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Good overall advice.
Lower Your Risk Of Heart Disease Without Drugs
Last week, I explained how preventing heart disease has very little to do with simply lowering cholesterol with statin drugs. Our current thinking about how to treat and prevent heart disease is at best misguided, and at worst harmful. We believe we are treating the causes of heart disease by lowering cholesterol, lowering blood pressure, lowering blood sugar with medication. But the real question is what causes high cholesterol, high blood pressure and high blood sugar in the first place. (i) It is certainly not a medication deficiency!
If you say your genes are responsible, you are mostly wrong. It is the environment working on your genes that determines your risk. In other words, it is the way you eat, how much you exercise, how you deal with stress and the effects of environmental toxins (ii) that are the underlying causes of high cholesterol, high blood pressure and high blood sugar. That is what determines your risk of heart disease, not a lack of medication.
The research clearly shows that changing how we live is a much more powerful intervention for preventing heart disease than any medication. The "EPIC" study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine studied 23,000 people's adherence to 4 simple behaviors (not smoking, exercising 3.5 hours a week, eating a healthy diet [fruits, vegetables, beans, whole grains, nuts, seeds, and limited amounts of meat], and maintaining a healthy weight [BMI <30]). In those adhering to these behaviors, 93% of diabetes, 81% of heart attacks, 50% of strokes, and 36% of all cancers were prevented. (iii)
And the INTERHEART study, published in the Lancet in 2004, followed 30 000 people and found that changing lifestyle could prevent at least 90% of all heart disease. (iv)
These studies are among a large evidence base documenting how lifestyle intervention is often more effective in reducing cardiovascular disease, hypertension, heart failure, stroke, cancer, diabetes, and deaths from all causes than almost any other medical intervention. (v) It is because lifestyle doesn't only reduce risk factors such as high blood pressure, blood sugar, or cholesterol. Our lifestyle and environment influence the fundamental causes and biological mechanisms leading to disease: changes in gene expression, which modulate inflammation, oxidative stress, and metabolic dysfunction. Those are the real reasons we are sick.
The good news is that by fixing the problem at its root results creates benefit for most chronic disease and it makes you feel more alive, healthy and has no side effects.
Disregarding the underlying causes and treating only risk factors is somewhat like mopping up the floor around an overflowing sink instead of turning off the faucet, which is why medications usually have to be taken for a lifetime. When the underlying lifestyle causes are addressed, patients often are able to stop taking medication and avoid surgery (under their doctor's supervision, of course). Now I am going to tell you how to lower your heart disease risk as well as your cholesterol using a comprehensive dietary and lifestyle approach.
Dietary Recommendations to Help Prevent Cardiovascular Disease
The first step in preventing heart disease is to eat a healthy diet. Increase your consumption of whole foods rich in phytonutrients, plant molecules that give your body the nutrients it needs. Here are some practical tips:
1. To avoid the blood sugar imbalances that increase your risk for heart disease, eat protein with every meal, even at breakfast. This will help you to avoid sudden increases in your blood sugar.
2. Use lean animal protein like fish, turkey, chicken, lean cuts of lamb, and even vegetable protein such as nuts, beans, and tofu.
3. Combine protein, fat, and carbohydrates in every meal. Never eat carbohydrates alone.
4. For the same reasons, avoid white flour and sugar.
5. Eat high-fiber foods, ideally at least 50 grams per day. Beans, whole grains, vegetables, nuts, seeds, and fruit all contain beneficial fiber.
6. Avoid all processed junk food, including sodas, juices, and diet drinks, which impact sugar and lipid metabolism. Liquid sugar calories are the biggest contributors to obesity and diabetes and heart disease.
7. Increase omega-3 fatty acids by eating cold-water wild salmon, sardines, herring, flaxseeds, and even seaweed.
8. Reduce saturated fat and use more grass-fed or organic beef or animal products, which contain less saturated fat.
9. Eliminate all hydrogenated fat, which is found in margarine, shortening, and processed oils, as well as many baked goods and processed foods.
10. Instead use healthy oils, such as olive (especially extra virgin olive oil), cold pressed sesame, and other nut oils.
11. Avoid or reduce alcohol, which can increase triglycerides and fat in the liver and create blood sugar imbalances.
12. Don't allow yourself to get hungry. Graze -- don't gorge -- by eating every three to four hours to keep your insulin and blood sugar normal.
13. Try not to eat three hours before bed.
14. Have a good protein breakfast every day. You can start with a protein shake or may use eggs. Some suppliers offer omega-3 eggs, which are ideal.
15. Include flaxseeds by using two to four tablespoons of ground flaxseeds every day in your food. This can lower cholesterol by 18 percent. Flax is tasty in shakes or sprinkled on salads or whole grain cereal.
16. Drink green tea, which can help lower cholesterol.
17. Use soy foods such as soymilk, edamame, soy nuts, tempeh, and tofu, which can help lower cholesterol by 10 percent.
18. Eat at least eight to ten servings of colorful fruits and vegetables a day, which contain disease fighting vitamins, minerals, fiber, phytonutrients, antioxidants, and anti-inflammatory molecules. (vi)
Supplements Can Help Reduce Your Risk
Supplements are important. Along with a healthy diet and exercise program, they can dramatically affect your risk of cardiovascular disease. Combining these together can have the greatest impact on your cholesterol.
Here are the supplements I have found most useful in my practice to lower cholesterol and even prevent and reverse heart disease:
1. Everyone must take a good multivitamin and mineral, as well as a purified fish oil supplement that contains 1000 to 2000 grams a day of EPA/DHA. More may be necessary for those with low HDL and high triglycerides. (vii)
2. Red rice yeast (two 600-mg capsules twice a day), which is another powerful cholesterol-lowering herbal formula. (viii)
3. Plant sterols (beta-sitosterol and others) can help lower cholesterol. Take 2 grams a day.
4. Try policosanol (10 mg to 20 mg twice a day), which is from sugarcane wax and can help lower cholesterol. (ix)
5. A soy protein isolate shake can be helpful in lowering cholesterol by about 10 percent.
6. Fiber supplements such as WellbetX PGX (Konjac fiber or gluccomanan) -- 4 before each meal with a glass of water -- can both lower cholesterol and balance blood sugar metabolism. (x)
There are other suggestions and therapies, but these will work for most people. Working with a doctor specializing in nutritional therapy can help sort out questions or difficulties that arise.
Lifestyle and Exercise Changes for Heart Health
I encourage 30 to 45 minutes of cardiovascular exercise at least six times a week. You may try interval training (also known as wind sprints) if you are feeling stronger. I also encourage strength training to build muscle and reduce body fat composition.
Exercise is a necessity, not a luxury, in preventing almost all chronic disease, from heart disease to cancer, from dementia to diabetes, from osteoporosis to osteoarthritis. You cannot age successfully without it. It is how we are designed.
Stop Stressing Out Your Heart
Stress alone can cause a heart attack. It is often the trigger that leads to the cascade of events that causes that final, fatal heart attack. But all along the way, it contributes to heart disease by creating inflammation, raising your cholesterol and blood sugar, causing high blood pressure and even making your blood more likely to clot.
Therefore, finding ways to manage stress, to relax, and to find the pause button is essential for dealing with nearly all chronic health conditions, including high cholesterol.
Learn to reduce stress by doing regular relaxation exercises such as yoga, tai chi, meditation, breathing, guided imagery, or whatever it takes to engage the relaxation nervous system, which can lower cholesterol, reduce your overall level of inflammation, balance your blood sugar, increase metabolism, and help with your overall health.
Try classes, buy tapes, try therapy, or just go out and have fun. But you must do something to switch daily out of the alarm response to maintain your health.
Heart Medications
Occasionally I will recommend medications if I feel that my patient is swimming upstream genetically, or if there is significant heart disease present already. Then I can carefully weigh the risks and the benefits of medications.
However, it is possible to achieve most of the benefits of medications through lifestyle changes. Dr. David Jenkins from the University of Toronto compared treatment with statin drugs (the number-one cholesterol medication) to a diet high in viscous fiber, almonds, soy, and plant sterols and found they were equal, although the diet was more effective in lowering inflammation and homocysteine. (xi)
In fact, many of my patients have lowered their cholesterol over 100 points by following the comprehensive program I outline above.
In the rare occasions when I do need to use medications, here are the ones I have to choose from:
1. Statins -- These work by blocking the production of cholesterol in the liver. They can also lower inflammation and very high doses may even reverse plaque or fatty deposits in the arteries.
Though now widely prescribed, statin medications do have significant side effects, in that they deplete the body's stores of the vital component Coenzyme Q10. If you're on statins, it's a good idea to supplement with at least 100 mg of CoQ10 a day.
Many patients have to stop taking statins because of muscle pain and aching, known as statin myopathy. It is more common that most people think.
And you must have your liver function checked regularly and have your muscle enzymes (CPK) measured to make sure you can continue the medications safely. However you can have symptoms, pain, and muscle injury without having an abnormal CPK test.
2. Niacin -- This is also known as vitamin B3, and in very high doses (1000 to 3000 mg a day) can be very helpful for raising good cholesterol (HDL) and lowering high triglycerides -- something that statins are not very effective at.
I use niacin often in my patients who have insulin resistance or pre-diabetes. The major side effect is flushing (sort of like hot flashes), which are benign, subside after an hour, and reduce completely over a few weeks. You can stop flushing by taking a baby aspirin (81mg) half an hour before your take the niacin.
I usually recommend long-acting Niaspan and build up slowly over the course of 2 to 6 weeks to the desired dose of 1500 to 2000 mg daily. This needs to be done only under a doctor's supervision.
3. Ezetimbe (Zetia) -- This drug prevents absorption of cholesterol from the intestine. It can interact with the statins to increase the risk of liver toxicity. However recent studies have shown that combining Zetia with a statin actually increases plaque in the arteries even though it lowers cholesterol. Another reason to not assume that lowering cholesterol is what protects us against heart disease.
4. Fibrates -- This class of medications includes drugs such as fenofibrate (Tricor) and gemfibrozil (Lopid) and helps to lower triglycerides and raise HDL. These drugs also act on a class of receptors that control inflammation and blood sugar called PPAR.
The verdict is still out on their effectiveness and safety. I prefer to use niacin, which achieves the same results, at lower cost with less risk.
5. Bile Acid Binding Agents -- Drugs like Questran and WellChol bind up bile in the gut and promote the elimination of cholesterol from the body. Bile is comprised of cholesterol among other things, and getting rid of bile helps lower your cholesterol. These are somewhat difficult to take, and not often used.
Remember, cholesterol is only one of many factors that lead to cardiovascular disease, and it may not even be the most important one. Inflammation and insulin resistance or pre-diabetes are much more important. There are many causes. We have to look at all of them. We focus on cholesterol because it is what we have the best medication for. But remember if all you have is a hammer, then everything looks like a nail.
Comprehensive diet, supplements, exercise, and other lifestyle approaches can have a huge impact your risk of heart disease and can dramatically improve cholesterol. And this approach reduces your risk of nearly all chronic diseases.
Medications are available as a last resort, but I never start them without trying an integrated approach to cholesterol management and heart disease prevention. In fact, the cholesterol comes way down as a side effect of changing lifestyle. You often don't have to treat it directly.
If you are willing to make the changes in diet and lifestyle and take a few supplements, your health, and your numbers, may change dramatically ... and so will your life.
Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-mark-hyman/lower-your-risk-of-heart_b_300292.html
I have had some decent, low sodium soups (Amy's Lentil Vegetable comes to mind).
I have never been a big salt fan, though, unlike my dad who puts salt on soy sauce. :-/
The Fake Salt Problem.
Why it's so hard for researchers to create salt substitutes that taste good and won't kill us.
Our taste buds have very good taste. They've evolved to respond to certain chemicals--and not to others--to help ensure we eat things that will keep us healthy and shun what will poison us.
The system worked pretty well until we figured out how to make potato chips so cheap.
Now researchers struggle to replicate the flavors of our favorite foods while cutting back on the sugar, the fat and the salt that makes them taste so irresistible. Salt, which shows up in nearly everything, sweet or savory, has been particularly tough to replace because scientists still don't fully understand how humans taste it.
"It's the final frontier," says Scott Herness, chair of the Oral Biology department at Ohio State University's College of Dentistry. "There is still that fundamental discovery to be made."
It would be an important one. A study released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in March suggests that most Americans eat more than double the amount of salt than they should, leading to increased rates of heart disease and stroke. The report said the average sodium intake for Americans older than two was 3,436 milligrams per day in 2005 and 2006. People older than 40, people with high blood pressure and blacks (70% of the U.S. population) should be eating just 1,500 milligrams per day and everyone else should be eating less than 2,300 milligrams, about one teaspoon. (One half-cup "serving" of Campbell's Chicken Noodle Soup has 890 milligrams of sodium.)
"Because of the public health implications, it's one of the most important activities in our field," says Gary Beauchamp, director of the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia. "It's also been one of the most frustrating."
Human taste buds respond to five--and only five--basic tastes: Salty, sweet, bitter, sour and something called umami, or savory. Flavor is far more complex, it is something your brain concocts given information about taste, smell, texture and temperature. (See "The Superhero Of Senses.")
We know that sweet, bitter and umami are perceived when the right chemicals bind to specific receptors on the outside of the different types of taste bud cells. We know what those receptors are, and researchers can run screens on molecules that might have the perfect shape to bind to those receptors and trigger the taste sensation.
Researchers think they know what triggers sour tastes, a channel in the cell membrane of the sour cell that allows protons through. Protons, or hydrogen nuclei, are what makes things acidic. When we taste something sour, we are basically tasting acidity.
Researchers thought they had a candidate for a salt receptor when they were working with mice. They focused on a very common sodium channel called an epithelial sodium channel, or ENaCs, used by many types of cells to regulate sodium intake. When researchers inhibited ENaCs in mice, the mice couldn't taste salt.
But when human ENaCs were inhibited with amiloride, a congestive heart failure drug made specifically to inhibit ENaCs, there was no effect on salt perception. Researchers still think an ion channel of some sort allows us to taste salt.
Now salt substitutes are mainly mixtures of salt and potassium chloride. Potassium chloride does taste a bit salty, but too much of it and you taste a metallic bitterness, so it only goes so far. The only other chemical that tastes wonderfully salty like sodium is lithium. Lithium's not a great candidate as a substitute. It's poisonous.
Flavor companies and food manufacturers are so frustrated that they have formed a consortium to try to understand the biology of salt reception so they can better come up with replacements.
Perhaps because sodium is so important to our physiology, researchers think it is unlikely that a salt substitute akin to the popular sweeteners aspartame and sucralose will ever be found. Instead, researchers are working to develop sodium enhancers that perhaps open up the mysterious ion channel and make us more sensitive to salt so we would be satisfied with less of it.
The Swiss flavor giant Givaudan ( GIVAUDAN.PK - news - people ) has a new technology that uses the products of a fermentation process as building blocks for salt enhancers. The company's flavorists combine these products with other chemicals to make the overall flavor of a food taste salty and good yet use less sodium.
The problem is the enhancers have to be customized for the food so they don't throw off the flavor. "If we were going into a hamburger situation versus a noodle situation, it's going to be a different solution," explains Robert Eilerman, Givaudan's Global Head of Science and Technology. "We blend this sodium replacement agent into a flavor profile that allows us to enhance sodium perception. We build a flavor around the sodium replacement."
Givaudan's taste research program's goal is to be able to reduce sodium in food by 50%. It has been able to reduce sodium in some foods by 30% so far. Still, a simpler solution would be more than welcome.
Senomyx ( SNMX - news - people ) the flavor company based in San Diego, Calif., claims to have identified the primary human salt taste receptor, a protein it calls SNMX-29. Others assume it's an ion channel, but Senomyx won't say. The company hasn't published any scientific details about its purported discovery, so researchers remain skeptical.
Still, the company says it has identified 250 chemical candidates that it says enhance salt and potassium chloride perception and it is sifting through those in hopes of developing a new ingredient.
Our taste buds have proven they won't be fooled easily, though. In the end, no one wants their chicken soup messed with. Says Givaudan's Eilerman about the industry's past frustration: "We've been dealing with this for 25 years. You can reduce sodium, but your soup tastes like dishwater."
http://www.forbes.com/2009/09/22/taste-buds-science-technology-breakthroughs-salt.html?partner=alerts
12 simple ways to supercharge your brain
by Jay @ Dumb Little Man, on Wed Oct 22, 2008 6:00am PDT
http://shine.yahoo.com/channel/health/12-simple-ways-to-supercharge-your-brain-293892/print/
Have you ever felt exasperated when you bumped into someone at the store but absolutely couldn't remember their name? Sure, it happens to all of us.
Despite being the strongest computer on the planet, our brains do lapse. It's hard to blame them really. As humans, we spend much of or existence stuffing our brains with stuff.
No matter how powerful our brains are, they need recuperation time to be kept in shape. Think of it as a tune up for your brain. Skipping brain maintenance is as silly as the person wandering the parking garage because they forgot where they parked. Is that you? Are you that person? If so, fear not; we are all that person at some point.
Now I am not a brain surgeon and I am not going to suggest you do anything surgical or dangerous. I am however an astute student of human behavior so I always look for simple ways to super charge my brain.
Here are some things you can begin doing as soon as today to begin the great brain tune up:
Eat Almonds
Almond is believed to improve memory. If a combination of almond oil and milk is taken together before going to bed or after getting up at morning, it strengthens our memory power. Almond milk is prepared by crushing the almonds without the outer cover and adding water and sugar to it.
Drink Apple Juice
Research from the University of Massachusetts Lowell (UML) indicates that apple juice increases the production of the essential neurotransmitter acetylcholine in the brain, resulting in an increased memory power.
Sleep well
Research indicates that the long-term memory is consolidated during sleep by replaying the images of the experiences of the day. These repeated playbacks program the subconscious mind to store these images and other related information.
Enjoy simple Pleasures
Stress drains our brainpower. A stress-ridden mind consumes much of our memory resources to leave us with a feeble mind. Make a habit to engage yourself in few simple pleasures everyday to dissolve stress from your mind. Some of these simple pleasures are good for your mind, body and soul.
