A primer on radiation of all types.

Paul Herscu has prepared a nice primer for everyone on radiation of all types.  Spoiler:  stop smoking and check for radon before you buy iodide. 

In lighter reading, Amy Rothenberg has written a book on cured cases from Natural Medicine.  She loves Oliver Sachs, so we should get lots of good stories.  Look at the book here.

Hiroshima: The Last Japanese Nuclear Crisis.

For anyone watching the news it is important to realize that for many older Japanese this is the worst nuclear disaster since the bomb was dropped on them.  Even as we support them in this crisis, it is important to realize that many of them may be experiencing PTSD as an aspect of this crisis.

I wonder if we worried about our radiation exposure back then?  Were we even checking radiation levels?  It is somewhat ironic that we were likely the recipients of much of that blown radiation.    

Journal Article on Harmful Herbs in Liver Foundation Magazine.

I was really excited to have my herbs that harm article finally published.  Have a look at the American Liver Foundation website (I'm on page 26). 

How Many Ways Can We Say: Eat Well, Exercise, and Do It For Life?

Evidently we can say it to the tune of $48.7 billions dollars.  That's with a B, not an M, and that was for 2005 alone.  According to Forbes, lots of good diets exist.  There are many sites out there to rate the different diets, including those with reviews of the different diets.  I like the one I linked to because it focuses on the safety of diet plans.  A number of diets out there are just not a great idea in terms of your health. 

The most effective diet book I've ever read isn't a diet book at all.  It's the China Study, which goes over in detail the largest study ever done on diet and cancer.  The first part is intense because of his studies on rats and cancer production.  If you don't like that stuff, skip ahead to the huge studies on the Han Chinese, which provides conclusive evidence that diet activates or deactivates cancer. 

I guess the most disturbing thing about the book is that we haven't really shifted our diets to conform to what he found.  This was the big one.  I think they had 500,000 survey takers, and covered millions of people.  To paraphrase what he found, Campbell is now a vegan.  To give that context, he began life as a cattleman researcher, trying to find ways to increase our meat yields.  I still struggle to get my mind around what he found, and I still don't follow his diet.  But I keep trying, which is more than I can say of any other diet book I've read from years ago. 

HCG Diet: Boy, I Wish I Could Get Behind It, But I Can't.

For those of you living in seclusion, the HCG diet is a great new craze.  Thank Kevin Trudeau, who publicized his own weight loss using the diet. 

Now, the basis of the HCG diet is a five hundred calorie diet.  Guess what, that's effective.  Starvation does actually lead to weight loss.  But the next step is to inject yourself with HCG.  For the men out there, this is the stuff that pregnant ladies generate.  And you'll be injecting that into yourself.  Hence my initial difficulty with the concept.

So does the HCG do anything?  Well, no.  It really doesn't.  Don't believe the experts, don't believe common sense.  Just have a look at the double blind, placebo controlled study.

S Afr Med J. 1990 Feb 17;77(4):185-9.
Human chorionic gonadotrophin and weight loss. A double-blind, placebo-controlled trial.

Bosch B, Venter I, Stewart RI, Bertram SR.
Department of Medical Physiology and Biochemistry, University of Stellenbosch, Parowvallei, CP.
Abstract

Low-dose human chorionic gonadotrophin (HCG) combined with a severe diet remains a popular treatment for obesity, despite equivocal evidence of its effectiveness. In a double-blind, placebo-controlled study, the effects of HCG on weight loss were compared with placebo injections. Forty obese women (body mass index greater than 30 kg/m2) were placed on the same diet supplying 5,000 kJ per day and received daily intramuscular injections of saline or HCG, 6 days a week for 6 weeks. A psychological profile, hunger level, body circumferences, a fasting blood sample and food records were obtained at the start and end of the study, while body weight was measured weekly. Subjects receiving HCG injections showed no advantages over those on placebo in respect of any of the variables recorded. Furthermore, weight loss on our diet was similar to that on severely restricted intake. We conclude that there is no rationale for the use of HCG injections in the treatment of obesity.
PMID: 2405506 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

So, while I'd love to have lots of patients and put them all on HCG, it hasn't been shown to work.  Starvation does work short term, but it generates long term problems.  As you generate a deficiency in the body, you are telling the fat cells that are left to become more active.  Fat is not just passive storage.  It works for your body by generating a range of hormones. 

BMC Med. 2011 Mar 16;9(1):25. [Epub ahead of print]


Regulation of vascular tone by adipocytes.

