August 7, 2009

Eating Strawberries Boosts Brain Power
NewsRx.com 08-06-09
Strawberries are good for your brain, according to breaking news out of the 2009 Berry Health Symposium. Several of the latest studies, conducted by world-renowned researchers, consistently showed that strawberry consumption is a simple way to improve cognitive function (see also Aging).
For example, one study presented by researchers from the Chicago Healthy Aging Project (CHAP) showed that older adults who consume strawberries at least once per month have less cognitive decline. More specifically, women who consumed more than one serving of strawberries per month had a 16.2% slower rate of cognitive decline versus those who consumed less.
With increasing age, brain function diminishes. This has been conclusively shown in laboratory studies, by Drs. James Joseph and Barbara Shukitt-Hale of USDA Agricultural Research Service at Tufts University. Their latest research at the conference demonstrated that aging results in deficits in learning, memory and motor function, such as balance and walking speed - and concluded that strawberries and other berries improved both memory and motor function.
Berries Can Preserve Brain Function
Researchers from the 2009 Berry Health Symposium described how berries may be contributing to the preservation of brain function. Most disease processes in the body are believed to begin through inflammation and oxidation which damage cells. Healthy nerve cell membranes promote optimal communication within the brain and nervous system so preventing membrane damage from inflammation and oxidation is essential. Numerous antioxidant substances have been identified in berries.
Prevention of Dementia in an Aging Population
Dementia is the loss of cognitive function of sufficient severity to interfere with everyday tasks. Alzheimer's disease is the most common form of dementia. It is estimated that one in eight persons, aged 65 and older have Alzheimer's. There is no cure for the disease and treatments are ineffective.
According to recently released census estimates, the world's 65-and-older population will triple by 2050 to make up 1 in 6 people. The number of senior citizens has already increased 23 percent since 2000 to 516 million, more than double the growth rate for the general population. As a result, the incidence of dementia is likely to rise.
The frequent consumption of berries is emerging as a potential simple dietary factor for prevention.
California strawberries are grown and available year-round in supermarkets across the country.
http://www.lef.org/news/LefDailyNews.htm?NewsID=8606&Section=Nutrition

Cranberry Proanthocyanidins Induce Apoptosis and Inhibit Acid-Induced Proliferation of Human Esophageal Adenocarcinoma Cells

Laura A. Kresty*, Amy B. Howell and Maureen Baird
Division of Hematology and Oncology, Department of Internal Medicine, College of Medicine, and Comprehensive Cancer Center, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio 43210; and Blueberry and Cranberry Research Center, Rutgers University, Chatsworth, New Jersey 08019
J. Agric. Food Chem., 2008, 56 (3), pp 676–680
Publication Date (Web): January 23, 2008

Abstract

The occurrence of esophageal adenocarcinoma and its only recognized precursor lesion, Barrett’s esophagus, has rapidly increased during the past three decades. The precise reason for the rise remains to be elucidated, but increasing rates have been linked to multiple nutritional factors. Plant-based diets have generally been associated with a reduction of risk for esophageal adenocarcinoma and those of animal origin with risk escalation. Moreover, a number of recent in vitro and limited in vivo investigations have reported that cranberry extracts affect multiple cancer-associated processes in breast, colon, prostate, and other cancer cell lines of epithelial origin. Thus, this study sought to investigate the chemopreventive potential of a cranberry proanthocyanidin rich extract (PAC) in SEG-1 human esophageal adenocarcinoma (EAC) cells. PAC pretreatment significantly inhibited the viability and proliferation of EAC cells in a time- and dose-dependent manner. Moreover, PAC (50 µg/mL) significantly inhibited acid-induced cell proliferation of SEG-1 cells. PAC treatment induced cell cycle arrest at the G1 checkpoint and significantly reduced the percentage of SEG-1 cells in S-phase following 24 and 48 h of exposure. PAC treatment also resulted in significant induction of apoptosis. Thus, PAC modulates cell cycle regulation, aberrant proliferation, and apoptosis, all key biological processes altered during progression to esophageal adenocarcinoma. These findings support that further mechanistic studies are warranted to more fully elucidate the inhibitory potential of PAC against esophageal cancer.
http://pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/jf071997t?cookieSet=1

Berry Fruits for Cancer Prevention: Current Status and Future Prospects

Navindra P. Seeram#
Center for Human Nutrition, David Geffen School of Medicine, University of California, Los Angeles, California 90095
J. Agric. Food Chem., 2008, 56 (3), pp 630–635
Publication Date (Web): January 23, 2008

Abstract

Overwhelming evidence suggests that edible small and soft-fleshed berry fruits may have beneficial effects against several types of human cancers. The anticancer potential of berries has been related, at least in part, to a multitude of bioactive phytochemicals that these colorful fruits contain, including polyphenols (flavonoids, proanthocyanidins, ellagitannins, gallotannins, phenolic acids), stilbenoids, lignans, and triterpenoids. Studies show that the anticancer effects of berry bioactives are partially mediated through their abilities to counteract, reduce, and also repair damage resulting from oxidative stress and inflammation. In addition, berry bioactives also regulate carcinogen and xenobiotic metabolizing enzymes, various transcription and growth factors, inflammatory cytokines, and subcellular signaling pathways of cancer cell proliferation, apoptosis, and tumor angiogenesis. Berry phytochemicals may also potentially sensitize tumor cells to chemotherapeutic agents by inhibiting pathways that lead to treatment resistance, and berry fruit consumption may provide protection from therapy-associated toxicities. Although a wide variety of berry fruits are consumed worldwide, this paper focuses on those commonly consumed in North America, namely, blackberries, black raspberries, blueberries, cranberries, red raspberries, and strawberries. In addition, a large body of studies on singly purified berry bioactives is available, but this paper focuses on studies of “whole berries” per se, that is, as berry extracts and purified fractions, juices, and freeze-dried powders. Potential mechanisms of anticancer action and bioavailability of berry phenolics, as well as gaps in knowledge and recommendations for future berry research, are also briefly discussed.
http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/jf072504n

Human cells secrete cancer-killing protein, UK study finds

NewsRx.com 08-06-09
Human cells are able to secrete a cancer-killing protein, scientists at the University of Kentucky's Markey Cancer Center have found (see also University of Kentucky).
Researchers led by Vivek Rangnekar, UK professor of radiation medicine, have determined that the tumor-suppressor protein Par-4, initially thought to be active only within cells expressing the Par-4 gene, is in fact secreted by most human and rodent cells and can target large numbers of cancer cells by binding to receptors on the cell surface.
This discovery, published in the leading journal Cell, makes Par-4 a very attractive molecule for future research aimed at developing new cancer treatments.
"It was a pleasant surprise, when we noticed that Par-4 protein is secreted by cells," Rangnekar said. "This new finding means it is not necessary to make genetic modifications, or to employ recombinant viruses, to deliver the Par-4 gene to cancer cells, and it significantly expands the potential applications of Par-4 to selectively kill cancer cells."
Funded by several grants from the National Institutes of Health, Rangnekar's study found that when the Par-4 molecule binds to its receptor GRP78 on the surface of a tumor cell, it triggers a biological process called apoptosis or "cell suicide." Consistent with previous research by Rangnekar's laboratory with intracellular Par-4, the newly discovered secreted Par-4 acts selectively against cancer cells, leaving healthy cells unharmed. Few other molecules are known to exhibit such selectivity.
One molecule, known as TRAIL, also exerts cancer-cell-specific effects. However, Rangnekar's most recent study discovered that apoptosis inducible by TRAIL is dependent upon extracellular Par-4 signaling via cell surface GRP78. Thus, the researchers conclude, Par-4 activates a novel pathway involving cell surface GRP78 receptor for induction of apoptosis. In other words, without Par-4, TRAIL lacks the ability to cause "cell suicide."
Rangnekar first discovered the Par-4 gene in 1993. In 2007, Rangnekar's team introduced the gene into a mouse embryo, creating a cancer-resistant "supermouse" that did not develop tumors. In fact, the mice possessing Par-4 actually live a few months longer than lab mice without the gene, indicating that Par-4 mice have no toxic side effects.
While Par-4 is not necessarily a "magic bullet" - it does not target every type of cancer cell - Rangnekar says it could play a major role in developing new combination treatment modalities for cancer patients. His hope is that the next generation of treatments will be even more effective than conventional treatments available today, with fewer and less severe side effects.
"I look at this research from the standpoint of how it can be developed to benefit the cancer patient, and that's what keeps us focused," Rangnekar said, discussing the potential of Par-4 in 2007. "The pain that cancer patients go through - not just from the disease, but also from the treatment - is excruciating. If you can treat the cancer and not harm the patient, that's a major breakthrough."
http://www.lef.org/news/LefDailyNews.htm?NewsID=8604&Section=Disease

Intermittent calorie restriction more effective than chronic restriction in mammary cancer prevention

Life Extensions August 05, 2009
An article published online on August 3, 2009 in the journal Cancer Prevention Research reports the discovery of researchers at the University of Minnesota’s Hormel Institute that calorie restriction need only be implemented intermittently to result in significant protection against the development of tumors in a mouse model of breast cancer.
Professor Margot P. Cleary, PhD and her associates divided 10 week old mice to receive diets that allowed them to eat as much as they wanted, intermittently restricted diets consisting of cycles of restricted calories for three weeks followed by 3 weeks of unrestricted eating, or chronic 25 percent restricted diets. At 72 to 82 weeks of age, half of the animals in each group were examined for tumors.
Seventy-one percent of the unrestricted mice had mammary tumors, compared to 35 percent of chronically restricted mice. Only 9 percent of the animals who underwent intermittent dietary restriction had tumors. Intermittently restricted mice also had significantly lower serum insulin-like growth factor-I (IGF-1), which has been associated with cancer.
"Further identification of serum factors that are involved in tumor development would possibly provide a way to identify at risk individuals and target interventions to these people," Dr Cleary stated.
In an accompanying editorial, Michael Pollak of McGill University remarked that the study "contributes to accumulating evidence that caloric restriction acts by altering hormone levels rather than by directly starving cancers of energy. In particular, lower levels of insulin are associated with reduced food intake, and this may be protective."
"Humans frequently regain lost weight discouraging the application of calorie restriction protocols for disease prevention," Dr Cleary observed. "We hope these studies will identify biomarkers and/or pathways that could be used in human studies to determine agents that would mimic calorie restriction."
chronic-restriction-in-mammary-cancer-prevention

Beetroot juice may boost endurance: Study

Nutraingredients.com, 07-Aug-2009

Consuming beetroot juice may boost stamina and allow people to exercise for up to 16 per cent longer, according to a new study from the UK.
The vegetable juice’s nitrate content may reduce oxygen uptake to an extent that cannot be achieved by any other known means, making exercise less tiring, according to findings published in the Journal of Applied Physiology.
“Our study is the first to show that nitrate-rich food can increase exercise endurance,” said Professor Andy Jones from the University of Exeter. “We were amazed by the effects of beetroot juice on oxygen uptake because these effects cannot be achieved by any other known means, including training.”
“I am sure professional and amateur athletes will be interested in the results of this research,” added Prof Jones. “I am also keen to explore the relevance of the findings to those people who suffer from poor fitness and may be able to use dietary supplements to help them go about their daily lives.”
The study could see beetroot juice positioned as a unique beverage in the growing sports nutrition market. Frost & Sullivan estimates the European sports nutrition market will surpass the €4 billion by 2010 – and it is a food industry segment that is growing more rapidly than most.
In addition to the potential benefits for athletes, the Exeter researchers report that the findings could be relevant to elderly people or those with cardiovascular, respiratory or metabolic diseases.
Study details
Prof Jones and his co-workers recruited eight men aged between 19 and 38, and assigned them to consume 500 ml per day of organic beetroot juice for six days. After this time the men underwent a series of tests, involving cycling on an exercise bike.
The ‘placebo’ phase involved consuming blackcurrant cordial for six days before completing the same cycling tests.
The researchers report that, following consumption of the beetroot juice, the volunteers were able to cycle for an average of 11.25 minutes, which is 92 seconds longer compared to their performance after placebo.
This would translate into an approximate 2 per cent reduction in the time taken to cover a set distance. The group that had consumed the beetroot juice also had lower resting blood pressure, a finding that supports the findings of an earlier study from London-based researchers who reported blood pressure reductions on consuming beetroot juice (Hypertension, Mar 2008; Vol. 51, pp. 784-790).
“The principal original finding of this investigation is that three days of dietary supplementation with nitrate-rich beetroot juice (which doubled the plasma nitrite) significantly reduced the O2 cost of cycling at a fixed sub-maximal work rate and increased the time to task failure during severe exercise,” wrote Jones and his co-workers.
“That an acute nutritional intervention (ie, dietary supplementation with a natural food product that is rich in nitrate) can reduce the O2 cost of a given increment in work rate by about 20 per cent is therefore remarkable,” they added.
Mechanism
It is unclear what the exact mechanism behind the apparent benefits is, said the researchers. They do, however, suspect it could be a result of the nitrate turning into nitric oxide in the body, reducing the oxygen cost of exercise.
Source: Journal of Applied Physiology “Dietary nitrate supplementation reduces the O2 cost of low-intensity exercise and enhances tolerance to high-intensity exercise in humans” Authors: S.J. Bailey, P. Winyard, A. Vanhatalo, J.R. Blackwell, F.J. DiMenna, D.P. Wilkerson, J. Tarr, N. Benjamin, A.M. Jones
http://www.nutraingredients.com/Research/Beetroot-juice-may-boost-endurance-Study

Green tea extracts linked to healthier bones: Study

Nutraingredients.com, 06-Aug-2009

Compounds from green tea may lead to stronger bones by promoting bone formation, while also inhibiting bone resorption, which leads to weakening, suggests a new cell study.
The new study looked at three tea compounds called epigallocatechin (EGC), gallocatechin (GC), and gallocatechin gallate (GCG), and found that EGC produced the greatest bone boosting potential.
"Our study has provided the first laboratory evidence on the bone promotion effects of the green tea catechin EGC as was demonstrated by the promotion of osteoblastic differentiation and inhibition of osteoclast formation,” wrote researchers from the Chinese University of Hong Kong report their findings in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry.
Osteoblasts are cells responsible for bone formation, while osteoclasts are cells which break down bone, leading to resorption and weakening.
The study is consistent with data from epidemiological studies. A study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition (Oct. 2007, Vol 86, pp. 1243-1247) reported that bone mineral density levels were 2.8 per cent greater in tea drinkers than non-tea drinkers, suggesting the beverage has the potential to aid in the prevention of osteoporosis.
The condition is currently second only to cardiovascular disease in terms of global healthcare burden, according to the World Health Organisation, affecting some 200 million people today but the number of sufferers is set to increase steadily with growing numbers of elderly living longer, and obesity adding extra strain on bones.
Green tea contains between 30 and 40 per cent of water-extractable polyphenols, while black tea (green tea that has been oxidized by fermentation) contains between 3 and 10 per cent.
The four primary polyphenols found in fresh tealeaves are epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG), epigallocatechin, epicatechin gallate, and epicatechin.
Study details
The Hong Kong based researchers used rat cells to study the effects of EGC, GC, and GCG on bone health.
EGC was found to stimulate bone mineralisation, while simultaneously inhibiting the formation of osteoclasts. The other catechins were found to have a significantly weaker effect, said the researchers.
“The present study illustrated that the tea catechins, EGC in particular, had positive effects on bone metabolism through a double process of promoting osteoblastic activity and inhibiting osteoclast differentiations,” wrote the authors.
"Our observations would serve as groundwork for further studies,” they concluded.
Source: Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry "Effects of Tea Catechins, Epigallocatechin, Gallocatechin, and Gallocatechin Gallate, on Bone Metabolism" Authors: C.H. Ko, K.M. Lau, W.Y. Choy, P.C. Leung
http://www.nutraingredients.com/Research/Green-tea-extracts-linked-to-healthier-bones-Study

Woman Hypnotized to Believe She Had Gastric Band Surgery Loses 55 Pounds
David Gutierrez, NaturalNews.com August 7, 2009 

(NaturalNews) A woman lost 55 pounds after undergoing hypnosis to implant memories of a gastric band surgery in her head.

