy professor Gunther von Hagens

'An agreement is in place': German doctor Gunther von Hagens says he is to preserve the King of Pop with polyurethane

Michael Jackson with his Chimpanzee Bubbles in 1991

Michael Jackson with his Chimpanzee Bubbles in 1991: Bubbles currently resides at the Body Worlds exhibit at the O2 Centre in London

Von Hagens said that he spoke with representatives of the Jackson family 'many months ago' and it was agreed that his body will be plastinated and placed next to Bubbles, his late pet monkey who was plastinated a number of years ago and is exhibited at The Body Worlds & Mirror Of Time exhibition at the O2 Centre in London.

Von Hagens also confirmed it was one of Michael's final requests to be reunited with Bubbles.

'There is no better place than to do this at the venue where Jackson was due to perform his world record 50-date tour,' said a spokesman for Von Hagens.

He added: 'Von Hagens has hinted that a moonwalk pose would naturally be favoured. 'It is hoped the exhibit will be unveiled towards the end of July.'

It was widely believed that the singer, who died yesterday from a heart attack, was interested in having his body frozen in the hope he could later be brought back to life.

However, it is now too late for his wish to be granted as the freezing process - cryonics - must be initiated almost immediately after death but an autopsy on Jackson's body still needs to be carried out.

cryogencis michael jackson

Cryonic freezing: Michael Jackson would need to have been put in a supercooled chamber very soon after his death for it to be effective

Cryonics is the cooling of legally dead people to liquid nitrogen temperature where physical decay essentially stops, with the idea that technology developed in the future will be able to revive them.

No-one has ever been revived using this process although it is a popular subject in science fiction films such as Forever Young featuring Mel Gibson.

Despite this, cryogenic freezing has become more popular over time.

Media mogul Simon Cowell caused headlines recently after he said that he wanted to undergo the process.

'Medical science is bound to work out a way of bringing us back to life in the next century or so, and I want to be available when they do,' he said.

How cryonics works

The medical process is a complicated one. Immediately after a cryonic patient's death certificate is signed by a doctor, a cryonics team restores the heartbeat and respiration using a machine to help keep cells in organs and tissues alive.

The patient's body is then cooled from body temperature (37C) to 10C as quickly as possible using ice.

Mel Gibson

Mel Gibson played a character from the 1930s who was frozen for 60 years in the 1992 film Forever Young

Medication is added to their bloodstream to help preserve the body.

Blood is then removed from the body and replaced with a saline-like solution that stops the shrinking or swelling of cells and tissues.

Anti-freeze agents are added to the blood vessels and the body is placed in a special cooling box where it is cooled to between -120C and -196C and stored away.

However, for this process to have any chance of working, the cryonic process must be started just minutes after 'legal death' is verified by doctors.

This is because a dead person's brain will start to experience a build-up of lactic acid at room temperature. Within 24 hours it will have virtually dissolved.

So with an autopsy on Michael Jackson expected 24 hours after his death, it's already too late for the Peter Pan of pop who never wanted to grow up.

By DAILY MAIL REPORTER

Posted: True Health Is True Wealth

Friday, July 3, 2009

Welcome To Obamacare Theater

The White House sure likes to put on a show. Fresh off its joint stage production with ABC News, the Obama administration broadcast another health-care propaganda play this week under the guise of a citizen "town hall."

Chicago consigliere and senior adviser Valerie Jarrett managed the floor and human props for Obama. In a telling moment as the event kicked off, she protested a wee bit much: "I want to emphasize that the president has not seen the questions ahead of time." The audience responded with polite laughter.

But the denials of pre-planning and stacked decks deserve nothing but derisive mockery. Obama's town hall was filled with backroom players and a supporting cast of socialized medicine activists and ideologues. One of the three lucky audience members whom Obama chose for questioning was Jason Rosenbaum. Rosenbaum works for the Washington, D.C.-based Health Care for America Now (HCAN). That's the same K Street Astroturf outfit I reported on last week -- the one with a $40 million budget to lobby for government-run health care. The one inextricably linked to left-wing billionaire George Soros.

Let's look at who else miraculously drew a golden ticket. Another one of the three softball-tossing citizen questioners at the White House forum identified herself as a member of the Service Employees International Union. That's the same SEIU whose president, Andy Stern, boasted of spending nearly $61 million in members' dues to elect Barack Obama. It's the same union that produced Patrick Gaspard, former SEIU health-care lobbyist and now White House director of the Office of Political Affairs.

But the Obama health-care town hall's climactic moment came when the consoler in chief plucked Debby Smith from the crowd to tell her personal health-care horror story. She choked back tears as she talked of her battle with kidney cancer, her joblessness and her lack of insurance. Obama hugged the trembling woman and dubbed her "Exhibit A" for his massive entitlement program.

Debby Smith, however, is no ordinary patient. While she may be "unemployed," she has been rather busy working for the Obama campaign -- as a volunteer for Organizing for America. It's the old Obama for Change political machine now housed under the Democratic National Committee. Smith has also identified herself as a worker for the Virginia Organizing Project, which has been coordinating lobbying trips and health-care forums with HCAN. Yes, that same HCAN.

In December, Smith moderated "a community discussion on health care issues" in Appalachia, Va., and told her local paper that the meeting "would be reported back to former Sen. Tom Daschle, who has been directed by President-elect Barack Obama to form a committee to report on health-care issues."

Daschle may be out of the spotlight since his Health and Human Services Cabinet-nomination fiasco. But he is in constant contact with Team Obama. As he told The Associated Press earlier this week in a media meeting on health-care reform, "We interact with them daily." No doubt.

Veteran liberal journalist Helen Thomas earned some accolades for challenging the tightly controlled White House events. But where was she back in March, when Team Obama pulled the same stunt? At a health-care event in the East Room, the questioners included an Obama donor, a Democratic National Committee member, a former Democratic candidate for the Virginia statehouse who had publicly endorsed Obama and a member of the SEIU. Yes, that SEIU.

The growing irritation of the once-smitten Beltway media is better late than never, I suppose. But one wonders what took so long for the sedatives to wear off the watchdogs. Team Obama has screamed "kabuki" from day one.

By: Michelle Malkin - Blogger, author of the forthcoming "Culture of Corruption: Obama and His Team of Tax Cheats, Crooks, and Cronies" (Regnery 2009), and contributor to Creators Syndicate, Inc.