Maenhaut N, Van de Voorde J.
Abstract

ABSTRACT: Recent studies have shown that adipose tissue is an active endocrine and paracrine organ secreting several mediators called adipokines. Adipokines include hormones, inflammatory cytokines and other proteins. In obesity, adipose tissue becomes dysfunctional, resulting in an overproduction of proinflammatory adipokines and a lower production of anti-inflammatory adipokines. The pathological accumulation of dysfunctional adipose tissue that characterizes obesity is a major risk factor for many other diseases, including type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease and hypertension. Multiple physiological roles have been assigned to adipokines, including the regulation of vascular tone. For example, the unidentified adipocyte-derived relaxing factor (ADRF) released from adipose tissue has been shown to relax arteries. Besides ADRF, other adipokines such as adiponectin, omentin and visfatin are vasorelaxants. On the other hand, angiotensin II and resistin are vasoconstrictors released by adipocytes. Reactive oxygen species, leptin, tumour necrosis factor alpha, interleukin-6 and apelin share both vasorelaxing and constricting properties. Dysregulated synthesis of the vasoactive and proinflammatory adipokines may underlie the compromised vascular reactivity in obesity and obesity-related disorders.
PMID: 21410966

The bottom line is that I've just talked myself out of a whole bunch of patients looking for a quick weight loss solution.  But that's not what I want to do with patients.  What I want for patients is not term weight control, not just short term weight loss.  For that we have to use the body's wisdom to help people figure out what works for them. 

Kathryn Retzler of Hormone Synergy has done a wonderful job of summarizing the data on HCG.  http://www.hormonesynergy.com/resources.asp.  I hope she publishes her position paper, because we need people to understand the whole picture about HCG. 

Homeopathy: Boy, It Makes the Pharma Boys Quake.

Imagine, just imagine, that we had a process whereby we could take a single bottle of aspirin and use it to treat every single person on the planet.  Where we could orally vaccinate an entire third world country for a tenth of the cost.  Where families that could not afford medications for their dying children could receive medications for free.  Not donated by a charity, for free because the cost of producing the medication is so low that it can be given away by other families for free.  Wouldn't that be a good thing? 

Not if you want to make money, it wouldn't.  Hence the amazing resistance to homeopathy, and the perpetual attacks upon it.  If homeopathy replaced pharmaceuticals in even a small area, the billions saved would make the whole world sit up and take notice.  We'd have a roll-back to patients preparing their own remedies, a drop-off in surgeries and office visits, and a significant decrease in the total dollars spent on health care.  Most importantly, we'd finally see the huge hole in the logic that the "cure" for anything is a pharmaceutical.  Pharmaceuticals primarily manage, they rarely cure. 

 I got to read another salvo from Dr. Steven Novella recently.  He's upset because Dr. Oz has a TV show and he doesn't.  So he attacks Dr. Oz's credibility and insults his wife.  It's sort of disturbing, but since Dr. Novella works for Yale as a professional skeptic/neurologist I suppose we should assume he's well balanced. 

So here's a nice video of that supposed quack Dr. Oz washing up for surgery.  Compare him to his critic lower down. 

I do wonder what Dr. Novella will do with the upcoming radio show for Dana Ullman, author of the Homeopathic Revolution.  I imagine a bit of frothing at the mouth, following by some eye twitching.  All in a day's work for a professional skeptic.  I can only imagine that they must run shrieking from the aisles of supplements filling every supermarket, hunkering down in the canned goods aisles and filling their baskets with conservative choices like Spam and Twinkies.  At the checkout line they have to avert their eyes from every magazine, all trumpeting alternative treatments.  It's a lonely life, somewhat of a hermetic existance, and the nightly flagellation in penance for enjoying aromatherapy candles or a nice long bath has to get a bit wearing. 

That most skeptics are men is telling.  They also must be clueless men, because in all likelihood their spouses are merrily buying all the soaps and supplements they desire.  So these men, unable to bring their version of truth into the home,  seek solace with other men online.  What they are really saying is the world isn't going my way and I don't like it.  It is fortunate that the women of the world are running things, because for these guys anything beyond the stone scapel and a rock to bite on is too newfangled to be trusted.

For some basic research about homeopathy, please have a look at http://www.maloneymedical.com/id30.html  

Running in the Right Direction: A Run For Naturopathic Medicine.

A Naturopathic Doctor is planning to run across the U.S. to raise awareness of Naturopathic Medicine.  You can read all about it at:  http://physicianswholisten.blogspot.com/2011/03/running-for-naturopathic-medicine.html