Stupid Brits to jump on the folic acid bandwagon. Who cares if it gives people bowel cancer?

Because America does it, it must be OK, seems to be their reasoning. The article below says that the experts have found no evidence of harm from folates. They were not looking very hard. I can find plenty and I am only a desultory reader of the relevant literature. Note this recent expert comment about folates and bowel cancer:

"Other reasonable hypotheses about one-carbon metabolism and colorectal carcinogenesis, based on our current understanding of the biochemistry and underlying mechanisms, have also not been proven correct. In a recently published placebo-controlled randomized clinical trial among 1021 men and women with a recent history of colorectal adenoma, supplemental folic acid at 1 mg/d for up to 6 years did not reduce the incidence of subsequent colorectal adenomas and might have increased it."

WHOA! The folate that Americans get compulsorily added to their bread did no good and seems to have done harm?? And do we see a double blind controlled study contradicting epidemiological inferences?? Who would have believed it! They go on to admit that two animal studies have shown that folate INCREASES cancer. Aren't you glad that your government is dosing you up with the stuff and giving you no say in the matter?

The addition of folate to our bread is more and more looking like an iatrogenic disaster to come. I think I should note once again that a folate expert has reported that the addition of folate to bread seems to have caused an upsurge in bowel cancer among Americans.

Bread should be fortified with folic acid by law to cut the risk of birth defects, the Food Standards Agency decided yesterday. The FSA board, which was split on the issue when it was last discussed in 2002, decided unanimously to back a recommendation from its scientific advisers for mandatory fortification of flour or bread, whichever is the more practicable.

In the US, Canada and several other countries, mandatory fortification has already cut sharply birth defects such as spina bifida. But Britain has hung back because of doubts about possible side-effects, and fear that "compulsory medication" would cause a public outcry.

The recommendation will now go to ministers, who will decide whether to implement it. If they do they could face opposition in the House of Commons but will be able to cite a mass of evidence gathered by the FSA.

The mandatory fortification of bread would include regular white and brown bread, but not wholemeal, enabling objectors to opt out. It would also be accompanied by controls on food that are already fortified voluntarily by manufacturers, such as some breakfast cereals, to avoid any possibility of an overdose.

The FSA board was given a range of options to consider, including the present policy of advising women planning pregnancies to take folic acid supplements. But half of pregnancies are unplanned, and the advice does not reach women in lower social classes whose diets are the most likely to be deficient. It has had relatively little effect.

The levels of fortification recommended by the FSA are 300 micrograms per 100 grams of flour, which it estimates will increase the average intake of the UK population by 78 micrograms a day. That should cut the incidence of neural tube defects by between 11 and 18 per cent, or between 77 and 162 cases a year. Greater reductions than this have been achieved abroad, and range from 27 to 50 per cent. But direct comparisons are difficult because they depend on the level of folic acid in the diet of each country before fortification began, and on eating patterns. The US achieved much greater increases in folic acid intake, probably because the amounts added to food exceeded the recommendations.

Dame Deirdre Hutton, chair of the FSA, told the board meeting in Nottingham that she supported the measure. "I don't believe it is the ultimate solution. I believe it is the best pragmatic solution we can get," she said.

The FSA board wants further advice on how folic acid can be added to bread without affecting cakes or biscuits. It called for more debate on how products fortified with folic acid should be labelled. Andrew Russell, the chief executive of the Association for Spina Bifida and Hydrocephalus, said: "We are delighted that the FSA board has taken the decision to recommend mandatory flour fortification to ministers. "It is a rare opportunity to benefit from a vitamin, and significantly improve public health. Now that the science has been listened to, we look to health ministers to speedily implement this life-saving measure." Between 700 and 900 pregnancies per year in the UK are affected by neural tube defects (NTDs) such as spina bifida. The majority are terminated when the defects are detected in antenatal checks.

The FSA estimated that the cost of NTDs was 136 million pounds a year, of which the greatest cost was in treating babies who died soon after birth. Of the 800 affected pregnancies each year, 110 end in stillbirths or deaths early in life; 79 in births of children who require treatment but have good life expectancy, and 611 in terminations.

The FSA's decision is in stark contrast to that of 2002, when the measure was rejected. The fear then was that fortifying flour with folic acid would conceal vitamin B12 deficiencies in older people, leading them to medical problems. The unknown effect of excessive folic acid consumption on cancer risk also caused concern. Since then, the US has found no evidence of harm.

Source





'Magic bullet' devised to beat cancer

Sounds interesting

A new targeted therapy against cancer has shown impressive results in animal experiments. By using a beam of ultraviolet light to activate antibodies inside the tumour, a team at Newcastle University has created "magic bullets" that can use the body's immune system to destroy tumours while leaving healthy tissue unharmed.

They use antibodies - the body's own natural defences - that are injected into the tumour. But before injection, the antibodies are "cloaked" by attaching them to an organic oil that renders them ineffective. Once in place, a beam of ultraviolet light breaks up the cloaking chemical, bringing the antibody back to life. The antibody then binds to T-cells, the body's defence system, and triggers them to target the surrounding tissue.

Antibodies are the big growth area in cancer therapy. Drugs such as Avastin and Herceptin have shown good results in shrinking tumours, and 20 antibody drugs have so far been licensed, with many more in the pipeline. But targeting them precisely and avoiding damage to surrounding healthy tissue have proved stumbling blocks. The team, led by Colin Self, believes that its technique could reduce or eliminate these problems.

Two papers published today in the journal ChemMedChem report that in a small animal trial, the technique elimated ovarian cancers in five out of six mice, and greatly reduced the tumour's size in the sixth mouse.

The body is not very effective at using its own defences to fight cancer, possibly because it fails to recognise the tumours as a threat. The aim of the technique is to activate the killer T-cells to attack cancer cells and destroy them.

There are risks in activating T-cells, as the failed human trial last year at Northwick Park Hospital in Harrow proved. In that trial, an experimental antibody treatment called TGN1412 caused such a huge response that six healthy human volunteers suffered serious injuries as their activated T-cells attacked almost every organ in their bodies.

The trial showed just how powerful boosting the T-cell response can be. The Newcastle technique ought to avoid these dangers because the T-cell response will be local - inside the cancer - and not general.

However, the process will require extensive testing in animals and human trials before it has any chance of reaching a cancer clinic. David Glover, an expert in antibody technology and in drug trials, estimated yesterday that even if all went well it would be a decade before such a product could reach the market.

Light-activated therapies have achieved some success against cancers, particularly skin cancers, but have been used previously to activate chemotherapy drugs, not T-cells. There are some limitations, as light cannot always reach internal tumours very easily. But Professsor Self suggested yesterday that in an operation to cut out a prostate tumour, for example, the method could be used at the end of the operation to destroy any remaining tumour cells that the surgeon had been unable to remove, and hence prevent recurrence.

The method offers a further refinement, in which the cloaked antibody is linked to a second antibody directed against the tumour in a "double whammy". When uncloaked, it recruits T-cells to attack the tumour at the same time as the antitumour antibody also attacks it.

Professor Self said yesterday that his team had "very exciting" new results that confirmed the findings and that he was raising money for a human trial. This will be aimed at treating secondary skin cancers in patients who are already suffering cancers of the internal organs. The aim will not be to cure them, but simply to see if the skin cancers can be controlled, as a proof that the technique works in human beings.

Professor Self said: "I would describe this development as the equivalent of ultra-specific magic bullets. This could mean that a patient coming in for treatment of bladder cancer would receive an injection of the cloaked antibodies. She would sit in the waiting room for an hour and then come back in for treatment by light. Just a few minutes of the light therapy directed at the region of the tumour would activate the T-cells causing her body's own immune system to attack the tumour.
"While our work indicates that sunlight doesn't activate these antibodies, patients may have to be advised to avoid direct sunlight for a short time."

BioTransformations Ltd, the company set up by Professor Self to develop the technology, hopes to begin clinical trials on patients with secondary skin cancers early next year.

Source

****************

Just some problems with the "Obesity" war:

1). It tries to impose behavior change on everybody -- when most of those targeted are not obese and hence have no reason to change their behaviour. It is a form of punishing the innocent and the guilty alike. (It is also typical of Leftist thinking: Scorning the individual and capable of dealing with large groups only).

2). The longevity research all leads to the conclusion that it is people of MIDDLING weight who live longest -- not slim people. So the "epidemic" of obesity is in fact largely an "epidemic" of living longer.

3). It is total calorie intake that makes you fat -- not where you get your calories. Policies that attack only the source of the calories (e.g. "junk food") without addressing total calorie intake are hence pissing into the wind. People involuntarily deprived of their preferred calorie intake from one source are highly likely to seek and find their calories elsewhere.

4). So-called junk food is perfectly nutritious. A big Mac meal comprises meat, bread, salad and potatoes -- which is a mainstream Western diet. If that is bad then we are all in big trouble.

5). Food warriors demonize salt and fat. But we need a daily salt intake to counter salt-loss through perspiration and the research shows that people on salt-restricted diets die SOONER. And Eskimos eat huge amounts of fat with no apparent ill-effects. And the average home-cooked roast dinner has LOTS of fat. Will we ban roast dinners?