Source: GOPUSA.com

Posted: True Health Is True Wealth

Related Resources:

Wednesday, July 1, 2009

FDA Advisers Urge Smaller Doses of Acetaminophen

The concern is that the drug can cause liver damage, even death, if used improperly

TUESDAY, June 30 (HealthDay News) -- U.S. health advisers recommended Tuesday to lower the maximum dose of over-the-counter acetaminophen -- the key ingredient in Tylenol, Excedrin and many other pain-killing medications.

The advisers' vote followed the release of a U.S. Food and Drug Administration report last month. It found that severe liver damage and even death can result from a lack of consumer awareness that acetaminophen -- which is easier on the stomach than painkillers such as aspirin and ibuprofen -- can cause such injury.

Also, many people may take more than the recommended dose of acetaminophen-based, over-the-counter pain relievers in the mistaken belief that taking more will be more effective against pain without posing health risks. And consumers may not know that acetaminophen is present in many over-the-counter products, including remedies for colds, headaches and fevers, making it possible to exceed the recommended acetaminophen dose, the report said.

The FDA advisory panel voted 21-16 Tuesday to lower the maximum daily dose of nonprescription acetaminophen, which is currently 4 grams - equal to eight pills of a drug such as Extra Strength Tylenol. The panel was not asked to recommend another maximum daily dose.

The panel also voted 24-13 to limit the maximum single dose of acetaminophen to 650 milligrams. The current single dose of Extra Strength Tylenol, for instance, is 1,000 milligrams.

The panel also voted 26-11 to make the 1,000-milligram dose of acetaminophen available only by prescription.

The advisers voted against other safety restrictions for other over-the-counter drugs such as NyQuil or Theraflu, which contain acetaminophen and other ingredients that treat cough and runny nose. Patients often mix the cold medications with pure acetaminophen drugs, like Tylenol, leaving them vulnerable to dangerously high levels of acetaminophen.

The FDA is not obligated to follow the recommendations of its advisory panels, but it typically does so.

Despite more than five years of FDA-sponsored consumer education campaigns, "recent studies indicate that unintentional and intentional overdoses leading to severe hepatotoxicity [liver damage] continue to occur," last month's report said.

Dr. John H. Klippel, chief executive officer of the Arthritis Foundation, said Tuesday's votes were very important to "people with arthritis because acetaminophen is a very commonly used medication to control pain."

"Lowering the maximum dose, providing that kind of guidance to patients, if it increases safety, would be something the arthritis community would support," he said. "Every person who takes this drug sees it as valuable, but they want clear guidance so they won't be harmed by the drug."

Dr. Lewis W. Teperman, director of transplant surgery and vice chairman of surgery at New York University, said he supported the panel's decision to recommend lowering doses of acetaminophen.

"It's not that the doses can get you in trouble, but the very young and the very old can get into trouble easily," he said. Also if you are sick there is the danger of taking cold remedies that contain acetaminophen plus taking pure acetaminophen drugs as well, he noted.

But Klipper said the vote to make the 1,000-milligram dose of acetaminophen available only by prescription would overburden the health-care system. "Given the massive number of people who rely on this drug for pain control, making the maximum dose requiring a prescription, I think is going to place undo burden on the health-care system," he said.

On the other hand, Teperman supported the 1,000-milligram recommendation.

"The 1,000 milligram pill should never be at the patient's discretion. It should only be prescribed by a physician," Teperman said. "If you took an entire bottle of Tylenol Extra Strength, three days later you would be in a coma and needing a liver transplant."

Klippel said he'd like to see more education for consumers, alerting them to the potential dangers of acetaminophen. "Give consumers the benefit of the doubt," he said. "Consumers want to do the right thing, and if dosage in acetaminophen is important the consumer will follow."

By Steve Reinberg - HealthDay Reporter

For more on acetaminophen, visit the U.S. National Library of Medicine.

Posted: True Health Is True Wealth

Monday, June 29, 2009

How Painkillers can cause Cardiac Arrest

The death of pop icon Michael Jackson is raising questions over what might have caused it.

Photograph by: handout, morguefile.com

CHICAGO — The death of pop music icon Michael Jackson from cardiac arrest on Thursday has raised a host of questions about what might have caused it.

It may take weeks before an autopsy can reveal the true circumstances that led the singer’s heart to stop.

One possible cause reported by celebrity website TMZ.com is that he was injected with the potent painkiller Demerol before he went into cardiac arrest.

Others speculate it was a combination of Demerol and Oxycontin, another powerful painkiller that is among the most commonly abused prescription drugs.

Here are some facts about cardiac arrest and both these drugs.

HOW COULD DEMEROL CAUSE CARDIAC ARREST?

Cardiac arrest occurs when the heart stops circulating blood. In 80 percent of cases, the cause is heart disease, but narcotic painkillers like Demerol can cause cardiac arrest.

Dr. Daniel Simon, chief of cardiology at University Hospitals Case Medical Center in Cleveland, said if Jackson had been injected with too much Demerol, it might have caused him to stop breathing, a condition called respiratory arrest.

"The most likely scenario with Demerol would be that it caused a respiratory arrest because it takes away the drive to ventilate (breathe)," Simon said in a telephone interview.

He said low blood oxygen can trigger a deadly heart rhythm known as ventricular fibrillation in which the heart quivers but does not circulate blood. "Without CPR and a defibrillator, you have no chance," Simon said.

DEMEROL AND OXYCONTIN?

ABC News has reported that Jackson was addicted to prescription painkillers, and may have used Demerol in combination with Oxycontin.

Cleveland Clinic cardiologist Dr. Bruce Lindsay, past president of the Heart Rhythm Society, said the two drugs in combination could cause respiratory arrest.

"As with any of these painkillers, if you get too much on board, it really depresses the central nervous system so the patient could lapse into a deep sleep or even a coma. And if their respiratory capacity was too depressed, they would just stop breathing," Lindsay said.

"If they stop breathing, eventually of course the heart will go into cardiac arrest, but not because of some primary heart problem. It is simply because the final mode of death is that the heart stops beating."

COULD IT HAVE BEEN HEART DISEASE?

Simon said many media outlets are looking for exotic reasons to explain the singer’s death because it occurred in a relatively young man, but age 50 is not too young for sudden cardiac arrest.

"A lot of people are saying it’s a surprise a 50-year-old has cardiac arrest. Thirty percent of cardiac arrests are in people for whom it is their first symptom of heart disease," Simon said.

"When they do an autopsy, the first thing the medical examiner will look for is a scar in the heart muscle suggesting an old heart attack," Simon said.

He said 25 percent of patients who have cardiac arrest have had a prior heart attack without knowing it. "That is what the scar will tell them."

Big Pharma and doctors under the AMA push drugs, drugs, drugs and surgery rather than prevention, natural remedies and alternative treatments. Once nationalized healthcare takes over that trend away from natural and alternative cures will continue while their pattern of treatment will go unchanged except that it will be rationed.