* Enjoy music you love
* Play with your children
* Appreciate others
* Run few miles a day, bike or swim
* Start a blog
* Take a yoga class or Total Wellness routine
Exercise your mind
Just as physical exercise is essential for a strong body, mental exercise is equally essential for a sharp and agile mind. Have you noticed that children have far superior brainpower than an adult does? Children have playful minds. A playful mind exhibits superior memory power. Engage in some of the activities that require your mind to remain active and playful.
* Play scrabble or crossword puzzle
* Volunteer
* Interact with others
* Start a new hobby such as blogging, reading, painting, bird watching
* Learn new skill or a foreign language
Practice Yoga or Meditation
Yoga or Meditation relives stress. Stress is a known memory buster. With less stress, lower blood pressure, slower respiration, slower metabolism, and released muscle tension follows. All of these factors contribute significantly towards increases in our brainpower.
Reduce Sugar intake
Sugar is a non-food. It’s a form of carbohydrate that offers illusionary energy, only to cause a downhill slump once the initial burst has been worn off. Excess intake of sugar results in neurotic symptoms. Excess sugar is known to cause claustrophobia, memory loss and other neurotic disorders. Eat food without adding sugar. Stay away from sweet drinks or excess consumption of caffeine with sugar.
Eat whole wheat
The whole wheat germs contain lecithin. Lecithin helps ease the problem of the hardening of the arteries, which often impairs brain functioning.
Eat a light meal at night
A heavy meal at night causes tossing and turning and a prolonged emotional stress while at sleep. It’s wise to eat heavy meal during the day when our body is in motion to consume the heavy in-take. Eating a light meal with some fruits allows us to sleep well. A good night sleep strengthens our brainpower.
Develop imagination
Greeks mastered the principle of imagination and association to memorize everything. This technique requires one to develop a vivid and colorful imagination that can be linked to a known object. If you involve all your senses - touching, feeling, smelling, hearing and seeing in the imagination process, you can remember greater details of the event.
Control your temper
Bleached food, excess of starch or excess of white bread can lead to nerve grating effect. This results in a violent and some time depressive behavior. Eat fresh vegetables. Drink lots of water and meditate or practice yoga to relieve these toxic emotions of temper and stressful mood swings.
Take Vitamin B-complex
Vitamin B-complex strengthens memory power. Eat food and vegetables high in Vitamin B-complex. Stay away from the starch food or white bread, which depletes the Vitamin B-complex necessary for a healthy mind.
I don't believe these are that tough. If you find yourself increasing stumped, give a couple of these a try.
Written by Shilpan Patel of Success Soul and cross-posted from Dumb Little Man, a web site that provides tips for life that will save you money, increase your productivity, or simply keep you sane.
If you are interested in RAW, ORGANIC, WHOLE FOODS that can be delivered to your home or office or where ever, check out
http://www.anglefood.wholefoodfarmacy.com
watch The Whole Truth DVD, 16 minutes that can transform your health forever!
salt your way to health
http://www.realityzone.com/saltyourway.html
By David Brownstein, M.D.
A low-salt diet is good for you if you have high-blood pressure, right? WRONG! Says Dr. Brownstein, and here are the reasons for his contrarian view. He shows the errors that led early researchers to believe that low salt intake would reduce blood pressure and then presents scientific studies showing a 400% increase in heart attacks among hypertension patients on a low-salt diet. He also shows the value of adequate unrefined salt consumption in combating Thyroid and Adrenal disorders.
10,000 Strong: Sign our Petition for rBGH-free Milk
http://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/food/10-000-strong-sign-the-petition-for-rbgh-free-milk
heres to your health
http://users.chariot.net.au/~dna/kefirpage.html
Artichoke May Lower Cholesterol
by ruth on July 11th, 2008
In study sponsored by Lichtwer Pharma, a German manufacturer of herbal supplements, UK researchers found that a preparation of artichoke leaf extract helped decrease cholesterol levels in healthy adults with raised cholesterol levels.
Plasma total cholesterol levels dropped on average 4.2 per cent and increased by 1.9 per cent among the control group, making a 6.1 per cent differential.
These results were observed in test subjects who were given four 320mg Lichtwer Pharma-branded (Cynara) supplements per day for 12 weeks. Seems to be a lot, for so little an effect, but hey, every little bit counts, and who knows what the effects may be if one continues to take the supplements for extended periods?
According to the researchers,
“This study provides further evidence that ALE may help reduce plasma total cholesterol in adults with mild to moderate hypercholesterolemia. It is suggested that the type and amount of extract used, in addition to the apparent positive health status of the study population, may have affected the observed magnitude of this response.”
For further reading, you may want to read the manuscript published in Phytomedicine, doi:10.1016/j.phymed.2008.03.001.
http://www.eatingfabulous.com/artichoke-may-lower-cholesterol/
7 Super Foods That May Help Lower Cholesterol
http://www.lifelinescreening.com/inthenews/healthy_you/Pages/SevenSuperFoods.aspx?src=ELTR-444
The best meal for anyone worried about their cholesterol is a meal low in saturated fat and abundant in fruits and vegetables. And although there are no magic bullets beyond that healthy prescription, certain foods have been shown to give cholesterol levels an extra nudge in the right direction.
Weave some of these whole foods, all pinpointed by research as cholesterol-friendly, into your daily diet, and be sure to try some of our heart-healthy recipes below.
Alcohol
Drinking a glass of wine with dinner—any alcoholic beverage, in fact—has been shown to raise good-cholesterol levels and lower the risk of a heart attack. (Excessive drinking, however, raises heart-disease danger.)
Almonds
Substances in almond skins help prevent LDL "bad" cholesterol from being oxidized, a process that can otherwise damage the lining of blood vessels and increase cardiovascular risk.
* Sprinkle almonds on cereals and salads, nibble on a handful for an afternoon snack.
Avocados
The monounsaturated fats in avocados have been found to lower "bad" LDLs and raise "good" HDLs, especially in people with mildly elevated cholesterol.
* Slice avocadoes into sandwiches and salads or mash with garlic, lemon juice and salsa for a terrific guacamole.
Barley
When volunteers in a USDA study added barley to the standard American Heart Association diet, LDL "bad" cholesterol levels fell more than twice as far.
* Barley makes a great substitute for rice, adds depth to soups and is terrific combined with dried fruits, nuts and a little oil and vinegar for a hearty salad.
Beans & Lentils
From a recent study in the Annals of Internal Medicine, LDL "bad" cholesterol levels fell almost twice as far in those volunteers on a low-fat diet who added beans and lentils (along with more whole grains and vegetables) to the menu.
* Experiment with beans in soups, salads, and dips. Tuck them into burritos, lasagnas and casseroles.
Blueberries
Blueberries contain a powerful antioxidant called pterostilbene that may help lower LDL cholesterol.
* Toss a cup of frozen blueberries together with a half-cup of orange juice and vanilla-flavored yogurt into the blender for a healthy breakfast drink. Sprinkle fresh blueberries on cereals and eat them by the handfuls for snacks.
Oats
When women in a University of Toronto study added oat bran to an already heart-healthy diet, HDL-cholesterol levels—the beneficial kind—climbed more than 11 percent.
* Consider a daily bowl of oat bran hot cereal or old-fashioned oatmeal for breakfast. Oat bran muffins can also pack a tasty dose into your day.
The 20 Healthiest Foods for Under $1
By: Brie Cadman (View Profile)
http://www.divinecaroline.com/articles/printer_friendly/22145/52070
Food prices are climbing, and some might be looking to fast foods and packaged foods for their cheap bites. But low cost doesn’t have to mean low quality. In fact, some of the most inexpensive things you can buy are the best things for you. At the grocery store, getting the most nutrition for the least amount of money means hanging out on the peripheries—near the fruits and veggies, the meat and dairy, and the bulk grains—while avoiding the expensive packaged interior. By doing so, not only will your kitchen be stocked with excellent foods, your wallet won’t be empty.
1. Oats
High in fiber and complex carbohydrates, oats have also been shown to lower cholesterol. And they sure are cheap—a dollar will buy you more than a week’s worth of hearty breakfasts.
Serving suggestions: Sprinkle with nuts and fruit in the morning, make oatmeal cookies for dessert.
2. Eggs
You can get about a half dozen of eggs for a dollar, making them one of the cheapest and most versatile sources of protein. They are also a good source of the antioxidants lutein and zeaxanthin, which may ward off age-related eye problems.
Serving suggestions: Huevos rancheros for breakfast, egg salad sandwiches for lunch, and frittatas for dinner.
3. Kale
This dark, leafy green is loaded with vitamin C, carotenoids, and calcium. Like most greens, it is usually a dollar a bunch.
Serving suggestions: Chop up some kale and add to your favorite stir-fry; try German-Style Kale or traditional Irish Colcannon.
4. Potatoes
Because we often see potatoes at their unhealthiest—as fries or chips—we don’t think of them as nutritious, but they definitely are. Eaten with the skin on, potatoes contain almost half a day’s worth of Vitamin C, and are a good source of potassium. If you opt for sweet potatoes or yams, you’ll also get a good wallop of beta carotene. Plus, they’re dirt cheap and have almost endless culinary possibilities.
Serving suggestions: In the a.m., try Easy Breakfast Potatoes; for lunch, make potato salad; for dinner, have them with sour cream and chives.
5. Apples
I’m fond of apples because they’re inexpensive, easy to find, come in portion-controlled packaging, and taste good. They are a good source of pectin—a fiber that may help reduce cholesterol—and they have the antioxidant Vitamin C, which keeps your blood vessels healthy.
Serving suggestions: Plain; as applesauce; or in baked goods like Pumpkin-Apple Breakfast Bread.
6. Nuts
Though nuts have a high fat content, they’re packed with the good-for-you fats—unsaturated and monounsaturated. They’re also good sources of essential fatty acids, Vitamin E, and protein. And because they’re so nutrient-dense, you only need to eat a little to get the nutritional benefits. Although some nuts, like pecans and macadamias, can be costly, peanuts, walnuts, and almonds, especially when bought in the shell, are low in cost.
Serving suggestions: Raw; roasted and salted; sprinkled in salads.
7. Bananas
At a local Trader Joe’s, I found bananas for about 19¢ apiece; a dollar gets you a banana a day for the workweek. High in potassium and fiber (9 grams for one), bananas are a no-brainer when it comes to eating your five a day quotient of fruits and veggies.
Serving suggestions: In smoothies, by themselves, in cereal and yogurt.
8. Garbanzo Beans
With beans, you’re getting your money’s worth and then some. Not only are they a great source of protein and fiber, but ’bonzos are also high in fiber, iron, folate, and manganese, and may help reduce cholesterol levels. And if you don’t like one type, try another—black, lima, lentils … the varieties are endless. Though they require soaking and cooking, the most inexpensive way to purchase these beans is in dried form; a precooked can will still only run you around a buck.
Serving suggestions: In salads, curries, and Orange Hummus.
9. Broccoli
Broccoli contains tons of nice nutrients—calcium, vitamins A and C, potassium, folate, and fiber. As if that isn’t enough, broccoli is also packed with phytonutrients, compounds that may help prevent heart disease, diabetes, and certain cancers. Plus, it’s low in calories and cost.
Serving suggestions: Throw it in salads, stir fries, or served as an accompaniment to meat in this Steamed Ginger Chicken with Asian Greens recipe.
10. Watermelon
Though you may not be able to buy an entire watermelon for a dollar, your per serving cost isn’t more than a few dimes. This summertime fruit is over 90 percent water, making it an easy way to hydrate, and gives a healthy does of Vitamin C, potassium, and lycopene, an antioxidant that may ward off cancer.
Serving suggestions: Freeze chunks for popsicles; eat straight from the rind; squeeze to make watermelon margaritas (may negate the hydrating effect!).
11. Wild Rice
It won’t cost you much more than white rice, but wild rice is much better for you. Low in fat and high in protein and fiber, this gluten-free rice is a great source of complex carbohydrates. It packs a powerful potassium punch and is loaded with B vitamins. Plus, it has a nutty, robust flavor.
Serving suggestions: Mix with nuts and veggies for a cold rice salad; blend with brown rice for a side dish.
12. Beets
Beets are my kind of vegetable—their natural sugars make them sweet to the palate while their rich flavor and color make them nutritious for the body. They’re powerhouses of folate, iron, and antioxidants.
Serving suggestions: Shred into salads, slice with goat cheese. If you buy your beets with the greens on, you can braise them in olive oil like you would other greens.
13. Butternut Squash
This beautiful gourd swings both ways: sometimes savory, sometimes sweet. However you prepare the butternut, it will not only add color and texture, but also five grams of fiber per half cup and chunks and chunks of Vitamin A and C. When in season, butternut squash and related gourds are usually less than a dollar a pound.
Serving suggestions: Try Pear and Squash Bruschetta; cook and dot with butter and salt.
14. Whole Grain Pasta
In the days of Atkins, pasta was wrongly convicted, for there is nothing harmful about a complex carbohydrate source that is high in protein and B vitamins. Plus, it’s one of the cheapest staples you can buy.
Serving suggestions: Mix clams and white wine with linguine; top orzo with tomatoes and garlic; eat cold Farfalle Salad on a picnic.
15. Sardines
As a kid, I used to hate it when my dad would order sardines on our communal pizzas, but since then I’ve acquired a taste for them. Because not everyone has, you can still get a can of sardines for relatively cheap. And the little fish come with big benefits: calcium, iron, magnesium, zinc, and B vitamins. And, because they’re low on the food chain, they don’t accumulate mercury.
Serving suggestions: Mash them with parsley, lemon juice, and olive oil for a spread; eat them plain on crackers; enjoy as a pizza topping (adults only).
16. Spinach
Spinach is perhaps one of the best green leafies out there—it has lots of Vitamin C, iron, and trace minerals. Plus, you can usually find it year round for less than a dollar.
Serving suggestions: Sautéed with eggs, as a salad, or a Spinach Frittata.
17. Tofu
Not just for vegetarians anymore, tofu is an inexpensive protein source that can be used in both savory and sweet recipes. It’s high in B vitamins and iron, but low in fat and sodium, making it a healthful addition to many dishes.
Serving suggestions: Use silken varieties in Tofu Cheesecake; add to smoothies for a protein boost; cube and marinate for barbecue kebobs.
18. Lowfat Milk
Yes, the price of a gallon of milk is rising, but per serving, it’s still under a dollar; single serving milk products, like yogurt, are usually less than a dollar, too. Plus, you’ll get a lot of benefit for a small investment. Milk is rich in protein, vitamins A and D, potassium, and niacin, and is one of the easiest ways to get bone-strengthening calcium.
Serving suggestions: In smoothies, hot chocolate, or coffee; milk products like low fat cottage cheese and yogurt.
19. Pumpkin Seeds
When it’s time to carve your pumpkin this October, don’t shovel those seeds into the trash—they’re a goldmine of magnesium, protein, and trace minerals. Plus, they come free with the purchase of a pumpkin.
Serving suggestions: Salt, roast, and eat plain; toss in salads.
20. Coffee
The old cup-o-joe has been thrown on the stands for many a corporeal crime—heart disease, cancer, osteoporosis—but exonerated on all counts. In fact, coffee, which is derived from a bean, contains beneficial antioxidants that protect against free radicals and may actually help thwart heart disease and cancer. While it’s not going to fill you up like the other items on this list, it might make you a lot perkier. When made at home, coffee runs less than 50¢ cents a cup.
Serving suggestions: Just drink it.
Although that bag of 99¢ Cheetos may look like a bargain, knowing that you’re not getting much in the way of nutrition or sustenance makes it seem less like a deal and more like a dupe. Choosing one of these twenty items, or the countless number of similarly nutritious ones, might just stretch that dollar from a snack into a meal.
Elderly's Restless Nights Helped By Ancient Martial Art
ScienceDaily (June 21, 2008)
Thanks to grandpatb on Dew's board: #Msg-30180695
More than half of all older adults complain about having difficulties sleeping. Most don't bother seeking treatment. Those who do usually turn either to medications, which can lead to other health problems, or behavior therapies, which are costly and often not available close to home.
Now, UCLA researchers report that practicing tai chi chih, the Westernized version of a 2,000-year-old Chinese martial art, promotes sleep quality in older adults with moderate sleep complaints. The study, which will be published in the journal Sleep, is currently available in the journal's online edition.
In the study, 112 healthy adults ranging in age from 59 to 86 were randomly assigned to one of two groups for a 25-week period: The first group practiced 20 simple tai chi chih moves; the other participated in health education classes that included advice on stress management, diet and sleep habits.
At the beginning of the study, participants were asked to rate their sleep based on the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index, a self-rated questionnaire that assesses sleep quality, duration and disturbances over a one-month time interval.
The study found that the tai chi chih group showed improved sleep quality and a remission of clinical impairments, such as drowsiness during the day and inability to concentrate, compared with those receiving health education. The tai chi chih participants showed improvements in their own self-rating of sleep quality, sleep duration and sleep disturbance.
"Poor sleeping constitutes one of the most common difficulties facing older adults," said lead study author Dr. Michael Irwin, the Norman Cousins Professor of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and director of the UCLA Cousins Center for Psychoneuroimmunology.
Irwin noted that 58 percent of adults age 59 and older report having difficulty sleeping at least a few nights each week. However, sleep problems remain untreated in up to 85 percent of people. And for those who do seek help, the usual remedy is a sedative.
But sedatives can cause side effects, according to Irwin.
"It's not uncommon for older adults to experience daytime confusion, drowsiness, falls and fractures, and adverse interactions with other medications they may be taking," he said.
And while most health professionals generally agree that physical exercise enhances sleep quality, given the physical limitations of the elderly, rigorous exercise might not be an option. That's why tai chi chih, with its gentle, slow movements, is an attractive exercise option for the elderly population.
"It's a form of exercise virtually every elderly person can do, and this study provides more across-the-board evidence of its health benefits," Irwin said.