6). The foods restricted are often no more calorific than those permitted -- such as milk and fruit-juice drinks.

7). Tendency to weight is mostly genetic and is therefore not readily susceptible to voluntary behaviour change.

8). And when are we going to ban cheese? Cheese is a concentrated calorie bomb and has lots of that wicked animal fat in it too. Wouldn't we all be better off without it? And what about butter and margarine? They are just about pure fat. Surely they should be treated as contraband in kids' lunchboxes! [/sarcasm].

And will "this generation of Western children be the first in history to lead shorter lives than their parents did"? This idea emanates from a much-cited editorial in a prominent medical journal that said so. Yet this editorial offered no statistical basis for its opinion -- an opinion that flies directly in the face of the available evidence.

*********************

DOES GAINING WEIGHT GIVE WOMEN BREAST CANCER?

There are many articles just out which say that it does (e.g. here). They are all based on the study abstracted below. What the study in fact shows is that old ladies who say that they were once slim have more breast cancer. A rather different story, What? There is no objective data about fat in the article at all. Any interpretation is mere speculation. The fact that fat women overall get LESS breast cancer is glided over. If we were to take the findings below seriously, I think we would have to say to women: "Get fat while young to avoid breast cancer"! Excuse me while I laugh!

Adiposity, Adult Weight Change, and Postmenopausal Breast Cancer Risk

By Jiyoung Ahn et al.

Background: Obesity is a risk factor for postmenopausal breast cancer, but the role of the timing and amount of adult weight change in breast cancer risk is unclear.

Methods: We prospectively examined the relations of adiposity and adult weight change to breast cancer risk among 99 039 postmenopausal women in the National Institutes of Health-AARP Diet and Health Study. Anthropometry was assessed by self-report in 1996. Through 2000, 2111 incident breast cancer cases were ascertained.

Results: Current body mass index (BMI) (calculated as weight in kilograms divided by height in meters squared), BMI at ages 50 and 35 years, and waist-hip ratio were associated with increased breast cancer risk, particularly in women not using menopausal hormone therapy (MHT). Weight gained between age 18 years and the current age, between ages 18 and 35 years, between ages 35 and 50 years, and between age 50 years and the current age was consistently associated with increased breast cancer risk in MHT nonusers (relative risk [RR], 2.15; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.35-3.42 for a ~ 50-kg weight gain between age 18 years and the current age vs stable weight) but not in current MHT users. Risk associated with adult weight change was stronger in women with later vs earlier age at menarche (RR, 4.20; 95% CI, 2.05-8.64 for ~15 years vs RR, 1.51; 95% CI, 1.11-2.06 for 11-12 years; P = .007 for interaction). In MHT nonusers, the associations with current BMI and adult weight change were stronger for advanced disease than for nonadvanced disease (P = .009 [current BMI] and .21 [weight gain] for heterogeneity) and were stronger for hormone receptor-positive than hormone receptor-negative tumors (P < .001 for heterogeneity).

Conclusion: Weight gain throughout adulthood is associated with increased postmenopausal breast cancer risk in MHT nonusers.

Arch Intern Med. 2007;167:2091-2102




AN ASPIRIN THEORY BITES THE DUST

Cochrane review abstract below. It was another great theory but reality is pesky, as it often is

Low-dose aspirin for in vitro fertilisation

By VJ Poustie et al

Background: Low-dose aspirin is sometimes used to improve the outcome in women undergoing in vitro fertilisation, despite inconsistent evidence of efficacy and the potential risk of significant side affects. The most appropriate time to commence aspirin therapy and length of treatment required is also still to be determined.

Objectives: To determine the effectiveness of low-dose aspirin for improving the outcome of in vitro fertilisation and intracytoplasmic sperm injection treatment cycles.

Search strategy: We searched the Cochrane Menstrual Disorders and Subfertility Group Trials Register, Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (April 2007), MEDLINE (1966 to March 2007) and EMBASE (1980 to March 2007) databases using the following research terms: "(aspirin OR acetylsalicylic acid) AND (in-vitro fertilisation OR intracytoplasmic sperm injection)" combined with the Cochrane Menstrual Disorders and Subfertility Group's search strategy for identifying randomised controlled trials for reports which appeared to describe randomised controlled trials of low-dose aspirin for women undergoing in vitro fertilisation.

Selection criteria: Prospective randomised controlled trials, published or unpublished, which addressed the objectives of the review. Quasi-randomised trials were excluded.

Data collection and analysis: Two authors independently selected studies to include in the review, extracted data and assessed trial quality.

Main results: The searches identified nine trials which were eligible for inclusion in the review, including a total of 1449 participants. No significant differences were found between the treatment and control groups for any of the outcomes assessed. Only two studies (involving 401 participants) investigated the effect of low-dose aspirin on live birth rate, and no significant difference was found between the treatment and control groups (RR 0.94, 95% CI 0.63 to 1.39). No significant difference was found in clinical pregnancy rate between treatment and control groups, based on results from 1240 participants in seven studies (RR 1.09, 95% CI 0.83 to 1.43). No data were reported on adverse events related to aspirin treatment in any of the included studies.

Authors' conclusions: Use of low-dose aspirin for women undergoing in vitro fertilisation cannot currently be recommended due to lack of adequate trial data. There is a need for randomised controlled trials investigating the use of low-dose aspirin for different patient groups undergoing in vitro fertilisation. We used control group data from the largest trial included in this review to determine that a sample size of 350 women in each group would be required in order to demonstrate a 10% improvement from the use of aspirin with 80% power at the 5% significance level. Until evidence from appropriately powered trials is available, this treatment can not be recommended.

Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews 2007, Issue 4. Art. No.: CD004832

****************

Just some problems with the "Obesity" war:

1). It tries to impose behavior change on everybody -- when most of those targeted are not obese and hence have no reason to change their behaviour. It is a form of punishing the innocent and the guilty alike. (It is also typical of Leftist thinking: Scorning the individual and capable of dealing with large groups only).

2). The longevity research all leads to the conclusion that it is people of MIDDLING weight who live longest -- not slim people. So the "epidemic" of obesity is in fact largely an "epidemic" of living longer.

3). It is total calorie intake that makes you fat -- not where you get your calories. Policies that attack only the source of the calories (e.g. "junk food") without addressing total calorie intake are hence pissing into the wind. People involuntarily deprived of their preferred calorie intake from one source are highly likely to seek and find their calories elsewhere.

4). So-called junk food is perfectly nutritious. A big Mac meal comprises meat, bread, salad and potatoes -- which is a mainstream Western diet. If that is bad then we are all in big trouble.

5). Food warriors demonize salt and fat. But we need a daily salt intake to counter salt-loss through perspiration and the research shows that people on salt-restricted diets die SOONER. And Eskimos eat huge amounts of fat with no apparent ill-effects. And the average home-cooked roast dinner has LOTS of fat. Will we ban roast dinners?

6). The foods restricted are often no more calorific than those permitted -- such as milk and fruit-juice drinks.

7). Tendency to weight is mostly genetic and is therefore not readily susceptible to voluntary behaviour change.

8). And when are we going to ban cheese? Cheese is a concentrated calorie bomb and has lots of that wicked animal fat in it too. Wouldn't we all be better off without it? And what about butter and margarine? They are just about pure fat. Surely they should be treated as contraband in kids' lunchboxes! [/sarcasm].

*********************

More stupid "organic" propaganda

It assumes that "antioxidants" are good for you -- a myth. Antioxidants are the medical equivalent of global warming -- used to explain just about anything purely on the basis of theory. They can actually be dangerous and can shorten your life

The biggest study into organic food has found that it is more nutritious than ordinary produce and may help to lengthen people's lives. The evidence from the 12m pound four-year project will end years of debate and is likely to overturn government advice that eating organic food is no more than a lifestyle choice. The study found that organic fruit and vegetables contained as much as 40% more antioxidants, which scientists believe can cut the risk of cancer and heart disease, Britain's biggest killers. They also had higher levels of beneficial minerals such as iron and zinc.

Professor Carlo Leifert, the co-ordinator of the European Union-funded project, said the differences were so marked that organic produce would help to increase the nutrient intake of people not eating the recommended five portions a day of fruit and vegetables. "If you have just 20% more antioxidants and you can't get your kids to do five a day, then you might just be okay with four a day," he said.

This weekend the Food Standards Agency confirmed that it was reviewing the evidence before deciding whether to change its advice. Ministers and the agency have said there are no significant differences between organic and ordinary produce.

Researchers grew fruit and vegetables and reared cattle on adjacent organic and nonorganic sites on a 725-acre farm attached to Newcastle University, and at other sites in Europe. They found that levels of antioxidants in milk from organic herds were up to 90% higher than in milk from conventional herds. As well as finding up to 40% more antioxidants in organic vegetables, they also found that organic tomatoes from Greece had significantly higher levels of antioxidants, including flavo-noids thought to reduce coronary heart disease.

Leifert said the government was wrong about there being no difference between organic and conventional produce. "There is enough evidence now that the level of good things is higher in organics," he said.