BY JULIE STEENHUYSEN, REUTERSJUNE 26, 2009

(Editing by Mary Milliken; Editing by Will Dunham)

Source: The Vancouver Sun

Posted: True Health Is True Wealth

Soy May Reduce Damage Caused by Smoking

If you can’t quit smoking, maybe you should at least increase the amount of soy in your diet, if a new study saying soy could curb respiratory problems is any indication. The Asian superfood can reduce the risk of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and other respiratory problems, the study says.

Soy, which is found in many Japanese foods, including tofu, natto, miso soup, soybean sprouts, and soy milk, has long been associated with a reduction in cholesterol and the symptoms of menopause. The new study, however, is the first to show a connection between soy consumption and a reduction in the risk of developing COPD, a deadly lung disease.

Researchers Dr. Fumi Hirayama and professor Andy Lee from the Curtin University of Technology, Australia, polled 300 patients with COPD and 340 age-matched control subjects about their intake of soy.

“Soy consumption was found to be positively correlated with lung function and inversely associated with the risk of COPD,” Hirayama said. “It has been suggested that flavonoids from soy foods act as an anti-inflammatory agent in the lung, and can protect against tobacco carcinogens for smokers.”

Smoking is the biggest cause of COPD, a lung disease that includes emphysema and chronic bronchitis. Long-term smoking is associated with 90 percent of cases.

More than 12 million Americans have COPD, and another 24 million have impaired lung function, indicating that COPD may be under-diagnosed. The best preventive measure is not to smoke.

Source: Newsmax Health

Posted: True Health Is True Wealth

Renal Failure with Reclast

The FDA just released its Drug Safety Newsletter (at 5:00 on Friday, of course), and it contains some very bad news for people taking Reclast, the annual IV osteoporosis treatment.

The agency has received 24 reports of renal impairment (which means kidney damage) and "some cases" of acute renal failure associated with the use of this drug. All of these reports were filed between April 2007 and February 2009 – less than two years – and seven of the people died.

So, what's the FDA doing about this dangerous drug? A big, fat nothing...well, almost nothing. One of their suggestions for physicians is to make sure patients are "adequately hydrated" before they get their Reclast infusion.

My suggestion: Find out more about the potentially dangerous (possibly deadly) side effects of Reclast before even considering this treatment. Don't risk adverse events like osteonecrosis of the jaw (literally, a dead jaw bone), atrial fibrillation (an abnormal heart rhythm), or hypertension when you can boost your bone density with very safe, natural treatments. Check out the HSI Cures Library to find out more about successfully treating and preventing osteoporosis...without risking your life.

--Michele/HSI

Posted: True Health Is True Wealth

Sunday, June 28, 2009

A few extra pounds helps you live longer, study finds

Carrying a few extra pounds may actually be good for you, according to a new study which found overweight people live longer than their more slender peers.

Woman standing on weighing scales: A few extra pounds helps you live longer, study finds

The study showed that modestly overweight individuals were 17 per cent less likely to diePhoto: GETTY

While the obese or underweight are at greater risk of death, people marginally overweight have longer lifespans than those considered to be of "healthy" weight, researchers claim.

The findings defy the commonly held belief that staying slim is the secret to healthy and long life.

Scientists examined the relationship between body mass index and death among 11,326 adults in Canada over a 12-year period.

They discovered that underweight people were 70 per cent more likely than people of normal weight to die, and extremely obese people were 36 per cent more likely to die.

However, modestly overweight individuals were 17 per cent less likely to die, the study showed.

The relative risk for obese people was nearly the same as for people of normal weight, the report concluded.

The research was conducted by experts at Statistics Canada, Kaiser Permanente Center for Health Research, Portland State University, Oregon Health & Science University, and McGill University.

Commenting on the findings, David Feeny from the Kaiser Permanente Center for Health Research, said: "It's not surprising that extreme underweight and extreme obesity increase the risk of dying.

"But it is surprising that carrying a little extra weight may give people a longevity advantage."

However, the researchers also warned people of normal weight not to try to put on extra pounds in the hope of improving their health.

"I would not interpret our results as suggesting that if you are normal you should gain weight and get into the overweight category," Mr Feeny said.

Fellow researcher Mark Kaplan, professor of Community Health at Portland State University, added: "Our study only looked at mortality, not at quality of life.

"There are many negative health consequences associated with obesity, including high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and diabetes."

The researches said carrying slightly more weight than normal may be beneficial in later life because it prevents people from becoming dangerously underweight when faced with health problems.

Posted: True Health Is True Wealth

Saturday, June 27, 2009

Pool Rules – Diseases You Can Catch In The Pool

Content provided by:

Are there Communicable Diseases Swimming in your Public Pool?

By Robert Shmerling, M.D., Harvard Health Publications

Harvard Health Publications//Harvard Medical School

The other day, the "pool monitor" of a public pool in our neighborhood wandered around reminding people to shower before getting into the water. For anyone asking why, she simply pointed to the conspicuous sign, posted, as required by public health regulations, that read: "All persons are required to take a cleansing shower bath before entering the pool."

The next rule caught my eye, as well: "No person with a communicable disease is allowed to use the pool."

When I first read these rules, they seemed reasonable enough. But as I thought about it, the logic was difficult to understand. What diseases or conditions are being prevented by these health codes? Many communicable diseases are not spread through water (for example, the common cold or most sexually transmitted diseases). How do these rules promote health?

Swimming by the rules

It's probably reassuring to most people to know that everyone is required to shower before getting in the pool and that a person who might pass a disease to you or your kids is not allowed in the water. Yet, it struck me that, as written, these rules were unlikely to be effective and would prohibit many from swimming who pose no threat to the health of others.

For example, a number of important communicable diseases; hepatitis B, hepatitis C and HIV come to mind; are not known to be spread by simply swimming in a pool with others. It would be unfair and would accomplish nothing to exclude people with these diseases from swimming pools. Never mind that these rules are probably impossible to enforce; my own observation is that they are often ignored.

I looked into what these rules were intended to accomplish, and here's what I found. First, the "communicable diseases" are only those known to be spread from person to person via contaminated water. More specifically, the regulations are aimed at preventing diseases caused by organisms that are shed in the feces of an infected person and can spread to another person who ingests contaminated water. The particular concerns are bacterial infections, (Shigella, Campylobacter, Salmonella, certain types of E. coli), hepatitis A and parasitic infections (Cryptosporidium and Giardia). A person who has been diagnosed with one of these infections should not swim in a pool in which others swim until the infection has resolved and recovery is complete. The time required to eliminate an infection and to no longer be considered infectious varies, depending on the organism, but waiting at least two weeks after complete recovery before swimming in a public pool is recommended. In the world of infectious diseases, there are relatively few that are relevant to your swimming decisions.

