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

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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

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.

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

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

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

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

Related Resources:

1. Simplifying the Health Care Debate « NEOAVATARA
2. Reagan jokes about the Soviet Union and how it relates to government health care « Jim Blazsik
3. Congrats to ABC/ObamaCARE infomercial! Your ratings tied 8pm comedy reruns! | Fire Andrea Mitchell!
4. Obama Health Care; A Native American Warning, the Ta’Shon Story « VotingFemale Speaks!
5. Health Care Reform Clearly a Huge Gamble, Too Experimental to Pass Without Big-Time Manipulation « Quick Daily Hits — Politics and Such
6. Guess the Repressive Regime with Auntie Rosita: Lightning State-Run Media Round. « Rosita the Prole
7. The City Square
8. Obama Socialized Health Care Infomerical on ABC-TV Bombs; POTUS Drones On and On, Admits He May Not Want It for His Own Family « Frugal Café Blog Zone
9. Tel-Chai Nation
10. The Obama Public Option Poison Pill For A Government Health Care Monopoly–Single Payer System–Betting Your Life and Paying Though The Nose « Pronk Palisades
11. COACHEP » Blog Archive » Posts about Obama Health Care Failure as of June 25, 2009
12. GayPatriot » Is Obama the Political Equivalent of Ben Affleck?
13. Health Care BS - DOCTOR UNMASKS OBAMA ON PUBLIC PLAN
14. A Small Corner of Sanity - An Online Oasis for Conservative Thought
15. So, how DID that ObamaCare indoctrimmercial go? « The Daley Gator

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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.

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

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

Related Resources:

• 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

Related Resources:

• In Defense of Food
• The Omnivore's Dilemma

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

Related Articles:

• Can Dogs Smell Cancer?
• Stroke Heroes and Their Pets
• Pet Therapy
• Doggie Doctors Diagnose Their Owners
• Top 10 Human Medications That Poison
• Your Pet and Your Health

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

Media Blasts Oprah for Supporting Alternative Medicine

This is just a preview of what is to come in the world of government-run healthcare overseen by the ‘Health Czar’. Have you ever seen a scarier more unflattering photo of Oprah?? Even being Obama’s Muse hasn’t helped her from attacks in this arena which brings us to the obvious question… how will they treat the rest of us????

In January of this year, Oprah Winfrey invited Suzanne Somers on her show to talk about health tips. The 62-year-old actress uses bio-identical estrogen cream and progesterone on her other arm two weeks a month.

According to Somers, the bio-identical hormones are identical to the ones created by the human body, unlike conventional hormones, which are made from mare’s urine.

The result has been a media firestorm condemning both Somers and Oprah, including the hit piece in Newsweek linked below. The authors of the piece, Weston Kosova and Pat Wingert, argue that bio-identical hormones are just as synthetic as conventional hormones -- although they don’t much discuss the fact that conventional hormones are actually different from the 17-beta-estradiol made by your body, while the bio-identical hormones are 17-beta-estradiol itself.

The real reason for the attacks on bio-identical hormones?
As Somers points out, many doctors, scientists and media figures make a good deal of money off of the pharmaceutical industry.
And one thing you won’t see mentioned in the Newsweek article is the fact that Pat Wingert is the co-author of a pharmaceutically biased book on hormones and menopause, and that Newsweek is heavily funded by pharmaceutical companies.

This resembles an incident a few years ago when the cattle industry actually sued Oprah Winfrey just for talking about Mad Cow Disease.

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Dr. Mercola's Comments:

The authors of this Newsweek article clearly had a bone to pick with alternative medicine of all kinds. Newsweek does not just ridicule Suzanne Somers for her endorsement of bioidentical hormones, they blast Jenny McCarthy’s stance on vaccine adjuvants being a culprit in causing autism, and even criticize Dr. Christiane Northrup for warning Oprah’s audience of the HPV vaccine and recommending dietary and lifestyle changes to enhance their natural immunity instead. In their article they counter this advice with the statement,

“It is true that of the millions of women who have received the vaccine, 32 have died in the days or weeks afterward. But in each case, the Centers for Disease Control and the Food and Drug Administration investigated the deaths and found that they were coincidental and were not related to the shot.”

This is the kind of blanket dismissal one could only expect from those who have not bothered to do any serious investigations of their own on a topic.

And as for the idea that your thoughts and beliefs may have the slightest to do with your physical health? Ridiculous, according to these two authors.

Apparently they’ve never heard of epigenetics.

Dr. Bruce Lipton, a forerunner in the field of epigenetics and The New Biology, has carefully documented how emotions are one of the most important factors in your health. According to his research, the controlling factor in deciding what your genes express -- in deciding how your future health will play out -- is not your genes, your family history or even the strength of your immune system. It is YOUR MIND.

These are the kind of myopic viewpoints you have to contend with when dealing with conventional medicine, big pharma, and their mouthpieces. But that doesn’t mean they’re any more right, or any less ridiculous, than the people and alternative strategies they try to dismiss with little more than parroted catch-phrases.