Source






New pill cuts urge to smoke

A REVOLUTIONARY new pill to help smokers quit is set to hit the Australian market - the first product which reduces the intensity of nicotine cravings. It is also claimed Champix reduces the pleasure from cigarettes if patients have a relapse.

But while the so-called wonder drug has helped thousands overseas to kick the habit, some patients have reported falling asleep at the wheel while on it. Britain's medicine watchdog issued a warning last week after two patients had car accidents. It was not known whether the drug caused the crashes, but it prompted authorities to recommend stronger warnings of possible side-effects. This included advising people that they should not drive or operate machinery until it is clear how the drug affects their abilities.

Developed by Pfizer, which also makes the anti-impotence drug Viagra, the pill targets the same "receptors" in the brain as nicotine. Unlike the anti-smoking drug Zyban, an antidepressant that lessens smokers' desire to smoke again, Champix is designed to block cravings and lessen withdrawal symptoms.

The Australian Register of Therapeutic Goods gave it approval in February. It has been recommended for listing on the PBS by the Pharmaceutical Benefits Advisory Committee. The prescription tablets have to be taken for at least 12 weeks.

Anne Jones, the chief executive of anti-smoking lobby group ASH (Action on Smoking and Health), said reports that the drug took away the enjoyment of a cigarette if a person had a relapse was "very promising".

Champix is the third pharmaceutical therapy available to smokers, joining Zyban and nicotine replacement therapy such as patches and gum. It is expected to be available from December. "It gives smokers who want to give up another choice of treatment," Ms Jones said. "If we have three drug types out there for smokers, that's got to be good. "Smokers, however, should not see it as a magic bullet. Motivation is the key to success."

Source

****************

Just some problems with the "Obesity" war:

1). It tries to impose behavior change on everybody -- when most of those targeted are not obese and hence have no reason to change their behaviour. It is a form of punishing the innocent and the guilty alike. (It is also typical of Leftist thinking: Scorning the individual and capable of dealing with large groups only).

2). The longevity research all leads to the conclusion that it is people of MIDDLING weight who live longest -- not slim people. So the "epidemic" of obesity is in fact largely an "epidemic" of living longer.

3). It is total calorie intake that makes you fat -- not where you get your calories. Policies that attack only the source of the calories (e.g. "junk food") without addressing total calorie intake are hence pissing into the wind. People involuntarily deprived of their preferred calorie intake from one source are highly likely to seek and find their calories elsewhere.

4). So-called junk food is perfectly nutritious. A big Mac meal comprises meat, bread, salad and potatoes -- which is a mainstream Western diet. If that is bad then we are all in big trouble.

5). Food warriors demonize salt and fat. But we need a daily salt intake to counter salt-loss through perspiration and the research shows that people on salt-restricted diets die SOONER. And Eskimos eat huge amounts of fat with no apparent ill-effects. And the average home-cooked roast dinner has LOTS of fat. Will we ban roast dinners?

6). The foods restricted are often no more calorific than those permitted -- such as milk and fruit-juice drinks.

7). Tendency to weight is mostly genetic and is therefore not readily susceptible to voluntary behaviour change.

8). And when are we going to ban cheese? Cheese is a concentrated calorie bomb and has lots of that wicked animal fat in it too. Wouldn't we all be better off without it? And what about butter and margarine? They are just about pure fat. Surely they should be treated as contraband in kids' lunchboxes! [/sarcasm].

*********************

DO GERMS MAKE YOU FAT?

Obviously, excess food intake is the major cause but the body does not always store excess calories as fat. What makes it do so? One contributory cause is suggested below. It is a book review. I cannot keep up even with the journal literature, however, so I had no time to read the book. I therefore delegated the review job to my friend "Ken", who does not have any formal science education but is nonetheless a perceptive reader:

The Potbelly Syndrome - Book review

A health book by Russell Farris and Per Marin, M.D., Ph.D.

I am not a medical man and so I review this book as a layman. It can be very illuminating for an acute observer from another discipline to take an overview of research outside his field, especially if he has an invested interest in the object of that research; the necessity for micro research of a macro subject can often blur the big picture.

Russell Farris is a meticulous observer and researcher of a medical condition that affects him directly. He has been wise enough to enlist the aid of a qualified specialist in the field to overview his conclusions.

Farris' expertise in artificial intelligence is obvious in the flow-chart style of analysis he brings to his research and it makes following his train of logic very easy for the layman and professional alike.

He sets out to show by cause, effect, and process, how it is possible for untreated infections from middle-path germs to lead to obesity and all of its associated problems; arthritis, hypertension, type 2 diabetes, arterial occlusion, stroke, cardiovascular disease etc.

The author tells us that middle-path germs cannot kill us and we cannot kill them so we carry them to our graves; they (the germs) have a vested interest in allowing us to survive in order to keep them fed and comfortable and introduce them to our friends. In order to keep us infected but still breathing, they force us to raise our cortisol levels high enough to weaken us, but not high enough to kill us right away. This is the start of the cortisol loop; a balancing act between immune cell response and infection maintenance.

Every infection triggers an "Acute Phase Response (APR)" whereby immune cells leap into action to destroy the invaders. The immune cells are highly toxic and the ensuing battle leaves dead cells strewn across the battlefield. These cells form pus in the tissues which, when located in the arteries, can slowly narrow the channels of blood flow. Cholesterol shows a large presence in such arteries and has been blamed for the subsequent occlusion when it may be a result rather than a cause.

The thing that intrigued me throughout this book was that my previously held assumptions were being turned on their heads. The first was that germs cause inflammation. Farris tells me that it is the bodies own immune system that actually causes the inflammation that doctors prescribe anti-inflammatory medication for. Both of these mechanisms, i.e. inflammation and medication, increase cortisol levels, and excess cortisol is a major cause of hypertension.

Like an iterating loop in a computer program, Farris demonstrates how cortisol loops can affect our body's chemistry adversely in the process of protecting us from infection.

A brief look at a cortisol-loop flowchart will help to clarify Farris' contention. The following diagram is reproduced exactly from the book. The highlighting is the authors and is referenced in the text.



Having identified excess cortisol as the catalyst for many ills, Farris faces the enigma of cortisol testing and finds that because of natural diurnal fluctuations in cortisol levels (i.e. high in the morning with a peak after lunch and a low tail off towards evening) a single sample is simply insufficient to deduce overall levels. A flattened diurnal curve will go unobserved yet will produce excess levels of cortisol.

Apparently, one of the major causes of chronic illness is from the middle-path germ chlamydophila (Chlamydia) pneumoniae (CPN) which infects between 40 and 70 percent of all adults in the USA and has been linked to more than forty diseases and conditions. When an immune cell eats a CPN germ it becomes infected thus the cells that protect us from most germs keep themselves and us infected year after year. They are very difficult to eradicate permanently but, because they are not perceived to be life-threatening in themselves it is easier to ignore them.

Common germs like CPN seldom cause life-threatening illnesses in healthy people but many of them raise our cortisol levels.

One of the most disturbing aspects of this book is my slowly evolving realisation of how ineffectual medical diagnosis by GPs can be, and, to be fair, what an impossible position we put them in when we ask for a diagnosis. To properly test for all of the aberrations in the human body in a ten minute consultation is expecting the impossible. A thorough cortisol level test alone requires an extended stay in a regulated environment with constant round-the-clock testing and monitoring - intensive care for a non-life-threatening condition?

It is also apparent that medical fallacies abound in the literature which is offered to our GP's. Diet and cholesterol levels have long been blamed for heart attacks and as a consequence we are constantly being advised to reduce our intake of them and saturated fats. A quote from one coronary heart disease commentator (George V. Mann) is worth repeating:

The diet-heart hypothesis has been repeatedly shown to be wrong, and yet, for complicated reasons of pride, profit and prejudice, the hypothesis continues to be exploited by scientists, fund-raising enterprises, food companies and even governmental agencies. The public is being deceived by the greatest health scam of the century.

The scope of this extraordinary book is much deeper than the brief extracts I have chosen to highlight. The medical references, suggested reading and contextual clinical trial results that accompany the text would keep a more diligent reviewer busy for years and I have checked none of them. If the referenced material is accurately sampled and appropriately utilised, I am convinced that the logic behind Farris' conclusions is impressive and very worthy of serious consideration.

The author offers a few suggestions for counteracting the insidious effects of potbelly syndrome but none are particularly effective or life-changing. You might also take into account that medical fallacies proliferate because of the astounding complexity of all biological systems and offering simplistic explanations of the mechanisms for the observed behaviour, no matter how logical and attractive, could be fraught with esoteric errors.

Farris' book is eminently readable and thought provoking. It has the potential to change medical thinking but I doubt that it will because of the understandably slow uptake of new ideas by nervous doctors who only feel safe if they follow the procedures which have been advocated by generations of doctors before them. I applaud their conservative structure but suggest that we, the patients, take control of our own health and assist in the training of our doctors by understanding our own ill health and suggesting tests that seem relevant to us.

****************

Just some problems with the "Obesity" war:

1). It tries to impose behavior change on everybody -- when most of those targeted are not obese and hence have no reason to change their behaviour. It is a form of punishing the innocent and the guilty alike. (It is also typical of Leftist thinking: Scorning the individual and capable of dealing with large groups only).