Now, about that pre-swim shower…

The reason a shower is required before entering the pool is that an infectious organism could be living on your skin and the shower is intended to reduce or eliminate the risk that you will expose others in the pool to that organism.

However, for those people who do take a shower before entering a pool, it is not likely that the quick rinse or even use of soap and water will do much to change what must be a very low risk in the first place. The acid level and chlorine in swimming pools already kills most infectious organisms (though cryptosporidia is a notable exception); and other than infections such as those listed above (that are spread by water contaminated with feces), most organisms living on your skin are of no risk to others anyway.

Why do health codes continue to require this?

It is possible that health codes and regulations were created in response to diseases that used to be more common than they are today. In addition, the understanding of disease may be better now than when these rules were established. For example, before different types of hepatitis were identified and their means of spread understood, it may have been more difficult to prevent their spread, so restricting pool access may have seemed reasonable at the time. There may have been fear of people who were ill, and sickness may be associated with poor hygiene, so requiring showers of everyone may have been appealing to those charged with overseeing public health. Finally, it may also be a matter of "inertia" once rules are set up, it's harder to change them over time than to simply leave them in place, especially if they don't seem to be causing much harm. It's hard to say that requiring showers of everyone entering a pool even if it's unnecessary is particularly harmful. On the other hand, if a person with HIV is kept out of the pool because of his or her "communicable disease," that's a discriminatory misunderstanding of the regulations' purpose.

Conclusions

It can be difficult to understand what your own doctor is saying but at least you have the opportunity to ask questions to clarify the message. But when the message is coming from your "public health doctor," it's not so easy to ask questions or to apply a one-size-fits-all rule to your own particular situation. Of course, that's the challenge of establishing public health codes and regulations to effectively protect health with rules that are not too constrictive and are applied fairly to all.

Perhaps the most important thing to know about preventing the spread of illness while swimming is to avoid the pool if you have a diarrheal infection or have been diagnosed with one of the waterborne communicable diseases mentioned above. If you don't have any of those illnesses and are otherwise healthy, you may still have no choice rules are rules but speaking from a strictly medical point of view, there's little reason to shower before swimming unless that's what you like to do.

Copyright © 2009 by the Presidents and Fellows of Harvard College. Used with permission of StayWell. All rights reserved. Harvard Medical School does not approve or endorse any products on the page. Harvard is the sole creator of its editorial content, and advertisers are not allowed to influence the language or images Harvard uses.

Posted: True Health Is True Wealth

Amish Fat Loss Secret

Was reading the news today and discovered the Amish Secret To Fat Loss.

What's great about this secret is it puts an end to the whole "I have the fat gene" argument.

Why?

Because some of the thin Amish people studied HAD that very same "fat" gene! The plot thickens! (So to speak)

So how do these guys stay thin?

Do they go to the gym?

Do they use treadmills every day?

Do they have personal trainers design complicated programs for them using the latest equipment?

...Nope!

They just ‘walk’ more than we do. And do fun stuff like gardening, playing actively with their kids, and other stuff that involves MOVEMENT.

So how can you take advantage of this tidbit? I recommend parking as far away from the store or office as possible and walking the extra distance (beats the heck out of wasting time scavenging for a spot close by anyway). And stop waiting around for the elevator. Conquer those stairs.

Just make sure not to give up your computer and other electronic gadgets in the process. That would be nuts., but cut down on how much time you spend using them

From Your NON-Amish Friend
Nate Rifkin - Nate Rifkin Enterprises LLC

P.S. If you are going take up something… to help your health and weight loss, I recommend yoga!!

Posted: True Health Is True Wealth

Friday, June 26, 2009

President Obama Defends Right to Choose Best Care… For His Family

In ABC News Health Care Forum, President Answers Questions About Reform. President Obama struggled to explain today whether his health care reform proposals would force normal Americans to make sacrifices that wealthier, more powerful people -- like the president himself -- wouldn't face.

Obama Said He Won't Accept Health Care Limits for His Own Family… But Obviously Limits Will Be Good Enough For You and Your Family…. Hmmmm?!?

A special edition of "Nightline" from inside the White House followed the Prime Time infomercial.

The probing questions came from two skeptical neurologists during ABC News' special on health care reform, "Questions for the President: Prescription for America," anchored from the White House by Diane Sawyer and Charles Gibson.

Dr. Orrin Devinsky, a neurologist and researcher at the New York University Langone Medical Center, said that elites often propose health care solutions that limit options for the general public, secure in the knowledge that if they or their loves ones get sick, they will be able to afford the best care available, even if it's not provided by insurance.

Devinsky asked the president pointedly if he would be willing to promise that he wouldn't seek such extraordinary help for his wife or daughters if they became sick and the public plan he's proposing limited the tests or treatment they can get.

The president refused to make such a pledge, though he allowed that if "it's my family member, if it's my wife, if it's my children, if it's my grandmother, I always want them to get the very best care.

"There's a whole bunch of care that's being provided that every study, that every bit of evidence that we have indicates may not be making us healthier," he said.

Gibson interjected that often patients don't know what will work until they get every test they can.

"Oftentimes we know what makes sense and what doesn't," the president responded, making a push for evidence-based medicine.

By JAKE TAPPER and KAREN TRAVERS

Source: Fox Nation - Read The Full Article

Posted: True Health Is True Wealth

The Obamacare Show: Bombed

In a rare show of good taste, America TV viewers turned off the ABC News/White House infomercial on Obamacare.

They should have listened to me and included John Stossel in their programming!

Via The Live Feed:

President Obama’s town hall meeting on health care delivered a sickly rating Wednesday evening.

The one-hour ABC News special “Primetime: Questions for the President: Prescription for America” (4.7 million viewers, 1.1 preliminary adults 18-49 rating) had the fewest viewers in the 10 p.m. hour. The special tied some 8 p.m. comedy repeats as the lowest-rated program on a major broadcast network.

Source: By Michelle Malkin • June 25, 2009 02:46 PM

Posted: True Health Is True Wealth

For the 4.7 million viewers who did watch the ABC-ObamaCare infomercial it was disappointing. It was vague, filled with generalities and a "follow us blindly" mantra. There was a lot of: that is a significant issue that we are looking into; it’s not going to happen overnight; and we have to do something (even if we don’t quite know what). When asked who was going to pay for all this the answer again was pretty vague except for more taxing of the same group whose pockets the Obama administration has already picked several times.