The research piggybacked on a study published in April 2007 by Irwin that showed tai chi chih boosted the immune system of elderly people suffering from shingles.
Other studies done at UCLA have shown that tai chi chih can help people who suffer from tension headaches and have suggested that it may aid in decreasing high blood pressure.
#Board-3252
Israeli scientists reveal the prostate-healing power of mushrooms
By Deborah Frenkel
January 01, 2008
Chinese tradition refers to the reishi mushroom (Ganoderma lucidum) as 'the lucky fungus', for its powers in alleviating complaints such as arthritis, insomnia and chest tightness. And 2,000 years after its first use, the ancient remedy is still proving somewhat of a charm, after researchers from the University of Haifa announced their success in preliminary efforts to slow the growth of prostate cancer cells using reishi extracts.
The scientists, led by Dr Ben-Zion Zaidman of the university's Institute for Evolution, found that molecules extracted from Ganoderma lucidum blocked the action of androgen - the male sex hormone - upon cancerous cells. Without intervention, said Zaidman, the hormone otherwise works as a chemical 'switch', stimulating the cells - especially in early stages of the disease - to multiply uncontrollably into tumor tissue.
"These results give rise to hope about developing new medications to treat prostate cancer," said Zaidman.
While the research is still in the petri-dish stages, stresses Zaidman, one day it could lead to a new way to combat the disease, which every year is diagnosed in nearly 700,000 men worldwide, including Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.
Existing drugs, such as Flutamide, also work by interfering with the action of androgen receptors. But the mushroom extract molecules, said Zaidman, had a far more dramatic effect.
"The extracts worked in a different way. We think they actually prevented androgen receptors from binding to the DNA," he told ISRAEL21c.
The reishi, a fungus native to densely wooded areas in North America, Europe and Asia has been used in traditional medicines for centuries - and is currently experiencing renewed popularity among the health-conscious, popping up on the shelves of health food stores and organic supermarkets around the world.
"Recently, mushroom extracts of every kind have become available," notes Zaidman. "But the preparations are water soluble and very weak. You'd have to eat a lot of mushroom soup to get any kind of effect," he laughed.
Eschewing the kitchen in favor of the laboratory, his team has spent the last three years cooking up active metabolites using alcohol-based solvents. They will now seek to pinpoint the precise relationship between the chemical structures and their cell-based activity, refining the crude extracts into isolated molecules.
If they succeed in their research, then it will confirm the long-standing notion that the reishi mushroom is very lucky indeed.
http://www.israel21c.org/bin/en.jsp?enDispWho=Articles%5El1898&enPage=BlankPage&enDisplay=view&enDispWhat=object&enVersion=0&enZone=Health
Israeli researcher proves the healing power of the cranberry
By Ilana Teitelbaum
April 29, 2008
Cranberries have long been known as a popular folk remedy for the treatment of urinary tract infections, but until recently there was no scientific evidence to back up this claim. Now Professor Itzhak Ofek of Tel Aviv University has discovered that the benefits ascribed to cranberries are not only real - there are several more as well.
"Cranberries started as a folk medicine in the US," Ofek told ISRAEL21c. "Every fourth American in the '60s knew it was good for urinary tract infection." Ofek's goal was to find out the truth behind the myth.
With his research funded by the cranberry juice-producing monolith Ocean Spray, Ofek recently published his findings in the journal Molecular Nutrition & Food Research. There is only one snag: the benefits of cranberries, though prodigious, appear to apply only to women.
"It appears that in certain infections, such as ulcers caused by H. pylori bacteria, a clinical trial showed that the cranberry has beneficial effects for women only," says Ofek. "In urinary tract infections (UTI), the cranberry has been tested only on women and has proven to be beneficial, although UTI is primarily an infectious disease most common in women."
Ofek has been researching the healing properties of the cranberry for more than a decade, and has discovered numerous benefits in the course of his research. He began at the logical starting point: the claim that cranberries prevent urinary tract infections. Ofek explains that while other researchers had investigated this phenomenon in the past, they had been looking for an antibiotic substance in cranberries.
"We thought: perhaps they did the wrong test?" says Ofek. Sure enough, he and his colleagues found the answer when they tested cranberries for an anti-bacterial substance.
He discovered that cranberries contain a heavy molecule, also known as non-dialyzable material or NDM. This molecule, isolated by Ofek and collaborator Professor Nathan Sharon of the Weizmann Institute, seems to coat some bodily surfaces with Teflon-like efficiency, preventing infection-causing agents from taking root. Surprisingly, the NDM has no effect on good bacteria.
More recently in collaboration with other researchers, Ofek discovered that the NDM substance inhibits the flu virus from attaching to cells. This NDM also has a gastrointestinal benefit: it inhibits unhealthy bacteria from attaching to gastric cells, thereby preventing ulcers.
But cranberries don't have to be swallowed to provide benefits. When Ofek explored other properties of the cranberry in collaboration with Professor Ervin Weiss of Hadassah Medical Center, they discovered that the benefits of cranberries extend to the teeth as well; a property of cranberries is that it can reduce the bacteria in the mouth that causes cavities. This find could end up giving current brands of mouthwash a run for their money.
However, Ofek cautions against gargling with cranberry juice. "The cranberry is very tart and acidic, so dentists say it will hurt your teeth. That's why we're isolating the substance that helps, to put in mouthwash."
This substance has been patented by Ramot, TAU's technology transfer company, and is currently the subject of negotiations with companies and investors.
Ramot is also commercializing this active substance in pill form, for people who don't like to drink cranberry juice but want to reap the benefits.
Ofek's work isn't done: he's still investigating the cranberry for further health benefits, and to see if it can also help men. While he acknowledges that other fruits may also contain healing properties that are waiting to be explored, Ofek also says that in comparison to other fruits, "Cranberries are unique." And since his research was publicized, cranberry juice consumption has gone up. "The sales of cranberry juice were tripled since our study," says Ofek.
http://www.israel21c.org/bin/en.jsp?enDispWho=Articles%5El2085&enPage=BlankPage&enDisplay=view&enDispWhat=object&enVersion=0&enZone=Health&
WHAT IN THE WORLD ARE YOU PUTTING ON YOUR SKIN?
http://products.mercola.com/natural-body-butter/
A Growing Debate Over Folic Acid in Flour
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/04/health/nutrition/04foli.html
>>
December 4, 2007
By DARSHAK M. SANGHAVI, M.D.
Every year, an estimated 200,000 children around the world are born with crippling defects of the spinal column. Many are paralyzed or permanently impaired by spina bifida; some, with a condition called anencephaly (literally, “no brain”), survive in a vegetative state.
It is a stubborn and terrible problem, in the developed and developing worlds alike. But many experts believe it could be greatly eased by a simple government measure: requiring that flour be fortified with the dietary supplement folic acid, which has been shown to prevent these neural tube defects if taken by expectant mothers from before conception through the first trimester.
The debate over folic acid is a familiar one, and Americans could be excused for thinking it was over. Since 1998, the federal government has required that almost all flour be fortified with the supplement.
But in fact, the requirement has meant women receive an average extra dose of just 100 micrograms of folic acid a day — far below the levels that have been shown in studies to prevent spina bifida and other neural tube defects. For more than a decade, the Food and Drug Administration has resisted calls to require that the amount be doubled.
To Dr. Godfrey Oakley, the former director of birth defects research for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, it is a baffling situation. “Until this day the F.D.A. still obstructs folic acid supplementation,” he said. “It’s like making a vaccine against polio with only one strain instead of four.”
The debate is intensifying. In the past two years, the American Medical Association, the March of Dimes and several pediatric societies have called on the food and drug agency to reconsider. The only country now adding the amount recommended by experts like Dr. Michael Katz, the medical director of the March of Dimes, is Chile.
Folic acid’s promise emerged 40 years ago, when British obstetricians realized that spina bifida often occurred when mothers had a form of anemia caused by folic acid deficiency. Then, in a 1991 British study of mothers of children with spina bifida, Dr. Nicholas Wald, the lead investigator, found such extraordinary results that he stopped the trial prematurely. When the women took folic acid daily before their next conception and through the first trimester of pregnancy, spina bifida recurrences fell 72 percent.
“That was the most important scientific data I’d heard in my career,” Dr. Oakley said.
In 1992, the Public Health Service called for all menstruating women to take a daily folic acid pill. (Folic acid helps only if taken before the fetus’s nervous system forms, which is before women realize they’re pregnant.)
But when few women followed that advice, the C.D.C. prevailed on the food and drug agency to hold hearings on folic acid fortification. That led to the federal requirement in effect today, though the food and drug agency was never enthusiastic about it. Dr. David A. Kessler, the food and drug commissioner at the time, told me recently that the issue “was probably the hardest decision I had on my tenure on the commission.”
“Adding a biologically active ingredient to the food supply of 300 million people is a very weighty issue,” Dr. Kessler said. “You can’t experiment on the American people.”
For critics of the idea, the first problem was that the recommended doses of folic acid were large, dwarfing the amount found in the average person’s diet. The second worry was that too much folic acid could mask symptoms of vitamin B12 deficiency and perhaps lead to irreversible brain damage in older people.
More recently, some researchers have pointed out that the rate of colon cancer rose slightly in the late 1990s, after the folic acid requirement took effect. But colon cancer rates have since fallen, suggesting the increase was a statistical anomaly.
Skeptics remain. Dr. James Mills, a foe of increased fortification at the National Institutes of Health, concludes that most women’s folate levels are already high enough to avoid preventable neural tube defects. He says there is no way the population’s safety can be guaranteed with higher fortification levels, and asks, “How would you design a study to determine if this is safe?”
Yet the folic acid requirement has had clear benefits. Within a year of the limited fortification, the C.D.C. reported, neural tube defect rates fell 20 percent, and no reports of widespread toxic effects emerged.
And there is good reason to think that requiring more fortification may prevent more birth defects. Blood levels of folate among women have been declining, according to a C.D.C. study released last January, perhaps because of worsening obesity and the popularity of low-carbohydrate diets.
The United States has a long history of accepting food fortification for public health. Iodine in salt has been shown to prevent many cases of mental retardation; while almost one-third of the world’s population has no access to iodized salt, Americans have been ingesting it since 1924. Similarly, additives like vitamin D in milk to prevent rickets, iron in flour to prevent anemia and fluoride in water to prevent cavities have been widespread in the developed world for half a century. Ultimately every public health intervention, including fortification, widespread vaccination and banning trans fats, involves a leap of faith, since no study can ever prove safety beyond the shadow of a doubt. One can show only that unintended harm is very unlikely.
From this perspective, the fact that 300 million Americans have already been exposed to folic acid in flour constitutes one of the world’s largest medical trials — one that suggests fortification is safe. And new benefits have emerged: in June, the American Heart Association reported that folic acid prevented common birth defects of the heart, and the journal Lancet reported that more folic acid might reduce strokes in adults by 18 percent.
Ideally, the authorities would address every concern before any intervention. But this approach causes public health paralysis.
Dr. Oakley bemoans the lack of incentives to prevent birth defects. For example, efforts to include package inserts in tampons or oral contraceptives to educate women about folic acid have not been adopted.
By comparison, he pointed to the introduction of a new vaccine two decades ago that led to the near eradication of Hemophilus meningitis in children.
“The vaccine-industrial complex works like a charm,” Dr. Oakley said. But with folic acid, things are slow: “Nobody’s making any money off this.”
Darshak Sanghavi is a pediatric cardiologist at the University of Massachusetts Medical School and the author of “A Map of the Child: A Pediatrician’s Tour of the Body.”
<<
My friend Whoopi is angry about food labels!
TODAY’s Food editor and Whoopi Goldberg say Americans need to wake up
By Phil Lempert
http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/22022583/
As many of you already suspect, I have a very cool job. But one of the best things about it is the way I start each week — talking to my friend Whoopi on her radio show. Even though she makes me wake up at 2:30 a.m. to be on the air at 3:30 a.m. Pacific. I suppose that’s why the show is called “Wake up with Whoopi.”
As I’ve shared with her and Cubby Bryant (her co-host) the situation that surrounds our imported foods from China, I can “hear” the smoke coming out of her ears. And rightfully so.
She will not accept the fact that our imported foods aren’t labeled. Nor will she accept the fact the one of the reasons that we are having so many of the food imports from China being recalled for food safety problems is about the American shoppers’ demand for cheap food prices. And mostly, she will not accept the fact that it appears that very few people who are in our government or who run our food companies are actually trying to change the situation.
On Sunday, Chinese food company representatives met in Beijing to discuss food safety and quality control issues. The topline was that over 400 of them agreed in person, fax and phone to publish a written pledge to improve their production processes, raw materials, and quality assurance programs on the production of toothpaste, seafood, eggs and vegetables.
In the first six months of this year, sales of Chinese-produced foods topped $173 billion dollars, up 30 percent from 2006 (to put that in perspective, Nestle, the largest food company in the world, had in 2006, 12-month sales of almost $75 billion, and Kraft, the second-largest, reported $35 billion).
China’s volume was produced by almost 450,000 food companies, so it would seem that a logical next step is to have the remaining 449,600 sign the same pledge.
Most American shoppers had no idea to the extent that the foods on our local supermarket shelves rely on China’s exports for either ingredients or whole foods (like produce) until the headlines over the past 18 months. And while you might think it's all about low-cost goods, I was recently sent bottles of “premium” 267 Infusions brand vodka and tequila to taste-test. Examining the designer bottle, I found the words “Bottled in China.” It is sitting on a shelf unopened, even though the company is touting their high-profile celebrity clientele.
If you think my friend and I are over-reacting, think again. In a four-month Chinese government product quality campaign that included their new food inspection labeling requirement, the government filed 626 criminal cases over substandard food and drug practices. Here in the U.S., China tops the list of countries that export products to our shores that are rejected by the FDA. The reasons? According to FDA reports: filth, misbranding, mislabeling, presence of unsafe color additives, poisonous additives, meat products from animals that died other than by slaughter and items prepared in unsanitary conditions.
So what products are we stocking our supermarket shelves with that come from China? Well, in addition to pet foods, Chinese foods are on almost every shelf, either as an ingredient or as a packaged product; bean curd, catfish, produce, apple juice, pork, chicken, teas and vitamins.
“Vitamins?” she asked. “Would you be surprised to know that China is actually one of the largest producers of drugs and vitamins? And that they produce between 80 and 90 percent of all vitamin C sold in the United States, about 50 percent of the world's aspirin and a majority of vitamins A, B12 and E?”
And then she asked me again, “And why aren’t all these products labeled where they come from?”
Phil Lempert is food editor of the TODAY show. He welcomes questions and comments, which can be sent to phil.lempert@nbc.com or by using the mail box below. For more about the latest trends on the supermarket shelves, visit Phil’s Web site at SuperMarketGuru.com.
FDA: Flu drugs affecting kids' behavior
http://www.rawstory.com/news/mochila/FDA_Flu_drugs_affecting_kids_behavi_11242007.html
from what really happened
Tamiflu was created by the American pharmaceutical company Gilead Sciences, Inc.. Don Rumsfeld was appointed as Chairman of Gilead Sciences in 1997, a position held prior to becoming Bush's Secretary of Defense.
The unsavory health history of this product was suspect almost from the beginning
As reported by by the website Global Research on 26 October, 2005, pointing to the research done by Joseph Mercola ( www.mercola.com):
"Finally, the pieces of the puzzle start to add up. Not long ago, President Bush sought to instill panic in this country by telling us a minimum of 200,000 people will die from the avian flu pandemic, but it could be as bad as 2 million deaths in this country alone.
This hoax is then used to justify the immediate purchase of 80 million doses of Tamiflu, a worthless drug that in no way shape or form treats the avian flu, but only decreases the amount of days one is sick and can actually contribute to the virus having more lethal mutations.
So the U.S. placed an order for 20 million doses of this worthless drug at a price of $100 per dose. That comes to a staggering $2 billion.
Since Rumsfeld holds major portions of stock in Gilead, he will handsomely profit from the scare tactics of the government that is being used to justify the purchase of $2 billion of Tamiflu."
Many drugs out there on the market today are not about really making people better: they are simply about making profits.
Will Raw Milk Soon Be Banned in California?
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2007/11/15/will-raw-milk-soon-be-banned-in-california.aspx
Health conscious California consumers may be in for a less healthy 2008 due to a new state law, signed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on October 8, 2007. According to the language in AB1735, raw milk must now -- for the first time -- conform to strict limits for coliform bacteria.
Mark McAfee, managing partner of Organic Pastures Dairy in Fresno, which produces most of the raw milk sold in California, said, "It basically prohibits raw milk in California." He sees the standard as a stealth attempt to ban raw milk.
The problem stems from one line inserted into the new bill (marked in red), which now calls for a coliform bacteria limit of 10 coliform bacteria per ml:
35891. Grade A raw milk is market milk which conforms to all the
following minimum requirements:
(a) The health of the cows and goats shall be determined at least
once in two months by an official representative of an approved milk
inspection service, or a milk inspection service which is established
by the director.
(b) It shall be produced on dairy farms that score not less than
85 percent on the dairy farm scorecard.
(c) It shall be cooled immediately after being drawn from the cow
or goat to 50 degrees Fahrenheit or less, and so maintained until
delivered to the consumer, at which time it shall contain not more
than 15,000 bacteria per milliliter, and/or not more than 10 coliform bacteria per milliliter.
However, both raw milk advocates and milk safety authorities agree that only a few of the coliform bacteria strains actually cause illness, such as:
E. coli
Salmonella
Listeria
Camylobacter
These pathogenic forms of E.coli are already tested separately by the state, to ensure that none is present.
Previous standards have never included a limit on coliform bacteria, since they are in fact “good bacteria,” and one of the main reasons behind raw milk’s astounding health benefits. These beneficial bacteria help build your immune system, reduce allergies and asthma, and they actually inhibit the production of bad bacteria in raw milk.
In a letter to the members of the Agriculture Committee, Mark McAfee points out that this new requirement actually makes raw milk LESS safe, as less coliform bacteria means that more pathogens can thrive in the milk.