2). The longevity research all leads to the conclusion that it is people of MIDDLING weight who live longest -- not slim people. So the "epidemic" of obesity is in fact largely an "epidemic" of living longer.

3). It is total calorie intake that makes you fat -- not where you get your calories. Policies that attack only the source of the calories (e.g. "junk food") without addressing total calorie intake are hence pissing into the wind. People involuntarily deprived of their preferred calorie intake from one source are highly likely to seek and find their calories elsewhere.

4). So-called junk food is perfectly nutritious. A big Mac meal comprises meat, bread, salad and potatoes -- which is a mainstream Western diet. If that is bad then we are all in big trouble.

5). Food warriors demonize salt and fat. But we need a daily salt intake to counter salt-loss through perspiration and the research shows that people on salt-restricted diets die SOONER. And Eskimos eat huge amounts of fat with no apparent ill-effects. And the average home-cooked roast dinner has LOTS of fat. Will we ban roast dinners?

6). The foods restricted are often no more calorific than those permitted -- such as milk and fruit-juice drinks.

7). Tendency to weight is mostly genetic and is therefore not readily susceptible to voluntary behaviour change.

8). And when are we going to ban cheese? Cheese is a concentrated calorie bomb and has lots of that wicked animal fat in it too. Wouldn't we all be better off without it? And what about butter and margarine? They are just about pure fat. Surely they should be treated as contraband in kids' lunchboxes! [/sarcasm].

*********************

The dangers of fried food and a fried planet

Claims that the `obesity epidemic' is as bad as climate change suggest that modern society is bingeing on scare stories

Just when you thought we were all going to fry because of climate change, it looks like our taste for fried food will do us in even sooner. According to headlines across the British media this week, obesity is `as bad as climate risk'. But the comparisons with climate change shouldn't leave us quaking in our boots. Rather, they show up how our fears for the future have become independent of any reason to be fearful. And once we recognise those fears for what they are - a product of political and social changes rather than real dangers - we will be in a better position to deal with them.

The UK health secretary, Alan Johnson, made the obesity and climate change comparison this week, when he said: `We cannot afford not to act [on obesity]. For the first time we are clear about the magnitude of the problem. We are facing a potential crisis on the scale of climate change and it is in everybody's interest to turn things round. We will succeed only if the problem is recognised, owned and addressed at every level in every part of society.' (1)

Johnson's comments were the prelude to a report published today by the obesity group of the UK government's Foresight programme. Foresight is an initiative to facilitate better planning by making forecasts decades ahead on how society might turn out.

The report's `key messages' document suggests that: `By 2050, Foresight modelling indicates that 60 per cent of adult men, 50 per cent of adult women and about 25 per cent of all children under 16 could be obese. Obesity increases the risk of a range of chronic diseases, particularly type-2 diabetes, stroke and coronary heart disease and also cancer and arthritis. The financial impact to society attributable to obesity, at current prices, is estimated to become an additional o45.5 billion per year by 2050 with a seven-fold increase in NHS [National Health Service] costs alone.' (2)

The report says that our modern, `obesogenic' environment is very bad for us. We eat more energy-dense foods while having less and less need to expend this extra energy because we use mechanised transport and have sedentary lives. While `personal responsibility plays a crucial part in weight gain', the reports suggests that we will need a society-wide response to the problem if we are not all to become great mounds of lard suffering from multiple chronic illnesses and facing an early grave.

As the chairman of the National Obesity Forum, Dr Colin Waine, told BBC News on Monday, the effects of the obesity crisis `will hit us much earlier than climate change'. Waine warned: `We are now in a situation where levels of childhood obesity will lead to the first cut in life expectancy for 200 years. These children are likely to die before their parents.' (3)

Things are looking bleak, it would seem. But like a portion of fries, we should take these claims with a pinch of salt. Firstly, the good news: while all these doom and gloom predictions are flying about, the reality is that we are living longer, healthier lives than before. Figures from the UK Office for National Statistics suggest that between 1981 and 2004, life expectancy rose for men from 70.8 years to 76.6 years, while for women the rise was from 76.8 years to 81 years (4).

As the House of Lords Science and Technology Committee noted in 2005: `Life expectancy in the UK and other developed countries continues to increase by about two years per decade.' (5) Given that people most often start families in their twenties and thirties, such figures suggest that each generation will live between four and six years longer than the previous one, all other things being equal. Even if obesity slowed that progress down, it is unlikely to reverse it. Statements like those from the National Obesity Forum are simply alarmist.

One of the main reasons for this success is our increasing ability to tackle the kinds of chronic diseases that are widely associated with obesity. According to the British Heart Foundation's Heartstats website: `Death rates from cardio-vascular disease (CVD) have been falling in the UK since the early 1970s. For people under 65 years, they have fallen by 46 per cent in the last 10 years.' (6) According to Cancer Research UK's CancerStats pages, overall mortality rates for cancer fell by 17 per cent between 1976 and 2005, despite the fact that incidence has been rising, mainly as a result of people living long enough to develop cancers (7).

Secondly, the basis on which the government's Foresight report has been produced is questionable. The authors assume that obesity is caused by an imbalance between calories consumed and calories expended. But as the Australian writers Michael Gard and Jan Wright point out, researchers have struggled to confirm this thesis. It might be true - but studies looking for an increase in calories consumed have tended to find that we're actually eating less than in the past, while studies looking to confirm we take less exercise have also been inconclusive. Yes, it's true we have many labour-saving devices and transport options now - but there are also many more options for physical activity, too. Women, in particular, would have been strongly discouraged from taking part in sport 50 years ago but now are as likely to be active as men.

Nor has the world of work changed as much people assume. In the past, only a quite small proportion of the population spent their days as miners or road diggers - most people had sedentary jobs back then, too. The kinds of jobs we do may have changed, but the energy involved may not. There is little reason to assume that manning a station on a production line, for example, was any more energetic than filling shelves in a supermarket or flipping burgers. Oh, and people may not have noticed, but despite all their physical activity, poor manual labourers have always tended to die at a younger age than double-chinned, deskbound bank managers.

Our scepticism should be further increased by the fact that the forecasts in the report are based on computer models. Such models have a laughable track record in relation to major health problems in the UK. Remember when millions of people were going to die from AIDS? Or when hundreds of thousands were going to die from variant-Creutzfeldt Jakob Disease (vCJD)? In truth, the numbers of deaths were a fraction of those predicted by the models. We should be very wary of taking models seriously in such circumstances.

Thirdly, there is the assumption that `obesity equals disease'. But on closer inspection, people in the `overweight' or even the `mildly obese' categories have broadly similar health outcomes to people in the `ideal' weight range. And what are all these fat people going to be treated for? It would appear that cases of type-2 diabetes will rise, but the major diseases said to be caused by obesity are cardio-vascular disease and cancer: the things that are already killing most people, but for which mortality rates have been falling. The worst-case scenario is that, if we become obese, these diseases might get us a little bit quicker than they would have done anyway. How will that put an extra strain on health services?

Finally, the report is pretty damning in one respect: despite suggesting that there is a need for a national, we're-in-this-together approach to tackling the problem of obesity and exercise, there is no proof whatsoever that government intervention in these areas has a positive effect - a fact that the report admits. Today, there is ubiquitous advice to `eat healthily' or `be more active'. There is pressure from government, the media and society generally to get thin and get moving, with the message that being fat is going to kill you. And yet in Britain, as in many other countries around the world, people are still getting fatter.

If government intervention doesn't work, then the policies that the UK government is now hinting that it will implement - from more weighing of schoolkids and examinations of their body mass index, to greater labelling of foods and banning `trans' fats - are highly unlikely to transform Britain into a thin and healthy nation. They may well, however, make chubby schoolchildren feel stigmatised and guilty as they are weighed in the classroom, and ruin the joys of food for the rest of us.

In a sense, it doesn't matter if the latest government campaign doesn't make us all super-healthy - because the recurring panic about obesity doesn't really have anything to do with how much we weigh. Instead, what the Foresight report shows is that there is a template today for social panics. The comparison between obesity and climate change is striking: fears about both of these phenomena spring from the same source, a general sense of anxiety, and both the alleged dangers of obesity and climate change are increasingly framed in a similar way. So like reports on climate change, the Foresight report started out with a literature review; then it created `scenarios' about how the world might change over the next few decades; finally computer models were employed to predict how the disaster might unfold. We're even assured that the report is a product of the work of `250 scientists' - looking uncannily like a poor man's version of the `2,500 scientists' involved in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). This is a straight rip-off of the IPCC method of working, with the aim of acquiring the kudos that the recent Nobel Peace Prize-winning organisation has won in recent years.

There are other similarities between the fat and climate panics. According to anti-obesity campaigners, today's spread of flab highlights the essential problem of human greed, even more than global warming does. We want too much - and it's going to come back to haunt us in the future. We must learn to change our ways and the government will jolly well tell us how to do so if we don't make the necessary changes by ourselves. This fearful attitude towards future disaster, a disaster we have apparently brought upon ourselves, seems to float free of any particular issue. Just fill in the gaps with obesity/climate change/bird flu/whatever and you have a ready-made panic, complete with independent, neutral, evidence-based, scientific authority, in response to which Something Must Be Done - usually by the government, because we feckless individuals are too weak to do it ourselves.