"I've tried every other diet and exercise plan the world has to offer," said the woman, Marion Corns. "Now I am able to shed up to three pounds a week because I believe I've had a band fitted into my stomach. Bizarrely, I can remember every part of the 'procedure' - including being wheeled into theatre, the clink of the surgeon's knife and even the smell of the anesthetic." 

Corns underwent the hypnotherapy at the Elite Clinic in Spain, which was recommended to her by a friend who had gone there to quit smoking. The therapy involved a number of sessions in which she was familiarized with the procedure of a gastric band surgery, including a real surgical gastric band and stomach model. She then underwent several sessions of hypnosis, in which every stage of the surgery was narrated to her. She was made to touch the gastric band, while a recording of surgical tools played in the background. The hypnotherapists also pumped smells into the room to simulate those found in the operating and recovery rooms of a hospital.

After her first hypnosis session, Corns began to lose weight, just as if she had undergone the real surgery. 

"Now if I try and eat a large portion I feel a pulling sensation in my tummy as if my stomach is stretching," she said. "I simply cannot eat large portions of food any more."

Clinic owner Martin Shirran said that health insurance should cover the gastric band hypnotherapy as an alternative to true surgery and with fewer side effects.

Jacqui Lowdon of the British Dietary Association cautioned that such therapy is not without risks, however.

"If this works and people can achieve the same kind of weight loss without surgery, it is important they are getting the correct dietary advice as well," she said. "It is also important to have a target weight and to know what your ideal weight is."

http://www.naturalnews.com/026796_hypnosis_hypnotherapy_natural_health.html

Fish Oils Reduce Size of Cancer Tumors
David Gutierrez, NaturalNews.com August 7, 2009 

(NaturalNews) The omega-3 essential fatty acid known as docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) is more effective at reducing the size of breast cancer tumors than the chemotherapy drug cisplatin, and can also reduce that drug's harmful side effects, reports a new study published in the journal Cell Division.

"Our results suggest a new, fruitful drug regimen in the management of solid tumors based on combining cisplatin and possibly other chemotherapeutics with DHA," said researcher A.M. El-Mowafy of Egypt's Mansoura University. "DHA elicited prominent chemo-preventative effects on its own, and appreciably augmented those of cisplatin as well. Furthermore, this study is the first to reveal that DHA can obliterate lethal cisplatin-induced nephrotoxicity [kidney damage] and renal tissue injury."

Researchers injected a group of mice with breast cancer cells, then treated them with either 125 or 250 milligrams per kilogram of DHA, a regular dose of cisplatin, a mix of cisplatin and 125 milligrams per kilogram of DHA, or a placebo. They recorded tumor size and blood levels of white blood cells, C-reactive protein (CRP) and MDA at the start of the study and again after 20 days.

CRP is a marker of inflammation, a known risk factor for tumor growth. MDA is a marker of lipid peroxidation, which signifies high levels of the free radicals that can lead to cancer. Elevated white blood cell counts are also associated with tumor growth.

The researchers found that compared with mice that had never been injected with cancer cells, the injected mice underwent a significant increase in levels of CRP, MDA and white blood cells. Elevated levels of CRP and white blood cells were significantly correlated with increased tumor size.

Levels of white blood cells, CRP and MDA were all lower in animals that had been treated with either DHA, cisplatin, or a combination, however.

In animals who received 125 milligrams per kilogram of DHA, tumor growth was 38 percent less than in animals who received a placebo. Animals receiving cisplatin had 55 percent less tumor growth, while those treated with 250 milligrams per kilogram of DHA had 79 percent less. The combination of DHA and cisplatin not only reduced tumor growth by 81 percent compared with a placebo, it also returned white blood cell counts to normal levels. The 250 milligram per kilogram dose of DHA was nearly as effective at restoring a normal white blood cell count as the DHA-cisplatin combination.

"The chemoprevention elicited by DHA was dose-dependent, and appeared to be mediated by reduction of leukocytosis [elevated white blood cell count], oxidative stress, and replenishing of endogenous antioxidant machinery," the researchers wrote. "Most strikingly, a strong anti-inflammatory effect was produced."

In a second experiment, researchers treated rats with cisplatin, which is known to produce potentially lethal kidney damage. Half the rats were also given a 250 milligram per kilogram dose of DHA, while the other half was given nothing.

All the rats that received only cisplatin died from kidney toxicity. Among animals given both the drug and the omega-3, however, only 12 percent developed lethal kidney damage.

DHA is found primarily in fatty cold-water fish, such as salmon, anchovies, herring, mackerel and sardines, but it can also be found in certain vegetable oils. It is believed to play a critical role in the development of the nervous system, particularly the brain and retina.

A number of studies have linked omega-3s such as DHA to a wide variety of health benefits, including reduced risk of cancer and heart disease. A recent study showed that a diet high in omega-3s reduced the risk of prostate cancer even in men with a genetic predisposition for the disease.
http://www.naturalnews.com/026784_DHA_cancer_blood.html

Treat Candida Infections with Enzymes and Diet
Melanie Grimes, NaturalNews.com August 6, 2009 

(NaturalNews) Candida albicans is a form of yeast that lives in the colon. While Candida is not normal, it is common. Some studies say that Candida is present in 90% of the population. Some believe this number to be 100%. And for most people with a small amount of Candida, infection is not a problem. However, after treatment with antibiotics or as a by-product of digestion, Candida can multiply, disrupt normal digestive flora and cause severe mental and physical health problems. Enzymes and diet have been shown to reduce and eliminate Candida in the gut, leading to better digestion, reduced inflammation, and overall health. Raw foods have been shown to be particularly useful in reducing Candida infection.

Candida is a member of the fungi family of yeast. It grows on the mucus membranes of the gastrointestinal and genitourinary tracts. It is responsible for thrush in infants, and can cause many disruptions of the GI tract, including heartburn, colitis, bloating, gas, constipation, diarrhea, and gastritis. It can also trigger depression, lethargy, memory loss, hyperactivity and headaches. Allergy symptoms can also be increased by Candida, such as hives, asthma, food allergies, and hay fever. In the reproductive system, Candida can trigger yeast vaginitis, menstrual irregularities, endometriosis, cystitis, urethritis as well as kidney and bladder infections. General, unexplained fatigue can also be a symptom, as well as increased body hair, cold hands and feet, food cravings, joint pains, and loss of libido.

There are specific triggers that cause the overgrowth of Candida. One of the primary causes is the use of antibiotics. Antibiotics kill the healthy flora of the gut. After treatment with antibiotics, it`s important to rebuild this healthy flora, or Candida will run rampant. Oral contraceptives can also cause a Candida overgrowth, as can excessive use of sugar or alcohol.

The best way to treat Candida infection is to change the diet. Raw foods help the growth of the "good" bacteria. Probiotics and yogurt should be added to the diet. Consumption of sugar should be halted completely, while healing is taking places, as sugar is a food that will stimulate growth of the Candida. Even fruit juices are too sweet. Fermented foods or those containing yeast should also be avoided, such as beer or cheese. Even vinegar can cause a spike in yeast growth and mushrooms should not be consumed because it is a member of the fungus family as well.

Adding fiber to the diet is encouraged. Fiber purges the lining of the colon and helps reduce inflammation and yeast. A good source of fiber can be found in oatmeal mixed with flax seeds or chia seeds. Enzyme therapy is frequently used to help balance the gut. Nutritional supplemental enzymesshould be taken with every meal, as well as in between meals, so that the buildup of yeast will be reduced, as well as aiding digestion of the current meals. Coconut oil has been shown to solve yeast problems as well. This is because coconut oil contains ingredients that have antimicrobial and antifungal properties.

With proper diet and enzyme therapy, Candida infections can be controlled. A healthy, balanced gut will return, enabling the proper digestion and assimilation of important nutrients to return.
http://www.naturalnews.com/026793_candida_infections_enzymes.html

He Shou Wu is the Most Amazing Longevity Herb of All
Christopher Gussa, NaturalNews.com August 6, 2009 

(NaturalNews) Out of about 10,000 Chinese medicinal plants only about 60 belong to the class of Superior Tonic Herbs. Out of these 60 herbs He Shou Wu is the most amazing longevity tonic of all. It is widely used in Chinese herbal medicine as a tonic to prevent premature aging by tonifying the Kidney and Liver functions. It also is known to bring up Jing (vital essence), nourishing the blood, and fortifying the muscles, tendons and bones. It strengthens and stabilizes the lower back and knees. He Shou Wu is also used to enhance sexual drive and fertility in men and women. It can increase sperm count in men and help build more semen even in old age. It helps build ova in women as well. It is also widely used in Asia to maintain the youthful condition and color of the hair. This is, for some reason, its most popular attribute but it does so much more than this! There are countless legends of people that have lived well past the century mark taking this herb, including Li Qing Yeun who lived to be 197 years old!

Many people (Including the author) have claimed He Shou Wu has made all the difference in the world as far as stopping pain in the knees and lower back.

He Shou Wu (Called "Foti" by some) is the "Prepared" root of Polygonum multiform - a large vining plant. It is prepared by slicing the root shortly after harvesting and then cooking it in black bean soup (in a proportion of 10 parts He Shou Wu to 1 part black beans) until the soup is exhausted. The "prepared" roots are then dried. This is what makes He Shou Wu a tonic worthy of taking for the rest of one's life. This process has been done in this way for around 1,500 years. If the herb is not prepared in this way it will not have the same tonic energy. However raw He Shou Wu is often used to stop acne and can have a strong laxative effect.

He Shou Wu is a tonic to the endocrine glands; it improves health, stamina and resistance to disease. It is used to reduce cholesterol due in part to its lecithin content. It is used for angina pectoris, bloody stools, hypoglycemia, diabetes, night sweating and has been found to be helpful in schizophrenia.

Science takes He Shou Wu very seriously:

Studies show that He Shou Wu extract improves the cardiovascular system, enhances immune functions, slows the degeneration of glands, increasesantioxidant activity, and reduces the accumulation of lipid peroxidation. Such findings suggest that ho-shou-wu is helpful in combating some of the processes that lead to conditions characteristic of old age, thereby also reducing the risk of fatal diseases (e.g., cancer) and incidents (e.g., heart attack, stroke). He Shou Wu was shown to have effects on the antioxidant system superoxide dismutase (SOD), accumulation of lipid peroxidase, and enhancement of cell-mediated immune responses.

Pharmacological studies have shown that prepared He Shou Wu root extract can prolong the life cycle of somatic cells. Laboratory studies have shown that He Shou Wu can promote strong development and prolonged growing cycle in mammalian cells compared to cells in the control group, which demonstrated aging and degeneration.

He Shou Wu`s effect on protecting the liver:

In experiments on mice, prepared He Shou Wu reduces buildup of hepatic (liver) fat. He Shou Wu also lessens the enlargement of the liver caused by carbon tetrachloride poisoning.

He Shou Wu can significantly counter the liver damage in rats caused by peroxidized (spoiled) corn oil. The damage includes fatty liver, liver function damage and elevated levels of peroxidized lipids in the liver.

At a fundamental level in the liver`s cells, in vitro studies have demonstrated He Shou Wu`s ability to inhibit the lipid peroxidation of rat liver microsomes induced by ADP and NADPH.

These studies show that He Shou Wu`s liver protection mechanism relies largely in its ability to inhibit lipid peroxidation (LPO) and its damage to the liver cells.

Studies have also demonstrated that various laboratory animals fed He Shou Wu in their diets lived longer than control animals.

Study 1: A decoction with He Shou Wu as the main ingredient prolonged the lifespan of fruit flies. At 0.1% strength, the decoction could prolong the lifespan by 5.83%. At 0.5% strength, it could prolong the lifespan by 12.03%.

Study 2: He Shou Wu has been shown to slow down the aging of vital organs in aged animals, especially the reproductive organs, the ovary, the uterus and the testicle. The same formula also demonstrated significant results in open human clinical studies.

Study 3: In an attempt to prove Shou Wu`s legendary reputation as being able to reverse grey hair to black, Shou Wu liquor (dilute alcohol extract) was given to 36 people with gray hair. 24 completely recovered their dark hair and 8 more showed improvement. The total effective rate was of 88.9%.

Taking He Shou Wu:

He Shou Wu is best taken in tinctured form or in a fine sifted powder shaken into juice or other liquid. As a "Tea" it does not have its full potential as it is not completely water soluble. A great way to take it is powder in the morning and a teaspoon of the tincture at night. (It tends to help with sleep in this way)

Be sure to get it from a reliable source and be sure the roots are at least 4 years old and that it is traditionally prepared in black bean soup. 6-10 year old roots are available and can really show off the amazing powerful restorative energy of this Superior Chinese Tonic Herb.
( http://www.naturalnews.com/023021_C... )

Whether you plan on living to 200 years or you just want to preserve your vital essence and Qi to have the energy of a young person for the rest of your life, He Shou Wu should be tried by anyone. At least for the first 100 years of your life!

http://www.naturalnews.com/026786_He_Shou_Wu_longevity_medicine.html

Moving To The US Increases Cancer Risk For Hispanics

ScienceDaily (Aug. 7, 2009) — Results of a new study confirm trends that different Hispanic population groups have higher incidence rates of certain cancers and worse cancer outcomes if they live in the United States, than they do if they live in their homelands.
"Hispanics are not all the same with regard to their cancer experience," said Paulo S. Pinheiro, M.D., Ph.D., M.Sc., researcher in the Department of Epidemiology at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine.
"Targeted interventions for cancer prevention and control should take into account the specificity of each Hispanic subgroup: Cubans, Puerto Ricans or Mexicans," added Pinheiro, who is the study's lead researcher. Pinheiro received support from the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology.
These results are published in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research.
Studies to date have classified all Hispanics under the same umbrella, as a single ethnic group, hiding the differences between each population group.
"They are really heterogeneous from cultural and socioeconomic perspectives and represent several population groups," said Amelie G. Ramirez, Dr.P.H., director of the Institute for Health Promotion Research, and co-associate director of the Cancer Prevention and Population Studies research program at the Cancer Therapy & Research Center at The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio.
The Hispanic population in the United States is increasing according to Ramirez — nearly one in every three people will be Hispanic by 2050. Ramirez, who was not involved in this research, said it is important to conduct studies like this to better understand these differences and learn what predisposes different population groups to certain types of cancer, in order to improve health outcomes.
Pinheiro and colleagues evaluated the kinds of cancers occurring in each Hispanic population group and compared their risk after moving to the United States. They conducted the study in Florida, which has a diverse Hispanic community composed of Cubans, Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, Central and South Americans.
The results indicated that these population groups showed different patterns of cancer once they moved to the United States; Mexicans had the lowest rates of cancer overall and Puerto Ricans had the highest rates of cancer. Cubans' risk of cancer most closely resembles that of non-Hispanic whites. Similar to the U.S. non-Hispanic white population, Cubans and Puerto Ricans seemed to acquire higher risk for diet-related cancers relatively quickly.
Furthermore, Cuban males had higher incidence of tobacco-related cancers; Puerto Rican men had high incidence of liver cancer; and Mexican women had a higher incidence of cervical cancer.
For all cancers combined, risk for most cancers was higher (at least 40 percent) among Hispanics living in the United States compared with those who live in their countries of origin. Colorectal cancer risk among Cubans and Mexicans who moved to the United States was more than double that in Cuba and Mexico. The same was said for lung cancer among Mexican and Puerto Rican Floridian women compared to those in Mexico or Puerto Rico.
"This suggests that changes in their environment and lifestyles make them more prone to develop cancer," Pinheiro said. "It is puzzling that the groups for which integration in mainstream American society is easier, including access to health care, are also those with higher cancer rates even after accounting for the increased detection of certain cancers in the United States."
These results present important opportunities for United States and international collaborations in the prevention, treatment and research of cancer. While physicians may not have to change the care they provide, Ramirez said they should be more aware of the diversity and differences in cancer prevalence among this population.
"Don't assume that all Hispanics are the same," Ramirez said. "Physicians should probe Hispanic patients more on their background and family history to identify any problematic behaviors that could contribute to health problems."
Patients should become better informed of some of the positive aspects of their original lifestyles and should be strongly discouraged from adopting unfavorable lifestyles that may be more common in the United States, such as unhealthy diets, smoking and alcohol use, according to Pinheiro and Ramirez.
Additional studies are warranted to assess the variations in cancer risk according to socio-economic status and length of time spent in the United States within each Hispanic population group, in order to evaluate habits that may predispose them to certain cancers. More research should focus on these unique populations in relation not only to cancer, but to other diseases, according to the researchers.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/08/090806080144.htm