No illnesses have been connected to consumption of raw milk in the past 40 years, although bill AB1735 was most likely created in a knee-jerk reaction to four E.coli cases that were originally thought to have originated from Organic Pastures Dairy. McAfee was completely cleared and allowed to resume production when, after a three-week investigation, no evidence of contamination was found.
Neither McAfee nor the Claravale Dairy were consulted for this bill, even though they are the only dairies in California producing raw milk for human consumption.
The new law also makes non-compliance punishable by criminal action, rather than infractions.
Sources:
San Francisco Chronicle October 26, 2007
Dr. Mercola's Comments:
Between this latest sneak attack, and the new guidelines being proposed by the FDA for raw-milk cheese, it’s becoming clear that in order to save the raw milk industry, you, as a concerned consumer (whether you actually drink raw milk or not) need to take a stand and join in the efforts to quell these disastrous regulations.
Raw milk is an absolutely marvelous whole food, whereas pasteurized milk is just not designed for your best long-term health interests, and will invariably cause you problems if you drink it long enough.
Why is Raw Milk Good for you?
Raw milk still contains all of the valuable enzymes that are destroyed during pasteurization. Without them, milk is very difficult to digest. So if you have a lactose intolerance, it will simply disappear once you start consuming raw dairy products.
Raw milk is an outstanding source of healthy, “good” bacteria and micronutrients, including lactobacillus, acidophilus, and vitamins, which are virtually eliminated by the pasteurization process of commercial milk. It is an outstanding nutrient to promote the growth of healthy bacteria in your intestine.
Raw milk still contains natural butterfat, which is homogenized or removed in commercial milk. Without butterfat, your body cannot absorb and utilize the vitamins and minerals in the water fraction of the milk. Butterfat is also your best source of preformed vitamin A, and contains re-arranged acids with strong anti-carcinogenic properties.
Raw milk does not contain synthetic vitamin D, which is known to be toxic to the liver, yet is still added to most commercial milk.
Raw milk contains healthy unoxidized cholesterol.
Pasteurizing milk, on the other hand, destroys enzymes, diminishes vitamins, denatures fragile milk proteins, destroys vitamin B12 and vitamin B6, kills beneficial bacteria, and promotes pathogens.
From my perspective, there’s simply no rational justification to ever drink pasteurized milk, even organic pasteurized milk.
Once you heat milk, you distort the configuration -- the shape -- of the fragile milk protein, turning it from something good into something bad that will actually cause allergies and other autoimmune dysfunction. So, even if you start with organic milk from grass-fed cows, once you heat it the milk is ruined and should not be consumed.
In addition to the reasons mentioned above, raw-milk drinkers also rave about these additional benefits:
You feel the health benefits: Raw milk is not associated with any of the health problems surrounding pasteurized milk, such as rheumatoid arthritis, skin rashes, diarrhea, and cramps. Even people who have been allergic to pasteurized milk for many years can typically tolerate and even thrive on raw milk.
It tastes better: As with any food, fresher is always better and this applies to milk as well. Fresh raw milk is creamier and better tasting than pasteurized milk that has a shelf life of several weeks.
What You Can Do to Keep Raw Milk Legal in California
There are several ways you can help protect your (and others') right to buy raw milk in California. Please get involved, and do as many of them as you can. Together we can make a difference!
The Farm to Consumer Legal Defense Fund (www.ftcldf.org) is the official non profit organization handling the legal defense and Consumer Revolt against AB 1735. Gary Cox is the lawyer handling the case. They are a legal 501 C3 organization connected to the www.westonaprice.org. They need to raise $35,000 to defend your access to raw milk. So far they've raised 26 percent, so please donate!
To donate, and secure raw milk for your future, go to www.organicpastures.com and click on the legal defense fund link on the home page. Remember, whether you live in California or not, this bill will set a precedent that may eventually eliminate raw milk everywhere.
Also, call or write, and voice your opinion!
Assembly Agriculture Committee chair Nicole Parra (916) 319-2030
Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, www.gov.ca.gov.
Call (916) 445-2841, or fax your letter to (916) 445-4633, asking the governor to stop enforcement of AB1735, and to spearhead the elimination of the law completely.
Make sure you sign your letter and supply your address to show that you are a resident of California.
California Department of Food and Agriculture, Animal Health and Food Safety Services, Milk and Dairy Food Safety Branch (916) 654-0773
For more information and updates, contact Organic Pastures at www.organicpastures.com or (559) 846-9732.
Unhappy Meals
By MICHAEL POLLAN
Published: January 28, 2007
http://tinyurl.com/2rvcop
FDA seeks to bypass doctors with behind-the-counter drug sales via pharmacists
http://www.newstarget.com/022087.html
Reading Food Labels Not Just for Adults
By KELLI KENNEDY 09.18.07, 1:32 PM ET
MIAMI - When 10-year-old Marie Grandguillotte goes grocery shopping with her mother, she reads the food labels. She looks for calories and ingredients and knows to avoid fat and cholesterol.
Reading the food labels was "a little bit confusing, but after a while I got used to it," said the fifth-grader from suburban Doral.
Nutrition experts and the Food and Drug Administration think there should be more kids like Marie. They advocate teaching children to read food labels themselves instead of relying on mom and dad.
"Since I find parents are not doing a bang-up job (teaching nutrition), I think it's important to empower the children with their own information," said Miami registered dietitian Ronni Litz Julien.
The FDA partnered with the Cartoon Network earlier this year to launch a public education campaign encouraging children ages 9 to 13 - or tweens - to read the nutrition facts on food labels.
An interactive Web page on the Cartoon Network's Web site teaches kids to avoid foods high in fat, cholesterol, sodium and sugar and consume more foods with potassium, fiber, iron and calcium. It offers information on serving sizes and calories (40 calories is low, 100 is moderate and 400 is high).
"We learned that tweens are able to cognitively understand food labels, they're making food choices on their own, they want independence, yet they're still influenced by their parents," said Carrie Ainsworth, education outreach specialist for the FDA.
http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2007/09/18/ap4130708.html?partner=alerts
Novozymes Launches Enzyme to Reduce Acrylamide in Food
http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/070831/ukth033.html?.v=9
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DITTINGEN, Switzerland, August 31 /PRNewswire/ -- Researchers from Novozymes, the world leader in bio-innovations and bio-solutions have found a solution to reduce the level of acrylamide in food products such as cookies, crackers and snacks.
Novozymes launches Acrylaway to reduce acrylamide which is formed when starchy foods are baked, fried or toasted at high temperatures. Acrylamide is under suspicion of causing cancer.
Health concerns
In 2002, a study by the Swedish National Food Authorities discovered considerable levels of acrylamide in food products such as French fries, biscuits, snacks and crackers. The study raised awareness of acrylamide worldwide. A new enzyme called Acrylaway addresses this problem.
Acrylaway can be applied to a wide range of products opening up for an overall reduction of average daily intake of acrylamide for consumers worldwide.
"It is a fundamental need for consumers and society that our food is safe and healthy. With the enzyme solution from Novozymes, food manufacturers can now offer end-consumers food products with reduced worries regarding acrylamide" says Peder Holk Nielsen, Executive Vice President, Sales & Marketing at Novozymes.
Acrylamide is reduced up to 90%
Independent tests show that Acrylaway effectively reduces acrylamide levels by 50% to 90% in a broad range of foods such as biscuits, crackers, crisp bread and snacks.
"Many food manufacturers globally have already tested Acrylaway and have shown interest in the product and its ability to substantially reduce acrylamide without changing the taste and appearance of their food product," Peder Holk Nielsen says.
In November 2006, Novozymes received a consent letter from the US Food & Drug Administration regarding the generally recognized as safe (GRAS) status of the asparaginase enzyme. In June 2007 Acrylaway was approved by the Danish authorities and thereby is the first asparaginase that has been safety evaluated by a national EU authority. Furthermore, Acrylaway became the first asparaginase product to be evaluated internationally as it received a positive evaluation at a Joint FAO/WHO Expert Committee meeting in June 2007.
For more information on Acrylaway please go to http://www.novozymes.com/acrylaway
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Uh Oh.....
Pot Bellies Point to Heart Risk
MONDAY, Aug. 13 (HealthDay News) -- Banish the belly, not just the pounds: That's the heart-healthy advice from a new study that finds that "pot" bellies may be a big indicator of future heart disease.
"What we're seeing is a quite strong association between the pot-belly, apple shape among a relatively young group of people and the build-up of plaque in the arteries," said study co-author Dr. James A. de Lemos, an associate professor of medicine and director of the Coronary Care Unit at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas. "Ten to 15 years down the road, this can lead to major cardiac problems, such as a heart attack," he said.
The findings are published in the Aug. 21 issue of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.
According to the American Heart Association (AHA), more than 870,000 Americans die from heart disease each year, making it the leading killer of both men and women. Cardiovascular disease has long been associated with obesity, and approximately one-third of American adults are considered clinically obese, the researchers noted.
But are some forms of overweight worse than others? Lemos' team compared various ways of measuring obesity to detect signs of heart disease in the form of atherosclerosis ("hardening of the arteries"). They looked specifically at atherosclerosis, a systemic thickening and calcification of artery blood vessel walls due to a build-up of calcium and/or plaque composed of cholesterol and triglyceride fats.
The researchers focused on data collected between 2000 and 2002 on more than 2,700 men and women between the ages of 30 and 65, who were participating in the larger, multi-ethnic Dallas Heart Study. Blood and urine samples were taken from all the participants following completion of a general health survey. A subsequent clinical exam calculated both weight and body mass index (BMI) -- a common obesity measurement based on weight-to-height ratios -- as well as waist and hip circumference.
All the men and women then underwent non-invasive imaging tests, including MRI to assess atherosclerosis and/or electron beam computed tomography (EBCT) that specifically looked at arterial calcium deposits in the heart. Such calcium deposits, Lemos and his colleagues noted, collect years before the onset of chest pains or a heart attack.
Detectable coronary artery calcium was found in just over 20 percent (583) of the men and women tested. Almost 40 percent of those who underwent an MRI (976) were found to have detectable aortic plaque. After factoring out differences in blood pressure, diabetes, age, smoking, or cholesterol status, body shape was a much better indicator of either calcium or plaque status than either simple weight or BMI numbers.
For both men and women, the bigger the belly in relation to the hips -- otherwise called the waist-to-hip ratio (WHR) -- the greater the likelihood of arterial calcium in the heart.
After dividing the participants into five groups ranging from those with the smallest to the largest WHRs, the authors specifically observed that those with the largest were almost twice as likely to have coronary calcium as those with the smallest.
Even if your belt buckled somewhere between flat and fat, you weren't home-free, the researchers said. That's because even incremental increases in waist-to-hip-ratio translated into small but steady increases in calcium deposits. Those with the largest waist-to-hip ratios were also three times as likely to have atherosclerotic plaque as those in the smallest waist-to-hip group, the researchers said.
Although higher BMI and waist circumference readings alone were also associated with signs of atherosclerosis, waist-to-hip ratios were found to be much more stronger indicators of either calcium or plaque build-up.
Lemos and his team noted that BMI, in particular, does not gauge body composition, because it fails to account for the fact that abdominal fat -- as opposed to fat around the hips -- may be much less healthy. Abdominal fat appears to trigger a chain of inflammatory activities that translates into harmful metabolic changes, plaque build-up and, ultimately, heart disease, the researchers said.
"The good news for patients is that it's not an 'all or nothing' situation," said Lemos. "Even little improvements in your body shape are going to prove beneficial, with the goal being the smallest waist relative to your hips that you can have -- without becoming anorexic, obviously."
"It's not rocket science," he added. "It's the kind of thing you work on by incorporating regular routine exercise into everyday living. Nothing heroic, mind you. Just some exercise. And by developing good eating habits. And most of that revolves around moderation. It's not about crash diets. It's about learning portion control. So the best thing we can do is unlearn everything our parents taught us. Meaning, we should definitely not finish everything on our plate."
Cardiologist Dr. Curtis M. Rimmerman is medical director of the Westlake, Lakewood, and Avon Pointe branches of the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio. He described Lemos' work as a "start in the right direction" toward refining heart disease screening methods.
"I wouldn't say this finding is surprising," Rimmerman noted. "But it is certainly a reasonable assertion to suggest, given limited health care resources, that health care advisors focus on central-weight distribution rather than weight alone as a more precise way to identify at-risk patients in need of aggressive treatment and follow-up. In that sense, this is a valuable step forward."
5 Veggies That Make Any Salad Super-Healthy
Those fresh, delicious summer salads that sustain life in sauna-like weather? They can do a lot more than keep you cool. In fact, five salad veggies turn out to be antioxidant superstars. Toss a handful into any bowl and you'll instantly up your defenses against everything from wrinkles to heart disease and even help make your RealAge younger. Then season some olive oil and vinegar with a few of the herbs and spices below and you'll punch up the antioxidant power even more. Health food doesn't get any easy-breezier!
5 Superstar Veggies
Artichokes
Radishes
Broccoli
Red chicory
Leeks
7 Stellar Seasonings
Sage
Rosemary
Marjoram
Thyme
Tarragon
Cumin
Fresh ginger
Garlic
The #1 Vegetable
Of the 27 vegetables scientists studied, the almighty artichoke led the antioxidant pack. Plus it's rich in both fiber and folate, two good-for-you nutrients. Look for plump but compact globe-like artichokes with thick, green, fresh-looking scales.
The Runners-Up
Radishes, broccoli, and even luscious leeks are stocked in most supermarkets. But what's red chicory? An Italian salad favorite with an oddly appealing bitter taste. Try mixing it with romaine.
The High-Powered Herbs and Spices
Sage, rosemary, and thyme...when Simon and Garfunkel made them famous, nobody knew they had disease-fighting powers. Cumin, a spice used heavily in Indian food, is even more impressive, as is ginger. But experiment: All of these seasonings are simple ways to boost the health -- and flavor -- of any salad (soups too). Here's a get-you-started recipe.
COOL-BEANS ARTICHOKE SALAD
This elegant mix is both light and filling -- perfect to serve a few friends on a sultry night.
10 baby artichokes, peeled and quartered
2 cups diagonally cut asparagus
1/3 cup thinly sliced radishes
3 green onions, thinly sliced
1 19-oz. can white beans, rinsed and drained
3 cloves garlic, minced
2 tsp. lemon juice
1 Tbsp. olive oil
1/4 tsp. salt
1/8 tsp. black pepper
8 large romaine leaves
1. Steam the artichokes for 8 minutes. Add the asparagus and steam about 2 minutes more, or until crisp-tender. Drain and run vegetables under cold water. Let cool.
2. Make dressing: Whisk together garlic, lemon juice, olive oil, salt, and pepper.
3. Combine radishes, onions, and beans in salad bowl with half of dressing and toss well. Gently stir in artichokes and asparagus.
4. To serve, place 2 romaine leaves each on four plates. Divide salad equally among plates and drizzle with remaining dressing.
I think it'll affect more in this century (21st). :(
What was it? (Link does not seem to work.)
Most Astonishing Health Disaster of the 20th Century
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2007/07/30/most-astonishing-health-disaster-of-th....
How Safe Is What's In This Can of Tuna?
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19441470/
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Debate rages over what level of mercury in tuna is considered harmful
By Lawrence Goodman
July 1, 2007
Money was tight, what with a baby boy in the house and another one on the way, so Teri Curtis cut costs. The 22-year-old bartender in Bentonville, Arkansas, saved on gas by making fewer trips to see her mother, who lived about an hour away. She and her husband stopped eating dinner out. And for lunch, she almost invariably had a plain tuna sandwich. “It was a cheap meal,” she remembers. “And I thought it would be nutritious.”
Curtis’s second son, Ryker, was born in June 2005, three weeks early. The doctors helicoptered him to a bigger hospital, where he was put in an incubator. The IV the nurses hooked up to his arm kept popping out every time he wriggled, so they inserted one through his scalp. Curtis was able to hold him for only a few hours a day. “On a scale of 1 to 10, I would say I was terrified at an 11,” Curtis says. “That poor kid.” It was a month before Curtis was able to take him home.
There were new problems, though. At 8 months, Ryker wasn’t responding to his name. And he didn’t look at Curtis when she talked to him.
It turned out that Ryker was nearly deaf. His adenoids, clusters of tissue toward the top of the throat, were swollen to the size of an adult’s, clogging up his hearing passageways. What the heck was going on with her child? Curtis wondered. She sat down with her ob/gyn, who ticked off some possible explanations. They could be seeing the health effects of Ryker’s prematurity. Or perhaps it was genetic.
But Curtis had heard something on the news that troubled her. Might mercury be a cause? “It’s unlikely, and we’ll never know for sure,” the doctor told Curtis. “But that might be it.” The toxin is found in certain varieties of seafood — including tuna, which Curtis had eaten at least three times a week for virtually her entire pregnancy. When a pregnant woman consumes mercury, it passes through the placenta into the brain of the fetus, where it can linger for years.
In extreme amounts, more than 10 micrograms per gram as measured in hair (which scientists use to gauge the body’s mercury levels), mercury can cause mental retardation, cerebral palsy, deafness and blindness. In the lower-level amounts typically found in Americans — fewer than 2 micrograms per gram in hair — risks to a newborn include a drop of a few IQ points, slow brain development and learning disabilities. Researchers at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimate that more than 300,000 babies born each year in this country are at risk of having brain damage due to mercury exposure in utero.
Women may also have to worry for their own health: A 2003 study by San Francisco internist Jane Hightower, M.D., published in the journal "Environmental Health Perspectives," found that 89 percent of her female patients had mercury levels above what most scientists consider safe, and that high mercury levels in adults correlated with memory loss, fatigue and muscle aches. Another preliminary study this year found that mothers who delivered prematurely were more likely to have high mercury levels.