A more useful approach to social problems would be to realise that society will face challenges of all sorts in the coming years. Through science, technology and innovation, we have been able not only to solve the immediate problems we face, but also to take society forward in the process. What is evident from the seemingly endless series of panics about the future is that society has lost confidence in its ability to solve problems. This gives rise to a view of the future as being filled with disease and destruction; the future is apparently something we must guard against, by making changes to our behaviour, rather than something we mould through positive human action.

As such, we cannot stop the obesity panic by trying to lose weight, nor allay fears about global warming by emitting less carbon. We can only solve the problem of these recurring panics by regaining confidence in our ability to shape the world rather than just our waistlines

Source





New hope for twisted spine sufferers

A painful and progressive spinal condition could be halted by drugs used to treat another disease, a genetic study has found. The IL23R gene has been found by scientists to be implicated in the development of ankylosing spondylitis, having already been shown to be involved in Crohn's disease.

Michael Brown, of the University of Oxford, said that the identification of the gene was a big breakthrough and meant that there was hope that an existing treatment could be used. "We already know that IL23R is involved in inflammation, but no one had ever thought it was involved in ankylosing spondylitis," Professor Brown said. "A treatment for Crohn's disease that inhibits the activity of this gene is already undergoing human trials. This looks very promising as a potential treatment for ankylosing spondylitis."

The gene was identified with a second, called ARTS1, in a study funded by the Wellcome Trust and the Arthritis Research Campaign. Details have been published in the journal Nature Genetics.

Source

****************

Just some problems with the "Obesity" war:

1). It tries to impose behavior change on everybody -- when most of those targeted are not obese and hence have no reason to change their behaviour. It is a form of punishing the innocent and the guilty alike. (It is also typical of Leftist thinking: Scorning the individual and capable of dealing with large groups only).

2). The longevity research all leads to the conclusion that it is people of MIDDLING weight who live longest -- not slim people. So the "epidemic" of obesity is in fact largely an "epidemic" of living longer.

3). It is total calorie intake that makes you fat -- not where you get your calories. Policies that attack only the source of the calories (e.g. "junk food") without addressing total calorie intake are hence pissing into the wind. People involuntarily deprived of their preferred calorie intake from one source are highly likely to seek and find their calories elsewhere.

4). So-called junk food is perfectly nutritious. A big Mac meal comprises meat, bread, salad and potatoes -- which is a mainstream Western diet. If that is bad then we are all in big trouble.

5). Food warriors demonize salt and fat. But we need a daily salt intake to counter salt-loss through perspiration and the research shows that people on salt-restricted diets die SOONER. And Eskimos eat huge amounts of fat with no apparent ill-effects. And the average home-cooked roast dinner has LOTS of fat. Will we ban roast dinners?

6). The foods restricted are often no more calorific than those permitted -- such as milk and fruit-juice drinks.

7). Tendency to weight is mostly genetic and is therefore not readily susceptible to voluntary behaviour change.

8). And when are we going to ban cheese? Cheese is a concentrated calorie bomb and has lots of that wicked animal fat in it too. Wouldn't we all be better off without it? And what about butter and margarine? They are just about pure fat. Surely they should be treated as contraband in kids' lunchboxes! [/sarcasm].

*********************

Groan! So middle class people have better health

Tell us something else we didn't know

Men who eat whole-grain cereal every day [Who are most unlikely to be your average worker] are nearly 30 per cent less likely to suffer heart failure than those who do not, a new study has shown. The findings add to existing evidence that whole-grain foods are healthy. But not all cereals contain whole grain, and the new study shows that those cereals that lack it do not have the same health benefits.

Luc Djousse and Michael Graziano, of Harvard Medical School, studied a group of more than 21,000 doctors taking part in the Physicians' Health Study, a long-running trial. Their results, published in Archives of Internal Medicine, are in line with other trials.

Source




Social class effect on health accelerates for British women

Life expectancy for professional women has shot up by 30 months to 85 years in only the last four years, while the gap between the top and bottom classes has widened. Figures from the Office for National Statistics published yesterday show that females in high-status, well-paid jobs such as medicine, law and finance are living longer than ever. Their counterparts in clerical and manual jobs, however, are struggling to keep pace as their lifestyles and life expectancy emulate their male colleagues.

Diet, drinking and smoking are taking their toll on women in the lower social classes but health experts suggest that females at the top are in better shape than ever, have quicker access to healthcare, are no longer dying from breast cancer and can afford better holidays. Some epidemiologists also suggest that women get a psychological boost from a high-status job where they are largely in control.

The figures show that the life expectancy at birth for women in the top social class, or those who married into it, jumped from 82.6 years in 2001 to 85.1 years in 2005, an increase of 2.5years. This rise is at a much faster rate than the rest of the past 30 years where life expectancy has gone up about two years in every ten. During the same period the life expectancy for women in the lowest social class - unskilled workers and labourers - rose from 77.9 to 78.1 years, an increase of only ten weeks.

In male mortality, the opposite appears to be happening. Life expectancy in men has been catching up with women over the past 30 years, but since 2001 the increase has dropped slightly and the gap between the social classes has slightly narrowed. Life expectancy for men in the professional classes rose from 79.5 years in 2001 to 80 years in 2005. At the same time the life span for unskilled workers rose from 71.5 to 72.7 years. A similar picture occurs in life expectancy from the age of 65. A women in Social Class 1 now aged 65 was expected to live to 85 in 2005, but is now expected to carry on to 87. However, the corresponding figures for women in Social Class 5 only rose from 81.9 to 82.7 years.

Eric Brunner, a reader in epidemiology at University College London, could not fully explain the acceleration in life expectancy for woman in the top social classes in the past four years. But he said that access to cash and high self-esteem has a big impact on health and longevity. "Money, wealth and resources, particularly psychological, mean that women feel more in control of their lives." Women are also categorised in Social Class 1 if they are married to men working in the professions, so many of them may be able to take on part-time jobs or not work at all.

Alcohol, smoking, poor diet and better health services in earlier life would all be factors in the widening gap between the social classes. "There are different smoking patterns in men and women over the last 40 years," said Dr Brunner. "The peak mortality rates for men with lung cancer was in the early 1970s while the peak rate for women was in the mid-1990s." In addition, there was a much greater class divide in obesity levels among women, with far more obese females in the lowest classes. There is no significant difference among men.

Professor Mel Bartley, a director of the Economic and Social Research Centre, said that women in the top social classes were more likely to get breast cancer but now less likely to die from it. Better screening techniques and drug treatments such as Tamoxifen had had a huge impact on mortality in recent years.

More here





Foolish use of "energy drinks" by students

College students relying on unregulated potions and elixirs to pull all-nighters and muscle their way through school have medical professionals fearful about just how badly they are treating their bodies in the pursuit of academic success. With midterm exams looming, students are fueling themselves on sugary coffee drinks and jazzy concoctions made of caffeine and herbs - all packaged as "energy drinks" with names such as Amp, Full Throttle and Rockstar. In some cases, students supplement the liquid buzz with drugs like Adderall and other amphetamines.

Neither regulated nor standardized by the Food and Drug Administration, energy drinks comprise a multibillion-dollar industry, with 65 percent of consumers under age 35, data show.

Doctors say these drinks do little for productivity and instead leave students jittery, anxious and sleep-deprived, not to mention hopped-up on a cocktail of ingredients scientists know little about.

Despite being marketed as "wellness boosters" and "herbal antioxidants," additives such as taurine, guarana and ginkgo-biloba are little understood and likely dangerous to student health, experts say. Taurine, the key ingredient in many energy drinks, including megaseller Red Bull, has been linked to the deaths of several athletes in Europe. A handful of countries, including France, have banned Red Bull from shelves. "These herbs have not been studied in a scientific manner, they are nutritional supplements that don't follow FDA guidance," said Dr. Caroline Apovian, director of the Nutrition and Weight Management Center at Boston University School of Medicine. "I think they are potentially dangerous because we don't know what they do."

Apovian, who works with students to maintain their health while under pressure to perform at school, suggests they "stay clear from all of this, stay clear from all these supplements that are not vitamins. Caffeine, we know what it does, it's a known entity. These other herbs, there's no science."

Susanna Barry, an educator at MIT's Medical Center for Health Promotion and Wellness, warns students, "If you feel panicky, anxious, gastric-upset and have sleep problems, you should know that your body is telling you very clearly that this doesn't work for you."

Dr. David S. Rosenthal, director of Harvard University Health Services, agrees, "There's no question that we're futzing around with various transmitters in the brain. It's something you don't want to mess with. These things can be very disruptive in everyday life."

Consuming energy drinks is counterproductive to academic success, he said. And compensating for lost sleep by drinking beverages high in sugar and caffeine takes a heavy hit on the body's wellness. "People take them for highs," he said. "But they cause lethargy. For many people, they have the opposite effects. We try to recommend strongly against them because they totally disrupt sleeping patterns."