High-fat, High-sugar Foods Alter Brain Receptors
ScienceDaily (Aug. 6, 2009) — Overconsumption of fatty, sugary foods leads to changes in brain receptors, according to new animal research at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.  The new research results are being presented at the 2009 annual meeting of the Society for the Study of Ingestive Behavior (SSIB). The results have implications for understanding bulimia and other binge eating disorders.
Dr. Bello and colleagues report that either continuous eating or binge eating a high fat, high sugar diet alters opioid receptor levels in an area of the brain that controls food intake. Opioids are a family of chemicals with actions similar to those of morphine; however, opioids exist naturally in the brain and have been linked to feelings of pleasure and euphoria. “These results are interesting because we saw changes in opioid receptor gene expression in a brain area that controls how much we eat during a meal”, said Bello.
The new findings suggest that overconsumption of highly palatable foods maintains bingeing by enhancing opioids in the brain, and that increased opioids could be a factor involved in binge eating disorders. These findings may help to understand the biological basis of eating disorders.
This research was supported by NIH DK19302 and DK078484.
The lead author was Nicholas Bello, Dept. of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, USA.
  Co-authors were F. CASSEUS, M.T. CHUANG, B.A. MITCHELL, Z.W. PATINKIN, P. SINGH, T.H. MORAN. Johns Hopkins University, School of Medicine, Dept. Psychiatry and Behavioral Sci., Baltimore, MD, USA
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/07/090727102024.htm

Hormone Levels Contribute To Stress Resilience
ScienceDaily (Aug. 6, 2009) — It is important to understand what biological mechanisms contribute to an individual’s capacity to be resilient under conditions of extreme stress, such as those regularly experienced by soldiers, police, and firefighters. Dr. Charles A. Morgan III and his colleagues from Yale University and the VA National Center for PTSD have worked closely with collaborators at the Special Forces Underwater Warfare Operations Center to study special operations soldiers enrolled in the military Combat Diver Qualification Course (CDQC).
Dehydroepiandrosterone, or “DHEA” as it is commonly known, is a hormone that is secreted by the adrenal gland in response to stress. Although medical scientists have known for over a decade that DHEA provides beneficial, anti-stress effects in animals, they did not know until now whether this was also true for humans.
The scientists completed psychological and hormone assessments on a group of soldiers the day before they began the month-long CDQC, and immediately after their final pass/fail exam – a highly stressful, nocturnal, underwater navigation exercise.
They found that soldiers with more DHEA performed better during the final underwater navigation exam than those with less DHEA. These findings are being published by Elsevier in the August 15th issue of Biological Psychiatry.
Underwater navigation is a task that relies on an area of the brain called the hippocampus that is very sensitive to the negative effects of stress. “Animal studies have shown that DHEA buffers against stress, in part, by modulating receptors in this region of the brain,” explained Dr. Morgan. “These findings are important in understanding why and how soldiers may differ in their ability to tolerate stress and also raise the possibility that, in the future, compounds like DHEA might be used to protect military personnel from the negative impact of operational stress."
Clearly, additional research is still needed but these findings are a step forward in the quest to help prevent or better treat the symptoms of stress-related disorders that these high-risk individuals experience.
Charles A. Morgan III et al. Relationships Among Plasma Dehydroepiandrosterone and Dehydroepiandrosterone Sulfate, Cortisol, Symptoms of Dissociation, and Objective Performance in Humans Exposed to Underwater Navigation Stress. Biological Psychiatry, Volume 66, Issue 4 (August 15, 2009)
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/08/090805075640.htm

The Organic Center Refutes Misleading Nutritional Claims Made by United Kingdom's Food Standards Agency (FSA) in Agency Report on Health Value of Organic Foods---FSA-Commissioned 'Nutritional Quality of Organic Foods: A Systematic Review' Draws Unsupported Conclusions from a Flawed and Incomplete Look at Benefits of Organic Foods

PR Newswire 08-05-09
BOULDER, Colo., Aug 05, 2009 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ -- The following is being issued by The Organic Center -- We (The Organic Center) strongly refute the claim made by Dr. Alan Dangour and his U.K. colleagues that the nutritional benefits of organic food are 'not important.' Left unchallenged, the U.K. team's study and Dr. Dangour's remarks could erode consumer confidence in the inherent nutritional and health benefits of organic food. Among the multiple missteps in the FSA's analysis are a failure to properly assess differences in the levels of key polyphenols and antioxidants and not using stringent guidelines to determine whether the studies are scientifically valid.
In our March 2008 report covering many of the same studies comparing nutrient levels in organic and conventional foods, we confirmed that organic foods were, on average, 25 percent higher across 11 key nutrients compared to conventional foods. Significant new science released since early 2008, which was the cut-off date for studies included in both the FSA's and our study, provide additional strong support for the conclusion that organic foods offer nutritional and public health benefits.
In a separate report released in May 2009, we analyzed dozens of studies, the majority published in the last three years, that collectively show exposure to pesticides during pregnancy and the first years of life increases the risk of obesity, neurological problems and diabetes. With the average American child exposed to 10 to 13 pesticides daily in food and drink and the rate of new diabetes cases doubling in the last decade, reducing pesticides in children's foods is a top public health priority.
Environmental benefits of organic farming include promoting more bio-diverse, agricultural landscapes; helping reverse the effects of global warming through sequestering more carbon than conventional farming; and improving health and survival among honey bee and endangered fish and amphibian species.
We call upon government bodies, academic institutions, business leaders and consumers to join us in contesting this incomplete and flawed analysis of the benefits of organic food and farming.
http://www.lef.org/news/LefDailyNews.htm?NewsID=8600&Section=Nutrition

Lupus, vitamin D linked by Oklahoma scientists: State study could further therapies

McClatchy-Tribune Information Services -- 08-05-09
For people genetically predisposed to lupus, a deficiency of vitamin D may be a catalyst for developing the disease, say scientists at the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation.
The research by Dr. Judith James and graduate student Lauren Cole could be useful in treating lupus, which has no cure and strikes up to 2 million Americans.
"Vitamin D could be beneficial to lupus patients and people who are at increased risk of developing the disease, such as their family members," James said. "With vitamin D supplements, doctors might be able to reduce the chances of an autoimmune attack," which occurs when the body mistakes its own tissue for foreign invaders.
James and Cole presented their findings at the annual Federation of Clinical Immunology Societies Conference in Boston.
Cole said their research found that in both lupus patients and healthy individuals, low levels of vitamin D correlated with increased autoantibodies -- proteins that attack the body's own tissue.
"By boosting vitamin D levels, we'd hope to see a drop in autoantibodies," Cole said.
Lupus is a chronic autoimmune disease in which the body's immune system turns its defenses against itself. It can affect any part of the body, but it most commonly attacks the skin, joints, blood and kidneys of sufferers.
Sunlight serves as the primary source of vitamin D, which is formed when the skin is exposed to ultraviolet B radiation. But because skin sensitivity to light is a symptom of lupus, James said, patients would likely need supplements to keep their vitamin D levels up. 
http://www.lef.org/news/LefDailyNews.htm?NewsID=8599&Section=Vitamins

CONGRESSMAN RON PAUL INTRODUCES 3 BILLS TO RESTORE CONSTITUTIONAL GOVERNMENT; END FDA CENSORSHIP OF HEALTH CLAIMS; AND END FTC CENSORSHIP OF HEALTH INFORMATION
Washington, D.C.: Today on the floor of the House of Representatives, Congressman Ron Paul introduced three bills that would restore constitutional government; end FDA censorship of health claims; and end FTC censorship of health information.
HR 3396: The Congressional Responsibility and Accountability Act. This bill prohibits regulations promulgated from regulatory agencies from going into effect unless passed into law by Congress in the way in which the Constitution designates. Under Article I of the Constitution, the Congress of the United States, our elected representatives, are the ones given the exclusive power to make laws. In violation of the non-delegation doctrine, about 90% of all law created by the federal government is the product of unelected heads of bureaucratic agencies, not our elected representatives. From 1934 to the present, the Congress of the United States has delegated executive, legislative, and judicial governing power to these agencies. The founding fathers warned that this combination would give birth to tyranny, self-dealing, and corruption and would be the death of liberty. Because the unelected bureaucracy makes the laws, the nation has been transformed from a republic into a bureaucratic oligarchy. Congressman Ron Paul’s Congressional Responsibility and Accountability Act restores constitutional government by returning to Congress the responsibility to make laws, thereby making them once again accountable for the laws to those who elect them.

HR 3395: The Health Freedom Act. This bill removes FDA’s power of prior restraint over all nutrient-disease relationship claims. Under the bill, the FDA may not prohibit any statement concerning a nutrient affecting a disease (including treatment effects) from being made in the market and may only act against a statement once made if it possesses clear and convincing evidence that the statement is false. Presently the FDA blocks an enormous quantity of truthful information concerning the effects of nutrients and foods on disease from reaching consumers. That barrier is removed by the Health Freedom Act, but the Act preserves the power of the government to prosecute those who communicate falsehood. The essential purpose of the First Amendment is to disarm the federal government of the power to impose a prior restraint on speech. The FDA has imposed a prior restraint for decades to the health detriment of the public. Passage of the Health Freedom Act will restore constitutional governance by reasserting the supremacy of the First Amendment over the Food and Drug Administration.

HR 3394: The Health Information Protection Act. This bill prevents the Federal Trade Commission from taking action against any advertiser that communicates a health benefit for a product unless the FTC first establishes based on clear and convincing evidence that the statement made is false and that its communication causes harm to the public. Presently, the FTC reverses the Fifth Amendment burden of proof on the government when it charges advertisers with deceptive advertising and then demands that they prove their speech true based on contemporaneously held documentation or be deemed to have advertised deceptively. The Fifth Amendment requires that FTC bear the burden of proving advertising deceptive. It may not constitutionally shift the burden to the advertiser to prove its statements not deceptive. The First Amendment requires that FTC not act against speech unless the speech is probably false. It may not constitutionally accuse a party of false advertising yet lack proof that the advertising is false and condemn advertising based on an absence of documentation concerning the truth of the statement rather than the presence of evidence establishing the falsity of the statement.

Whey protein may improve heart health: Study

Nutraingredients, 05-Aug-2009

A whey-protein-rich ingredient may improve blood vessel function in healthy individuals, reports a new randomised, double-blind study supported by Glanbia.
Two weeks of supplementation with a proprietary peptide (NOP847, GlanbiaNutritionals) resulted in a 1.5 per cent improvement in blood flow, report researchers from the University of Connecticut in the open access Nutrition Journal.
According to the researchers, the whey protein-derived ingredient, isolated from hydrolysate, may work via an angiotensin converting enzyme (ACE)-inhibitory activity.
ACE inhibitors work by inhibiting the conversion of angiotensin I to the potent vasoconstrictor, angiotensin II, thereby improving blood flow and blood pressure.
“The results of this preliminary study suggest that in individuals with normal endothelial function, the acute ingestion of a peptide derived from whey improves both conduit and resistance vascular responses,” wrote the authors, led by Kevin Ballard.
If further studies support the vascular benefits of the ingredient, it could see it enter the already buoyant heart health market. According to a recent market research conducted by Frost & Sullivan, the market is dominated by four ingredients: phytosterols; omega-3s; beta-glucans and soy protein.
Cardiovascular disease (CVD), which cost €192 billion in health care costs across the 27-member state EU in 2007 according to the European Heart Network, can be sub-classified into categories such as hypercholesterolemia, hypertension, heart attack and stroke.
Study details
Ballard and his co-workers recruited 20 healthy men and women with an average age of 25, and an average BMI of 24.3 kg/m2, and randomly assigned them to receive the whey ingredient (five grams per day) or placebo for two weeks. After this time, the subjects underwent a two week washout period before being crossed over to the other intervention.
According to the study’s results, there was no difference between the groups’ flow-mediated dilation (FMD), a measure of a blood vessel's healthy ability to relax, at the start of the study. While placebo had no effect on FMD, supplementation with the whey ingredient was associated with a significant improvement in FMD for up to 90 minutes following ingestion or between 1.1 and 2.2 per cent.
Furthermore, blood flow in the arm improved by 2.7 per cent per minute following whey protein supplementation, but did not change following placebo, said the researchers.
“These findings indicate that supplementation with a novel whey-derived peptide in healthy individuals improves vascular function,” wrote Ballard and his co-workers.
Looking to the next stage in research, the scientists noted that an investigation into how the ingredient functions in people with vascular dysfunction would be“informative”.
Source: Nutrition Journal 2009, 8:34 “Acute ingestion of a novel whey-derived peptide improves vascular endothelial responses in healthy individuals: a randomized, placebo controlled trial”Authors: K.D. Ballard, R.S. Bruno, R.L. Seip, E.E. Quann, B.M. Volk, D.J. Freidenreich, D.M. Kawiecki, B.R. Kupchak, M.-Y. Chung, W.J. Kraemer, J.S. Volek
http://www.nutraingredients.com/Research/Whey-protein-may-improve-heart-health-Study

DSM files patent for stevia as cognitive health ingredient

Nutraingredients, 05-Aug-2009

Stevia extracts may boost brain function and tap growing interest in natural ingredients for cognitive health, suggests a patent application from DSM.
According to the patent application, protection is pending in over 100 countries, including key markets such as Europe, the US, and China.
“The present invention relates to a novel nutraceutical composition or food additive comprising Stevia extract or its constituents, such as steviol and stevioside, as active ingredient(s) to improve cognitive functions, such as learning, memory and alertness, as well as relieving psychosocial pressure,”states the application (WO 2009/071277).
The invention, which covers rebaudioside A, as well as B to F, and other steviol glycosides, indicates that the compounds may enhance cognitive function via their interaction with a specific receptor (NMDA receptor) in the brain that boosts synaptic transmission, or chemical signalling in the brain.
“There is an increasing interest in the development of compounds, as well as nutraceutical compositions, that may be used to improve learning, memory and alertness, in both elderly and young people,” states the application.
“Thus, a compound or nutraceutical composition which enhances NMDA receptor function and enables improvements in learning, memory and alertness would be highly desirable,” it added.
DSM would not comment on any aspect of the patent, and it is not known how the ingredient(s) could be affected by the ongoing approval process in Europe for stevia.
Approvals
The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) has received three petitions for stevia sweeteners, from EUSTAS (the European Stevia Association), Cargill and Morita. Industry is hoping that, pending a positive opinion, extracts with 95 per cent steviol glycosides could be approved in Europe under the new sweeteners directive by autumn 2010 or spring 2011.
In the US, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said it has no objection to rebiana, (Reb A) at 95 percent purity or above, having GRAS (generally recognized as safe) status as a general purpose sweetener for food and drink, not just as a supplement.
Recently, Blue California became only the third company to receive an FDA non-objection letter for its Good & Sweet Reb A brand, following the December 2008 FDA GRAS letters of no objection for Cargill’s Truvia and Merisant’s PureVia.
Thinking about cognitive health
Such is the interest in dietary approaches to improve brain health that the world's largest food company, Nestlé, signalled its intention to get a head start on the competition with the signing of an agreement in November 2006 with the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL) to investigate the role of nutrition in cognitive function.
Despite the optimism for this area, some Europe-based manufacturers have appeared reluctant to push products that are linked to brain function regarding mental wellbeing or the thought process.
Analyst Mintel said that during 2008 and the first eight months of 2009, no vitamin or supplement products were launched offering functional claims related to the brain and the nervous system. Upon further searches, the analyst said there had been a little activity for products linked by their manufacturers to psychological or behavioural factors.
http://www.nutraingredients.com/Research/DSM-files-patent-for-stevia-as-cognitive-health-ingredient

Diseased African Monkeys Used to Make Swine Flu Vaccines; Private Military Contractor Holds Key Patents

Mike Adams, NaturalNews.com  August 5, 2009 

(NaturalNews) To most people, vaccines sound medically harmless. "They're good for you!" say the doctors and drug companies, but they never really talk about what's in those vaccines. There's a good reason for that: If people knew what was really in those vaccines, they would never allow themselves to be injected with them.