Even a suggestion, however remote, that her diet had played a role in Ryker’s illnesses left Curtis devastated. “I felt like everything my son was going through was my fault,” she says. But although she blamed herself, she couldn’t help but wonder why there were no warnings on the cans of tuna she ate. She hadn’t heard anything from the government about limiting tuna during pregnancy, nor did she recall her ob/gyn telling her that tuna might have mercury pollution. “This was something that should never have happened,” Curtis says. “I worry that it could have been prevented.”
Pollution in our seafood
Every day in this country, coal-fired power plants in 46 states spew out particles laced with mercury. Incinerators and chlorine plants burn off still more. The emissions travel on the wind — sometimes hundreds of miles — then fall back to Earth, usually in rain or snow, and land most often in our rivers, lakes and oceans. Though there are natural sources of mercury in the air, such as forest fires, a 2002 study published in "Environmental Science & Technology" estimated that 70 percent of the mercury in our atmosphere was put there by humans.
As it turns out, bacteria in marine soil and sediment like to dine on mercury, which they convert to a toxic form called methyl mercury. The bacteria are absorbed by plankton, which fish dine on. Little fish are light eaters, so they don’t consume enough mercury through plankton to become dangerous. But eventually, big fish eat the small fish, and it’s these predators that have the most mercury in their flesh. According to government data, top-of-the-food-chain fish such as shark, swordfish, tilefish and king mackerel contain 0.7 to 1.4 mcg per gram of mercury — anywhere from 8 to 100 times as much as seafood like cod, herring, clams, salmon and scallops.
And then there’s tuna. It has become a focus of mercury worries because we eat so much of it: Canned tuna is the most popular fish in the United States and the second most popular seafood after shrimp, generating close to $1.5 billion in sales annually. That means, as Dr. Hightower notes, “the issue of mercury in fish involves not only the health of the consumer, but the health of the economy.”
As a large predator fish, tuna contains mercury — and sometimes lots of it. Government data shows that the freshly caught bigeye and ahi tuna used for steaks and sushi has levels around 0.6 mcg per gram, and albacore used to make “white” canned tuna has moderately high levels of about 0.35 mcg per gram. Light canned tuna has long been thought to have low mercury because it’s mostly made from skipjack, a smaller species. But independent laboratory testing of light canned tuna has produced wildly varying levels of mercury even among cans bought in the same store — with some light canned tuna testing higher than tuna steaks.
The task of protecting Americans from mercury in commercially sold fish falls to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. In its most recent advice to consumers, the FDA recommends that women of childbearing age consume up to 12 ounces — two servings — of fish or shellfish per week. It also says these women should not eat more than 6 ounces of albacore tuna per week. The FDA’s assistant commissioner for food safety, David Acheson, M.D., insists the agency has done a good job warning women about the dangers without frightening them. After all, tuna and many other types of fish are rich in vitamin B and omega-3 fatty acids that prevent heart disease. Eating fish can lower the risk for stroke, depression and mental decline. There are species, including salmon, sole, trout and flounder, that are both high in omega-3s and low in mercury. But Dr. Acheson says that if the FDA issued too dire a warning about tuna, women might turn away from fish altogether and toward fattier, less healthy sources of protein such as red meat.
The tuna industry takes the same position. “We strongly encourage women to follow the advice of the FDA: to eat seafood, including canned tuna, twice per week. They have brought in health professionals from around the nation in a very open and transparent process,” says John Connelly, president of the National Fisheries Institute in McLean, Virginia. This year, the NFI merged with the U.S. Tuna Foundation, a trade group representing the three largest brands of canned tuna. “Large, peer-reviewed, published studies (have found) that without question the best thing young women and families can do is get more seafood into their diet,” Connelly adds.
But has women’s health truly come first in the government’s handling of the mercury issue? For the past decade, numerous scientists have accused the FDA of ignoring their advice and watering down its rules to suit the wishes of Big Tuna [not to be confused with Bill Parcells]: the fisheries that catch and process tuna and the companies that sell it. “It’s been complete and utter foot dragging by the FDA,” says Deborah Rice, Ph.D., a former senior toxicologist at the EPA now working for the state of Maine. At the same time, Big Tuna — and the electrical-power industry that generates mercury emissions in the first place — have put money into scientific studies that found low threats from mercury and have used that research to argue against tighter rules. Leonardo Trasande, M.D., an expert on environmental toxins at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City, says the result of the country’s lax methyl mercury regulations will be felt for decades to come: “Mercury is going to poison an entire generation of our nation’s children.”
Who paid for that mercury study?
The debate started in 1995. Researchers at the University of Rochester School of Medicine in upstate New York reported that they had studied 131 pregnant Peruvian women, who ate fish frequently and had high mercury levels, and found no harm to their babies. As with most studies, you had to read the fine print to see who funded it: the federal government’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), but also Big Tuna: the National Fisheries Institute and the Tuna Research Foundation.
In 1997, another group of scientists reported that mercury in fish was likely nothing to worry about. They took hair samples from American women and tested for traces of mercury. The results, according to the study, did “not justify concern... of adverse health effects in these women or in their children.” The same industry groups had teamed with NOAA to fund the research, joined this time by the U.S. Tuna Foundation.
But the most reassuring mercury news that year came from an international team including different scientists from the University of Rochester. They had been working in the Seychelles islands off the east coast of Africa, where diets consist mainly of fish. At the time the women studied gave birth, they had about 6 mcg per gram of mercury in their hair — an alarmingly high level. But at a year and a half, the women’s babies showed no ill effects.
The work in the Seychelles was funded by the governments of the United States and the Seychelles, not private industry. Big Tuna and the power industry chipped in the following year, giving some of the Seychelles researchers grants of half a million dollars to evaluate methods of testing children for cognitive defects resulting from environmental toxins, including mercury. In addition to money from an FDA program, the project attracted $5,000 from the fisheries institute, $10,000 from the U.S. Tuna Foundation and $486,000 from the Electric Power Research Institute in Palo Alto, California, a research group funded by electric power–plant companies. (Officials with the EPRI did not return calls for comment.)
There is no evidence that the scientists involved in these studies did anything improper. Their work appeared in peer-reviewed scientific journals and no one has suggested it’s invalid. “There’s been no industry influence on any of the work we’ve done. We report what we find,” says Gary Myers, M.D., professor of neurology, pediatrics and environmental medicine at the University of Rochester. “All of our research in Seychelles has the strict scrutiny and oversight of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. NIEHS is intimately aware of our funding and has never questioned the integrity of our findings or suggested any conflict of interest.”
Yet the fact remains, as Dr. Hightower puts it, that in contrast to studies connected to industry, “most independent studies have found that mercury has harmful health effects.” A 2007 British study published in "The Lancet" was the exception, suggesting that eating seafood while pregnant had a net health benefit for children. But other independent studies in the United States, New Zealand and the Faroe Islands near Iceland have all shown danger to children due to mercury in seafood. The Faroes study, which also appeared in 1997 and was led by Philippe Grandjean, M.D., professor of environmental health at the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston, showed that children born to mothers with elevated mercury levels were slow to develop motor and speech skills. “Over an entire population, it can be significant,” Dr. Grandjean says. “You will have fewer kids who are really bright and will have pushed a few (down so far) they can’t compete in high school.”
By 2000, the federal government had begun to consider how much mercury consumers could safely eat and which fish were most dangerous. The EPA had for years used a low threshold, saying a person could safely ingest 0.1 mcg of mercury per day per kilogram of body weight. For a 132 pound woman, that would mean about 6 mcg a day of mercury — less than is found in one third of a can of light tuna.
The National Research Council in Washington, D.C., one of the nation’s premier scientific bodies, convened a panel of experts to look at the EPA standard in light of the latest research, including the Faroes and Seychelles studies. The independent Faroes research, the panel members wrote in their final report, “should be used as the critical study,” supporting the EPA standard.
But the EPA has jurisdiction only over fish that recreational fishermen catch in the nation’s interior lakes, ponds and rivers. Tuna, which commercial haulers gather on the open sea, falls under the purview of the FDA. And that agency had set a standard five times as high as the one the NRC experts were recommending. Giving equal weight to the Faroes and Seychelles research, the agency issued an advisory in 2001 warning pregnant women against eating king mackerel, shark, swordfish and tilefish. Nowhere did it mention tuna, which accounted for one third of the seafood market.
After the decision, the Environmental Working Group, an activist organization in Washington, D.C., petitioned the FDA to release transcripts from focus groups it had held in fall 2000 on mercury. Those papers show FDA senior scientist Alan Levy, M.D., stating that the standard was “not protective enough” of fetuses, and later suggesting that “it is prudent, particularly for pregnant women, to … moderate their tuna fish consumption.” A draft advisory reportedly did recommend pregnant women eat less tuna. But when the agency released its mercury warning a few months later, all references to tuna had been deleted.
Mercury experts ignored
One spring day a year later, toxicologist Vas Aposhian, Ph.D., did something rare for him: He went food shopping. Aposhian, a professor of molecular and cellular biology at the University of Arizona in Tucson, prefers being in his lab and is content to let his wife do the shopping. But this time he went with her; she pointed him toward what he was looking for. He threw 11 cans of tuna into his shopping cart and the next day mailed them off to a laboratory to be analyzed.
Shortly after, Aposhian flew to Washington, D.C. By this point, the FDA was under intense pressure to reconsider its mercury policies. The public was understandably confused by there being one mercury standard from the EPA and another from the FDA. Meanwhile, many states had drafted their own mercury advisories, some of which were considerably stricter than the FDA’s. The FDA asked its Food Advisory Committee to study the issue further. Aposhian was one of 21 members given this assignment, along with government officials, business leaders, consumer activists and other researchers from around the country.
The committee met in July 2002. About halfway through the deliberations, Aposhian revealed the results of his lab tests: One of the 11 cans he purchased contained 1.24 mcg per gram of mercury, an unsafe level even by FDA rules. It wasn’t a scientific study, but it was all it took to convince Aposhian that young women and their children faced a significant health threat. “I think something has to be done about protecting pregnant women,” he told his fellow committee members.
Other members agreed and urged the FDA to include tuna in its mercury advisory. The committee members’ recommendations were quite specific: They wanted the agency to follow the advisory adopted by the state of Wisconsin — one of the strictest in the nation. That state told women to eat no more than one 6-ounce can of light tuna per week.
Almost two years passed before the FDA updated its advisory. In the intervening time, Big Tuna stepped up its lobbying to new heights, according to data from The Center for Responsive Politics, a group in Washington, D.C., that tracks industry expenditures on lobbying activities such as meetings and meals with lawmakers and regulators. Organizations representing tuna sellers, processors and fishermen spent at least $540,000 lobbying the House, Senate and FDA on mercury and other issues. “There was tremendous regulatory activity during that period, so you would expect to see a spike in contacts between the industry and government,” says Anne Forristall Luke, who was president of the U.S. Tuna Foundation at the time. She adds that the process of crafting the FDA advisory was fully transparent. “The FDA had meetings with industry people, environmental organizations and consumer advocates. There’s nothing nefarious about this kind of lobbying, and the tuna industry advocates for positions it believes are true.”
The Seychelles researchers also joined the debate. The power industry helped underwrite a speech by University of Rochester researcher Philip Davidson, Ph.D., to a July 2003 conference co-hosted by the American Association on Mental Retardation. In his talk, Davidson stressed how little was known about mercury’s health effects. Days later, his colleague Dr. Myers testified before Congress and was less ambiguous, telling lawmakers that “we do not believe that there is presently good scientific evidence that moderate fish consumption is harmful to the fetus.”
The FDA and EPA issued their new joint statement on mercury and fish in March 2004 — and at last tuna was included on the list of fish women should be concerned about. But the agency rejected one of the major recommendations of its own committee: The new mercury guidelines were not modeled on Wisconsin’s. In fact, they were much more lenient. Wisconsin had put the maximum amount of light tuna women should eat at one can per week; the FDA put it at two cans. “It was clear we wanted the Wisconsin numbers followed,” laments consumer advocate Jean Halloran, a member of the committee. “The only way to explain what happened is that the FDA cared most about how an advisory would affect the profits of the fish industry.”
Dr. Acheson says the FDA advisory is based on the best available science, showing that tuna can have both positive and negative health effects. “Not everyone agrees with the tack that we’ve taken, but our role is not to get everyone to pat us on the back. It’s to protect public health,” he says. As for Aposhian, he resigned from the committee in protest the day the FDA issued its decision. “I was shocked the FDA did not follow the Wisconsin advisory,” he says. “It has put the normal development of American children in jeopardy.”
Consumers in confusion
The news about mercury keeps coming, with each contradictory finding seeming to further cloud the picture. Recent research on men in Finland found that mercury in fish increased their risk for heart disease, potentially counteracting the benefits hearts get from omega-3s. Dr. Grandjean, who led the Faroe Islands study, argues that although low-mercury fish is definitely a health food, the evidence linking mercury to heart disease is now strong enough that no one — man, woman or child — should eat fish with elevated mercury levels.
Meanwhile, the tuna industry launched an aggressive marketing campaign aimed at countering the Faroe Islands research. Restaurants and food companies have funded MercuryFacts.org, FishScam.com and magazine ads, all blasting the study as invalid because the residents there get their mercury from whale meat, rather than fish. “Unless you’re lunching on a Moby Dick sandwich, there’s no reason to worry,” one advertisement says. Dr. Grandjean says that “mercury is mercury is mercury. It doesn’t matter if it comes from whale or tuna.” His view is backed by the members of the original 2000 NRC panel, who recently went back and reexamined whether new Seychelles research supplants the Faroes findings. They found it does not.
In May 2006, the seafood industry scored a major victory in court that stopped then California Attorney General Bill Lockyer from requiring tuna companies to warn consumers about man-made toxins in their food, as with labels on cans. Deputy Attorney General Susan S. Fiering called the decision “devastating” to the health of poor women in particular. Testifying against the warnings was Louis Sullivan, M.D., who served as the U.S. Health and Human Services secretary in the early 1990s; Dr. Sullivan, who did not return calls for comment, worked in 2005 and 2006 as a paid consultant to Big Tuna.
The San Francisco judge who ruled against consumer warnings relied heavily on the testimony of François Morel, Ph.D., professor of geosciences at Princeton University in New Jersey, whose findings indicate that very little of the mercury in tuna comes from man-made sources. The state countered in its appeal that Morel’s claims are “not shared by any other scientists in the field.” Morel’s research had been aided by — surprise — the U.S. Tuna Foundation. He says that since 2003, he has also accepted roughly $150,000 a year in grants from the Electric Power Research Institute. The power industry has funded almost all of the research into the chemistry of mercury, he adds. “I’ve yet to see any problems. People are honest and EPRI realizes it would damage itself by trying to skew the results.”
Last October, the Institute of Medicine in Washington, D.C., released a report that Big Tuna declared the best take yet on the issue: Its verdict was that the benefits of eating fish generally outweighed the risks. “Seafood is a good source of high-quality protein, is low in saturated fat and is rich in many micronutrients,” the panel wrote, whereas “the available evidence to assess risks to the U.S. population (from mercury and other pollutants) is incomplete.”
David Bellinger, Ph.D., professor of neurology at the Harvard School of Public Health, was a member of the Institute of Medicine panel. He was also a co-author of a large 2005 Harvard study funded by Big Tuna, including grants from the National Food Processors Association Research Foundation and the Fisheries Scholarship Fund. Bellinger says industry had no influence on his research, which upheld the idea that if pregnant women follow the FDA advisory, their children will have a net health benefit. But would it be better if the Institute of Medicine were able to base its decisions on studies that weren’t funded by industry groups? “In an ideal world?” he replies. “Yes.”
In our imperfect world, the influence of industry-funded research, industry-financed politicians and industry lobbyists makes it difficult for physicians and the consumer to know just whom to trust, says Dr. Hightower, who has treated nearly 100 women for mercury poisoning. “Money tends to add to the confusion when it comes to regulation,” she says. “The public health message is one of compromise for all parties. The doctor’s office should be where the best message is given to patients, regardless of any variable other than health.”
The message she gives patients: Use common sense. Fish such as salmon and flounder, grass-fed beef and fortified products are all good sources of healthy fats. “You can get omega-3 fatty acids without significantly increasing your mercury level and at the same time have a very healthful diet,” she says. “Poison is not a good thing to eat.”
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Scum-sucking epicure
I'm secretly addicted to spirulina. It tastes mossy, costs a fortune and makes my lips green, but this highbrow pond scum may turn out to be a wonder algae.
By Ann Bauer
Jun. 05, 2007 | Spirulina are free-floating filamentous cyanobacteria characterized by cylindrical, multicellular trichomes in an open left-hand helix that occur in tropical and subtropical bodies of water with a high pH and concentrations of carbonate.
In other words: pond scum. And I'm addicted.
Nights, I often disappear into my basement with a double-bagged inch or two. I handle it as if it were plutonium, because as foods go, spirulina -- the food product, a singular noun -- is outrageously expensive ($56 a pound at my local Whole Foods, on the odd days it's actually in stock) and because it stains anything it touches a dark, wet-looking green. This is why I eat it only in our dank downstairs family room with its scatter of cat toys, old computer equipment, and castoff furniture.
After I've had my fill, two or three teaspoons at most, I very carefully rewrap what's left and take it upstairs to the kitchen where my children are at the table doing homework and my husband is making tea. He kisses me and uses a paper napkin to dab a smudge from my chin. When I go into the bathroom to wash myself properly, I see in the mirror that my lips are outlined in Gothic midnight jade. But my skin, normally wan and delicate, has an almost rosy glow. And my eyes shine.
The first time I tasted spirulina, it was by chance.
It was four years ago and I was in New York City visiting literary agents at my own expense. That meant staying in a hotel room the size of a wheelchair-accessible restroom stall and eating on about $20 a day. My first night in town, I stopped at a bodega in the Village to pick up two small bags of popcorn and a bottle of sparkling water. This was an acceptable dinner, I decided, because the popcorn was coated with something its label promised was ultra-nutritious, high in protein and vitamins. I was disturbed when, once back in my room and settled on the bed, I opened the bags to discover that the wonder ingredient was a brilliant, aqueous green. Then I got a whiff of its briny odor -- redolent of the slimy, leafy stuff that washes up in tangles on the Eastern Seaboard -- and quailed.