Doctors Rosenthal, Apovian and others said they've met with students who exhibit such symptoms after consuming energy drinks and in extreme cases suffer much more serious side effects. "I've had students come to me with what mimics an almost full-blown panic attack due to the ingredients of energy drinks," said Barry at MIT. "It's very individual with what energy drinks do to our body."

More here

****************

Just some problems with the "Obesity" war:

1). It tries to impose behavior change on everybody -- when most of those targeted are not obese and hence have no reason to change their behaviour. It is a form of punishing the innocent and the guilty alike. (It is also typical of Leftist thinking: Scorning the individual and capable of dealing with large groups only).

2). The longevity research all leads to the conclusion that it is people of MIDDLING weight who live longest -- not slim people. So the "epidemic" of obesity is in fact largely an "epidemic" of living longer.

3). It is total calorie intake that makes you fat -- not where you get your calories. Policies that attack only the source of the calories (e.g. "junk food") without addressing total calorie intake are hence pissing into the wind. People involuntarily deprived of their preferred calorie intake from one source are highly likely to seek and find their calories elsewhere.

4). So-called junk food is perfectly nutritious. A big Mac meal comprises meat, bread, salad and potatoes -- which is a mainstream Western diet. If that is bad then we are all in big trouble.

5). Food warriors demonize salt and fat. But we need a daily salt intake to counter salt-loss through perspiration and the research shows that people on salt-restricted diets die SOONER. And Eskimos eat huge amounts of fat with no apparent ill-effects. And the average home-cooked roast dinner has LOTS of fat. Will we ban roast dinners?

6). The foods restricted are often no more calorific than those permitted -- such as milk and fruit-juice drinks.

7). Tendency to weight is mostly genetic and is therefore not readily susceptible to voluntary behaviour change.

8). And when are we going to ban cheese? Cheese is a concentrated calorie bomb and has lots of that wicked animal fat in it too. Wouldn't we all be better off without it? And what about butter and margarine? They are just about pure fat. Surely they should be treated as contraband in kids' lunchboxes! [/sarcasm].

*********************

Mental illness soars in UK's cannabis hotspots

I think that the claims below are probably broadly right but we must not discount that Britain has more and more blacks and that they tend to live in certain areas, that they are often drug users and that they are more prone to mental illness. These results should really be broken out by race for us to be sure of what is going on. It could just be that we are seeing nothing more than an effect of Britain's ever-increasing immigrant population

The devastating effects of skunk cannabis on the nation's mental health are revealed here for the first time, showing where the drug has hit hardest around the country. Some areas have suffered a tenfold increase in people mentally ill from using the drug. Nationally, skunk smokers are ending up ill in hospital in record numbers, with admissions soaring 73 per cent. The number of adults recorded as suffering mental illness as a result of cannabis use has risen sharply from 430 in 1996 to 743 in 2006. The government data shows how the damaging effects of the drug have swept across England. Hospital hotspots for cannabis abuse include Manchester, London, Cheshire and Merseyside.

And, as the debate over the drug's dangers continues, figures released by the National Treatment Agency for Substance Abuse (NTA) show that more than 24,500 people are in drug treatment programmes for cannabis - the highest ever. It is the most commonly misused drug by children, accounting for 75 per cent of those requiring treatment. That's 11,582 under-18s - more than double those in treatment for cannabis abuse in 2005. And more adults (13,087) are in drug treatment programmes for cannabis abuse than for crack or cocaine.

This news comes as pressure grows on the Government to reclassify cannabis to its former class B status, with the fears of police now being echoed by the Forensic Science Service, which says skunk cannabis - a highly potent form of the drug - accounts for 75 per cent of all seizures. Cannabis remains Britain's most commonly used illegal drug, with more than 4,000 kilos confiscated by police and customs officers in the first six months of this year.

Source




A "softer" paternalist



What gives HIM the right to make decisions for other people? Should we say "Sieg heil" to him?

A radical plan to improve the nation's health - including a workplace "exercise hour" - has been unveiled by a leading Government adviser. New figures today show England is the fattest country in the EU. Now Professor Julian Le Grand, chairman of Health England, hopes to encourage people to improve their diets, give up smoking and exercise more.

He proposed the introduction of a smoking permit, which smokers would be required to show each time they bought tobacco. It is then their choice to go smoke free and not buy a permit.

Companies with more than 500 staff would have an " exercise hour". Employees would have to deliberately choose not to join in. The proposalsare the opposite of the Government's approach which requires people to opt in to healthy lifestyles. Instead it would be up to them to make the unhealthy choice.

In his speech to the Royal Statistical Society last night the professor, a former aide to Tony Blair said: "It is not like banning something, it's a softer form of paternalism."

Source





More magic from broccoli

If anything is unpopular, it is sure to be "good for you". George Bush senior won the hearts of children everywhere when he said: "I am the President of the United States and I don't have to eat broccoli"

RESEARCH suggests that broccoli can prevent the damage from ultraviolet light that often leads to skin cancer. And, as many children would surely appreciate, you do not even have to eat it. In tests on people and hairless mice, a green smear of broccoli-sprout extract blocked the potentially cancer-causing damage inflicted by sunlight.

The product is still in early stages of development. Among other issues to be worked out is how best to remove the extract's green pigments, which do not contribute to its protective effects and would give users a temporary Martian complexion. Scientists said the extract works not by screening out the sun's rays - which also blocks vitamin D production - but by turning on the body's natural cancer-fighting machinery.

While the study, published in the online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, stops short of proving that broccoli extracts can prevent skin cancer, it shows "direct protection" against ultraviolet radiation, say researchers. The research team exposed areas of skin to intense ultraviolet light one to three days after the broccoli sprout extract was applied to some areas. Spots treated with the extract had, on average, 37 per cent less redness and inflammation - key measures of future skin cancer development.

Source

****************

Just some problems with the "Obesity" war:

1). It tries to impose behavior change on everybody -- when most of those targeted are not obese and hence have no reason to change their behaviour. It is a form of punishing the innocent and the guilty alike. (It is also typical of Leftist thinking: Scorning the individual and capable of dealing with large groups only).

2). The longevity research all leads to the conclusion that it is people of MIDDLING weight who live longest -- not slim people. So the "epidemic" of obesity is in fact largely an "epidemic" of living longer.

3). It is total calorie intake that makes you fat -- not where you get your calories. Policies that attack only the source of the calories (e.g. "junk food") without addressing total calorie intake are hence pissing into the wind. People involuntarily deprived of their preferred calorie intake from one source are highly likely to seek and find their calories elsewhere.

4). So-called junk food is perfectly nutritious. A big Mac meal comprises meat, bread, salad and potatoes -- which is a mainstream Western diet. If that is bad then we are all in big trouble.

5). Food warriors demonize salt and fat. But we need a daily salt intake to counter salt-loss through perspiration and the research shows that people on salt-restricted diets die SOONER. And Eskimos eat huge amounts of fat with no apparent ill-effects. And the average home-cooked roast dinner has LOTS of fat. Will we ban roast dinners?

6). The foods restricted are often no more calorific than those permitted -- such as milk and fruit-juice drinks.

7). Tendency to weight is mostly genetic and is therefore not readily susceptible to voluntary behaviour change.

8). And when are we going to ban cheese? Cheese is a concentrated calorie bomb and has lots of that wicked animal fat in it too. Wouldn't we all be better off without it? And what about butter and margarine? They are just about pure fat. Surely they should be treated as contraband in kids' lunchboxes! [/sarcasm].

*********************

Big surprise! Diet choices 'written in genes'

Our food likes and dislikes may have more to do with genes than choice, UK researchers believe. Experts from Kings College London compared the eating habits of thousands of pairs of twins. Identical twins were far more likely to share the same dietary patterns - like a penchant for coffee and garlic - suggesting tastes may be inherited.

Identical twins have exactly the same genetic make-up as each other, so scientists, by comparing them to non-identical twins, can work out the likelihood that their characteristics are due to "nature" or "nurture". The Kings College researchers looked at a total of more than 3,000 female twins aged between 18 and 79, working out their broad preferences using five different dietary "groups". These included diets heavy in fruit and vegetables, alcohol, fried meat and potatoes, and low-fat products or low in meat, fish and poultry.

Their results, published in the journal Twin Research and Human Genetics, suggested that between 41% and 48% of a person's leaning towards one of the food groups was influenced by genetics. The strongest link between individual liking and genes involved a taste for garlic and coffee.

Professor Tim Spector, who led the research, said: "For so long we have assumed that our upbringing and social environment determine what we like to eat. "This has blown that theory out of the water - more often than not, our genetic make-up influences our dietary patterns."

The researchers suggested that healthy eating campaigns, such as the government's "five-a-day" fruit and vegetable initiative, might have to be re-thought in light of the findings, as people genetically "programmed" to eat less fruit and vegetables would be more resistant to health messages than thought.