83% of all Americans have said they are happy with the coverage they have but are just worried about costs in the future. Does it really make sense to totally change the country's whole program for 17% of Americans when some of those already qualify for some coverage they just haven’t applied for, some just need a "group or category" to belong to cut their costs and others may just need government assistance, not matter what. Why not work with the private sector (as suggested by the CEO of Aetna who was at the event) to help cover some of those people and to incentivize prevention while simultaneously overhauling and expanding Medicare and Medicaid, that the government already runs… and presently does that pretty poorly, for those that are otherwise uninsurable?? - Ask Marion/True Health Is True Wealth

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Thursday, June 25, 2009

4 Fibromyalgia Treatments That Work

You’re in pain all over, always tired and can’t sleep, yet your doctor can’t figure what’s wrong. It could be fibromyalgia, and the answer to treating it may really be in your head. Here are 4 treatments that work. Plus, find out how much you know about the mysterious illness with our quiz…

If fibromyalgia were a pastime, it would be The New York Times’ infamous Sunday crossword: a confounding, bedeviling, even exhausting puzzle. The disease – a complex illness marked by chronic muscle, tendon and ligament pain, fatigue and multiple tender points on the body – affects about 2% of Americans, most of them women.

Since the first clinical, controlled study of fibromyalgia was conducted nearly 30 years, doctors still haven’t been able to pinpoint a cause or find a definitive treatment.

Physicians and patients alike are frustrated. Countless women are told the pain must be in their head.

Identifying a Puzzling, Painful Disease
But experts are inching closer to the causes of fibromyalgia and treatment, thanks to maverick thinkers like Daniel Clauw, M.D., who saw clues where many did not.

In the late 1980s, many patients with lower back pain were referred to him.
“As it turned out, most of these people had pain in many areas other than the back, as well as fatigue, insomnia, and memory problems. They had fibromyalgia – unrecognized and undiagnosed, as it often was,” recalls Clauw, a professor of anesthesiology and medicine at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and director of the Chronic Pain and Fatigue Research Center there.

Fast-forward 20 years: Clauw is still at it, still excited. But he’s now one of a growing number of physicians and practitioners approaching the puzzle of fibromyalgia from a new angle – the pain. Aided by dramatic advances in brain imaging and mapping, they’re getting a clearer view of the disease.

“We may not know what causes fibromyalgia, but it absolutely exists,” says George Griffing, M.D., a professor of medicine at St. Louis University in Missouri.

Seeing Is Believing
In the 1950s, when fibromyalgia was first described, the illness was thought to be a rheumatologic disorder like lupus because it was characterized by musculoskeletal pain. Despite this hypothesis – or maybe because it was inaccurate – fibromyalgia remained difficult to treat for decades.

But a landmark 2002 study, published by Clauw in the medical journal Arthritis and Rheumatism, shed new light on the disease. Rather than being rooted in the muscles and joints, the current thinking revolves around pain and sensory "amplification," he says.

His research showed that fibromyalgia sufferers are doubly sensitive to pain.

Clauw produced scans to show that the brains of fibromyalgia sufferers display significant pain signals from finger squeezes so gentle that they barely register as unpleasant in people without the disease.

"It’s as if the volume control on pain and sensory processing is set too high in people with fibromyalgia," Clauw says. The level at which touch to the skin [or noise or odor] becomes painful or uncomfortable is much lower in someone with fibromyalgia than in someone without it.

The brain, he says, is the key to the puzzle and, by quieting it, you’ll treat and manage the illness more effectively than before.

4 Ways to Manage Fibromyalgia
Here are four ways to calm your mind and improve your quality of life with fibromyalgia:

1. Find a doctor who "gets it." If you’re sore all over, suffer overwhelming fatigue and have trouble sleeping but don’t know why, see a rheumatologist. Such specialists are best able to differentiate fibromyalgia from other illnesses with similar symptoms.

But if your diagnosis is clearly fibromyalgia, start “with a physician – any physician – who fully acknowledges that the disease exists,” Griffing says.

2. Carefully test available meds and treatments. Many studies have shown that anti-convulsants and antidepressants can lower the pain volume for people with fibromyalgia.

One study, reported in the January 2009 issue of The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), revealed that antidepressants may reduce pain, depression, fatigue, sleep disturbances and improve quality of life.

The study showed that these drugs worked but with varying success. Tricyclic and tetracyclic antidepressants such as Elavil or Pamelor provided the most pain relief. Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) can help with fatigue and depression.

Because there’s not enough evidence on the long-term effects of antidepressants, patients should be evaluated regularly to determine if the benefits outweigh adverse effects, according to the JAMA report.

Clauw adds that patients should systematically try a few medications – butslowly. “One of the biggest problems I see is that doctors and patients want to try too many things at once,” he says. So they can’t tell if something is working or whether a new symptom is a side effect of a treatment.

“There is no silver bullet – not yet,” says Griffing. The cocktail approach – a dash of pharmacology here, a dose of non-drug therapies there – has been proven to work.

Coming soon: Neurostimulatory therapies in which the brain or spinal cord is stimulated by electricity or magnets to reduce pain. Ask your doctor about it.

3. Be your own advocate. Learn as much as you can about the disease and the myriad ways you can manage it. How do you find out about options? Sites like the American Fibromyalgia Syndrome Association, the National Fibromyalgia Partnership and Know Fibro, which Clauw helped develop, can help educate patients about non-drug approaches such as cognitive behavioral therapy.

“They’re an excellent way for people with fibromyalgia to get the non-drug therapies that are rarely prescribed in routine clinical practice,” he says.

4. Retrain your brain. The key to coping with the illness is to manage your brain’s sensitivity to stimuli – which means, in part, “unlearning what you’ve always done," says Barbara Keddy, Ph.D., professor emerita in the School of Nursing at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Keddy, founder of the blog womenandfibromyalgia.com, has struggled with and studied fibromyalgia for 40 years.

Living in the moment is one effective tool, she says. “It means being constantly aware of how your body is responding to different stimuli in the moment and working to breathe deeply, engaging your diaphragm and moving your body in different ways to subvert the stress response.”

For more information on this strategy, called the "relaxation response," check out relaxationresponse.org.

How Much Do You Know About Fibromyalgia?
Fibromyalgia is one of the world’s oldest medical mysteries. How much do you know about the illness? Find out now.

Source: By Megan Othersen Gorman, Special to Lifescript - Published June 25, 200

Posted: True Health Is True Wealth

ObamaCare Isn't Inevitable

Americans are increasingly concerned about the cost -- in money and personal freedom -- of the president's nanny-state initiatives.