But this was all I had to eat until morning and I was hungry after walking the city all day. So I took a tentative taste, and another. A few more bites and I was hooked.
Whatever was on this popcorn tasted much subtler than it smelled: loamy, mossy and salty, with a verdant after note of sex. I ate the entire bag while watching a rerun of "Monk." Then I opened the second, which was labeled "spicy." This version smelled better, and it was far more festive looking: a Christmasy blend of sea bottom green and chili pepper red. And it was like nothing I'd ever tasted before: crackling, nutty, oystery and wild. The way a deep-water fish might taste if it were stuffed with sweet corn and fire. I ate until only the dregs remained.
I half expected to be bilious the next day, hung over from my junky, salty meal. But I wasn't. In fact, I awoke feeling wonderful: inexplicably healthy and strangely "clean." I didn't link this directly to the spirulina, not at first. But when I returned to Minneapolis and made my own algae-covered popcorn, I had the same rejuvenating experience. I began craving it, eating spirulina three to four times a week. Over the next few months, I noticed that my hair felt thicker, my clothes fit better, and my chronic allergies seemed to have disappeared. Yet, something about this habit seemed shameful and weird.
A restaurant critic, I'd spent much of my career talking to chefs and gourmands about good food. No one I knew was eating spirulina. This isn't a delicacy you can bring out to share with your friends, slice up, and enjoy with a nice bottle of wine. Eating algae went counter to all my epicurean instincts.
At one point, I decided to get the green monkey off my back for good. I went cold turkey: no spirulina at all for three months. And though the craving disappeared within a week or two, my nails soon grew brittle, my allergies came back with a vengeance, and I had less stamina during spinning classes. Finally, I capitulated, and the response was swift. After only a few doses of spirulina, I felt as I had in New York: clear, clean and full of energy. Perhaps -- I remember thinking -- I'm actually some sort of sea creature. Part mermaid.
The truth is less fanciful. It's likely I simply needed protein, vitamins and minerals such as iron, manganese and zinc.
As a Minneapolis restaurant critic, I was eating spectacularly well. But often my diet was governed by editorial directives rather than hunger; if I were working on a cover story called "50 Best Desserts," for instance, I might eat five varieties of crème brûlée, when what I really needed was steamed tofu and broccoli. Supplementing with spirulina -- which is rich in all of the elements listed above plus Omega-3 and Omega-6 fatty acids, calcium, potassium, copper, folate, beta-carotene and vitamin K -- was an ideal way to achieve balance.
"Spirulina is one of the only non-animal sources of complete protein," says Jessica McNamara, product specialist for Frontier Natural Products Co-op, which supplies spirulina to natural food stores and cooperatives throughout the country. "It has all eight of the essential amino acids in the correct proportion, plus 10 of the 12 nonessential ones. So one serving all by itself translates into 5 grams of complete protein for the body. And for that reason, it's become really popular with strict vegans and people in the raw foods movement."
It's also extremely low in calories (26 per tablespoon), carbohydrates and fat. And because the carbs it does contain are complex, married to a protein- and mineral-rich base, McNamara says it's possible spirulina also stabilizes blood glucose levels by slowing the body's process for metabolizing sugars and simple starches. But she's reluctant to make any overt health claims.
Others are less reticent.
A 2001 study in Journal of Medicinal Food, conducted by three medical researchers in India and titled "Role of Spirulina in the Control of Glycemia and Lipidemia in Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus," showed that a two-gram dose of spirulina daily over a period of just two months lowered blood glucose levels "appreciably" in 25 patients with diabetes. It also uniformly improved their lipid profiles, lowering both LDL cholesterol and triglycerides, while raising HDL cholesterol just a tick.
And a 20-page article in the spring 2002 edition of Journal of the American Nutraceutical Association went much further. It claims spirulina, or "dihe" -- a natural food that's been consumed for more than 400 years, originally by the Aztecs in Mexico and currently by the Kanembu tribe in the Republic of Chad -- has anti-inflammatory, antihistamine, antioxidant, anti-cancer and anti-viral properties. Most of the studies it cites were conducted with rats, hamsters, mice, chickens and prawns -- but the article also refers to a handful of human studies, including one in Kerala, India, where pan tobacco chewers with precancerous mouth lesions were given either one gram of spirulina per day or one gram of a placebo; after a year, researchers observed a complete regression of mouth ulcers in 45 percent of patients taking spirulina, but only 7 percent of those in the control group. And in another study, aimed at reducing the fasting blood sugar of participants, it was determined that 2.8 grams of spirulina three times a day not only improved glucose levels, it also led to statistically significant weight loss.
This document goes so far as to recommend that spirulina be used for patients with HIV -- not to cure them, per se, but to bolster their flagging immune systems and protect them from opportunistic infections. It concludes: "Despite the few human studies done so far on the health benefits of spirulina, the evidence for its potential therapeutic application is overwhelming in the areas of immunomodulation, anti-cancer, anti-viral, and cholesterol-reduction effects."
It's worth noting that the article's author, Amha Belay, is vice president and scientific director for Earthrise Nutritionals Inc., a California company that calls itself a "pioneer and innovator of premium quality Spirulina." Personally, I assume Belay's work to be mostly a self-serving manifesto. And yet...
There's my own anecdotal data: the fact that my lifelong allergy symptoms have virtually disappeared. There's also the much more compelling evidence that a few real, unbiased, academic researchers have been won over.
Jane Teas, a research assistant at the South Carolina Cancer Center, has been studying the health effects of seaweeds and algae for more than 20 years. Back in 1984, when she was a fellow at the Harvard School of Public Health, Teas discovered that brown seaweeds -- primarily kombu and wakame -- helped prevent breast tumors in rats. Today, she continues to recommend seaweed for women (especially those prone to breast cancer); but she warns that too much can cause an iodine overdose, and ultimately thyroid disorders.
Spirulina, she says, poses no such risks.
"We know that spirulina stimulates the immune system, keeping envelope viruses, such as HIV and Ebola, from attaching," Teas says. "And it has some role to play in stabilizing blood sugar, controlling arthritis and fighting cancer. It even helps prevent skeletal muscle damage, which is why the Chinese and Cuban Olympic teams eat it daily."
- - - - - - - - - - - -
I just like it, and I like the way it makes me feel.
If, in addition to giving me a daily jolt of iron, spirulina also makes me less prone to develop diabetes, cancer and high cholesterol, that's a huge and unexpected benefit. And if it protects me from ligament strains when I'm hiking, that's cool, too.
But I wish it were more accessible, and less expensive. According to McNamara, the high price of spirulina is due to a combination of factors: first, the environment it requires to grow -- a precisely formulated high-saline, high-pH bog -- and second, the stricter National Organic Program standards set in April 2005, which eliminated many sources previously cultivating spirulina. (Because most American consumers of spirulina and seaweed also adhere to organic or raw foods diets, it just doesn't pay to grow commercial-grade products.) Farmers don't stumble into cultivating spirulina the way they might, say, soybeans; it takes a dedicated production facility like the one at Earthrise, which has partnered with a Japanese company, Dainippon Ink and Chemicals, to corner the world market on micro-algae products.
If companies are paying attention to the cycles of supply and demand (and I'm certain they are) all their efforts will go into producing pricey pre-made supplements, rather than affordable food-quality spirulina. Because more than half the people who take algae for health reasons prefer to swallow it in caps. But as with any vegetable -- sea, field or root -- eating spirulina in its real, unprocessed form probably offers the greatest potential benefit. Those who want to mask the flavor sometimes add a small amount to smoothies containing vibrant-tasting fruit, such as blueberries, or sprinkle it on salads and use a pungent dressing.
"Honestly, there are a lot of people who just choke it down," McNamara says. "But then there are those who become acquainted with it and learn to think it tastes great."
Me? I take my spirulina the way I learned to that first night in New York: sprinkled on organic white popcorn that's been cooked in olive oil and tossed with fresh-squeezed lemon juice and cayenne. And if I can get the timing just right, I still eat it while watching reruns of "Monk." Only these days, instead of fretting, I feel virtuous. Green lips and all.
-- By Ann Bauer
Source: Salon
http://www.salon.com/mwt/food/eat_drink/2007/06/05/spirulina/index.html
Alas, this board is turning into a home for anti-drug propaganda.
>a long-running Merck ad featured an older woman with this message: “See how beautiful 60 can look? See how invisible osteoporosis can be?” and recommended that women ask their doctors about bone density screening. As a result, many women started taking Merck’s drug Fosamax, even though the benefit may not outweigh the harm.<
The fallout from fractures due to osteoporosis is a leading cause of disability and death in the elderly. Here are some excerpts from the Fosamax FDA label that pertain to efficacy:
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Data on the effects of FOSAMAX on fracture incidence are derived from three clinical studies: 1) U.S. and Multinational combined: a study of patients with a BMD T-score at or below minus 2.5 with or without a prior vertebral fracture, 2) Three-Year Study of the Fracture Intervention Trial (FIT): a study of patients with at least one baseline vertebral fracture, and 3) Four-Year Study of FIT: a study of patients with low bone mass but without a baseline vertebral fracture.
To assess the effects of FOSAMAX on the incidence of vertebral fractures (detected by digitized radiography; approximately one third of these were clinically symptomatic), the U.S. and Multinational studies were combined in an analysis that compared placebo to the pooled dosage groups of FOSAMAX (5 or 10 mg for three years or 20 mg for two years followed by 5 mg for one year). There was a statistically significant reduction in the proportion of patients treated with FOSAMAX experiencing one or more new vertebral fractures relative to those treated with placebo (3.2% vs. 6.2%; a 48% relative risk reduction). A reduction in the total number of new vertebral fractures (4.2 vs. 11.3 per 100 patients) was also observed. In the pooled analysis, patients who received FOSAMAX had a loss in stature that was statistically significantly less than was observed in those who received placebo (-3.0 mm vs. -4.6 mm).
The Fracture Intervention Trial (FIT) consisted of two studies in postmenopausal women: the Three- Year Study of patients who had at least one baseline radiographic vertebral fracture and the Four-Year Study of patients with low bone mass but without a baseline vertebral fracture. In both studies of FIT, 96% of randomized patients completed the studies (i.e., had a closeout visit at the scheduled end of the study); approximately 80% of patients were still taking study medication upon completion.
Fracture Intervention Trial: Three-Year Study (patients with at least one baseline radiographic vertebral fracture)
This randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, 2027-patient study (FOSAMAX, n=1022; placebo, n=1005) demonstrated that treatment with FOSAMAX resulted in statistically significant reductions in fracture incidence at three years as shown in the table below [table omitted] Furthermore, in this population of patients with baseline vertebral fracture, treatment with FOSAMAX significantly reduced the incidence of hospitalizations (25.0% vs. 30.7%).
In the Three-Year Study of FIT, fractures of the hip occurred in 22 (2.2%) of 1005 patients on placebo and 11 (1.1%) of 1022 patients on FOSAMAX, p=0.047. The figure below displays the cumulative incidence of hip fractures in this study. Cumulative Incidence of Hip Fractures in the Three-Year Study of FIT (patients with radiographic vertebral fracture at baseline)
Fracture Intervention Trial: Four-Year Study (patients with low bone mass but without a baseline radiographic vertebral fracture)
This randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, 4432-patient study (FOSAMAX, n=2214; placebo, n=2218) further investigated the reduction in fracture incidence due to FOSAMAX. The intent of the study was to recruit women with osteoporosis, defined as a baseline femoral neck BMD at least two standard deviations below the mean for young adult women. However, due to subsequent revisions to the normative values for femoral neck BMD, 31% of patients were found not to meet this entry criterion and thus this study included both osteoporotic and non-osteoporotic women. The results are shown in the table below for the patients with osteoporosis [table omitted].
Fracture results across studies
In the Three-Year Study of FIT, FOSAMAX reduced the percentage of women experiencing at least one new radiographic vertebral fracture from 15.0% to 7.9% (47% relative risk reduction, p<0.001); in the Four-Year Study of FIT, the percentage was reduced from 3.8% to 2.1% (44% relative risk reduction, p=0.001); and in the combined U.S./Multinational studies, from 6.2% to 3.2% (48% relative risk reduction, p=0.034).
FOSAMAX reduced the percentage of women experiencing multiple (two or more) new vertebral fractures from 4.2% to 0.6% (87% relative risk reduction, p<0.001) in the combined U.S./Multinational studies and from 4.9% to 0.5% (90% relative risk reduction, p<0.001) in the Three-Year Study of FIT. In the Four-Year Study of FIT, FOSAMAX reduced the percentage of osteoporotic women experiencing multiple vertebral fractures from 0.6% to 0.1% (78% relative risk reduction, p=0.035). Thus, FOSAMAX reduced the incidence of radiographic vertebral fractures in osteoporotic women whether or not they had a previous radiographic vertebral fracture.
FOSAMAX, over a three- or four-year period, was associated with statistically significant reductions in loss of height vs. placebo in patients with and without baseline radiographic vertebral fractures. At the end of the FIT studies the between-treatment group differences were 3.2 mm in the Three-Year Study and 1.3 mm in the Four-Year Study.
Prevention of osteoporosis in postmenopausal women
Prevention of bone loss was demonstrated in two double-blind, placebo-controlled studies of postmenopausal women 40-60 years of age. One thousand six hundred nine patients (FOSAMAX 5 mg/day; n=498) who were at least six months postmenopausal were entered into a two-year study without regard to their baseline BMD. In the other study, 447 patients (FOSAMAX 5 mg/day; n=88), who were between six months and three years postmenopause, were treated for up to three years. In the placebo-treated patients BMD losses of approximately 1% per year were seen at the spine, hip (femoral neck and trochanter) and total body. In contrast, FOSAMAX 5 mg/day prevented bone loss in the majority of patients and induced significant increases in mean bone mass at each of these sites (see figures below). In addition, FOSAMAX 5 mg/day reduced the rate of bone loss at the forearm by approximately half relative to placebo. FOSAMAX 5 mg/day was similarly effective in this population regardless of age, time since menopause, race and baseline rate of bone turnover. The therapeutic equivalence of once weekly FOSAMAX 35 mg (n=362) and FOSAMAX 5 mg daily (n=361) was demonstrated in a one-year, double-blind, multicenter study of postmenopausal women without osteoporosis. In the primary analysis of completers, the mean increases from baseline in lumbar spine BMD at one year were 2.9% (2.6, 3.2%; 95% CI) in the 35-mg once-weekly group (n=307) and 3.2% (2.9, 3.5%; 95% CI) in the 5-mg daily group (n=298). The two treatment groups were also similar with regard to BMD increases at other skeletal sites. The results of the intention-to-treat analysis were consistent with the primary analysis of completers.
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It’s a good thing to be a skeptic, but it’s a bad thing to succumb to the propaganda that drugs and drug companies are evil.
Misleading Ads and How They Hurt Us by Judy Norsigian
May 22
Selling anxiety sells medicine. Drug companies know this and profit by it. But are women benefiting as much as the industry’s bottom line?
The pharmaceutical industry spent much of its $4.2 billion direct-to-consumer advertising budget in 2005 on ads targeting healthy upper-income, middle-aged people. A common underlying message was this: you appear to be healthy, but a deadly heart attack, hip fracture, or other medical catastrophe could occur at any time. Therefore, you should take a prescription drug to prevent such problems.
For example, a long-running Merck ad featured an older woman with this message: “See how beautiful 60 can look? See how invisible osteoporosis can be?” and recommended that women ask their doctors about bone density screening. As a result, many women started taking Merck’s drug Fosamax, even though the benefit may not outweigh the harm.
With such direct-to-consumer ad campaigns, which highlight risk factors and promote screening tests, drug companies move beyond promoting certain pills for treatment of diagnosed conditions to expanding their use in healthy people. And selling prevention through prescription drugs certainly does fill pharmaceutical industry coffers. Healthy people, preferably in early middle age, who can be persuaded to take a drug daily for the rest of their lives, are clearly the industry’s most desirable customer base. But as a category, these people who are at low risk of having the problem the drug is meant to treat may still suffer a serious adverse reaction. For example, Fosamax cuts the risk of hip fracture from 2% to 1%, but that small benefit may not be worth the 1.5% risk of suffering an esophageal ulcer. In addition, in a small percentage of women using Fosamax over the long term, the jawbone will start to crumble. And some research now suggests that the type of new bone created by Fosamax is more brittle and more prone to fracturing over time.
The over-selling of postmenopausal hormones, supported by the depiction of natural menopause as a hormone deficiency disease, was the forerunner to this type of sales pitch, which now permeates the media. Aging, social anxiety disorder, heartburn, restless leg syndrome, and overactive bladder are all examples of symptoms or normal physiological events that are now presented to consumers as being in need of long-term drug treatment.
Prescription drugs used to be advertised mainly in medical journals aimed at health care providers. But since 1997, when the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) loosened the restrictions on direct-to-consumer advertising, pharmaceutical companies have taken their messages directly to the people. They claim these ads are good for consumers because they educate and encourage individuals to be more involved in their medical choices. But whatever the industry’s philanthropic motives, the more direct interest is the bottom line. As Marcia Angell, a former editor of the New England Journal of Medicine, once put it, “They are no more in the business of educating the public than a beer company is in the business of educating people about alcoholism.”
Because of direct-to-consumer advertising, more people request prescription drugs from their doctors, and most doctors comply. Most lay people—and even many physicians—are not aware that drug ads are not checked by the FDA for accuracy beforehand, and are pulled only after complaints are made and verified. This usually takes about six months, and the drug company is given a grace period of several additional months, by which time most ads would have been changed anyway. A company is rarely required to run a corrective ad, and there is no other penalty for misleading the public. Thus, while the FDA sends hundreds of letters each year requiring drug companies to retract their ads, most people don’t hear about them.