Professor Jane Wardle, from University College, said that the findings, and other similar research, pointed to genetics playing a "moderate" part in the development of preferred foods. She said that it was possible that genes involved with taste, or the "reward" chemicals released by the body in response to certain foods, might play a role. "People have always made the assumption that food choices are all due to environmental factors during life, but it now seems this isn't the case. "It also suggests that what parents do to influence eating habits in childhood are not necessarily as important as we thought - and that a lot of effort may need to be made with young people as they become independent in adolescence to steer them onto the right course."

Source





Diabetes treatment from pig cells?

Promising but early days yet. Rejection problems might not be so bad as pig valves (politely called "tissue valves") are routinely used to replace faulty human heart valves -- which also makes the bans on this work extremely stupid

A RADICAL pig cell treatment being tested by an Australian drug company has raised hopes of a cure for diabetes. A Russian woman injected with pig cells four weeks ago has not needed the regular insulin injections she had relied on to keep her type 1 diabetes in check. A second patient, a Russian medical student, has seen his insulin injections cut by 40 per cent in the four months since receiving the pig cell transplant. Melbourne scientists have been conducting the trial in Moscow's Sklifasovsky Hospital because animal-to-human transplants have been banned in Australia until 2009.

Living Cell Technologies medical director Prof Bob Elliott said the early trial results were stunning. "These early-stage results have exceeded our expectations," Prof Elliott said. "Both patients are doing very well, and we hope to continue to see such positive results as the trial progresses."

The middle-aged woman and young student are the first of six Russians to be implanted with DiabeCell, made from neonatal pig islet cells collected from the pancreas of disease-free pigs bred on a remote New Zealand island. Cells are then put in coated capsules and injected into the abdominal cavity of the type 1 diabetes patients. The pig cells are intended to produce insulin, mimicking a healthy body's natural production of the hormone that controls blood glucose levels.

Pig cell treatments have been tested before, but Prof Elliott's 12-month trial is the first to use the cells without the need for drugs to stop the human body rejecting them. About 520,000 Australians have been diagnosed with diabetes, but just as many don't realise they have the disease. Type 1 diabetes, in which the pancreas does not produce insulin, accounts for 10 to 15 per cent of all cases. It is usually diagnosed in childhood or early adulthood. Current treatment centres on daily insulin injections and regular tests to check blood glucose levels.

Source

****************

Just some problems with the "Obesity" war:

1). It tries to impose behavior change on everybody -- when most of those targeted are not obese and hence have no reason to change their behaviour. It is a form of punishing the innocent and the guilty alike. (It is also typical of Leftist thinking: Scorning the individual and capable of dealing with large groups only).

2). The longevity research all leads to the conclusion that it is people of MIDDLING weight who live longest -- not slim people. So the "epidemic" of obesity is in fact largely an "epidemic" of living longer.

3). It is total calorie intake that makes you fat -- not where you get your calories. Policies that attack only the source of the calories (e.g. "junk food") without addressing total calorie intake are hence pissing into the wind. People involuntarily deprived of their preferred calorie intake from one source are highly likely to seek and find their calories elsewhere.

4). So-called junk food is perfectly nutritious. A big Mac meal comprises meat, bread, salad and potatoes -- which is a mainstream Western diet. If that is bad then we are all in big trouble.

5). Food warriors demonize salt and fat. But we need a daily salt intake to counter salt-loss through perspiration and the research shows that people on salt-restricted diets die SOONER. And Eskimos eat huge amounts of fat with no apparent ill-effects. And the average home-cooked roast dinner has LOTS of fat. Will we ban roast dinners?

6). The foods restricted are often no more calorific than those permitted -- such as milk and fruit-juice drinks.

7). Tendency to weight is mostly genetic and is therefore not readily susceptible to voluntary behaviour change.

8). And when are we going to ban cheese? Cheese is a concentrated calorie bomb and has lots of that wicked animal fat in it too. Wouldn't we all be better off without it? And what about butter and margarine? They are just about pure fat. Surely they should be treated as contraband in kids' lunchboxes! [/sarcasm].

*********************

Brilliant British crackdown on "obesity"

Make gyms MORE expensive. Yes, you read that right: MORE expensive. The right hand clearly does not know what the left hand is doing

Efforts to tackle the growing obesity problem risk being seriously undermined by a move to claim VAT on public gym memberships held by nearly three million people. While private gyms have to charge VAT on membership at 17.5 per cent, gyms run by leisure centres have enjoyed a partial exemption, allowing them to keep costs down. In addition, most of the not-for-profit trusts that run hundreds of leisure centre gyms on behalf of local authorities have not been charging VAT at all. But after a seemingly obscure court case in Scotland won by Revenue & Customs, tax officials have circulated a warning to all 2,597 public gyms saying that they must levy VAT on their full membership fees.

Experts say that the move will undermine Gordon Brown's attempts to bring obesity under control, with higher fees likely to push thousands of members - and those most at risk of obesity - into giving up going to the gym altogether. Average monthly fees at public gyms are 28.39 pounds , or 340 a year, according to the Leisure Database Company, compared with 42.07 at a private gym. Full VAT on top would increase the annual fee to 400.

Experian, a business consultancy, has analysed the backgrounds of the 2.8 million public gym members and forecast that at least 12 per cent, or 350,000 members, would give up their membership if the cost went up. "If public leisure centre operators are forced to put up gym fees as a result of this initiative, they risk putting prices beyond the reach of the very target groups the Government is trying to get to do more exercise. It will seriously undermine attempts to get the nation more active," said Patrick Gray, senior consultant at Experian. A regional breakdown of the data also indicated that charging full VAT on public gym membership would mean that in some areas, including Bristol and Southampton, they would be more expensive than private gyms.

Craig McAteer, chairman of the Sports and Recreation Trusts Association (SpoRTA), urged the Revenue to reconsider. The body represents 115 leisure trusts that run 550 leisure centres for local authorities. "A significant number of our customers are in the lower socioeconomic groups," he said. "If our public leisure centres are forced to apply VAT, considerably increasing the price, we could see a huge drop-off in visitors which will ultimately damage the Government's vision of increasing participation and tackling rising obesity problems."

The Revenue defended its actions, saying that it had not changed the rules but was simply reminding leisure centres of their VAT liabilities. The case involved the Highlands council, which levied only a small amount of VAT on fees at leisure centres to cover non-sport facilities at the gym, such as the sauna and steam room. The court ruled that since membership was all-inclusive, VAT had to be charged on the full amount.

After its victory, the Revenue dashed out a warning to all leisure centres and trusts. "Quick as a flash after the court case Revenue & Customs made clear that the whole membership payment is subject to VAT and that trusts must also charge VAT if the subscription covers any activity that is not strictly speaking sport, which is of course most gyms these days," said Steve Hodgetts, VAT partner at Baker Tilly, the accountant. "It also made clear it would chase up VAT retrospectively if leisure centres had not been paying it. We calculate a bill of about 20 million."

The Revenue said that it had not changed the guidelines and was only clarifying what should always have been the case.

Source







Why am I not surprised?

Guidelines on safe alcohol consumption limits that have shaped health policy in Britain for 20 years were "plucked out of the air" as an "intelligent guess". The Times reveals today that the recommended weekly drinking limits of 21 units of alcohol for men and 14 for women, first introduced in 1987 and still in use today, had no firm scientific basis whatsoever. Subsequent studies found evidence which suggested that the safety limits should be raised, but they were ignored by a succession of health ministers.

One found that men drinking between 21 and 30 units of alcohol a week had the lowest mortality rate in Britain. Another concluded that a man would have to drink 63 units a week, or a bottle of wine a day, to face the same risk of death as a teetotaller.

The disclosure that the 1987 recommendation was prompted by "a feeling that you had to say something" came from Richard Smith, a member of the Royal College of Physicians working party that produced it. He told The Times that the committee's epidemiologist had confessed that "it's impossible to say what's safe and what isn't" because "we don't really have any data whatsoever".

Mr Smith, a former Editor of the British Medical Journal, said that members of the working party were so concerned by growing evidence of the chronic damage caused by heavy, long-term drinking that they felt obliged to produce guidelines. "Those limits were really plucked out of the air. They were not based on any firm evidence at all. It was a sort of intelligent guess by a committee," he said. Mr Smith's disclosure casts doubt on the accuracy of a report published this week that blamed middle-class wine drinkers for placing some of Britain's most affluent towns at the top of the "hazardous drinking" list. The study, commissioned by the Government, relied on the 1987 guidelines when it suggested that men drinking more than 21 units a week and women consuming more than 14 units put their health "at significant risk".

In a further attack on Britain's drinkers, it was revealed yesterday that a coalition of health organisations is mounting a campaign to force a 10 per cent increase in alcohol taxation. The group, headed by the Royal College of Physicians, is also seeking to secure the support of MPs for stricter regulation of the drinks industry and warnings on alcohol advertising. A total of 21 bodies, including Alcohol Concern and the British Liver Trust, will form the Alcohol Health Alliance, according to Harpers Wine and Spirit magazine.

Source

****************

Just some problems with the "Obesity" war:

1). It tries to impose behavior change on everybody -- when most of those targeted are not obese and hence have no reason to change their behaviour. It is a form of punishing the innocent and the guilty alike. (It is also typical of Leftist thinking: Scorning the individual and capable of dealing with large groups only).