Aside from the dangerous ingredients many people already know about (like squalene or thimerosal), one of the key ingredients used in flu vaccines (including the vaccines being prepared for the swine flu pandemic) is the diseased flesh of African Green Monkeys. This is revealed in U.S. patent No. 5911998 - Method of producing a virus vaccine from an African green monkey kidney cell line. (http://www.patentstorm.us/patents/5...)

As this patent readily explains, ingredients used in the vaccine are derived from the kidneys of African Green Monkeys who are first infected with the virus, then allowed to fester the disease, and then are killed so that their diseased organs can be used make vaccine ingredients. This is done in a cruel, inhumane "flesh factory" environment where the monkeys are subjected to a process that includes "incubating said inoculated cell line to permit proliferation of said virus." Then: "harvesting the virus resulting from step (c); and... (ii) preparing a vaccine from the harvested virus."

Aside from the outrageous cruelty taking place with all this ("incubating" the virus in the kidneys of living monkeys, for example), there's another disturbing fact that has surfaced in all this: The patent for this process is held not just by the National Institutes of Health, but by another private corporation known as DynCorp.

This, of course, brings up the obvious question: Who is Dyncorp? And why do they hold a patent on live attenuated vaccine production using African Green Monkeys?

What you probably didn't want to know about Dyncorp

DynCorp, it turns out, is a one of the top private military contractors working for the U.S. government. In addition to allegedly trafficking in under-age sex slaves in Bosnia (http://www.corpwatch.org/article.ph...) and poisoning rural farmers in Ecuador with its aerial spraying of Colombian coca crops (http://www.corpwatch.org/article.ph...), Dyncorp just happens to be paid big dollars by the U.S. government to patrol the U.S. / Mexico border, near where the H1N1 first swine flu virus was originally detected.

DynCorp also happens to be in a position to receive tremendous financial rewards from its patents covering attenuated live viral vaccine harvesting methods, as described in four key patents jointly held by DynCorp and the National Institutes of Health:

(6025182) Method for producing a virus from an African green monkey kidney cell line

(6117667) Method for producing an adapted virus population from an African green monkey kidney cell line (http://www.patentstorm.us/patents/6...)

(5911998) Method of producing a virus vaccine from an African green monkey kidney cell line

(5646033) African green monkey kidney cell lines useful for maintaining viruses and for preparation of viral vaccines

Government collusion?

One of the key inventors in these patents now held by DynCorp was Dr. Robert H. Purcell. Who is Dr. Robert Purcell? He's one of the co-chiefs of theLaboratory of Infectious Diseases of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases operating under the National Institutes of Health of the U.S. government. (http://www3.niaid.nih.gov/labs/abou...)

That office, located at 50 South Drive, Bethesda, MD 20892, is less than 15 miles away from the headquarters of DynCorp.

It's not too many more miles to Washington D.C., where U.S. government health authorities awarded over $1 billion in swine flu vaccine contracts to pharmaceutical companies. Can you guess which company received one of the largest vaccine manufacturing contracts? Baxter Pharmaceuticals, the very same company using ingredients derived from African Green Monkeys in precisely the way described in the patents held jointly by DynCorp and the NIH. Remember, Baxter is the company that was caught inserting live viruses into vaccine materials distributed to 18 different countries.

Are you following all this?

So far, we have the U.S. government awarding swine flu vaccine manufacturing contracts to a major U.S. vaccine manufacturer (Baxter) that uses vaccine ingredients from African Green Monkeys (sick!), derived from a process covered in a patent invented by U.S. government NIH researchers (Dr. Purcell and others) and now held jointly by the NIH and a private military contractor named DynCorp -- the very same company that's paid to monitor the U.S. / Mexico border where H1N1 swine flu first appeared.

And just today, there's yet another development in all this: A Tamiflu-resistant strain of swine flu has just been discovered. Care to guess where? On the U.S.-Mexico border (http://www.google.com/hostednews/af...).

Once you understand all this, some obvious questions come to mind: Could H1N1 swine flu have been intentionally created and released into the wild (in Mexico) in order to create a windfall of vaccine profits that would financially benefit both the drug companies and the vaccine production patent holders? Because it certainly appears that a grand conspiracy between the NIH, the vaccine makers and private military contractors could have pulled this off.

But wait: Would a private military contractor really resort to such tactics just to make money?

Decide for yourself. Dyncorp has already been accused of crimes against humanity and genocide (http://www.corpwatch.org/section.ph...). According to the Wikipedia page on Dyncorp: (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DynCor...)

Since the late 1990s, the United States has paid private contractors an estimated $1.2 billion, both to eradicate coca crops and to assist the Colombian army put down rebels that use the illegal drug trade to finance their insurgency. DynCorp has been awarded under competitive bid more of this business than any other company. In September 2001, a group of Ecuadorian farmers filed a class-action lawsuit against DynCorp under the Alien Tort Claims Act (ATCA), the Torture Victim Protection Act and state law claims in US federal court in the District of Columbia. The plaintiffs claimed that from January to February 2001 DynCorp sprayed the herbicide almost daily, in a reckless manner, causing severe health problems (high fever, vomiting, diarrhea, dermatological problems) and the destruction of food crops and livestock of approximately 10,000 residents of the border region. In addition, the plaintiffs alleged that the toxicity of the fumigant caused the deaths of four infants in this region. The plaintiffs alleged under ATCA that DynCorp’s intensive aerial spraying of a toxic fumigant amounted to torture, a crime against humanity and cultural genocide.

And on the issue of DynCorp's people engaging in the sex slave trade:

According to whistleblower Ben Johnston, a former aircraft mechanic who worked for [DynCorp] in Bosnia, employees and supervisors of a predecessor company to today's DynCorp International engaged in sex with 12 to 15 year old children, and sold them to each other as slaves.

On June 2, 2000, members of the 48th Military Police Detachment conducted a sting on the DynCorp hangar at Comanche Base Camp, one of two U.S. bases in Bosnia, and all DynCorp personnel were detained for questioning. CID spent several weeks working the investigation and the results appear to support Johnston's allegations. For example, according to DynCorp employee Kevin Werner's sworn statement to CID, "during my last six months I have come to know a man we call 'Debeli,' which is Bosnian for fat boy. He is the operator of a nightclub by the name of Harley's that offers prostitution. Women are sold hourly, nightly or permanently."

Could this same company -- which admittedly sprays poison on family farms in Colombia and Ecuador -- have engaged in another crime against humanity with the release of swine flu virus in Mexico?

Important questions that need to be asked (and answered)

This apparent conspiracy brings up several important questions that need to be answered:

1) Why are key viral vaccine patents jointly held by the NIH and a large private military contractor?

2) Given the atrocious vaccine material handling safety record of Baxter Pharmaceuticals, why did the U.S. government choose Baxter to manufacture vaccines for public consumption?

3) Why is no one talking about the African Green Monkeys who are infected, incubated and then killed for harvesting vaccine ingredients used in the swine flu vaccine?

4) Is it just coincidence that the swine flu virus (and now the Tamiflu-resistant mutation of the virus) first appeared at the U.S. / Mexico border near where DynCorp has a security presence?

5) Why would the inventors of a key vaccine technology agree to hand over ownership of the patent to a private military contractor like DynCorp?

6) Why has nobody in the mainstream media noticed any of this yet (or not bothered to report on it?)

7) How much money is DynCorp collecting on the vaccine patents due to the sudden large-scale manufacture of swine flu vaccines taking place right now?

8) Why does the U.S. government continue to do business with criminally-minded organizations and incompetent vaccine manufacturers?

The pieces of the puzzle (opinion)

It's difficult to consider all the evidence presented here and not come to the rational conclusion that something sinister is afoot in America today. Let me paint a picture for you of a plausible scenario of what I think is happening right now. Note, carefully, that this is merely speculation, but it's a theory that makes sense:

Back in the late 1990's, evil leaders of the U.S. government decided they needed to launch a covert population control measure that could reduce the population while deflecting blame for the deaths. The obvious choice for this was a viral pandemic, so using the viral samples and knowledge already attained by U.S. Army virologists, they engineered a combination swine / avian / human influenza virus patterned after the 1918 influenza that devastated the world population nearly a century ago. The plan, of course, would be to release the virus into the wild and let nature do the rest.

But killing off a lot of people isn't profitable enough all by itself. The plan is a lot smarter if you add a profit center to it... and that's where the vaccines come into play. First, the patents had to be secured in order to guarantee profitability. DynCorp was offered partial ownership of the patents (together with the National Institutes of Health) in exchange for its responsibility to covertly release the engineered virus in Mexico, assuring the global spread of the next influenza pandemic. It will be paid back in patent royalties from the pharmaceutical companies that are awarded the government-funded vaccine manufacturing contracts.

Baxter was chosen by the U.S. government precisely because of its expertise in inserting live viruses into vaccine materials. And just to make sure the drug companies would play along, the U.S. government (under the Bush administration) granted them all complete immunity against product liability for all vaccines. This removed any financial risk from the drug companies while setting the stage for a massive human die-off following the vaccine injections.

Once the injections begin and people start dying, the deaths will simply be blamed on the virus itself. The drug companies have complete legal immunity, and DynCorp gets its share of the profits as the holder of the patents. Key conspirators are rewarded with bonus stock options and / or the threat of being killed if they talk.

Through this plan, several important things are accomplished:

1) The population gets reduced (with no blame on the national leaders).

2) Billions of dollars get funneled to powerful corporations.

3) The pandemic outbreak itself allows government to declare a State of Emergency where yet more rights and freedoms can be stolen away from the People. (And companies like DynCorp can be hired to run domestic prison camps or "isolation camps.")

4) The government and the pharmaceutical industry both get to position themselves as "heroic" for apparently attempting to stop the pandemic with vaccines. No matter how many people actually die, Big Pharma will claim many more would have died without the vaccine.

5) Those who survive the pandemic (and the vaccine) become immune compromised due to the vaccine, and they later emerge as repeat customers for future medical procedures (cancer, Parkinson's, etc.).

Of course, this is all just a theory. Some people might even call it a paranoid theory. But I ask them one question: Why does a top U.S. military contractor share ownership of key vaccine patents with the U.S. government's National Institutes of Health?

Merely attempting to explain that will lead you down the path to all kinds of eye-opening information about collusion between government, the pharmaceutical industry and the military-industrial complex. And you know what they all have in common? They're all promoters of death.

But it's not enough to just kill you; they want to make money while they're doing it.
http://www.naturalnews.com/026779_swine_flu_patents_vaccines.html

New Study: Fat in Meat and Dairy Products Increase Pancreatic Cancer Risk

S. L. Baker, NaturalNews.com  August 5, 2009 

(NaturalNews) Cancer of the pancreas, the large organ located horizontally behind the bottom part of the stomach, typically spreads quickly and is usually deadly. Symptoms are often vague at first and a diagnosis is typically not made until the malignancy is advanced and treatment is futile. In fact, the National Cancer Institute (NCI) predicts that almost 42,500 thousand Americans will be diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2009 and the vast majority of these people, about 35,250 will die from the disease. 

Clearly, the best way to deal with pancreatic cancer is to prevent it in the first place. But how? According to the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the known causes of the disease include long term diabetes, smoking and chronic inflammation of the pancreas (pancreatitis). However, a new study points to another, important and avoidable cause of pancreatic cancer --- specifically, eating fat in red meat and dairy products.

The research, just published online in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, was conducted because previous studies that attempted to relate fat consumption to the disease reached inconclusive results. But this study concludes the link between dietary animal fat and pancreatic cancer appears to be strong. 

Rachael Z. Stolzenberg-Solomon, PhD, of the Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics at the National Cancer Institute (NCI) in Bethesda, Maryland, and colleagues investigated a cohort of over 500,000 people from the NIH's AARP Diet and Health Study. Participants in the study filled outfood frequency questionnaires in 1995 and 1996 and follow-ups were conducted by the researchers every six years or so in order to track the research subjects' health, including whether any developed pancreatic cancer.

Men and women whose diets included high amounts of total fats had 53 percent and 23 percent increased rates of pancreatic cancer, respectively, compared with men and women who had low fat consumption. Overall, the research subjects who ate high amounts of saturated animal fat had a 36 percent higher rate of pancreatic cancer compared with those who ate low amounts. 

Another important finding: fat found in vegetables was not associated at all with cancer of the pancreas. "We observed positive associations between pancreatic cancer and intakes of total, saturated, and monounsaturated fat overall, particularly from red meat and dairy food sources. We did not observe any consistent association with polyunsaturated or fat from plant food sources," the authors wrote in the journal article. "Altogether, these results suggest a role for animal fat in pancreatic carcinogenesis."

There's even more good news about cancer prevention through diet. Other research just published in the British Journal of Cancer by Oxford University scientists concludes that not eating meat lowers the risk of many cancers, including stomach and bladder malignancies as well as leukemia, by close to 50 percent.
http://www.naturalnews.com/026778_cancer_pancreatic_cancer_meat.html

Groundbreaking Study has Major Implications for Health of Women

Barbara Minton, NaturalNews.com  August 5, 2009 

(NaturalNews) A new study with far reaching implications has gone a long way in explaining why women get breast cancer and how they can prevent the disease and its recurrence. Scientists have found evidence that hormonal balance is key in determining whether or not a malignant growth will occur in a woman's breast. Critical to the outcome is whether receptors in the body for estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone are fully functioning.

A steroid hormone receptor is a protein located on the surface or in the interior of a cell that binds to a specific hormone, causing many changes to take place in the cell. The binding of hormones to their receptors triggers biophysical signals that can lead to further signal transduction pathways and the switching on or off of genes. Estrogen receptors are activated by the hormone17-beta estradiol, the most aggressive form of estrogen. Progesterone receptors are activated by the hormone progesterone, and androgen receptors are activated by the hormones testosterone and dihydrotestosterone (DHT).

Team of scientists begins to explain the real connection between hormones and breast cancer

A research team composed of scientists from several parts of the world assessed androgen receptor status in a cohort of 215 women with invasive ductal breast cancers. Both androgen and estrogen receptors were expressed in 80 to 90 percent of the breast tumor cells. Their findings were published in the July 28th edition of the prestigious journal Cancer Research.

Using measures of analysis and regression models the team found that the androgen receptors were an independent prognostic factor. Women with estrogen positive cancers that expressed a low level of androgen receptors (less than median of 75% positive cells) had a 4.6 fold increased risk of cancer-related death.

Additional assessment with breast cancer cell lines showed that the ability of the androgen receptor to bind DNA was both necessary and sufficient for inhibiting estrogen receptor signaling. In the interaction of the androgen receptor with estrogen responsiveness, the action of the progesterone receptor promoter was critical. These finding led the scientists to conclude that androgen receptors activate target genes to mediate the stimulatory effects of 17 beta-estradiol on breast cancer cells.

One question arising from this study is why women have low levels of androgen receptors. The answer has yet to be documented, but evidence points to the hormones that activate these receptors. When levels of the sex hormones begin to decline, there is not enough to keep a high level of receptors activated, leading to atrophy of the receptors and rising risk of breast cancer.

This is a groundbreaking study of the highest importance for women looking for answers. It points to the conclusion that a full complement of the sex hormones (estrogen, progesterone and testosterone) and their receptors is what keeps away breast cancer. It provides a reason why breast cancer is not seen in teenage girls, a time when all of the hormones are at optimal levels, and it is a powerful vindication of nature's human design. It also serves as a strong warning to pharmaceutical companies telling them they are headed in exactly the wrong direction with their cancer prevention and treatment protocols.

Estrogen is just the beginning of the story

It has been long known that there is a connection between estrogen and breast cancer. Estrogen is what fuels the growth of breast tissue in the developing young woman. But in older women estrogen has been thought to fuel the development of growth gone awry, in the form of breast cancer. The answer of drug companies has been to declare that nature made a big mistake in giving women estrogen. According to their propaganda, estrogen is really the enemy of women and must be suppressed with drugs to avoid breast cancer.