Women need to recognize misleading pharmaceutical marketing practices and base drug treatment decisions on scientifically accurate evidence. Be most skeptical of heavily advertised drugs and those that come with coupons. They are the newest, most expensive drugs with the shortest track records of safety. The FDA does not require new drugs to be proven better than competing, often cheaper, drugs already on the market. Though many drugs for chronic conditions like arthritis are taken every day for years, pre-approval trials typically last no more than a few months and long-term safety studies are almost never done. Life-threatening effects may come to light only after the drug is approved and used widely.
To reduce unnecessary risk, women should seek independent sources of evidence about medicines, particularly new ones. The FDA's web site offers extensive information about medicines, herbal supplements, and vitamins, including safety alerts about the latest recalls and warnings for specific drugs. The international nonprofit group Healthy Skepticism counters misleading drug promotion and maintains a regular “AdWatch” section on its website. Consumers should be cautious when looking for information on other websites. Many are substantially sponsored by pharmaceutical companies. Being skeptical about drug ads and promotions is smart: it can protect both our health and our wallets.
http://www.womensmediacenter.com/Daily_Exclusives5.html
The Roots of Sickness and Disease
http://www.regaininghealthnaturally.com/Sickness_and_Disease/The_Roots_of_Sickness_&_Disease.sht...
Coming soon: the shopping channel run by drug firms
Sarah Boseley
Monday May 21, 2007
The Guardian
Four of the world's biggest pharmaceutical companies are proposing to launch a television station to tell the public about their drugs, amid strenuous lobbying across Europe by the industry for an end to restrictions aimed at protecting patients. Pharma TV would be a dedicated interactive digital channel funded by the industry with health news and features but, at its heart, would be detailed information from drug companies about their medicines.
A 10-minute pilot DVD, seen by the Guardian, featured a white-coated doctor discussing breast cancer and a woman patient who reassured viewers that "there are many new treatments available". Under the proposals, viewers could use their remote control to click on treatment options and read what manufacturers have to say about the latest branded breast cancer drugs.
Four companies, Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer, Novartis and Procter & Gamble, are behind the pilot, which they are offering to the European commission as a way to give patients more information. The commission is consulting on potential changes to the regulations that ban all direct-to-consumer advertising of medicinal drugs.
The industry has been lobbying in Europe to be allowed direct access to patients. It argues that lifting restrictions would help its competitiveness and has hinted that companies may relocate to the US, where they can advertise to patients who then demand drugs from their doctors. Profits have soared there as a result.
The proposed change in the rules is being led within the commission by its trade arm, DG Enterprise, and not health, DG Sanco. It is backed by a number of influential patient groups that are themselves heavily funded by drug companies. But consumer organisations are opposed, warning that the companies will play down risk, and that their real interest lies in boosting profits.
The International Society of Drug Bulletins (ISDB) - consumer publications which analyse the benefits of drugs and draw comparisons between them - warns that the industry is not a reliable source of trustworthy information.
The US and New Zealand allow drug companies to advertise to the public; the ISDB says in both these countries this has been shown to be detrimental to health.
"Pharmaceutical companies' messages are focused on relatively few top sellers, exaggerating effects and concealing risks, confusing patients and putting pressure on doctors to prescribe drugs they would not use otherwise," it says. "Lack of comparative information in advertising means people cannot choose among several options." Johnson & Johnson presented the companies' proposals to a meeting in Brussels of the Centre for Health, Ethics and Society, a thinktank which describes itself as "developed in partnership with Johnson & Johnson". The audience comprised members of the commission, patient groups and others.
The European Patient Information Channel, as industry is calling it, could be available on the internet as well as TV, and would offer "on demand" information about drugs "to enable patients and citizens to make better decisions", said Scott Ratzan of Johnson & Johnson. It would be self-regulating, with a board of medical, pharmaceutical and patient representatives to hear complaints.
The TV pilot was welcomed by the European Patients' Forum. The forum, an umbrella group, is one of only two patient organisations admitted to the working group set up by the commission to discuss changes in the rules.
Although its executive director, Nicola Bedlington, said the pilot's "slightly sanctimonious and patronising" tone needed improvement, she and other patient representatives present approved it in principle.
Source: Guardian UK
http://www.guardian.co.uk/medicine/story/0,,2084391,00.html
Death by Medicine
By Gary Null, PhD; Carolyn Dean MD, ND; Martin Feldman, MD; Debora Rasio, MD; and Dorothy Smith, PhD
Natural medicine is under siege, as pharmaceutical company lobbyists urge lawmakers to deprive Americans of the benefits of dietary supplements. Drug-company front groups have launched slanderous media campaigns to discredit the value of healthy lifestyles. The FDA continues to interfere with those who offer natural products that compete with prescription drugs.
These attacks against natural medicine obscure a lethal problem that until now was buried in thousands of pages of scientific text. In response to these baseless challenges to natural medicine, the Nutrition Institute of America commissioned an independent review of the quality of “government-approved” medicine. The startling findings from this meticulous study indicate that conventional medicine is “the leading cause of death” in the United States .
The Nutrition Institute of America is a nonprofit organization that has sponsored independent research for the past 30 years. To support its bold claim that conventional medicine is America 's number-one killer, the Nutritional Institute of America mandated that every “count” in this “indictment” of US medicine be validated by published, peer-reviewed scientific studies.
What you are about to read is a stunning compilation of facts that documents that those who seek to abolish consumer access to natural therapies are misleading the public. Over 700,000 Americans die each year at the hands of government-sanctioned medicine, while the FDA and other government agencies pretend to protect the public by harassing those who offer safe alternatives.
A definitive review of medical peer-reviewed journals and government health statistics shows that American medicine frequently causes more harm than good.
Each year approximately 2.2 million US hospital patients experience adverse drug reactions (ADRs) to prescribed medications.(1) In 1995, Dr. Richard Besser of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimated the number of unnecessary antibiotics prescribed annually for viral infections to be 20 million; in 2003, Dr. Besser spoke in terms of tens of millions of unnecessary antibiotics prescribed annually.(2, 2a) Approximately 7.5 million unnecessary medical and surgical procedures are performed annually in the US,(3) while approximately 8.9 million Americans are hospitalized unnecessarily.(4)
As shown in the following table, the estimated total number of iatrogenic deaths—that is, deaths induced inadvertently by a physician or surgeon or by medical treatment or diagnostic procedures— in the US annually is 783,936. It is evident that the American medical system is itself the leading cause of death and injury in the US . By comparison, approximately 699,697 Americans died of heart in 2001, while 553,251 died of cancer.(5)
Table 1: Estimated Annual Mortality and Economic Cost of Medical Intervention
Condition
Deaths
Cost
Author
Adverse Drug Reactions
106,000
$12 billion
Lazarou(1), Suh (49)
Medical error
98,000
$2 billion
IOM(6)
Bedsores
115,000
$55 billion
Xakellis(7), Barczak (8)
Infection
88,000
$5 billion
Weinstein(9), MMWR (10)
Malnutrition
108,800
-----------
Nurses Coalition(11)
Outpatients
199,000
$77 billion
Starfield(12), Weingart(112)
Unnecessary Procedures
37,136
$122 billion
HCUP(3,13)
Surgery-Related
32,000
$9 billion
AHRQ(85)
Total 783,936
$282 billion
Fact or Fiction?: Vitamin Supplements Improve Your Health
May 17, 2007
Americans pour billions of dollars into supplements every year—an investment in health or money down the drain?
By Coco Ballantyne
Vita means "life" in Latin, and vitamins are essential for life. The World Health Organization calls them the "magic wands" used by the body to synthesize enzymes, hormones and other chemical necessities. Unable to create vitamins from scratch, the body must fetch them from outside sources—typically food. But do the pills many pop for health deliver the same benefits?
Humans need 13 vitamins to survive. Vitamins, also called "micronutrients" because they are required in minute quantities, can be grouped in two categories. There are those that dissolve in fat—A, D, E and K—and can accumulate in the body when consumed in excess. And there are those that are water soluble—C and B—which are easily excreted, as anyone who takes large quantities of vitamin C and riboflavin (B2) can testify. (Their urine is bright yellow or orange.)
The best way to get vitamins is through food, not vitamin pills, according to Susan Taylor Mayne, a professor at the Yale School of Public Health's Division of Chronic Disease Epidemiology. A major problem with supplements is that they deliver vitamins out of context, she says. The vitamins found in fruit, vegetables and other foods come with thousands of other phytochemicals, or plant nutrients that are not essential for life but may protect against cancer, cardiovascular disease, Alzheimer's disease and other chronic ailments. Carotenoids in carrots and tomatoes, isothiocyanates in broccoli and cabbage, and flavonoids in soy, cocoa and red wine are just a few examples.
The combined effect of all these vitamins and phytochemicals seems to have much greater power than one nutrient taken alone, Mayne explains. For example, lycopene—the carotenoid that gives tomatoes their red hue—has been associated with a lower risk for prostate cancer, causing many supplement makers to rush to market pills bearing this healthy stuff. But research suggests that taking it in supplement form does not confer the same benefit as eating tomatoes or tomato products, such as pasta sauce and ketchup, that preserve some of the tomatos chemical integrity.
A healthy diet is paramount, but is there ever a time for supplements? Meir Stampfer, professor of nutrition and epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston, recommends that healthy adults take a multivitamin and extra vitamin D, if they don't get a lot of sun. Taking more than the Institute of Medicine's recommended daily allowance (RDA) of certain vitamins may lower one's risk for certain chronic diseases, he says. For example, Stampfer's research suggests that men and women taking vitamin E supplements for years at a time have a lower risk for heart disease. "The evidence for benefit is weak," but there is also "good evidence for no harm" associated with taking 200, 400, or even 600 IUs (international units) per day, Stampfer explains. (The RDA levels for vitamin E are 22.5 IUs, or 15 milligrams, for men and women.)
Mayne disagrees, pointing to a recent meta-analysis suggesting that vitamin E supplementation increases mortality of all causes. "We can debate" whether this analysis shows that vitamin E supplements are harmful, she says, but "there certainly wasn't any benefit shown." With the possible exception of vitamin D, there is no need to consume more than the RDA of vitamins, Mayne contends. In fact, there is increasing evidence that excessive intake of certain micronutrients is deleterious.
Stampfer acknowledges that overdosing on certain vitamins can be dangerous. "The most common one to look out for is preformed [active form] … vitamin A. It does not take too much to get too much," he says. Try to avoid retinol, retinyl palmitate and retinyl acetate, which may increase the risk of hip fracture and certain birth defects when taken at levels exceeding 10,000 IUs.
But Mayne and Stampfer both agree that more randomized clinical trials are needed to determine the health effects of vitamin supplements—and that such supplements are critical for certain people. Many African-Americans and people living in sun-deprived areas are vitamin D–deficient and could benefit from supplements, Mayne explains. Pregnant women, and even women who might want to get pregnant, should be taking folic acid supplements to help prevent serious birth defects in their babies. People over 50 years of age can benefit from B12 supplementation because absorption of this vitamin in the digestive tract becomes less efficient with age, says Roberta Anding, spokeswoman for the American Dietetic Association. Finally, HIV-positive patients should take multivitamins to boost immunity and slow the rate of disease progression, says Wafaie Fawzi, professor of nutrition and epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health.
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Perfect Day Of Eating
15/05/2007 3:06:00 AM
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Packed with protein, loaded with fiber, and older than Peru, quinoa is one of the most nutritious foods on the planet
By Matt Goulding
Francisco Pizarro might have known a thing or two about New World conquest, but he would have made a lousy nutritionist. After toppling the Incan empire in 1532, the Spanish conquistador filled his ships with potatoes and corn destining them to become major players in the European diet while leaving a third crop to wither. Turns out, the fields Pizarro neglected to harvest were filled with the world's most nutritious grain: quinoa [pronounced KEEN-wah].
"Quinoa is a true wonder food," says Daniel Fairbanks, Ph.D., a professor of plant and animal science at Brigham Young University. "It has about twice the protein of regular cereal grains, fewer carbohydrates, and even a dose of healthy fats." Plus, it's considered a "complete" protein, which means that, like meat, eggs, and dairy, it packs all of the essential amino acids your body needs to build muscle.
Unfortunately, not much has changed in the almost 500 years since Pizarro pillaged the Incas. More than ever, nutritionally inferior foods, such as corn, potatoes, rice, and wheat especially the refined versions fill our plates, while quinoa gathers dust on grocery-store shelves. And that's a shame, because besides being great for you, quinoa is the rare culinary triple threat: delicious, easy to prepare, and ultra-versatile. Ready to harness the full power of this superfood? Here's everything you need to know to make it a staple at breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
The User's Guide to Quinoa
Quinoa has an addictive nutty flavor, cooks up quicker than rice, and can be used to make pilafs, risottos, salads, soups, and even desserts. The downside: Few men know where to find it, let alone how to prepare it. Typically, you can locate quinoa in the rice aisle or the health-food section of your grocery store. You can also stock up at edenfoods.com.
As for preparation, the simplest way is to cook quinoa like pasta: Fill a large pot or saucepan with water, and bring it to a boil. Add just about any amount of quinoa, turn the heat to low, and cook until tender, about 20 minutes. Drain the water and allow the quinoa to cool.
Cook up a big batch and store it in Tupperware in your refrigerator, and you'll have a ready-to-eat side dish like rice or pasta that goes with just about any meal. (To warm, microwave it for 60 seconds.) Or you can be far more creative. For instance, quinoa can be used to...
Power up your breakfast: Combine a cup of cooked quinoa with ½ cup milk and ½ cup frozen blueberries, and microwave for 60 seconds. This makes a great alternative to oatmeal.
Redefine dessert: In a blender, puree two very ripe bananas with 2 cups whole milk. Combine the mix with 2 cups cooked quinoa, ½ cup raisins, a tablespoon of sugar, and a teaspoon of cinnamon, and simmer for 10 minutes. If you're celebrating, add a glug of dark rum at the last second. Creamy and sweet, it's a healthier version of rice pudding.
Even better, use the recipes and variations that follow and you can turn this simple grain into more than a dozen dishes.
Quinoa as a Salad
1 cup uncooked quinoa
8 asparagus spears
2 oz crumbled goat cheese or feta
¼ cup green olives, pitted and coarsely chopped
4 Tbsp chopped sun-dried tomatoes
½ Tbsp olive oil + a drizzle for the asparagus
1 Tbsp balsamic or red-wine vinegar
Salt and pepper to taste
1. Preheat the oven to 400°F.
2. Boil the quinoa according to the instructions on the previous page.
3. While the quinoa cooks, prep the asparagus. Remove the woody ends by gently bending each spear until it breaks it'll naturally snap off at the right place. Lay the spears on a cookie sheet or baking pan and drizzle with the olive oil and a pinch of salt. Place in the oven and roast for 10 minutes.
4. Chop the asparagus into bite-size pieces and add to the quinoa, along with the cheese, olives, sun-dried tomatoes, oil, and vinegar. Season with salt and pepper to taste.
Makes 4 servings; great with grilled pork tenderloin or roast chicken.
Per serving: 238 calories, 9 grams (g) protein, 34 g carbohydrates, 7 g fat (2 g saturated), 4.5 g fiber, 290 mg sodium
Change It Up
Try mixing the cooked quinoa with any of the following combos:
A sliced avocado, the segments of one grapefruit, a handful of chopped green onions, and the juice of half a lime. Goes great with grilled fish.
Half a cup of dried cranberries, ¼ cup chopped walnuts, 2 Tbsp crumbled blue cheese, and 1 Tbsp each balsamic vinegar and olive oil.
Two cups of baby spinach or arugula, 8 oz grilled chicken, and ¼ cup roasted red peppers.
...as a Stuffing
½ cup uncooked quinoa
1 tsp olive oil
½ yellow onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 roma tomatoes, seeded and chopped
6 oz shrimp, peeled and deveined
½ cup canned black beans, drained and rinsed
½ tsp cumin
Handful chopped fresh cilantro
Salt and pepper to taste
2 red bell peppers
1. Cook the quinoa according to the instructions on the previous page.
2. While the quinoa simmers, heat the olive oil in a sauté pan over medium heat, and add the onion, garlic, and tomato. Cook the mixture until the tomato is soft and the onion is translucent, about 3 minutes. Add the shrimp, black beans, and cumin, and cook for another 3 minutes, until the shrimp is just pink and firm. Add the cooked quinoa and cilantro, stir to blend, and turn off the heat. Season to taste with salt and pepper.
3. Preheat the oven to 400°F.
4. Cut the tops off the peppers and remove the seeds. Stuff each with half of the mixture, place them in a baking pan, and cook in the oven for 15 minutes.
Makes 2 servings
Per serving: 375 calories, 28 g protein, 52 g carbohydrates, 7 g fat (1 g saturated), 10 g fiber, 291 mg sodium
Change It Up
Replace the shrimp, cumin, and cilantro with two links of chicken sausage and a 6 oz jar of marinated artichoke hearts.
Replace the shrimp with 8 oz lean ground beef or ground turkey.
Go Greek: Trade the shrimp, cilantro, cumin, and black beans for lean ground beef, a cup of frozen spinach, and ½ cup of crumbled feta cheese.
...as a Risotto
1 tsp olive oil
1 medium yellow onion, diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 cup uncooked quinoa
3 cups low-sodium chicken stock
¼ cup fresh or frozen peas
2 oz prosciutto, cut in thin strips
Salt and pepper to taste
Parmesan cheese for grating
1. Heat the olive oil in a medium sauté pan or saucepan over medium heat, and add the onion and garlic. Cook until the onions are translucent and the garlic is lightly browned, about 3 minutes.
2. Add the quinoa and cook for another 3 minutes. Add 1 cup of the chicken stock, using a wooden spoon to occasionally stir the grains. When the liquid is mostly absorbed (about 10 minutes), add the remaining chicken stock. Continue cooking and stirring until the quinoa is tender (but not mushy) and most of the liquid has evaporated; the risotto should be moist, not soupy. At the last minute, add the peas and prosciutto. Stir until warmed through.
3. Remove from the heat, and season to taste with salt and pepper. Before serving, grate a bit of Parmesan over each portion.