(And yesterday’s ABC infomercial was, as always… very vague!)

While still good, President Barack Obama's political health is deteriorating, threatened by what he thought would be balm -- his ambitious plan for a government takeover of health care.

Mr. Obama remains slightly more popular than most presidents have been in their opening months. But his job approval rating has drifted down to 60% in the RealClearPolitics.com average. His disapproval numbers have nearly doubled to 33%.

More troubling to Team Obama is the growing gap between the president's approval rating and declining support for major items on his policy agenda. Independents are increasingly joining Republicans in opposition to administration initiatives that range from reviving the economy to closing the terrorist detention facility at Guantanamo.

[Commentary] Chad Crowe

Things will likely get worse in the coming months as the congressional stage comes to be dominated by health care. A new poll by Resurgent Republic (a nonprofit, right-of-center education organization whose creation I helped spur), reveals some of the president's challenges. By a 60%-to-31% margin, Americans prefer getting their health coverage through private insurance rather than the federal government.

Mr. Obama's record-setting spending binge has also made Americans more sensitive to deficits and higher taxes. Thirty-nine percent said they supported "a health-care plan that raises taxes in order to provide health insurance to all Americans," while 52% preferred "a plan that does not provide health insurance to all Americans but keeps taxes at current levels." By a 58%-to-37% margin, American prefer reforming health care "without raising taxes or increasing the deficit" to government investing "new resources to make sure it is done right."

This is why Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus blanched when committee staffers priced his -- which is also the Obama administration's -- draft legislation at a cool $1.6 trillion over the next decade.

The federal government will release an update on the deficit in mid-July, which will likely increase the public's fear of deficit spending. The current fiscal year's $1.8 trillion deficit is likely to grow significantly.

There is some good news in the Resurgent Republic poll for Mr. Obama if he can sell his plan as shifting power from "insurance bureaucrats to consumers." Resurgent's poll found that Americans favor that by 57% to 38%.

But to argue, as Mr. Obama does, that a government-run health-care plan can control costs better than a market-based system is a mistake. This argument is belied by Medicare's experience. A study published by the Pacific Research Institute finds that since 1970 Medicare's costs have risen 34% a year faster than the rest of health care.

Mr. Obama's trashing of American health care as "a broken system" that must be brought "into the 21st century" doesn't resonate with most Americans. They are happy about their health care, doctor and hospital. Resurgent's poll found that 83% of Americans are very or somewhat satisfied with the quality of care they and their families receive.

Nearly everyone agrees that some reforms are needed. But it is also vital to protect areas of excellence and innovation. Stanford University professor Scott Atlas points out that from 1998 to 2002 nearly twice as many new drugs were launched in the U.S. as in Europe. According the U.S. Pharmaceutical Industry Report, some 2,900 new drugs are now being researched here. America's five top hospitals conduct more clinical trials than all the hospitals in any other developed country, according to Mr. Atlas. And a McKinsey Co. study reports that 40% of all medical travelers come to the United States for medical treatment.

Transforming health care into a government-run system would be difficult to do under any circumstances. Americans are still wary about big government. Health-care reform also always sounds better in the abstract. Public resistance rises once liberals are forced to release the details of their plans.

Meanwhile, the $787 billion stimulus package has not provided the economic kick Mr. Obama promised. The $410 billion Omnibus spending bill the president signed in March and his $3.5 trillion budget plan for next year are also adding to the river of red ink.

Health-care reform was said to be "inevitable" a few months ago. Today, its prospects are less certain, even to Democrats. The issue may even turn out to be a millstone for the party.

Americans are increasingly concerned about the cost -- in money and personal freedom -- of Mr. Obama's nanny-state initiatives. To strengthen the emerging coalition of independents and Republicans, the GOP must fight Mr. Obama's agenda with reasoned arguments and attractive alternatives. Health care may actually be an issue that helps resurrect the GOP.

By Mr. Rove - the former senior adviser and deputy chief of staff to President George W. Bush.

Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page A13 on June 25, 2009

ON THE AIR: KARL ROVE ON IRAN, HEALTH CARE AND MORE

Karl Rove joined Hannity to analyze President Obama's rhetoric on the situation in Iran. Karl says Obama's statement condemning the violence against demonstrators came too late and its tardiness sent the wrong message to the Iranian regime. Karl also talks about health care and Gov. Sanford's political future.

>> Watch Video

Posted: Daily Thought Pad

Wednesday, June 24, 2009

Get Both Sides of the National Healthcare Story…

Thanks to the generous support of grassroots Republicans and Independents nationwide, the RNC exceeded Their Goal of raising over $100,000 to help counter ABC's one-sided infomercial for government-run health care.

Fellow Americans

Though the television network (ABC and some NBC affiliates) have denied requests to air ads counter to President Obama's government-run health care "reform" plans, they can't keep us off the air. (Ask yourself… what kind of media refuses to run both sides... and why is the administration so afraid to have us hear both sides??)

We are using the grassroots donations we received to spread our message against the one-sided, big government mantra being pushed by the Obama Democrats here in Washington --

watch it now!

Since when in America do we not get to hear both sides to make an informed decision???

Posted: True Health Is True Wealth

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Canadian Healthcare Coming Soon to the USA

CANADIAN HEALTH CARE: COMING SOON TO THE USA

The Obama health care proposals will lead to Canadian style socialized medicine -- and here are some of the consequences:

* A 16% higher cancer death rate in Canada
* An eight week wait for radiation therapy for cancer patients
* 42% of Canadians die of colon cancer vs. 31% in the US
* Cutbacks in diagnostic testing
* The best meds for chemo therapy are not available
* No way out of the system; you can't even pay for services yourself – in fact Canadians now come here to circumvent their system

Why is health care so bad north of the border? Because there are too few doctors to treat everybody and cost savings -- which slice medical incomes -- drive doctors out of the profession. When Obama calls for a 21% cut in Medicare fees to physicians and a $2500 cut in health costs per capita, that is exactly the kind of downward spiral in medical care quality he will bring to the United States. By making too few doctors cover too many patients, he will cut the quality of care to everybody.

As Obama's proposals make their way through Congress, it is vital that we all get up to speed on what is happening in Canada, so we can stop it from happening here. It is through word of mouth that we need to spread the information to undermine public support for the changes Obama would bring.

That's why we wrote Catastrophe. That's why we hope you read it!