This study shows that there is a very good reason why breast cancer does not show up until women reach the age of hormonal imbalance and decline. According to the American Cancer Society, 97 percent of women diagnosed with breast cancer are over the age of 40, with 64 being the average age at the time of diagnosis. Age 40 is the time when hormonal decline gets going to the point where it needs a special name, peri-menopause.

By the time a woman reaches age 64, she has completed menopause and is likely to be in a state of severe hormone insufficiency. Since breasttumors can take as long as 20 years to develop to a size detectable on a mammogram, this means tumors are initiated during a woman's mid 40's, showing that tumor growth begins just at the time hormonal decline swings into high gear.

Initially women complaining of the symptoms of hormone deficiency were given conjugated estrogen drugs, but research showed that latent tumors could blossom in just months when equine estrogen was given alone. So doctors added a synthetic progesterone drug, known as progestin to the mix. This combo didn't make small tumors grow big in a matter of months, but it led to a huge increase in overall breast cancer diagnoses. This was documented in the Women's Health Initiative Study in 2002. When women heard about the results of the study, they threw out their hormone drugs, but overall breast cancer rates have not declined. What most doctors failed to understand was that testosterone is the third part of the equation.

One of the cutting edge doctors who long ago realized the importance of testosterone replacement is breast cancer specialist Dr. Rebecca Glaser. Once an oncological surgeon, Dr. Glaser now spends her time practicing bioidentical hormone replacement. In her paper Breast Tissue, Testosterone and Pellet Implants, Dr. Glaser reports, "Clinical evidence supports that testosterone is breast protective. Androgens are known to inhibit breast cancer in almost every breast cell line via the androgen receptor. Adrenal androgens have been shown to counteract the growth stimulatory affects of estrogen on breast cancer cells." She notes that testosterone has been shown to prevent proliferation, decrease estrogen receptor alpha to reduce estrogen activity, and prevent the stimulation of breast tissue. For Dr. Glaser, pellet implants are the preferred method for bioidentical hormone delivery. Her clinical experience has shown that in implant form, physiologic doses of estradiol in combination with testosterone reduce the risk of breast cancer

Although estrogen in its many forms is the predominant hormone of males, testosterone is also present in females at much lower levels. It is there for a reason. Testosterone is the balance for estrogen in the female body, as the androgen receptor study reveals. In another of nature's brilliant designs, testosterone primes androgen receptors, and androgen receptors keep estrogen from being over-expressed. This balance is a concrete example of the yin and yang, the abstract symbol of the Chinese that defines how things work. It is a concept that is visible throughout the natural world, expressed in day and night, feast and famine, male and female, and love and hate. The concept of two-sided balance is the overriding principle in the human body as demonstrated by homeostasis, the body's constant striving to maintain its equilibrium. This craving for balance is what the doctors prescribing estrogen alone or estrogen with progestin drugs fail to realize.

Androgen receptor study suggests bioidentical hormone balance is the cure for breast cancer

Today's women are fortunate to have access to bioidentical hormones (bHRT). The term bioidentical is not a marketing term, but a descriptive one. The molecular structure of bioidentical hormones is identical to hormones made by the human female, and therefore they produce the same effects in the body. There are no side effects when these hormones are used in doses that replicate the hormonal status of healthy young women.

In his book Keeping a Breast: Ways to Stop Breast Cancer, leading gynecologist Dr. Khalid Mahmud explains that breast cancer is stoppable with the use of bioidentical hormones. He emphasizes the need to replace each of the sex hormones to optimal levels. In his interview with Suzanne Summers for her book Breakthrough, Dr. Mahmud explains, "Bioidentical estrogen replacement is essential. In addition you must replace progesterone. Progesterone is anti-breast cancer. And you also must replace testosterone in moderate doses, because testosterone has been shown to have its own receptors from breast cancer cells that inhibit breast cancer."

Bioidentical estradiol, progesterone and testosterone administered at optimal physiologic levels and in the balance nature intended restores the hormonal terrain of women to what it was in their reproductive prime, a time when breast cancer was of no concern. They are available by prescription from physicians who specialize in hormone replacement or anti-aging medicine. Although integrative medicine is the wave of the future, these new-age doctors are still in short supply. A large percentage of physicians practicing today have no knowledge of bioidentical hormones. These are doctors who get most of their updating from pharmaceutical companies and do not actually read research. Pharmaceutical companies have little interest in bioidenticals because they are not money makers like the patented drugs that block estrogen and leave women feeling miserable.

Bioidentical hormone replacement relieves all the symptoms associated with hormonal decline. Hot flashes, bone loss, irritability, loss of sex drive, and inability to concentrate become part of the past when bioidentical hormone replacement is used. So does cognitive decline and heart attack risk, as researchers have recently documented.

Androgen study underscores the importance of zinc in preventing breast cancer

Hormone receptors are made of zinc-finger proteins. A zinc finger is a group of proteins organized around a zinc ion that can bind to DNA and influence gene regulation. When there is not an adequate level of zinc in the breasts, production of androgen receptors and their ability to bind DNA and inhibit estrogen receptor signaling is impaired.
http://www.naturalnews.com/026773_cancer_estrogen_brst_cancer.html

Chemicals can turn genes on and off; new tests needed, scientists say.

Bette Hileman, Environmental Health News  Aug. 3, 2009

A National Academies workshop examined the evidence of epigenetic effects and considered whether the thousands of chemicals in use today should be tested for them. Some pollutants and chemicals don't kill cells or mutate DNA. Instead, they may be more subtle, muting genes or turning them on at the wrong time, which can lead to diseases that are passed on for generations. Asthma in New York City children exposed to traffic exhaust is an example, experts say.

Each of us starts life with a particular set of genes, 20,000 to 25,000 of them. Now scientists are amassing a growing body of evidence that pollutants and chemicals might be altering those genes—not by mutating them, but by sending subtle signals that silence them or switch them on at the wrong times.

Last week, several dozen researchers and experts convened by the National Academies tackled this complicated topic, called epigenetics, at a two-day workshop in Washington, D.C. They discussed new findings that suggest chemicals in our environment and in our food can alter genes, leaving people vulnerable  to a variety of diseases and disorders, including diabetes, asthma, cancer and obesity. They also considered whether regulatory agencies and industry should start testing the thousands of chemicals in use today for these effects.

“There is little doubt these epigenetic effects are important. The next question is how we test for effects," said William H. Farland, professor of environmental and radiological health sciences at Colorado State University. "We don’t need to abandon current approaches to chemical testing. When testing chemicals in animals, we may just need to add some new endpoints."

Exposure to gene-altering substances, particularly in the womb and shortly after birth, “can lead to increased susceptibility to disease,” said Linda S. Birnbaum, who was named director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and of the National Toxicology Program in December. “The susceptibility persists long after the exposure is gone, even decades later. Glands, organs, and systems can be permanently altered.”
 Animal studies indicate that some environmental chemicals cause epigenetic changes that trigger breast and prostate cancer, obesity, diabetes, heart disease, asthma, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s disease and learning disabilities, she said.  And some new human studies are now adding to the evidence.

“There is a huge potential impact from these exposures, partly because the changes may be inherited across generations. You may be affected by what your mother and grandmother were exposed to during pregnancy,” Birnbaum said.“There is a huge potential impact from these exposures, partly because the changes may be inherited across generations. You may be affected by what your mother and grandmother were exposed to during pregnancy.” Linda Birnbaum, Director, National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences
What a pregnant mother eats and the chemicals she is exposed to can affect her offspring without causing mutations in the DNA, the experts said. Instead, such exposures can disrupt the way that genes behave, according to both animal and human studies. These changes, in turn, can be passed on to the next generations.

Some environmental chemicals enable methyl groups (carbon atoms with three hydrogen atoms attached) to attack genes, which turns them off or mutes them, at a time when they should be turned on. When genes are turned off, they can’t direct the manufacture of proteins that are essential for proper cell function. Chemicals also can uncoil parts of the chromosome, causing genes to be expressed, or turned on, at inappropriate times.
An example is asthmatic children. Wan-Yee Tang, a researcher at the University of Cincinnati, found that children in New York City exposed in the womb to high levels of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), common air pollutants from traffic, were much more likely to have asthma than those who were not exposed. By studying cord blood, she found that a particular gene (ACSL3) was methylated in the asthmatic children and unmethylated in the unexposed children, and concluded that the abnormal methylation patterns probably caused the asthma.

The finding could in part explain why worldwide asthma rates have skyrocketed in much of the world, reaching epidemic proportions among children. In the boroughs of New York City with the worst air pollution, about 25 percent of children are asthmatic.

Epigenetic changes also have been observed in children conceived with assisted reproductive technologies, said Richard Meehan of the Medical Research Council in Scotland.

One of the disorders that occurs at a higher rate in these children is Beckwith-Wiedemann syndrome, which is characterized by abdominal wall defects and a higher risk of certain childhood cancers. The culture medium where fertilized eggs are grown for several days before implantation probably causes the syndrome, he said. It appears that all the different media used for the eggs might be problematic because they contain chemicals that stimulate the addition of methyl groups to the cells.

The scientists at the workshop said it’s important to understand epigenetics not only to figure out which chemicals might endanger public health, but to find new ways to prevent or treat diseases.

Scientists are just now beginning to figure out normal methylation patterns in the genome so they can learn what is abnormal, said Karl T. Kelsey, professor of community heath and pathology at Brown University in Rhode Island. As a result of this new understanding, epigenetic therapies have been developed for some types of cancers, and some have been successful in clinical trials, he said. Unlike traditional cancer drugs, which kill cells, the new drugs simply change how the cells act.

Research with rats shows that gene-altering chemicals can change animals’ brains—in some cases, in a beneficial way.

Moshe Szyf, a pharmacology and therapeutics professor at McGill University Medical School in Montreal, found that rats that received healthy doses of maternal licking as pups grew up to be calmer than pups who had inattentive mothers. The maternal grooming brought about a chemical change in the part of the pup’s brain that produces stress hormones, he said.

The rats reared by attentive mothers had different levels of corticoid gene expression and lower levels of stress hormones than those reared by inattentive mothers. Szyf found he could cure the stressed rats by injecting a chemical called TSA into their brains, which reversed the inappropriate methylation caused by inattentive mothering.

This understanding of epigenetics may lead to new medications for treating human problems. By using approaches similar to those used in the rat study, Szyf is hoping to find drugs that will help alleviate human psychiatric conditions.

Szyf also studied the preserved brains of suicide victims and of people who died suddenly from causes other than suicide. He found that certain genes in the suicide victims were methylated, or turned off. In contrast, those same genes were not methylated in the victims who died by other means. Abnormal methylation patterns could cause depression in some people, he said.

Some compounds, such as nickel, chromium and arsenic, are well-known carcinogens—not because they are toxic to cells but because of their epigenetic effect, said Max Costa, a New York University professor of environmental medicine and pharmacology. They increase DNA methylation, which results in gene silencing and cell transformation and leads to cancer, he explained.

Researchers at the meeting spent a great deal of time discussing whether and how to test chemicals for their ability to cause epigenetic changes.

Most researchers there agreed that compounds need to be tested for epigenetic effects. But practical testing of the 80,000 or so chemicals in commerce would require rapid screens that would prioritize the compounds into high, medium, and low-risk groups. Those at high risk for epigenetic effects could then be subjected to more definitive and expensive tests.

John M. Greally, associate professor at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York City, pointed out that no single test is ideal for detecting epigenetic effects.

“All of the assays have drawbacks,” he said. For example, one assay requires immediate sample processing so it cannot be used on stored samples.

Nevertheless, many researchers said that testing chemicals for epigenetic changes can begin soon.

“The fact that we don’t know a great deal about this area doesn’t mean it’s daunting,” said George Daston, research fellow at Procter & Gamble. “We just need to build on what we have. Microassays already show how chemical exposures change the gene expression in certain parts of the genome. The fact that we don’t know a lot doesn’t mean we can’t start testing quickly.”

Birnbaum, who formerly was head of experimental toxicology at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, said regulators and industry don’t have to start from square one.

“We’re already marching down this road,” said Birnbaum. “The National Toxicology Program is already talking about including some epigenetic studies in the program.”

The most important public health issue that arises from epigenetics, Birnbaum told Environmental Health News, is that the current environment may not be the crucial factor to consider when examining what causes diseases.

“Asking heart attack victims what they ate this year or last may be far less important than what they were exposed to in the womb and shortly after birth,” she said.
http://www.environmentalhealthnews.org/ehs/news/epigenetics-workshop

Twin Study Examines Associations Between Depression And Coronary Artery Disease

ScienceDaily (Aug. 5, 2009) — Major depression and coronary artery disease are only modestly related throughout an individual's lifetime, but studying how the two interact over time and in twin pairs paints a more complex picture of the associations between the conditions, according to a new report. For example, the association between coronary artery disease onset and major depression risk is much stronger over time than vice versa.
"While an association between major depression and coronary artery disease has long been noted and recently confirmed, the direction and cause of this association remain unclear," the authors write as background information in the article. High cortisol levels, inflammation and changes in blood platelet function associated with depression may increase risk for coronary artery disease; coronary artery disease is a stressful event that may increase risk for depression; and shared genetic or environmental factors may underlie both conditions.
Kenneth S. Kendler, M.D., of Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine, Richmond, and colleagues studied 30,374 twins (average age 57) from the Swedish Twin Registry. Information was obtained from telephone interviews conducted between 1998 and 2003 and also from Swedish hospital discharge and death registers.
The results of statistical models over time and of twin pairs yielded several findings, the authors note. "First, the lifetime association between major depression and coronary artery disease in this sample was modest and did not differ substantially in men and women," they write. "Second, in more informative time-dependent analyses, coronary artery disease onset was associated with a nearly three-fold increased risk for depressive onset in that year and a nearly two-fold increase in subsequent years. The long-term effect of coronary artery disease on risk for major depression did not attenuate over time."
"Third, given an onset of major depression, the risk for coronary artery disease onset was increased 2.5-fold in that year and much more modestly in subsequent years," they continue. "The ongoing increased risk for coronary artery disease after major depression onset did not attenuate over time. Although modest, this future risk for coronary artery disease was strongly related to the severity and recurrence of major depression. Indeed, elevated future coronary artery disease risk was confined to individuals with recurrent episodes of major depression or those who meet more than the minimum number of diagnostic criteria."
In men, the increased risk for major depression was much greater in the year of coronary artery disease onset than in subsequent years. Women experienced a smaller spike in depression risk after diagnosis with coronary artery disease but had nearly the same risk thereafter. "When examined separately, in men, environmental effects, which are often acute, have a large role in major depression-coronary artery disease comorbidity, whereas in women, chronic effects, which are in part genetic, are more important," the authors conclude. "In men, genetic sources of major depression-coronary artery disease comorbidity are more important in younger members of the sample."
Supported in part by National Institute of Mental Health grants, a National Institute on Aging grant, the Swedish Scientific Council and the Swedish Department of Higher Education.