Makes 4 servings as a side dish, or 2 as a main course
Per serving: 252 calories, 15 g protein, 34 g carbohydrates, 6 g fat (1 g saturated), 3 g fiber, 372 mg sodium
Change It Up
Replace the peas and prosciutto with a cup of shredded rotisserie chicken (or leftover grilled chicken), a cup of cherry tomatoes, and a handful of chopped fresh basil.
Add ½ pound sliced mushrooms to the pan with the onion and garlic. Before adding the stock, add ½ cup of red wine to the pan. Peas and prosciutto are optional.
Replace the peas and prosciutto with ½ cup canned pumpkin puree. Stir in a handful of chopped fresh sage a few seconds before you remove the pan from the heat. Goes great with pork tenderloin.
From the Field to Flour
When you eat quinoa, you can see that you're truly eating a "whole" grain. (Quinoa is really a seed, but it acts more like a grain.) But did you ever wonder how far removed a piece of bread is from a kernel of wheat? Here's an insider's look, courtesy of Kendall McFall, a flour-milling instructor at Kansas State University.
Step 1. A combine harvests the wheat and removes the whole-grain kernels from the stalks. The kernels are then transported to the mill.
Step 2. At the mill, corrugated rollers break open the kernel and scrape the carb-loaded endosperm away from the bran the high-fiber outer husk and the vitamin-rich germ.
Step 3. After the rollers pulverize all parts of the grain kernel, they're fed through sifters, which separate the larger bran and germ particles from the endosperm.
Step 4. The bran and germ are routed into different machines for further processing while rollers smooth the remaining endosperm fragments into a fine powder, or flour.
For Refined Flour
Step 5A. The endosperm flour is enriched as mandated by federal law with thiamine, niacin, riboflavin, folic acid, and iron. The flour may also be bleached at this point.
For Whole-Wheat Flour
Step 5B. The powdered endosperm, bran, and germ particles are combined in the same proportion as was present in the whole kernel to create whole-wheat flour. It is not enriched.
Step 6. The flour is packaged and ready to be made into bread.
Deserted beehives, starving young stun scientists
By Dan Vergano and Patrick O'Driscoll, USA TODAY
Tue May 1, 7:08 AM ET
"The bees were gone," David Hackenberg says. "The honey was still there. There's young brood (eggs) still in the hive. Bees just don't do that."
On that November night last year in the Florida field where he wintered his bees, Hackenberg found 400 hives empty. Another 30 hives were "disappearing, dwindling or whatever you want to call it," and their bees were "full of a fungus nobody's ever seen before."
The discovery by Hackenberg, 58, a beekeeper from Lewisburg, Pa., was the first buzz about a plague that now afflicts 27 states, from the East Coast to the West. Beekeepers report losses of 30% to 90% of their honeybee hives, according to a Congressional Research Service study in March. Some report total losses.
Now a nationwide investigation, congressional panels and last week's U.S. Department of Agriculture scientific workshop swarm around the newly named "colony collapse disorder." Says the USDA's Kevin Hackett, "With more dead and weakened colonies, the odds are building up for real problems."
Busy bees
The $15-billion-a-year honeybee industry is about more than honey: The nimble insects pollinate 90% to 100% of at least 19 kinds of fruits, vegetables and nuts nationwide, from almonds and apples to onions and broccoli.
"Basically, everything fun and nutritious on your table - fruits, nuts, berries, everything but the grains - require bee pollinators," Hackett says.
Beekeepers, who travel nationwide supplying pollinators to farmers, have been losing honeybees for a long time, mostly a result of suburbs snapping up habitat and the invasion in the 1980s of two foreign parasitic mite species. As a result, bee colonies have declined 60% since 1947, from an estimated 5.9 million to 2.4 million, says entomologist May Berenbaum of the University of Illinois.
Each year, in fact, the bee industry supplies at least 1 million queens and packages of bees to replace lost hives, according to a 2006 National Research Council report. And sudden losses of hives have been reported since the 1800s.
But colony collapse disorder differs from past outbreaks:
•Instead of dying in place, the bees abandon the hives, leaving behind the queen and young bees.
•Remaining bees eat sparsely and suffer the symptoms - high levels of bacteria, viruses and fungi in the guts - seen by Hackenberg.
•Collapses can occur within two days, Hackett says.
•Parasites wait unusually long to invade abandoned hives.
Daniel Weaver, head of the 1,500-member American Beekeeping Federation, estimates that about 600,000 of 2 million hives (a more conservative number than other estimates) nationwide have been lost.
Weaver, of Navasota, Texas, says his hives have been spared the mystery affliction so far. "But if we go into another winter without understanding what's going on, the risk of a more devastating effect on beekeepers is a real possibility," he says.
Fittingly, in The Cherry Orchard, physician/playwright Anton Chekhov observed that when people offer many remedies for an illness, you can be sure it is incurable.
If so, the bees are in trouble. A colony collapse disorder working group based at Pennsylvania State University has become a central clearinghouse for all the suspected causes, which include:
•An overload of parasites, such as bloodsucking varroa mites, that have ravaged bees. The parasites reportedly spread to Hawaii only last week.
•Pesticide contamination. Hotly debated suspicion centers on whether "neonicotinoid" insecticides interfere with the foraging behavior of bees, leading them to abandon their hives.
•Fungal diseases such as Nosema ceranae, which is blamed for big bee losses in Spain. It was spotted by University of California-San Francisco researchers who were examining sample dead bees last week.
•The rigors of traveling in trucks from crop to crop.
A complex problem
"We may have a perfect storm of many problems combining to kill the bees," Hackett says. And bees are social animals, who cue each other through "bee dances" to find food. "Something could be just disrupting bee society and causing the problem. That's very difficult to tease out."
Weaver says the beekeeper federation is "bombarded with lots of interesting theories," including "far-fetched ideas like cellphones," the notion that radio waves from mobile phones are zapping the bees' direction-sensing abilities.
"But right now there's not a lot of evidence to support any of these theories," Weaver says. "We think science is the only way to get to the bottom of this."
The USDA spends about $9 million a year on bee research, Hackett says, about half of it focused on breeding bees resistant to mites. California is undertaking a five-year, $5 million project to examine insecticides, hive care and transport as well, he says.
Weaver says researchers need perhaps $50 million over the next five years to cover studies, deeper analysis of the "leading suspects" and a national surveillance system.
"Creating healthier bees, with a good diet, better able to fight disease is the best thing we can do right now," Hackett says. Otherwise, "when you sit down to dinner, the question will be what sort of grain do you want - corn or wheat or rice - because that's about all the choice we'll have left."
Another thought, someone might have gotten the idea after hearing about the ecoli deaths from spinach and peanut butter we had a couple months ago.... Having both of these foods recalled put a damper on my life for a while as they were both a big part of my diet. But now, I'm a little weiry about it.
It is definitely possible that this was a diverted way to get to the human population of the United States. Maybe they thought that if they went through our live stock and pets undetected that eventually the human population would decrease or become weak enough that our defenses wouldn't be as strong and then be able to attack without a huge struggle... Just a thought.
Melamine Filler in Animal
Feed Is Open Secret in China
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/30/business/worldbusiness/30food.html
>>
April 30, 2007
By DAVID BARBOZA and ALEXEI BARRIONUEVO
ZHANGQIU, China, April 28 — As American food safety regulators head to China to investigate how a chemical made from coal found its way into pet food that killed dogs and cats in the United States, workers in this heavily polluted northern city openly admit that the substance is routinely added to animal feed as a fake protein.
For years, producers of animal feed all over China have secretly supplemented their feed with the substance, called melamine, a cheap additive that looks like protein in tests, even though it does not provide any nutritional benefits, according to melamine scrap traders and agricultural workers here.
“Many companies buy melamine scrap to make animal feed, such as fish feed,” said Ji Denghui, general manager of the Fujian Sanming Dinghui Chemical Company, which sells melamine. “I don’t know if there’s a regulation on it. Probably not. No law or regulation says ‘don’t do it,’ so everyone’s doing it. The laws in China are like that, aren’t they? If there’s no accident, there won’t be any regulation.”
Melamine is at the center of a recall of 60 million packages of pet food, after the chemical was found in wheat gluten linked this month to the deaths of at least 16 pets and the illness of possibly thousands of pets in the United States.
No one knows exactly how melamine (which is not believed to be particularly toxic) became so fatal in pet food, but its presence in any form of American food is illegal.
The link to China has set off concerns among critics of the Food and Drug Administration that ingredients in pet food as well as human food, which are increasingly coming from abroad, are not being adequately screened.
“They have fewer people inspecting product at the ports than ever before,” says Caroline Smith DeWaal, the director of food safety for the Center for Science in the Public Interest in Washington. “Until China gets programs in place to verify the safety of their products, they need to be inspected by U.S. inspectors. This open-door policy on food ingredients is an open invitation for an attack on the food supply, either intentional or unintentional.”
Etc.
<<
FDA asks if pet food tainted on purpose
By ANDREW BRIDGES, Associated Press WriterFri Apr 20, 1:24 AM ET
Imported ingredients used in recalled pet food may have been intentionally spiked with an industrial chemical to boost their apparent protein content, federal officials said Thursday.
That's one theory being pursued by the Food and Drug Administration as it investigates how the chemical, melamine, contaminated at least two ingredients used to make more than 100 brands of dog and cat foods.
In California, state agriculture officials placed a hog farm under quarantine after melamine was found in pig urine there. Additional testing was under way to determine whether the chemical was present in the meat produced by American Hog Farm in Ceres since April 3, the state Department of Food and Agriculture said.
So far, melamine's been found in both wheat gluten and rice protein concentrate imported from China. Media reports from South Africa suggest a third pet food ingredient, corn gluten, used in that country also was contaminated with melamine. That tainted ingredient has not been found in the United States, the FDA said. [But it may have gotten into food supplies meant for humans, according to other news reports.]
FDA investigators were awaiting visas that would allow them to visit the Chinese plants where the vegetable protein ingredients were produced.
"Melamine was found in all three of those — it would certainly lend credibility to the theory that it may be intentional. That will be one of the theories we will pursue when we get into the plants in China," Stephen Sundlof, the FDA's chief veterinarian, told reporters.
Chinese authorities have told the FDA that the wheat gluten was an industrial product not meant for pet food, Sundlof said. Still, melamine can skew test results to make a product appear more protein-rich than it really is, he added. That raises the possibility the contamination was deliberate.
"What we expect to do with our inspections in China will answer some of those questions," said Michael Rogers (news, bio, voting record), director of the division of field investigations within the FDA's office of regulatory affairs.
Wilbur-Ellis Co., the U.S. importer of the tainted rice protein, said Thursday it was recalling all the ingredient it had distributed to five U.S. pet food manufacturers. The San Francisco company in turn urged its customers to recall any products that may be on store shelves.
So far, just two of those companies have done so: Natural Balance Pet Foods and Blue Buffalo Co.
Natural Balance, of Pacoima, Calif., announced a limited recall Monday of its Venison and Brown Rice canned and bagged dog foods, Venison and Brown Rice dog treats and Venison and Green Pea dry cat food.
Blue Buffalo, of Wilton, Conn., followed Thursday by recalling 5,044 bags of its Spa Select Kitten dry food. The company intercepted most of the kitten food before it reached distribution centers, company co-founder Billy Bishop said.
FDA officials would not release the names of the other two manufacturers that Wilbur-Ellis supplied, citing its ongoing investigation.
The FDA could not provide updated numbers of pet deaths or injuries due to the contaminated pet food. The agency has received more than 15,000 calls since the first recall was announced more than a month ago.
The FDA and Agriculture Department also were investigating whether some pet food made by one of the five companies supplied by Wilbur-Ellis was diverted for use as hog feed after it was found unsuitable for pet consumption.
"We understand it did make it into some hog feed and we are following up on that as well," Sundlof said.
Later Thursday, California officials said they believe the melamine at the quarantined hog farm came from rice protein concentrate imported from China by Diamond Pet Food's Lathrop facility, which produces products under the Natural Balance brand and sold salvage pet food to the farm for pig feed.
"Although all animals appear healthy, we are taking this action out of an abundance of caution," State Veterinarian Richard Breitmeyer said in a statement. "It is unknown if the chemical will be detected in meat."
Officials were investigating American Hog Farm's sales records to determine who may be affected by the quarantine, said Steve Lyle, a spokesman for the California Department of Food and Agriculture. The 1,500-animal farm operates as a "custom slaughterhouse," which means it generally does not supply meat to commercial outlets.
"Mostly it is not so-called mainstream pork. This is an operation that sells to folks who come in and want a whole pig," said Lyle said.
Officials urged those who purchased pigs from American Hog Farm since April 3 to not consume the product until further notice.
Dr. Mark Horton, state public health officer, said so far "evidence suggests a minimal health risk to persons who may have consumed pork" from the farm.
A man who answered the phone for American Hog Farm late Thursday declined to comment and referred calls to state officials. Phone calls to Diamond Pet Food's Lathrop facility and Meta, Mo., headquarters were not immediately returned.
___
On the Net:
Food and Drug Administration pet food recall info:
http://www.fda.gov/oc/opacom/hottopics/petfood.html
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070420/ap_on_he_me/pet_food_recall
The Sordid History of Monsanto Poisoning Your Milk
http://v.mercola.com/blogs/public_blog/The-Sordid-History-of-Monsanto-Poisoning-Our-Milk-8494.aspx
There is a crisis in health freedom, please read
On April 30, 2007 the FDA will close the public comment period on a "Guidance" which will classify every alternative practice as medicine so that only licensed physicians can carry out the procedure AND vitamins, minerals, herbs, etc., will suddenly become "untested drugs" which will be forbidden.
Bad? Real Bad! But public outcry can stop this assault on your health and your freedom.
Spread the word! Tell everyone in your Circle of Influence, professionals, alternative practitioners, nutrient and herb companies, everyone! Let them know how important their participation is to make sure the FDA backs off from this repressive course.
Please share this link with them and urge them to take action: http://tinyurl.com/2u7ghc
Yours in health and freedom,
Rima E. Laibow, MD
Medical Director
Natural Solutions Foundation
www.HealthFreedomUSA.org
Chocolate improves blood vessel function: study
March 24, 2007 02:59:26 PM PST
Chocoholics were given further reason to rejoice on Saturday when a small clinical study showed that dark chocolate improves the function of blood vessels.
While the researchers cautioned against bingeing on bon bons, they said the findings of the trial were clear and called for larger such studies to confirm the results.
"In this sample of healthy adults, dark chocolate ingestion over a short period of time was shown to significantly improve (blood vessel) function," said Dr. Valentine Yanchou Njike of Yale Prevention Research Center, a co-investigator of the study.
The results, presented at the annual American College of Cardiology scientific meeting in New Orleans, add to mounting evidence of the health benefits of dark chocolate.
During the six-week trial, 45 people were given 8 ounces (227 grams) of cocoa without sugar, cocoa with sugar or a placebo each day.
An upper arm artery's ability to relax and expand to accommodate increased blood flow -- known as flow mediated dilation (FMD) -- was measured using high-frequency ultrasound before and after daily cocoa or placebo consumption.
Of the 39 subjects who completed the trial, FMD improved significantly in both cocoa groups -- by 2.4 percent among those who had it without sugar and 1.5 percent among those who had it with sugar. It dropped 0.8 percent in the placebo group.
"While the findings from this study do not suggest that people should start eating more chocolate as part of their daily routine, it does suggest that we pay more attention to how dark chocolate and other flavonoid-rich foods might offer cardiovascular benefits," Njike said.
http://health.yahoo.com/news/173386
Dubi
Every Pregnant Woman Needs to Know This
http://v.mercola.com/QA/Every-Pregnant-Woman-Needs-to-Know-This-2407.aspx
Lens Solution Mix-Up: A Flight for Sore Eyes
[Ouch!]
By Sandra G. Boodman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, March 20, 2007; HE07
Two patients who recently called Chevy Chase ophthalmologist Howard Weiss recounted similar experiences: Each had transferred contact lens solution into a small plastic bottle in compliance with the federal regulation limiting liquids and gels carried onto airplanes.
But the product each woman then squirted onto her lens wasn't saline solution. It was perfume in one case, hairspray in the other. Both women immediately suffered severe and painful corneal burns when they put the lenses into their eyes. They have since recovered, Weiss said.
To Weiss, the cases highlight what he and other eye doctors suspect is a growing and potentially dangerous practice among airline passengers: Pouring sterile contact lens solution into smaller bottles to comply with rules imposed by the Transportation Security Administration in August. (The limitation on liquids and gels applies only to carry-on luggage, not to checked baggage.)
"Don't do it," advised Weiss, who noted that it compromises the sterility of the product and leaves consumers open to self-inflicted mishaps.
Radio talk show host Diane Rehm, who accidentally sprayed perfume on her contact lens during a recent trip to Oklahoma City, has said that she labeled the identical three-ounce tinted plastic bottles to show they held different solutions but that the labels became blurred and hard to read -- especially without her lenses in.
"Anyone who treats injuries sees a steady stream of these kinds of cases," said Marguerite McDonald, a spokeswoman for the American Academy of Ophthalmology and a clinical professor at Tulane School of Medicine.
McDonald, a corneal specialist, said she once accidentally put super glue in her eye in a dark movie theater thinking it was eyedrops because the bottles were a similar size and shape.
"That's the problem," said McDonald, who carries "everything" in her purse, including the glue she uses to fix broken high heels.
TSA spokeswoman Amy Kudwa said that her agency is unaware of accidents other than Rehm's, which received media attention. "In most travel aisles you can find three-ounce or smaller" bottles of contact lens solution, she said. Consumers, she added, should buy and use them.
And no one should transfer lens solution from a big bottle, McDonald said, because that invariably contaminates the solution, which is prepared and bottled under sterile conditions.
"Anyone who does that is asking for trouble," she said, and is at greater risk of developing infectious keratitis, an infection that can cause blindness.
"It's okay to transfer your shampoo, your conditioner, your perfume," she said. "But never an eye-care product." ?
Comments:boodmans@washpost.com.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/16/AR2007031602100.html
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