Is an Organized Smear Campaign Underway?

Now, Oprah has been targeted by big industries before, such as when she dared talk about Mad Cow disease on her show – a topic that brought her a lawsuit by the meat industry.

But Oprah is not the only one in the crosshairs of what can only be described as an organized smear campaign against alternative medicine.

There’s a disturbing trend taking shape, with a recent onslaught of media articles seeking to put a bad spin on various complementary, alternative medicine and natural medicine options. The misinformation campaign is shifting into higher gear. Is it a very deliberate and concerted media strategy?

Could there be any coincidence that this is all occurring just as the government is preparing health care reform? What would happen If much of alternative medicine was determined illegal?
Robert Zieve, MD, who gave me many of these links, believes that it smells like a witch hunt.

Recent headlines include:

• Contaminants lurk in many ‘natural’ products. Tests find some herbal supplements may be doing more harm than good.

• Cancer patients turning to alternative remedies. 60 percent seek natural ‘cures’ despite warnings from doctors.

• Doctors eager to try ‘mystical mumbo jumbo’. Alternative remedies gain acceptance despite lack of evidence.

• Many ‘natural’ products make dubious claims. A product with "natural" ingredients may be no better for you than one with artificial ingredients, but a lot of us still trust advertisements that suggest as much.

• Reality check on supplements, remedies. Americans increasingly turn to alternative medicine. But does it really help?

• $2.5 Billion spent, no alternative cures found. Big government-funded studies show most work no better than placebos.

• Alternative heart disease treatment probed. Government investigating whether patients were told enough about risks.

-----------------

Dr. Deepak Chopra responded to the Oprah bashing with this Alternet article, where he states,

"The criticism the medical establishment is directing at Oprah through this article only exposes their own frustration in having squandered their credibility with the public. They hope that if they can successfully attack Oprah's immense credibility, then they can magically get some of that credibility back for themselves. However, if people still trusted the health care industry to act in their best interest the way they did decades ago, then it would be unnecessary to brand Oprah for "crazy talk" simply because she occasionally provides a forum for ideas outside of mainstream medicine.
The medical profession is burdened with a host of problems that Oprah addresses with more candor and force than the AMA. She promotes wellness and prevention, two areas that drastically need improvement. She brings up creative solutions to problems that medical science is baffled by, such as the healing response itself and the role of subjectivity in patient response. These are issues that few M.D.s are willing to explore, yet she has done so for decades.
... What this tells me is that medicine needs Oprah and other patient advocates who are demanding that official medicine heal itself. To accuse them of lacking medical credibility is a red herring. Patients aren't supposed to know more than their physicians. The fact that they often do, at least insofar as alternative treatment goes, is both a sign of hope and cause for distress."

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Is Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT) Dangerous?

It has been overwhelmingly proven that conventional hormone replacement therapy (HRT), which science, as little as ten years ago, massively touted, has now been shown to be very dangerous. So there’s no argument there.

Studies looking at the long-term usage of synthetic estrogen have revealed many negative side effects, including heart attacks, strokes, blood clots, high blood pressure and vaginal bleeding. But perhaps most strikingly, just one year after millions of women quit taking hormone replacement therapy, incidents of breast cancer fell dramatically—by 7 percent!

The following prescriptions now carry black box warnings and need to be avoided:

1. Premarin. Premarin is an estrogen extracted from Pregnant Mare’s Urine. We now know it is associated with an increased risk of heart disease.

2. Estrogen Therapy. Estrogen, which is extracted from Premarin, was effective in combating some menopausal symptoms but proved to have serious, negative side effects, such as the increased risk of breast cancer and an increase in insulin levels.

3. Provera. This drug is a progestin or a synthetic form of progesterone, which probably makes it even more toxic than Premarin. Its well-documented, negative side effects include blood clotting.

But to lump bioidentical hormones in with the rest, and attributing the same dangers to them as their synthetic versions is likely unjustified.

The Truth About Bioidentical Hormones

Bioidenticals, unlike synthetic hormones or natural ones from animals, are natural hormones that are bioidentical to your own.

The bioidentical hormone that is prescribed 80 percent of the time is estriol. It’s natural -- not a drug -- and you get it at compounding pharmacies.

And, although the article above states there are no conclusive clinical studies showing that bioidenticals are any less risky than synthetic hormones, the FDA also admits it’s unaware of any adverse effects of bioidentical hormones.

The fact is that estriol has been used safely for decades, and I believe it’s particularly useful when your ovaries have been removed or you’ve had a hysterectomy. Dr. Johathan Wright, who I’ve interviewed for my Expert Inner Circle program, is a pioneer in bioidenticals, and you can see what he has to say about their value in this short video.

The crux is that natural estriol can’t be patented, so there are no major profits to be made, and hence it gets little attention.