Thanks, Dick

CATASTROPHE by Dick Morris and Eileen McGann

Full Title: How Obama, Congress And The Special Interests Are Turning A Slump Into A Crash, Freedom Into Socialism, And A Disaster Into A CATASTROPHE...And How To

Fight Back Before It Is Too Late!!! Call/Fax/and Email your Congressperson and Senator (Daily)… Talk to Your Friends, Grab a Picket Sign, Organize a Tea Party and come 2010 and 2012 Vote for “Real Change” and American Freedom!!

ABC infomercial on Healthcare is a Diversion!

It's the way the Obama administration works -- forget about how you get it done, just get it done. Since support is fading for Cap & Trade, as it's essentially one of the biggest tax increases in history, the administration and the media are making a big deal (and rightfully so) out of the ABC infomercial happening tonight. While you are enraged about that, Cap ‘n’ Trade slips in through the back door, unnoticed and unharmed. Watch for Glenn to shine the spotlight on this issue for the rest of the week on radio and at 5pm on the Fox News Channel. – Glenn Beck

Also NBC is refusing or air commercials that are anti-the Obama Healthcare Program… showing the other side. That is censorship. That is Big Brother Politics! That is socialism or much much worse. Wake-up America!! Stand-up America, before it is too late!!

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Canadian Women Testifies Before Congress On Negatives of Canadian Healthcare

Canadian Shona Holmes is up to her eyeballs in debt after having to flee her country's supposedly "free" public health system to seek life-saving medical treatment in the United States.

After being diagnosed with a brain tumor, the Ontario woman was told she would have to wait five months or more to see a specialist in order to schedule surgery, which would come months after seeing the specialist. Her condition quickly began to deteriorate, causing her to lose her vision and forcing her to consider treatment outside Canada's health care program despite being told "nightmare stories about American health care."

She got the treatment she needed in the U.S., but racked up more than $100,000 in out-of-pocket health care expenses. One of the reasons, she says, is because provincial law bars their citizens from purchasing health insurance.

"I owe money to everyone I know," she lamented, citing the second mortgage she had to take out on her house and her husband who is now working two jobs to repay debts to their family and friends.

She has filed a constitutional challenge to her province because it prohibits the sale of private health care or insurance, yet put her life in danger by being unable to provide care in a timely manner. "I'm not the type to be unprepared," she said. "I would have bought insurance if I could have."

"Most people say I must have had the financial resources to get this treatment, but I just had no other options, I had to get it," she told Hot Button over coffee in downtown Washington.

She was in town to testify to Congress about her struggle with public health care. Mrs. Holmes said she had an obligation to warn Americans about the perils of a public health care system, in light of the push from President Obama to implement such a program. She's agreed to appear in advertisements for Patients United Now, a campaign that opposes Mr. Obama's plan.

"My agenda, if I have one, is to tell them be careful what you wish for," she said.

Source: Washington Times

Posted: True Health Is True Wealth

Michael Pollan's prescription to President Barack Obama — and you: ‘Eat food, not too much, mostly plants’

Michael Pollan visited the UBC Farm recently.

Photograph by: Jenelle Schneider, Vancouver Sun

VANCOUVER — He’s not as famous as his brother-in-law, actor Michael J. Fox, but Michael Pollan has a captivated audience that can change a nation. One, in particular, is Barack Obama.

Last October, Pollan wrote an open letter to Obama in The New York Times Magazine, citing how the presidential candidate could put the nation’s food system on the right track if he became president. In short order, an Obama aide phoned requesting a summary, but Pollan declined, basically saying if the story could have been shorter, it would have been. Undeterred, Obama quoted Pollan’s article at length in an interview with a reporter from Time magazine.

At the consumer level, Pollan is changing the way people eat, first with Omnivore’s Dilemma, which stayed on The New York Times best-seller list for 91 weeks. In his latest book, In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto, he coined a phrase, summarizing the book’s message: “Eat food, not too much, mostly plants” (Perhaps Obama should have asked for a seven-word summary.) Anyway, the phrase has legs and is working its way onto T-shirts, coffee mugs and the bottom of e-mail signatures. Some Pollan fans have created a web petition, appealing to Obama to appoint Pollan as secretary of agriculture (www.thepetitionsite.com).

Pollan’s shorthand summary of the book is like a semaphore for eating whole, local, mostly vegetarian foods in lesser amounts (like the French, eat less, but more sensually). But the background history, politics, culture and science woven into the book are what makes you sit up. “Food” in his mind does not include “food-like substitutes,” the 17,000 new ones that appear on grocery shelves every year.

I had a chance to sit down with Pollan when he was in Vancouver on a speaking engagement recently. (About 700 people showed up at the University of B.C. Farm.)

“I spent two years looking at the whole question of what we really know about diet and health,” said Pollan, who lives in Berkeley, Calif., where he teaches at the University of California, Berkeley.

“Usually, the deeper you drill into questions like that, the more complicated and ambiguous things become and it’s not as simple as you thought. With this question, the opposite was true. The further I went, the simpler it got. After two years of research, I had seven words: Eat food, not too much, mostly plants.”

That’s his prescription for health and well-being.

When Pollan talks about food, he means the kind our grandparents and great-grandparents used to eat.

“The modern way of eating leads to chronic diseases. As soon as you get away from the Western diet, you are going to be healthier.

It’s the elephant in the room that the food industry would rather not pay attention to,” he says.

In his book, he raises the irony of North American orthoexics, referring to an unhealthy obsession with healthy eating.

“The chronic diseases that now kill most of us can be traced directly to the industrialization of our food,” he says in the book.

“The rise of highly processed foods and refined grains; the use of chemicals to raise plants and animals in huge monocultures; the super-abundance of cheap calories of sugar and fat produced by modern agriculture; and the narrowing of the biological diversity of the human diet to a tiny handful of staple crops, notably wheat, corn and soy.

These changes have given us the Western diet that we take for granted: lots of processed foods and meat, lots of added fat and sugar, lots of everything — except vegetables, fruits and whole grains.”

Humans, he says, have adapted to a multitude of diets around the world. The Western diet, however, is not one of them and we have higher rates of cancer, cardiovascular diseases, diabetes and obesity than people on culturally traditional diets. By the 1960s, he says, it was all but impossible to sustain our grandparents’ way of eating. Synthetics had entered the food chain, as had meats raised on grains (not pastures) and pharmaceuticals.

The thing is, the big profits are made in cheap, easy, processed food. “It’s easier to slap a health claim on a box of sugary cereal than on a raw potato or carrot.”

However, those health claims often crumble like vanilla wafers. “The low-fat campaign,” he says, was an abject failure after 30 years of linking dietary fat with heart disease and cancer and weight gain.