Social Stress Linked To Harmful Fat Deposits, Heart Disease

ScienceDaily (Aug. 5, 2009) — A new study done by researchers at Wake Forest University School of Medicine shows that social stress could be an important precursor to heart disease by causing the body to deposit more fat in the abdominal cavity, speeding the harmful buildup of plaque in blood vessels, a stepping stone to the number one cause of death in the world.
The findings could be an important consideration in the way the United States and other Western countries try to stem the rapid rise of obesity, said Carol A. Shively, Ph.D., a professor of pathology and the study's principal investigator.
The study appears as the cover story of the current issue of Obesity.
"We are in the midst of an obesity epidemic," Shively said. "Much of the excess fat in many people who are overweight is located in the abdomen, and that fat behaves differently than fat in other locations. If there's too much, it can have far more harmful effects on health than fat located in other areas."
She notes that obesity is directly related to lower socioeconomic status in Western societies, as is heart disease. So, the people who have fewer resources to buffer themselves from the stresses of life are more likely to experience such health problems, she said.
In this study of how the stress of low social status affects the development of heart disease, female monkeys were fed a Western-style diet containing fat and cholesterol. The monkeys were housed in groups so they would naturally establish a pecking order from dominant to subordinate. Subordinate monkeys are often the target of aggression and aren't included in group grooming sessions as often as dominant monkeys.
Shively and colleagues Thomas C. Register, Ph.D., and Thomas B. Clarkson, D.V.M., all faculty of the Department of Pathology, Section on Comparative Medicine at the School of Medicine, found that these socially stressed subordinate monkeys developed more fat in the viscera, or abdominal cavity.
The researchers found that the stress of social subordination results in the release of stress hormones that promote the deposition of fat in the viscera. Visceral fat, in turn, promotes coronary artery atherosclerosis, the buildup of plaque in the blood vessels that leads to heart disease, the leading cause of death in the world today.
What is striking about that relationship, Shively said, is that women and female monkeys have a natural protection against heart disease – women typically develop heart disease, on average, 10 years later than men do. That protection seems to be lost when stress and visceral fat increase. Researchers found that the monkeys with high social stress and larger amounts of visceral fat also had ovaries that produced fewer protective hormones.
"Suppressed ovarian function is a very serious condition in a woman," Shively said. "Women who are hormone-deficient will develop more atherosclerosis and be at greater risk of developing coronary heart disease and other diseases such as osteoporosis and cognitive impairment."
Women whose bodies are not producing adequate amounts of hormones won't necessarily know it, Shively said. The researchers found that low hormone production doesn't always lead to fewer menstrual cycles. To diagnose serious health problems in obese women, doctors would have to investigate hormone levels.
"We need to take a closer look at the ovarian function of obese women," Shively said. "They might not be producing enough hormones to maintain adequate health."
The study's results also reinforce basic health advice, she said: watch what you eat, exercise regularly, and try to manage the stress in your life.
The study was funded by the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute of the National Institutes of Health and by a grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.
Media Relations Contacts: Jessica Guenzel, .edu, (336) 716-3487; Bonnie Davis, .edu, (336) 716-4977; or Shannon Koontz, .edu, (336) 716-2415.
Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center (http://www.wfubmc.edu) is an academic health system comprised of North Carolina Baptist Hospital, Brenner Children's Hospital, Wake Forest University Physicians, and Wake Forest University Health Sciences, which operates the university's School of Medicine and Piedmont Triad Research Park. The system comprises 1,056 acute care, rehabilitation and long-term care beds and has been ranked as one of "America's Best Hospitals" by U.S. News & World Report since 1993. Wake Forest Baptist is ranked 32nd in the nation by America's Top Doctors for the number of its doctors considered best by their peers. The institution ranks in the top third in funding by the National Institutes of Health and fourth in the Southeast in revenues from its licensed intellectual property.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/08/090805080752.htm

A Secret Experiment of Genetically Modified Potato Crops Discovered in England
Jason Cairns, Organic Jar,  July 27, 2009

(OrganicJar) A field of genetically modified (GM) potatoes – created to be resistant to pests – was planted in a Yorkshire field earlier this year by Leeds University scientists.
Last year, environmental activists ripped up a field of identical plants on the same farm, causing more than US $40,000 damage and wasting months of research work. The 400 potato plants are resistant to nematode worms, which cost British farmers around $107 million a year. GM scientists say the new strain could lead to a cut in chemical pesticide use.
The crop is growing next to plants that will be destroyed once the experiment is complete; the field will then be left fallow to reduce the risk of cross-pollination.
To reduce the risk of vandalism, scientists have surrounded the new experimental field with fencing and CCTV cameras to protect against vandals.
GM crops have been grown near a farm in Yorkshire amid a storm of controversy, which also followed a similar trial on a farm near Cambridgeshire last year. Although details of the trial were published on the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) website, locals were not told that the crop had been replanted.
Defra said its permission for the trial, granted for three years, remained valid and that the potatoes can be replanted without further notice. It also said the potatoes would not be used for human or animal consumption and that they would be grown in a ’safe environment’ with no risk of contamination. Supporters of the technology say it will allow plants to be grown in arid andsalty places where ordinary crops fail — and could prevent a worldwide food shortage in years to come.
However, environmental activists warned that neighbouring farms could be put at risk from the GM experiment. Clare Oxborrow, of Friends of the Earth, said: “Defra clearly does not want people to known it is going on this year. This worries us because farmers, gardeners and people living nearby should know about it because of the risk of contaminating other plants. They are trying to slip it under the radar.”
Defra said published details and map references of all GM experiments on its website and denied that it tried to keep people in the dark.
Vandals and eco-campaigners have destroyed almost all of the 54 attempts to grow experimental GM plants outdoors in the UK in the last five years. A GM trial in Cambridgeshire was abandoned last year when trees were ripped up.
Last year Prof Howard Atkinson, who is leading the Leeds experiment, called for details of small-scale GM trials to be kept secret from the public, claiming it cost around $165,000 to install security fences and guards at a GM field trial.
http://organicjar.com/2009/1726/

The Mystery of Blue Ginger
Jason Cairns,  Organic Jar, July 23, 2009

(OrganicJar) I was at the grocery store yesterday when I noticed something I’d never seen… Blue Ginger. I was incredibly intrigued…it looked like ginger but had white flesh and pinkish skin with reddish brown rings. Come to find out, blue ginger comes from the Galangal plant and is commonly referred to as Galanga or kah in Thai. It’s an immensely pungent and fiery rhizome related to the common ginger but with a personality distinctly its own.
Galanga has a tighter skin, is lighter in color and can have pinkish portions too. All of us know the taste and flavor of ginger, Galanga tastes more like pepper than ginger with a slightly milder taste, a dominant citrusy flavor and an earthy aroma.
There are two different varieties, one known as “greater galanga” and the other, “lesser galanga”.

Greater Galanga (what I tried)

Is larger in size, lighter in color and subtler in aroma, is the kind most used in Thai cooking. The fresh root is fleshy, knobby and very firm, to the point of being woody. When very fresh, its ivory color, with hardly any separation between skin and flesh, and its young pink shoots are reminiscent of the appearance of young ginger. But unlike its better-known cousin, it is much denser and harder with ring like markings spaced almost evenly apart.

Lesser Galanga

This root is comprised of a cluster of long, slender, orangish brown fingers joined to an insignificant, knobby ginger-like rhizome. Because its exuberant, aromatic quality freshens the taste of seafood, it is used primarily in seafood dishes. The fingers are cut into fine slivers and tossed along with other fragrant herbs into hot-and-spicy seafood stir-fries, curries and incendiary soups.
Its function in herbal medicine has been known for several centuries. Just like ginger, galangal (blue ginger) is boiled to make tea, used to cure colds, diarrhea, nasal conditions and great for the stomach and spleen. Galanga’s heat makes it a good agent in reducing cramping and numbness, in healing bruises and swelling, in treating respiratory ailments and skin diseases and in removing toxins from the body.
I know what you’re all thinking…why is it called Blue Ginger? Apparently its Chinese name ”南姜” is pronounced as “Lam Kiew” in Hokkien (a Chinese dialect) and its pronunciation sounds similar if one is to say “Blue Ginger” using the same dialect.

Squalene: The Swine Flu Vaccine’s Dirty Little Secret Exposed
By Dr. Mercola
In Australia, where the winter season has begun, Federal Health Minister Nicola Roxon is reassuring parents the swine flu is no more dangerous than regular seasonal flu. "Most people, including children, will experience very mild symptoms and recover without any medical intervention," she said.[ii]
Sydney-based immunization specialist Robert Booy predicts swine flu might be fatal to about twice as many children in the coming year as regular influenza. Booy estimates 10-12 children could die from the H1N1 virus, compared with the five or six regular flu deaths seen among children in an average year in Australia.[iii]
“Cure the Disease, Kill the Patient”
Less than 100 children in the U.S. die each year from seasonal flu viruses.[iv] If we use Australia’s math, a very rough estimate would be another 100 children could potentially die of swine flu in the United States in the coming year.
If children are the first target group in the U.S. per Sebelius, that means we’re about to inject around 75 million children with a fast tracked vaccine containing novel adjuvants, including dangerous squalene, to prevent perhaps 100 deaths.
I’m not overlooking the tragedy of the loss of even one child to an illness like the H1N1 flu virus. But there can be no argument that unnecessary mass injection of millions of children with a vaccine containing an adjuvant known to cause a host of debilitating autoimmune diseases is a reckless, dangerous plan.
Why are Vaccinations Dangerous?
The presumed intent of a vaccination is to help you build immunity to potentially harmful organisms that cause illness and disease. However, your body’s immune system is already designed to do this in response to organisms which invade your body naturally.
Most disease-causing organisms enter your body through the mucous membranes of your nose, mouth, pulmonary system or your digestive tract – not through an injection.
These mucous membranes have their own immune system, called the IgA immune system. It is a different system from the one activated when a vaccine is injected into your body.
Your IgA immune system is your body’s first line of defense. Its job is to fight off invading organisms at their entry points, reducing or even eliminating the need for activation of your body’s immune system.
When a virus is injected into your body in a vaccine, and especially when combined with an immune adjuvant like squalene, your IgA immune system is bypassed and your body’s immune system kicks into high gear in response to the vaccination.
Injecting organisms into your body to provoke immunity is contrary to nature, and vaccination carries enormous potential to do serious damage to your health.
And as if Vaccines Weren’t Dangerous Enough on Their Own …
… imagine them turbocharged.
The main ingredient in a vaccine is either killed viruses or live ones that have been attenuated (weakened and made less harmful).
Flu vaccines can also contain a number of chemical toxins, including ethylene glycol (antifreeze), formaldehyde, phenol (carbolic acid) and even antibiotics like Neomycin and streptomycin.
In addition to the viruses and other additives, many vaccines also contain immune adjuvants like aluminum and squalene.
The purpose of an immune adjuvant added to a vaccine is to enhance (turbo charge) your immune response to the vaccination. Adjuvants cause your immune system to overreact to the introduction of the organism you’re being vaccinated against.
Adjuvants are supposed to get the job done faster (but certainly not more safely), which reduces the amount of vaccine required per dose, and the number of doses given per individual.
Less vaccine required per person means more individual doses available for mass vaccination campaigns. Coincidentally, this is exactly the goal of government and the pharmaceutical companies who stand to make millions from their vaccines.
Will There Be Immune Adjuvants in Swine Flu Vaccines?
The U.S. government has contracts with several drug companies to develop and produce swine flu vaccines. At least two of those companies, Novartis and GlaxoSmithKline, are using an adjuvant in their H1N1 vaccines.
The adjuvant? Squalene.
According to Meryl Nass, M.D., an authority on the anthrax vaccine,
“A novel feature of the two H1N1 vaccines being developed by companies Novartis and GlaxoSmithKline is the addition of squalene-containing adjuvants to boost immunogenicity and dramatically reduce the amount of viral antigen needed. This translates to much faster production of desired vaccine quantities.”[v]
Novartis’s proprietary squalene adjuvant for their H1N1 vaccine is MF59. Glaxo’s is ASO3. MF59 has yet to be approved by the FDA for use in any U.S. vaccine, despite its history of use in other countries.
Per Dr. Nass, there are only three vaccines in existence using an approved squalene adjuvant. None of the three are approved for use in the U.S.
What Squalene Does to Rats
Oil-based vaccination adjuvants like squalene have been proved to generate concentrated, unremitting immune responses over long periods of time.[vi]
A 2000 study published in the American Journal of Pathology demonstrated a single injection of the adjuvant squalene into rats triggered “chronic, immune-mediated joint-specific inflammation,” also known as rheumatoid arthritis.[vii]
The researchers concluded the study raised questions about the role of adjuvants in chronic inflammatory diseases.
What Squalene Does to Humans
Your immune system recognizes squalene as an oil molecule native to your body. It is found throughout your nervous system and brain. In fact, you can consume squalene in olive oil and not only will your immune system recognize it, you will also reap the benefits of its antioxidant properties.
The difference between “good” and “bad” squalene is the route by which it enters your body. Injection is an abnormal route of entry which incites your immune system to attack all the squalene in your body, not just the vaccine adjuvant.
Your immune system will attempt to destroy the molecule wherever it finds it, including in places where it occurs naturally, and where it is vital to the health of your nervous system.[viii]
Gulf War veterans with Gulf War Syndrome (GWS) received anthrax vaccines which contained squalene.[ix] MF59 (the Novartis squalene adjuvant) was an unapproved ingredient in experimental anthrax vaccines and has since been linked to the devastating autoimmune diseases suffered by countless Gulf War vets.[x]
The Department of Defense made every attempt to deny that squalene was indeed an added contaminant in the anthrax vaccine administered to Persian Gulf war military personnel – deployed and non-deployed – as well as participants in the more recent Anthrax Vaccine Immunization Program (AVIP).
However, the FDA discovered the presence of squalene in certain lots of AVIP product. A test was developed to detect anti-squalene antibodies in GWS patients, and a clear link was established between the contaminated product and all the GWS sufferers who had been injected with the vaccine containing squalene.
A study conducted at Tulane Medical School and published in the February 2000 issue of Experimental Molecular Pathologyincluded these stunning statistics:
“ … the substantial majority (95%) of overtly ill deployed GWS patients had antibodies to squalene. All (100%) GWS patients immunized for service in Desert Shield/Desert Storm who did not deploy, but had the same signs and symptoms as those who did deploy, had antibodies to squalene.
In contrast, none (0%) of the deployed Persian Gulf veterans not showing signs and symptoms of GWS have antibodies to squalene. Neither patients with idiopathic autoimmune disease nor healthy controls had detectable serum antibodies to squalene. The majority of symptomatic GWS patients had serum antibodies to squalene.”[xi]
According to Dr. Viera Scheibner, Ph.D., a former principle research scientist for the government of Australia:
“… this adjuvant [squalene] contributed to the cascade of reactions called "Gulf War Syndrome," documented in the soldiers involved in the Gulf War.
The symptoms they developed included arthritis, fibromyalgia, lymphadenopathy, rashes, photosensitive rashes, malar rashes, chronic fatigue, chronic headaches, abnormal body hair loss, non-healing skin lesions, aphthous ulcers, dizziness, weakness, memory loss, seizures, mood changes, neuropsychiatric problems, anti-thyroid effects, anaemia, elevated ESR (erythrocyte sedimentation rate), systemic lupus erythematosus, multiple sclerosis, ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis), Raynaud’s phenomenon, Sjorgren’s syndrome, chronic diarrhoea, night sweats and low-grade fevers.”[xii]
Post Vaccination Follow-Up Might as Well Be Non-Existent
There is virtually no science to support the safety of vaccine injections on your long-term health or the health of your children. Follow-up studies last on average about two weeks, and look only for glaring injuries and illnesses.
Autoimmune disorders like those seen in Gulf War Syndrome frequently take years to diagnose due to the vagueness of early symptoms. Complaints like headaches, fatigue and chronic aches and pains are symptoms of many different illnesses and diseases.
Don’t hold your breath waiting for vaccine purveyors and proponents to look seriously at the long-term health consequences of their vaccination campaigns.