2). The longevity research all leads to the conclusion that it is people of MIDDLING weight who live longest -- not slim people. So the "epidemic" of obesity is in fact largely an "epidemic" of living longer.

3). It is total calorie intake that makes you fat -- not where you get your calories. Policies that attack only the source of the calories (e.g. "junk food") without addressing total calorie intake are hence pissing into the wind. People involuntarily deprived of their preferred calorie intake from one source are highly likely to seek and find their calories elsewhere.

4). So-called junk food is perfectly nutritious. A big Mac meal comprises meat, bread, salad and potatoes -- which is a mainstream Western diet. If that is bad then we are all in big trouble.

5). Food warriors demonize salt and fat. But we need a daily salt intake to counter salt-loss through perspiration and the research shows that people on salt-restricted diets die SOONER. And Eskimos eat huge amounts of fat with no apparent ill-effects. And the average home-cooked roast dinner has LOTS of fat. Will we ban roast dinners?

6). The foods restricted are often no more calorific than those permitted -- such as milk and fruit-juice drinks.

7). Tendency to weight is mostly genetic and is therefore not readily susceptible to voluntary behaviour change.

8). And when are we going to ban cheese? Cheese is a concentrated calorie bomb and has lots of that wicked animal fat in it too. Wouldn't we all be better off without it? And what about butter and margarine? They are just about pure fat. Surely they should be treated as contraband in kids' lunchboxes! [/sarcasm].

*********************

Recognition of deficient evidence when it suits

It is certainly deplorable that these things have not been tested properly but a few apparent adverse reactions out of billions of doses are unlikely to mean anything. This sounds more like an attack on the drug industry than any reasonable caution

Over-the-counter cough and cold medicines have not been proved to work, are potentially dangerous and should not be used in children ages 6 and younger, an advisory panel to the Food and Drug Administration decided Friday. The expert panel also voted to urge the FDA to require companies that make the popular products to conduct thorough research to finally determine whether they are effective in any group of children. "This one is really important because so many people are using it, there is so much money spent on it, there is no evidence that it works, and there is evidence of harm," said Dr. Jesse Joad, a UC Davis professor of pediatrics and pediatric lung specialist who served as a consultant on the committee. "Something really needs to be done about it."

The advisory panel's recommendations are not binding but, if adopted by the FDA, could lead to a major shift in the way these medicines are labeled, sold and used by parents. "We need to go back and review all these recommendations that we heard today and decide what the path forward might be," Dr. John Jenkins, director of the FDA's office of new drugs, said after the meeting. If the agency does adopt the committee's recommendations, it must undertake a rule-making process that can "take anywhere from one to many years," Jenkins said.

Manufacturers, who last week withdrew more than a dozen cold products labeled for use in infants and toddlers, said they would fight the new recommendations. "We believe these products will remain on the market," said Linda Suydam, president of the Consumer Healthcare Products Association, an industry trade group.

There are about 800 pediatric cold products sold in the United States that use one or more of 39 drugs. Parents spend around $500 million every year buying nearly 95 million boxes containing 3.8 billion doses of medicine, according to Suydam. The products under review include common brand names including PediaCare, Robitussin and Triaminic, many of which are marketed for toddlers and other children younger than 6.

The FDA review was prompted by a petition from Baltimore's commissioner of health after the deaths of four children. Earlier this year, the FDA completed a review that found that between 1969 and 2006, there were 54 reported child deaths from decongestants and 69 from antihistamines. Most of the deaths occurred in children younger than 2. Joad said the 22-member committee looked at several types of cold medicine ingredients including pseudoephedrine, a decongestant, and antihistamines to combat runny noses and sneezing. She said products containing pseudoephedrine were linked to seizures, mostly in children younger than 2, and that the antihistamines caused sedation in children. In most cases, she said, the adverse reactions resulted from overdoses.

Speaking from her hotel room after the committee adjourned in Maryland, Joad said that while most pediatricians tell parents not to use the drugs, 80 percent to 90 percent of parents do anyway. "They really believe it works," she said. "But colds are diseases that get worse for a few days and then get better. You don't have to give them anything." Joad added, "Why would you give them something that might kill you, or cause a seizure or a cardiac event?"

Part of the problem, said Joad, is that the products' labels can be very confusing for consumers. She noted, for example, that while Tylenol used to be synonymous with acetaminophen, a non-aspirin pain and fever reliever, Tylenol-labeled products now may contain many other ingredients that have nothing to do with addressing pain or fever symptoms. Cold products for kids also vary dramatically in terms of the active ingredient concentrations, their dosing and dispensing instructions, she said. "We recommended there be standard concentrations and that everything should be measured in milliliters, not teaspoons," she said.

In addition, Joad said the committee wants the industry to stop depicting young children on packaging and to clearly state that the products have not been shown to be effective and have been linked to severe adverse effects. Pediatric cold medicines were approved in the early 1970s, despite almost no evidence that they worked, because regulators assumed that drugs that worked in adults would also be helpful in children. Physicians now know that is not necessarily true. The bottom line, Joad told the committee, "is that children are not little adults."

Source






Bishop too fat for surgery

In general, discrimination on the basis of weight sounds to me no different from discrimination because of skin colour. But I have to agree with the doctors here. The vast weight of the man would undoubtedly be a factor in why his knee has collapsed and leaving the weight as is could well make a replacement knee largely futile

A BISHOP who has dedicated his life to the church has been refused surgery by a Victorian hospital because he is too fat. Bishop R.J. Gow of St Mary's House of Prayer, at Elaine, west of Ballarat, is in desperate need of a left knee replacement. "It's my praying knee," the good humoured priest said. "I'm having a lot of trouble walking and standing at the altar."

Three months ago the clergyman, 66, was referred to an orthopedic surgeon. "The surgeon said the waiting list at Ballarat Hospital for that surgery was two years, but he was now doing surgery at Bacchus Marsh hospital so to go there," Bishop Gow said. "I made an appointment, but within five minutes of them seeing me they said "unless you lose weight you won't be having surgery here". Bishop Gow, who stands six feet tall, weighed 147kg (330 lb.). Since that first appointment he lost 15kg in 11 weeks and is now 132kg. "They told me to lose 17 kilos before I came back," he said. "But when I came back they told me I'd have to lose another five before I see the anaesthetist on October 26. "The only way I can do that is to starve myself."

Bishop Gow said he was annoyed at the level of discrimination towards overweight people. "This is a hospital discriminating against people who are overweight," he said. "They're excluding people and I'm not the only one. I heard them saying to the person in front of me that they would also have to lose weight before an operation. "I questioned her about it and she said it was hospital policy. She showed me a copy of minutes of a meeting where it was stated they would only operate on patients who had a BMI (body mass index) of below 40. "This is discriminatory. Obesity is a disease caused by pyschological or physical factors - people don't get fat because they want to. "But what really annoyed me was I had a look around the hospital and there were empty beds. What's happening with our health care?"

Bishop Gow, who has spent more than 20 years working with the poor, sick and disadvantaged, said his knee was deteriorating and he was in a lot of pain. "But I haven't private health insurance and the operation would cost thousands of dollars," he said. Bacchus Marsh Hospital's Acting CEO David Grace said the hospital had a policy on surgery for the obese "for patient safety. We use an objective BMI assessment. "If someone is higher than the cut-off point of 40 they're considered a high anaesthetic risk and we wouldn't allow treatment." He would not comment on a specific case, but said he didn't consider the practice discriminatory. "It's about patient safety," he said.

Source

****************

Just some problems with the "Obesity" war:

1). It tries to impose behavior change on everybody -- when most of those targeted are not obese and hence have no reason to change their behaviour. It is a form of punishing the innocent and the guilty alike. (It is also typical of Leftist thinking: Scorning the individual and capable of dealing with large groups only).

2). The longevity research all leads to the conclusion that it is people of MIDDLING weight who live longest -- not slim people. So the "epidemic" of obesity is in fact largely an "epidemic" of living longer.

3). It is total calorie intake that makes you fat -- not where you get your calories. Policies that attack only the source of the calories (e.g. "junk food") without addressing total calorie intake are hence pissing into the wind. People involuntarily deprived of their preferred calorie intake from one source are highly likely to seek and find their calories elsewhere.

4). So-called junk food is perfectly nutritious. A big Mac meal comprises meat, bread, salad and potatoes -- which is a mainstream Western diet. If that is bad then we are all in big trouble.

5). Food warriors demonize salt and fat. But we need a daily salt intake to counter salt-loss through perspiration and the research shows that people on salt-restricted diets die SOONER. And Eskimos eat huge amounts of fat with no apparent ill-effects. And the average home-cooked roast dinner has LOTS of fat. Will we ban roast dinners?

6). The foods restricted are often no more calorific than those permitted -- such as milk and fruit-juice drinks.

7). Tendency to weight is mostly genetic and is therefore not readily susceptible to voluntary behaviour change.

8). And when are we going to ban cheese? Cheese is a concentrated calorie bomb and has lots of that wicked animal fat in it too. Wouldn't we all be better off without it? And what about butter and margarine? They are just about pure fat. Surely they should be treated as contraband in kids' lunchboxes! [/sarcasm].

*********************