“It is now increasingly recognized that the low-fat campaign has been based on little scientific evidence and may have caused unintended health consequences,” he says in his book. He points out that the human brain is about 60 per cent fat and every neuron is sheathed in a protective layer of fat.

Ironically, Americans got fat on low-fat diets because they turned to carbs to avoid fat.

There’s evidence that carbs interfere with insulin metabolism in ways that increase hunger and promote overeating and, thus, fat storage in the body.

Grandma food, the simple, unadulterated food made of vegetables, fruits and grains, can’t be broken down into reductionist science, he says.

These whole foods are a wilderness of chemical compounds and interactions that science doesn’t understand, just like the workings of our digestive system which has as many neurons as our spinal column.

“But,” he says, “you don’t need to fathom a carrot’s complexity to reap its benefits.”

Pollan is optimistic. “There’s a revolution going on and I’m very encouraged. The fastest growing segment [in the food sector] are farmers’ markets and organics. It’s important on the health level because there are no processed foods at farmers’ markets. Anything that gets people to cook more tends towards a healthier diet.”

And that, he says, is happening despite $32 billion a year spent marketing processed foods in the U.S.

BY MIA STAINSBY, VANCOUVER SUNJUNE 23, 2009

Sorry for the bad fit - full story - vancouversun.com

Click here to listen to the interview with food author Michael Pollan

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Dogs Being Trained to Sniff Out Diabetes

A canine's hyper-sensitive nose can detect tiny changes in blood sugar

AYLESBURY, England - Dogs are being trained in Britain as potential life-savers to warn diabetic owners when their blood sugar levels fall to dangerously low levels.

Man's best friend already has been shown capable of sniffing out certain cancer cells, and dogs have long been put to work in the hunt for illegal drugs and explosives.

Their new front-line role in diabetes care follows recent evidence suggesting a dog's hyper-sensitive nose can detect tiny changes that occur when a person is about to have a hypoglycemic attack.

A survey last December by researchers at Queen's University Belfast found 65 percent of 212 people with insulin-dependent diabetes reported that when they had a hypoglycemic episode their pets had reacted by whining, barking, licking or some other display.

At the Cancer and Bio-Detection Dogs research center in Aylesbury, southern England, animal trainers are putting that finding into practice and honing dogs' innate skills.

The charity has 17 rescue dogs at various stages of training that will be paired up with diabetic owners, many of them children.

"Dogs have been trained to detect certain odors down to parts per trillion, so we are talking tiny, tiny amounts. Their world is really very different to ours," Chief Executive Claire Guest told Reuters TV.

The center was started five years ago by orthopedic surgeon Dr John Hunt, who wanted to investigate curious anecdotes about dogs pestering their owners repeatedly on parts of their body that were later found to be cancerous.

At around the same time, the first hard evidence was being gathered by researchers down the road at Amersham Hospital that dogs could identify bladder cancer from chemicals in urine.

The move into diabetes followed the case of Paul Jackson, who told Guest and her team about his dog Tinker who warns him when his sugar levels get too low and he is in danger of collapsing.

"It's generally licking my face, panting beside me. It depends how far I have gone before he realizes," Jackson said.

Tinker has now been trained by the Aylesbury center and is a fully qualified Diabetic Hypo-Alert dog, complete with red jacket to announce himself as a working assistance animal.

Source: Just One More Pet

Posted: True Health Is True Wealth

Green Tea Slows Prostate Cancer

Active compounds in green tea may slow the progression of prostate cancer, according to a new study published in Cancer Prevention Research.

The study, which was conducted at Louisiana State University, also showed that green tea might lower the incidence of prostate cancer in the first place.

The study is one of the few green tea trials that evaluated biomarkers in order to predict prostate cancer’s progression, said study leader James A. Cardelli, director of basic and translational research in the Feist-Weiller Cancer Center at LSU University Health Sciences Center-Shreveport.

The biomarkers tracked were PSA (prostate specific antigen), HGF (hepatocyte growth factor), and VEGF (vascular endothelial growth factor).

The study, which used compounds of green tea polyphenols in the form of Polyphon E provided by Polyphenon Pharma, involved 26 men ages 41 to 72 who were scheduled for radical prostactectomies. For an average of about 35 days up until the day before surgery, each man took four capsules of Polyphenon E, which was equal to drinking 12 cups of normally brewed green tea.

The researchers found that the green tea compounds significantly reduced serum levels of PSA, HGF, and VEGF, with reductions as great as 30 percent in some patients.

There were few side effects, and other biomarkers were “positively affected,” Cardelli said.

Referring to the LSU study and to a year-long clinical trial in Italy involving green tea polyphenols, Cardelli said, “These studies are just the beginning and a lot of work remains to be done. However, we think that the use of tea polyphenols alone or in combination with other compounds currently used for cancer therapy should be explored as an approach to prevent cancer progression and recurrence.”

-James A. Cardilli - Director of basic and translational research in the Feist-Weiller Cancer Center at LSU University Health Sciences Center-Shreveport

Posted: True Health Is True Wealth

True Health Is True Wealth!!

Tuesday, July 7, 2009

Monday, July 6, 2009

It’s summertime—are you in swimsuit shape?

Saturday, July 4, 2009

Michael Jackson will live on as a 'plastinated' creature preserved by German doctor Gunther von Hagens.

Friday, July 3, 2009

Wednesday, July 1, 2009

The concern is that the drug can cause liver damage, even death, if used improperly

Monday, June 29, 2009

The death of pop icon Michael Jackson is raising questions over what might have caused it.

Photograph by: handout, morguefile.com

Sunday, June 28, 2009

Carrying a few extra pounds may actually be good for you, according to a new study which found overweight people live longer than their more slender peers.

Saturday, June 27, 2009

Are there Communicable Diseases Swimming in your Public Pool?

Friday, June 26, 2009

In ABC News Health Care Forum, President Answers Questions About Reform. President Obama struggled to explain today whether his health care reform proposals would force normal Americans to make sacrifices that wealthier, more powerful people -- like the president himself -- wouldn't face.

Obama Said He Won't Accept Health Care Limits for His Own Family… But Obviously Limits Will Be Good Enough For You and Your Family…. Hmmmm?!?

A special edition of "Nightline" from inside the White House followed the Prime Time infomercial.

Thursday, June 25, 2009

Americans are increasingly concerned about the cost -- in money and personal freedom -- of the president's nanny-state initiatives.

Wednesday, June 24, 2009

Michael Pollan visited the UBC Farm recently.

Photograph by: Jenelle Schneider, Vancouver Sun

A canine's hyper-sensitive nose can detect tiny changes in blood sugar

Sunday, June 21, 2009

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