Majority of American children have insufficient vitamin D levels
Life Extensions, August 03, 2009
The results of a study conducted by researchers at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University, published online on August 1, 2009 in the journal Pediatrics, reveal a disturbing presence of low levels of vitamin D among children in the U.S. “We expected the prevalence of vitamin D deficiency would be high, but the magnitude of the problem nationwide was shocking," stated lead author Juhi Kumar, MD, MPH, who is a fellow in pediatrics at Children's Hospital at Montefiore Medical Center, the University Hospital and Academic Medical Center for Albert Einstein College of Medicine.
The researchers, led by Einstein assistant professor medicine Michal L. Melamed, MD, evaluated data from over 6,000 children aged 1 to 21 who participated in the National Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) 2001-2004. "Several small studies had found a high prevalence of vitamin D deficiency in specific populations of children, but no one had examined this issue nationwide," Dr Melamed observed.
Insufficient levels of vitamin D were defined as 15 to 29 nanograms per milliliter (ng/mL), and deficient levels as less than 15 ng/mL.Vitamin D insufficiency was revealed in 61 percent of the participants, a percentage which, if applied to the U.S. population, is equivalent to 50.8 million children. Deficiency was found in 9 percent of the subjects, equal to 7.6 million children. Although participants who consumed 400 international units of vitamin D per day were less likely to experience a deficiency, just 4 percent of the children used vitamin D supplements.
"The message for pediatricians is that vitamin D deficiency is a real problem with consequences not only for bone health but also potentially for long-term cardiovascular health.” Dr Kumar concluded. “Pediatricians should be screening children for vitamin D levels, especially in the high-risk populations."
http://www.lef.org/whatshot/2009_08.htm#majority-of-american-children-have-insufficient-vitamin-D-levels

2 dietary oils, 2 sets of benefits for older women with diabetes

NewsRx.com 08-03-09
A study comparing how two common dietary oil supplements affect body composition suggests that both oils, by themselves, can lower body fat in obese postmenopausal women with Type 2 diabetes (see also Ohio State University).
The two oils compared were safflower oil, a common cooking oil, and conjugated linoleic acid (CLA), a compound naturally found in some meat and dairy products that has been associated with weight loss in previous studies. Both are composed primarily of polyunsaturated fatty acids, which are considered "good fats" that, when consumed in proper quantities, are associated with a variety of health benefits.
In the study, 16 weeks of supplementation with safflower oil reduced fat in the trunk area, lowered blood sugar and increased muscle tissue in the women participants.
Conjugated linoleic acid supplementation for the same length of time, on the other hand, reduced total body fat and lowered the women's body mass index (BMI), a common health measure of weight relative to height.
All of the women in the study took one oil for 16 weeks, followed by the other oil for an equal amount of time. The participants were instructed not to change their diets or exercise patterns over the course of the study so the research would measure the effects of only the supplementation.
"Making this subtle change in the intake of high-quality dietary fats in an effort to alter body composition is both achievable and affordable to postmenopausal women in the United States who are managing the difficult combination of obesity and diabetes," said Martha Belury, professor of human nutrition at Ohio State University and senior author of the study.
Among the most surprising findings: that in 16 weeks, these women could lose between about two pounds and four pounds of trunk fat simply by taking safflower oil supplements.
"I never would have imagined such a finding. This study is the first to show that such a modest amount of a linoleic acid-rich oil may have a profound effect on body composition in women," Belury said. The dose of either oil taken each day was approximately 1 2/3 teaspoons.
Postmenopausal women tend to lose muscle at the same time that body fat accumulates toward their middle, so this research shows how dietary oils can complement lifestyle and medication in helping older diabetic women manage their health, she said.
The research appears online and is scheduled for later print publication in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.
Thirty-five women participated in the study. All were considered obese based on their BMI measures of 30 or higher, were postmenopausal but younger than age 70, and had Type 2 diabetes but did not need to take insulin to treat the disease. Many did take other medications, such as those used to manage blood sugar levels, cholesterol or blood pressure.
The women were randomized into two groups to determine which supplement they took first. Each initial 16-week supplementation was followed by a four-week washout period to remove the first supplement from their systems before the next 16-week supplementation period began. The supplements were contained in eight pills; the women took two pills four times per day, at meals and bedtime.
"The power of the crossover is that it tells you the different effects of the dietary oils in the same woman," Belury said.
The daily supplementation contained 6.4 grams of each oil's active fatty acid: linoleic acid in safflower oil and, in CLA, specific fatty acid isomers - compounds that share the same chemical formula but differ in chemical structure.
The researchers used dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry, commonly known as DXA and usually used to measure bone density, to determine the women's baseline and follow-up lean mass and fat throughout their bodies and specifically in their trunk region.
Researchers asked the participants to keep diet and activity records for three consecutive days at four points over the course of the study to account for the potential for calorie intake or exercise to affect the results, Belury said. Physical activity remained unchanged throughout the study, and no significant differences were seen between the two groups' reported calorie intake.
The study showed that CLA supplementation significantly decreased body mass index and total body fat over both diet periods, typically showing effects in the last half of each 16-week period. The BMI levels of the women taking CLA dropped on average by about half a point, and their total body fat decreased by an average of 3.2 percent, reducing the weight of the fat tissue by an average of between 2.3 pounds and 3.5 pounds.
Safflower oil supplementation showed no effect on total body fat readings, but reduced the weight of trunk fat tissue by between 2.6 pounds and 4.2 pounds, or an average of 6.3 percent. It also increased lean tissue, or muscle, by between an average of about 1.4 pounds and 3 pounds.
Safflower oil also lowered fasting blood sugar levels by between 11 and 19 points on average. Blood sugar is considered normal if it falls below 110 milligrams per deciliter; the women's average blood sugar levels ranged from 129 to 148 after 16 weeks of safflower oil supplementation.
"Lowering fasting glucose is important for these women. The overall effect in just 16 weeks wasn't bringing them back to normal, but safflower oil still improved it significantly," Belury said.
The dietary oils did not have significant effects on other health measurements, such as waist circumference, waist-to-hip ratio and skinfold thickness measures of body fat, Belury noted.
The CLA also did not appear to affect the variety of hormones involved in fat burning. However, safflower oil increased a hormone called adiponectin. Increasing this hormone may have instilled an improved ability to burn dietary fats, said Belury, who hopes to investigate this mechanism in a follow-up study.
Belury said that other work she is conducting in animals suggests that at least in the case of CLA, the fatty acid appears to allow the body to burn calories in a heat-producing way. Questions remain about the long-term safety of any kind of supplementation that lowers body fat, because some research has suggested that the fat that leaves fat tissue ends up in the liver or muscles - a condition that could lead to insulin resistance and diabetes if that fat can't be used.
Neither CLA nor the linoleic acid in safflower oil is naturally produced in the human body, so both must be obtained from food or dietary supplements. Linoleic acid is an omega-6 fatty acid that is important in growth and maintenance of tissues and lipid metabolism. The American Heart Association recently issued recommendations suggesting that omega-6 fatty acids are among the polyunsaturated fats that should be consumed for heart health.
CLA is found naturally in trace amounts primarily in beef, lamb and milk, but obtaining levels comparable to those used in Belury's study likely requires concentrated doses similar to those found in dietary supplements.
"Essentially what we're trying to understand with nutrition is how dietary approaches can complement Westernized medicine," Belury said. "In an ideal world, we'd love it if women like those in our study could use diet, activity and other aspects of a healthy lifestyle to manage their health. But most will probably be on oral medications for the rest of their lives for managing their diabetes and metabolism, which is fine as long as the medications work. We think there's a chance that nutrition can complement medication and help drugs work even better."
http://www.lef.org/news/LefDailyNews.htm?NewsID=8594&Section=Nutrition

Too much TV time bad for kids' blood pressure
Last Updated: 2009-08-03 16:53:00 -0400 (Reuters Health)
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - You knew too much TV could be bad for kids in general. Now, hints a study released Monday, too much time in front of the tube, even playing video games, may increase a child's risk of developing high blood pressure.
The findings held regardless of whether the children were overweight or thin.
"We've known from previous studies that sedentary behaviors are linked to obesity, and that obesity is linked to high blood pressure, but this is the first time that we've linked those behaviors directly to elevated blood pressure," Dr. Joey C. Eisenmann of Michigan State University in East Lansing, who was involved in the study, noted in an email to Reuters Health.
In the study, Eisenmann and colleagues tracked the physical activity levels of 111 3 to 8-year-olds for one week. The children wore an accelerometer to determine how active they were and parents reported how much time their youngster spent watching TV, playing video games, painting, sitting or taking part in other low-exertional activities.
The results showed that the children were sedentary for an average of 5 hours each day and logged an average of 1.5 hours of screen time each day.
And while sedentary behavior was not significantly related to blood pressure, TV viewing and screen time -- but not computer use -- did seem to impact blood pressure.
Regardless of body weight, blood pressure was significantly higher in children who had the most TV and screen time compared to children with the lowest TV and screen time (less than 30 minutes per day, on average), the team found.
The researchers report their findings in the latest issue of the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine.
To combat the problem, Eisenmann stresses that parents and children need to adhere to limits set by the American Academy of Pediatrics of no more than 2 hours of TV watching per day and that needs to be combined with at least 60 minutes of physical activity a day.
"It appears other factors, which occur during excessive screen time, should also be considered in the context of sedentary behavior and elevated blood pressure development in children," Eisenmann said.
"TV viewing often comes with unhealthy snacking behavior, and also can lead to stress responses that disrupt sleep," he explained. Less sleep has been tied to higher blood pressure.
SOURCE: Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, August 2009.
http://www.reutershealth.com/archive/2009/08/03/eline/links/20090803elin006.html

Exercising the mind could hold off dementia
Last Updated: 2009-08-03 16:00:49 -0400 (Reuters Health)
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - A new study in Bronx seniors provides yet more evidence that keeping your brain active for fun can keep dementia at bay.
Dr. Charles B. Hall of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in Bronx, New York, and his colleagues found that every day per week that a person engaged in one of six mentally stimulating leisure activities delayed the onset of dementia by about two months.
Hall and his colleagues had previously shown that people with more years of education who developed dementia did so later than less educated individuals. In the current study, he said, "it was the cognitive activity that mattered, not the education."
In the current study, published in Neurology, Hall and his team looked at 101 people who developed dementia. All were participating in the Bronx Aging Study, which has been following 488 people since the early 1980s.
All of the study participants, who ranged in age from 75 to 85, had reported their years of formal education at the study's outset, as well as how often each week they read, wrote, did crossword puzzles, played board or card games, participated in group discussions, or played music. A person scored 1 for each day that they did each activity. The study participants, all of whom were dementia free at the beginning of the study, underwent cognitive testing every 12 to 18 months.
The higher a person's score on the activity scale, the later the onset of accelerated mental decline, Hall and his colleagues found. For example, a person in the top 25 percent based on their activity scale, who engaged in 11 "activity days" a week, started their accelerated decline 1.29 years later, on average, than a person in the bottom 25 percent, with four activity days a week.
But once that decline began, it happened faster in people with higher activity scores.
The findings back up the idea of "cognitive reserve," Hall noted, which is the theory that education and brain exercise build extra capacity into the brain so it can better handle the damage to neurons caused by Alzheimer's disease. But once that damage reaches a certain point, a person will develop dementia.
Being more mentally active "might keep you out of a nursing home for a year or two," Hall said. "But it's not going to prevent Alzheimer's disease unfortunately, at least that's the theory, and this is evidence toward that theory." Eventually, he said, the disease "would overwhelm whatever reserve you had."
Hall and his colleagues are now investigating which of the six activities in the current study might give the most brain-preserving "bang for the buck." Studies will need to tease out whether education and later-life mental activities have effects that are independent of one another.
With what we know now, he added, engaging in these activities could help-and it certainly won't hurt. "You might get depressed from not being able to do a crossword puzzle, but there's really very little of a downside here."
SOURCE: Neurology, August 4, 2009.
http://www.reutershealth.com/archive/2009/08/03/eline/links/20090803elin031.html

Omega-3 review: Half a gram needed for heart benefits

Nutraingredients.com, 04-Aug-2009

The science behind the cardiovascular health benefits of omega-3 fatty acids supports recommended daily levels of 500 mg, according to a ‘state-of-the-art’ review.
“Compelling evidence” from studies involving almost 40,000 participants supports daily EPA plus DHA intakes of at least 500 mg per day for healthy individuals, while people with known heart disease or heart failure should aim for up to 1,000 mg daily, according to a review published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.
The recommendations for healthy people are double the recommended levels determined by the European Food Safety Authority’s (EFSA) Panel on Dietetic Products, Nutrition and Allergies (NDA).
EFSA last month determined 250mg should be the labelling reference intake value for long-chain omega-3 fatty acids – most notably eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA).
“This isn’t just hype; we now have tremendous and compelling evidence from very large studies, some dating back 20 and 30 years, that demonstrate the protective benefits of omega-3 fish oil in multiple aspects of preventive cardiology,” said Carl Lavie, lead author of the review and medical director of Cardiac Rehabilitation and Prevention at the Ochsner Medical Center in New Orleans.
The review is in-line with claims from both industry and academia, and unofficial recommendations from UK and US bodies, for limits close to 500mg per day for EPA and DHA.
While the recent EFSA opinion was largely welcomed by industry, a group of prominent lipid scientists urged the EU to rethink of draft daily reference intake levels for the fatty acids. “Better no regulation than a bad regulation”, they said. To read about their position, click here .
Taking heart from the new review
Dr Lavie and his co-workers noted that the most compelling evidence for the cardiovascular benefits of the fatty acids came from four randomised controlled trials with EPA and DHA, which involved around 40,000 participants.
Following evaluation of evidence from retrospective epidemiologic studies and from large randomised controlled trials, the reviewers recommended that healthy individuals should consume 500 mg daily of omega-3 fish oil containing EPA and DHA, while people with known heart disease or heart failure aim for between 800 and 1,000 mg per day.
“Further studies are needed to determine optimal dosing and the relative ratio of DHA and EPA omega-3 PUFA that provides maximal cardioprotection in those at risk of CV disease as well in the treatment of atherosclerotic, arrhythmic, and primary myocardial disorders,” concluded the researchers.
EFSA’s opinion
EFSA’s draft recommends levels of EPA, DHA and ALA that products must contain if they are to carry either ‘Source of omega-3 fatty acids’ or ‘High in omega-3 fatty acids’ label claims.
Those levels are 300mg of ALA (alpha-linolenic acid) per 100g [and per 100kcal], or 30mg of the sum of EPA (eicosapentaenoic acid) and DHA (docosahexaenoic acid) per 100g/100kcal for the ‘source of’ claim. For the ‘high in’ claim, the levels are double.
These levels are based on a baseline daily intake level of 200mg per day EPA/DHA.
Source: Journal of the American College of Cardiology Volume 54, Pages 585-594, oi:10.1016/j.jacc.2009.02.084
"Omega-3 Polyunsaturated Fatty Acids and Cardiovascular Diseases"Authors: C.J. Lavie, R.V. Milani, M.R. Mehra, H.O. Ventura
http://www.nutraingredients.com/Research/Omega-3-review-Half-a-gram-needed-for-heart-benefits

Sangre De Drago is a Medicinal Power House
Zephyr Faegen, NaturalNews.com  August 4, 2009

(NaturalNews) Sangre de drago (grado) or "blood of the dragon" is the latex-like sap that comes from the Croton species of tree that grows throughout the Amazon rainforests of Peru and Ecuador. This medicinal sap used for centuries by the indigenous peoples of the Amazon for the treatment of various ailments that include diarrhea, ulcers in the mouth, throat, stomach and intestines, upper respiratory viruses, cancer, as well as topically to heal wounds has slowly been getting more attention from mainstream medicine. Over the last ten years several studies conducted by the University of Calgary, the Albany Medical Center and several others have pointed to concrete documented evidence that sangre de drago is a medicinal power house of phytochemicals.

Dr. Mark Miller of the Albany Medical Center conducted a study on treating stomach ulcers in rats with sangre de drago. The conclusions that he and his colleagues found are incredible. Out of three groups induced with ulcers, two groups of rats, through their drinking water, ingested the sangre de drago in different concentrations (1:1,000 and 1:10,000 dilutions) and one group was used as a control. Both the bacterial content and size of the ulcers in the two groups of rats treated with sangre de drago was greatly reduced at both concentrations. It was also found that sangre de drago greatly inhibits the inflammation of nerve endings and the creation of Myeloperoxidase, an enzyme in white blood cells that is linked to inflammation and cardiovascular disease.

Though this wonderful sap from the rainforest contains a number of beneficial phytochemicals, the healing and anti-inflammatory properties of sangre de drago can be attributed to two main chemicals. These two chemical compounds are Taspine, an alkaloid that has been documented as anti-inflammatory, antitumorous, and antiviral, and Dimethylcedrusine, a lignan that plays a central role in sangre de drago's wound-healing capabilities. In a study done in Belgium, it was found that the healing properties of the raw sangre de drago resin were four times more effective at forming collagen and healing wounds than the administration of the isolated chemicals. When sangre de drago resin was smeared onto a sterile plate, allowed to dry and then doused with E. Coli bacteria the bacteria promptly died versus a similar plate treated with the antibiotic ampicillin.