The FDA Effectively “Banned” Estriol, But May Approve an Unsafe Prescription Instead

Although not an FDA-approved drug, the FDA has proposed to allow estriol-containing prescriptions to be filled if they’re accompanied by an Investigational New Drug (IND) application, if and when a physician believes it’s in his patient’s best interest.
However, the IND places a significant financial burden on physicians, most notably by requiring them to submit applications to an Institutional Review Boards (IRB).
This process effectively bans most prescriptions for estriol.

Meanwhile, the FDA is in the process of considering the approval of Trimesta, a knock-off of natural estriol. Clearly, the FDA has never been concerned with estriol being used in an unsafe manner -- they were concerned that their drug-company buddies were not getting their fair share of the profits.
Aside from the obvious bias, this is even more troubling because Trimesta may not be a safe version of natural estriol.
According to Dr. Jonathan Wright, the problem with Trimesta is that it’s taken in pill form. Taking this hormone orally is known to be a greater risk factor for endometrial cancer than taking the hormone transdermally (through your skin).
As Dr. Wright said:

"...When the inevitable findings of excessive endometrial cancer are ultimately disclosed, you can bet the blame will fall on the bio-identical hormone itself -- and not on the oral route of administration, which is known to be more risky."

Do You Need Hormone Replacement?

The issue of hormone replacement generally does not come up until the classic symptoms of menopause strike. Menopause occurs when you stop producing estrogen and progesterone, and your periods cease. This can occur naturally, or be induced by a hysterectomy or by having your ovaries removed.

Typical menopausal symptoms include:

• Hot Flashes

• Vaginal Dryness

• Menstrual Irregularities

• Depression

• Mood Swings

• Weight Gain

Short- and long-term strategies can help you control these symptoms. The best approaches are preventive and involve diet and exercise. But in some cases where diet and lifestyle changes are not enough to counteract the more troublesome symptoms of menopause, bioidentical hormones may be able to help.

However, you’ll want to make sure you get your hormonal levels checked properly before embarking on any kind of hormone supplementation program.

I recommend you review Michael Borkin’s article, Women’s Hormones, for more in-depth information about the many variables involved in your sexual and overall health.

Oftentimes the cumulative physiological effects of stress can cause disruption of the natural rhythms and balancing mechanisms of your hormones, which can compromise your overall health as well as your sexual and reproductive health.

Both estrogen and progesterone are necessary in the female cycle, and their balance is key for optimal health. Many women have an imbalance of these hormones, regardless of their age. And if you have insufficient levels of progesterone to counter excessive estrogen, this imbalance can be further exacerbated by chronic stress.

So your answer might not necessarily lie in using hormones, but rather addressing your stress levels so that your body can normalize your hormone levels naturally.

Alternatives to Hormone Replacement

Prevention is always the best cure, and diet and exercise are as powerful in the prevention of future menopausal symptoms as for most other health concerns. Eating right for your nutritional type and exercising regularly can go a long way to keeping your hormones balanced as you age.

Consuming plenty of phytoestrogens (plant-estrogens) such as licorice and alfalfa before menopause can also help moderate your day-to-day estrogen levels so that when menopause comes, the drop won’t be so dramatic.

Beware, however, that soy is not a good option. In fact, non-fermented soy products are likely to damage your health even further.

You’ll also want to make sure your vitamin D levels are optimized. Vitamin D has gotten the short shrift, thanks to fears abouttanning and skin cancer, but Vitamin D is a must for gene regulation and optimal health. For more information, I recommend you watch my one-hour video lecture on this essential nutrient.

As for supplements, these have been shown to be beneficial in tempering symptoms of menopause:

• Polyphenols. Certain polyphenols have been shown to have some HRT-like benefits without the drawbacks, and are associated with a lowered risk of heart disease. Royal Macha seems to be an amazing adaptogenic herbal solution for menopause that has helped many women. Be sure to avoid the inexpensive ones, as they typically don’t work. Get the real deal from Peru.

• Omega 3 fats. You’ll also want to get plenty of omega-3 fats. A high quality animal-based omega-3 supplement, such as krill oil, can be far more effective and beneficial than fish oil.

• Black Cohosh may help regulate body temperature and hot flashes.

Implementing these lifestyle changes will help control symptoms of menopause, such as hot flashes, without resorting to hormone replacement.

Source: Mercola.com

I myself have gone to Suzanne Somers’ Doctor’s Clinic and used the bio-identical hormones. I never felt better and there are no side affects. And for anyone who has doubts… I would say just look at Suzanne and compare her to just about any other 62-year-old woman. If the positive affects aren’t obvious… get glasses! -Ask Marion~

Posted: Ask Marion – True Health Is True Wealth

Related Resources:

• Ageless: The Naked Truth About Bioidentical Hormones
• Newsweek Attacks Oprah Winfrey and BioIdentical Hormones
• Why Does the FDA Maintain a Conspiracy of Silence about the Health Benefits
• The Drug Story
• Western Medicine - Forbidden Cures
• The Neglected Nutritional Research of Dr. Weston Price, DDS
• Sanoviv Medical Center
• Big Red Juice
• Act (Natural) Energy Drink & Suzanne Somers’ Sip of Sunshine