Sangre de drago has so many benefits that it is hard to cover all of it within the scope of just one article. Between its internal and external uses it has been used for over thirty-one different ailments, and its uses keep growing in popularity. This sap from the Amazon rainforest is truly a miracle of nature and the more it becomes known to the masses, the better.
http://www.naturalnews.com/z026764_Sangre_de_Drago_ulcers_medicine.html

C-Reactive Protein Test for Heart Disease Found Useless - Researchers
S. L. Baker, NaturalNews.com  August 4, 2009

(NaturalNews) When scientific studies found possible biomarkers for cardiovascular disease in recent years, it didn't take long for the medical industry to start manufacturing and promoting blood tests for them, especially the main, supposedly new risk factor for heart disease and stroke known as C-reactive protein (CRP). The claims for CRP testing being important were based on findings it might be a marker of inflammation which leads to heart attacks and strokes. But two new studies just published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) reach conclusions that seem to indicate it is far better to use plain common sense to identify individual risk factors such as being overweight, having high blood pressure, smoking tobacco, and not exercising as ways to predict who will have cardiovascular problems -- not a host of expensive and unproven tests currently being hyped and promoted by many doctors and medical centers.

Olle Melander, MD, PhD, of Lund University in Sweden, and colleagues assessed a whole list of cardiovascular biomarkers to see if they were more useful in predicting future cardiovascular events than standard risk factors like hypertension. The study included 5,067 people with an average age of 58 who didn't have signs of heart disease at the beginning of the study, which recruited patients between 1991 and 1994. The research subjects were followed until 2006 and the Swedish national hospital discharge and cause-of-death registers were used to see if they had experienced cardiovascular events such as heart attack, stroke or coronary death. 

Many of them had fallen ill to these health problems. In all, there were over 600 coronary and cardiovascular events experienced during this time. But did expensive biomarker tests turn out to predict who would have one of these events? The use of combinations of biomarkers including CRP and newer ones dubbed cystatin C, lipoprotein-associated phospholipase 2, midregional proadrenomedullin (MR-proADM), midregional proatrial natriuretic peptide, and N-terminal pro-B-type natriuretic peptide (N-BNP) showed some slight statistical ability to predict who was going to have heart attacksand stroke, but the finding was very minimal. In fact, the authors wrote, the biomarker testing "did not reclassify a substantial proportion of individuals to higher or lower risk categories". Bottom line: all those tests made no significant difference in figuring out who was at risk and who wasn't.

Another just-published JAMA study comes down even harder on the idea that CRP tests can predict heart attack and stroke risk. A group of international scientists, including researchers from Germany, the United Kingdom and Canada, put together data from several health studies which had collected DNA from 128,000 research subjects. Headed by epidemiologist Paul Elliott of Imperial College in London, the research team searched for proof that people who have genes known to raise CRP levels have an increased risk of cardiovascular disease.

But the findings showed that wasn't the case. There have also been claims in previous studies of associations between CRP and type 2 diabetes and even being overweight. But an association is not proof CRP is the cause of any of these health problems -- nor a cause of heart attacks and strokes. 

And there is now no evidence at all CRP testing should be carried out on the masses or that people with elevated CRP need to be treated with new drugs designed to lower it. "Moreover, this study suggests that development of therapeutic strategies targeting specific reductions in plasma levels of CRP are unlikely to be fruitful," the researchers concluded in a statement to the media. 

As covered earlier this year in Natural News (http://www.naturalnews.com/026256_I...), it makes more sense to fight heart disease and stroke with a healthy lifestyle. Research conducted by scientists in Iceland found, in fact, that between 1981 and 2006 mortality rates from coronary heart disease (CHD) in Iceland plummeted by an amazing 80 percent in men and women between the ages of 25 and 74 due primarily to good nutrition, exercise and other natural approaches to health.
http://www.naturalnews.com/026769_disease_CRP_heart_disease.html

Greenroofs Can Save Cities Millions Of Gallons Of Water

ScienceDaily (Aug. 4, 2009) — Having a garden on your roof isn't just nice for a garden party; it can make your city more environmentally friendly. Many American cities are beginning to incorporate greenroofs into their planning ordinances because they recognize that, planting a rooftop garden can offset heat, increase city biodiversity and decrease stormwater runoff. This runoff can be problematic in cities where rainwater is funneled by streets and parking lots directly into streams, carrying with it chemicals and debris and increasing the risk of flash floods.
But the plants on greenroofs can absorb some of this water – "like a sponge being saturated," says Olyssa Starry, a graduate student at the University of Maryland at Baltimore County. Starry studied a greenroof atop a Baltimore building in comparison to a similar building without a greenroof to determine how well the roof would absorb water from frequent storms. By measuring water flowing out of building downspouts, she found that the greenroof retained from 30 to 75 percent of water from storms, compared to a negligible amount retained by the building with no greenroof.
Although her results are preliminary, Starry thinks that cities can reap benefits from making greenroofs a part of their building requirements, as cities like Toronto and Berlin have recently done. Using GIS satellite imagery, she estimated the number and area of buildings that could hold greenroofs within one watershed in the Baltimore area. If all these roofs were greened, she says, the city could save the watershed 8 million gallons of water per year, or about 10 percent of its yearly water loss.
"We need to understand what implementing these greenroofs at the whole watershed scale can do," she says. "Getting people to learn about this technology and providing incentives is the first step."
This research was presented at the Ecological Society of America's Annual Meeting on August 3, 2009.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/08/090803083628.htm

Common Household Pesticides Linked To Childhood Cancer Cases In Washington Area

ScienceDaily (Aug. 4, 2009) — A new study by researchers at the Georgetown's Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center finds a higher level of common household pesticides in the urine of children with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL), a cancer that develops most commonly between three and seven years of age. The findings are published in the August issue of the journal Therapeutic Drug Monitoring.
Researchers caution that these findings should not be seen as cause-and-effect, only that the study suggests an association between pesticide exposure and development of childhood ALL.
"In our study, we compared urine samples from children with ALL and their mothers with healthy children and their moms. We found elevated levels of common household pesticides more often in the mother-child pairs affected by cancer," says the study's lead investigator, Offie Soldin, PhD, an epidemiologist at Lombardi. Soldin cautions, "We shouldn't assume that pesticides caused these cancers, but our findings certainly support the need for more robust research in this area."
The study was conducted between January 2005 and January 2008 with volunteer participants from Lombardi and Children's National Medical Center who live in the Washington metropolitan area. It included 41 pairs of children with ALL and their mothers (cases), and 41 pairs of healthy children and their mothers (controls). For comparison purposes, the case pairs were matched with control pairs by age, sex and county of residence. Previous studies in agricultural areas of the country have suggested a relationship between pesticides and childhood cancers, but researchers say this is the first study conducted in a large, metropolitan area.
Urine samples were collected from all child-mother pairs and analyzed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to look for evidence of organophosphates (OP), the chemical name of some household pesticides. The body breaks down OP into metabolites which can be tracked in urine samples. The researchers say pesticides were detected in the urine of more than half of the participants, but levels of two common OP metobolites, diethylthiophosphate (DETP) and diethyldithiophosphate (DEDTP), were higher in the children with ALL compared to the control children (p< 0.03 and p< 0.05).
Also for the study, the mothers completed a questionnaire to collect information about the family's exposure to pesticides, their medical history, home and neighborhood characteristics, diet, and history of smoke exposure. More case mothers (33 percent) than controls (14 percent) reported using insecticides in the home (p< 0.02), however there was no correlation found between high levels of the OP metabolites in urine and reported use of pesticides.
"We know pesticides – sprays, strips, or 'bombs,' are found in at least 85 percent of households, but obviously not all the children in these homes develop cancer. What this study suggests is an association between pesticide exposure and the development of childhood ALL, but this isn't a cause-and-effect finding," Soldin explains. "Future research would help us understand the exact role of pesticides in the development of cancer. We hypothesize that pre-natal exposure coupled with genetic susceptibility or an additional environmental insult after birth could be to blame."
The study was funded by Lombardi's Cancer Center Support Grant from the National Cancer Institute, and by philanthropic support from Debbie and Scott Amey.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/07/090728102306.htm

Scientists Uncork Potential Secret Of Red Wine's Health Benefits
ScienceDaily (Aug. 3, 2009) — Scientists from Scotland and Singapore have unraveled a mystery that has perplexed scientists since red wine was first discovered to have health benefits: how does resveratrol control inflammation? New research published in the August 2009 print issue of The FASEB Journal, not only explains resveratrol's one-two punch on inflammation, but also show how it—or a derivative—can be used to treat potentially deadly inflammatory disease, such as appendicitis, peritonitis, and systemic sepsis.
"Strong acute inflammatory diseases such as sepsis are very difficult to treat and many die every day due to lack of treatment," said Alirio Melendez, senior lecturer on the faculty of medicine at Glasgow Biomedical Research Centre in Scotland and one of the researchers involved in the work. "Moreover, many survivors of sepsis develop a very low quality of life due to the damage that inflammation causes to several internal organs. The ultimate goal of our study was to identify a potential novel therapy to help in the treatment of strong acute inflammatory diseases."
In this study, researchers administered an inflammatory agent to two groups of mice. One group was pretreated with resveratrol and the other group was not. The mice that were not pretreated with resveratrol experienced a strong inflammatory response, simulating disease in humans, while the group pretreated with resveratrol was protected from the inflammation. The scientists then examined the tissues of the mice to determine exactly how resveratrol was able to protect the mice from inflammation. They found that resveratrol used a one-two punch to stop inflammation in the mice by preventing the body from creating two different molecules known to trigger inflammation, sphingosine kinase and phospholipase D. This finding suggests that resveratrol may be harnessable as a treatment for inflammatory diseases and may also lead to entirely new resveratrol-based drugs that are even more effective.
"The therapeutic potential of red wine has been bottled up for thousands of years," said Gerald Weissmann, M.D., Editor-in-Chief of The FASEB Journal, "and now that scientists have uncorked its secrets, they find that studies of how resveratrol works can lead to new treatments for life-threatening inflammation."
Issuree et al. Resveratrol attenuates C5a-induced inflammatory responses in vitro and in vivo by inhibiting phospholipase D and sphingosine kinase activities. The FASEB Journal, 2009; 23 (8): 2412 
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/07/090730103742.htm

Regular Yoga Practice Is Associated With Mindful Eating
ScienceDaily (Aug. 3, 2009) — Regular yoga practice is associated with mindful eating, and people who eat mindfully are less likely to be obese, according to a study led by researchers at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center.
The study was prompted by initial findings reported four years ago by Alan Kristal, Dr.P.H., and colleagues, who found that regular yoga practice may help prevent middle-age spread in normal-weight people and may promote weight loss in those who are overweight. At the time, the researchers suspected that the weight-loss effect had more to do with increased body awareness, specifically a sensitivity to hunger and satiety than the physical activity of yoga practice itself.
The follow-up study, published in the August issue of the Journal of the American Dietetic Association, confirms their initial hunch.
"In our earlier study, we found that middle-age people who practice yoga gained less weight over a 10-year period than those who did not. This was independent of physical activity and dietary patterns. We hypothesized that mindfulness – a skill learned either directly or indirectly through yoga – could affect eating behavior," said Kristal, associate head of the Cancer Prevention Program in the Public Health Sciences Division at the Hutchinson Center.
The researchers found that people who ate mindfully – those were aware of why they ate and stopped eating when full – weighed less than those who ate mindlessly, who ate when not hungry or in response to anxiety or depression. The researchers also found a strong association between yoga practice and mindful eating but found no association between other types of physical activity, such as walking or running, and mindful eating.
"These findings fit with our hypothesis that yoga increases mindfulness in eating and leads to less weight gain over time, independent of the physical activity aspect of yoga practice," said Kristal, who is also a professor of epidemiology at the University of Washington School of Public Health.
Kristal, a yoga enthusiast for the past 15 years, said that yoga cultivates mindfulness in a number of ways, such as being able to hold a challenging physical pose by observing the discomfort in a non-judgmental way, with an accepting, calm mind and focus on the breath. "This ability to be calm and observant during physical discomfort teaches how to maintain calm in other challenging situations, such as not eating more even when the food tastes good and not eating when you’re not hungry," he said.
To test whether yoga in fact increases mindfulness and mindful eating, Kristal and colleagues developed a Mindful Eating Questionnaire, a 28-item survey that measured a variety of factors:

• disinhibition – eating even when full;
• awareness – being aware of how food looks, tastes and smells;
• external cues – eating in response to environmental cues, such as advertising;
• emotional response – eating in response to sadness or stress; and
• distraction – focusing on other things while eating.

Each question was graded on a scale of 1 to 4, in which higher scores signified more mindful eating. The questionnaire was administered to more than 300 people at Seattle-area yoga studios, fitness facilities and weight-loss programs, among other venues. More than 80 percent of the study participants were women, well-educated and Caucasian, with an average age of 42. Participants provided self-reported information on a number of factors, including weight, height, yoga practice, walking for exercise or transportation and other forms of moderate and strenuous exercise.
More than 40 percent of the participants practiced yoga more than an hour per week, 46 percent walked for exercise or transportation for at least 90 minutes per week and more than 50 percent engaged in more than 90 minutes of moderate and/or strenuous physical activity per week.
The average weight of the study participants was within the normal range – not surprising considering that the study sample intentionally consisted of people more physically active than the U.S. population in general. Body-mass index was lower among participants who practiced yoga as compared to those who did not (an average of 23.1 vs. 25.8, respectively).
Higher scores on the mindfulness questionnaire overall (and on each of the categories within the questionnaire) was associated with a lower BMI, which suggests that mindful eating may play an important role in long-term weight maintenance, Kristal said.
"Mindful eating is a skill that augments the usual approaches to weight loss, such as dieting, counting calories and limiting portion sizes. Adding yoga practice to a standard weight-loss program may make it more effective," said Kristal, who himself scored high on the mindful-eating survey and has a BMI within the normal range.
Moving forward, Kristal and colleagues suggest that their Mindful Eating Questionnaire, the first tool of its kind to characterize and measure mindful eating, may be useful both in clinical practice and research to understand and promote healthy dietary behavior.
"Beyond calories and diets, mindful eating takes a more holistic approach that can empower individuals to build positive relationships with food and eating, said first author Celia Framson, M.P.H., R.D., C.D., a former graduate student of Kristal's – and former yoga teacher – who now works with adolescents with eating disorders at Seattle Children's Hospital. "The Mindful Eating Questionnaire offers a new and relevant dimension for masuring the effectiveness of dietary behavior interventions. It also encourages nutrition and medical practitioners to consider the broad scope of behavior involved in healthy eating," she said.
Other authors on the paper included Denise Benitez, owner of Seattle Yoga Arts; Alyson Littman, Ph.D., an epidemiologist at the UW School of Public Health and Department of Veterans Affairs; Steve Zeliadt, Ph.D., of VA Puget Sound Healthcare; and Jeanette Schenk, R.D., a research dietitian in the Hutchinson Center's Cancer Prevention Program.
Framson et al. Development and Validation of the Mindful Eating Questionnaire. Journal of the American Dietetic Association, 2009; 109 (8): 1439
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/08/090803185712.htm

Nutritional Supplement, SAMe, Effective In Preventing Formation Of Primary Liver Cancer In Rats
ScienceDaily (Aug. 2, 2009) — A new study investigated the effectiveness of S-adenosylmethionine (SAMe) in the prevention and treatment of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) or primary liver cancer. SAMe, a widely available nutritional supplement, with little known side effects, was found to be effective in preventing the formation of HCC in rats. However, high enough levels of SAMe were not attainable to successfully treat established HCC.
The findings are available in the August issue of Hepatology.
HCC is the fifth most common cancer and the third most frequent cause of cancer death worldwide. Risk factors for HCC include chronic infection with hepatitis B virus, hepatitis C virus (HCV), dietary aflatoxin, excessive alcohol use, cigarette smoking, diabetes and obesity. The overall 5-year survival for HCC patients is less than 10% and the disease rate is expected to rise due to the high prevalence of HCV in many areas of the world.
Shelly Lu, M.D., of the Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California, and colleagues studied the effects of SAMe on chemoprevention and treatment of HCC. In the U.S. the incidence of HCC doubled from 1979 to 1995 and the number of HCC cases for the following 20 to 30 years is projected to increase. “Given these projections, there is a tremendous interest in developing effective chemoprevention strategies,” said Dr. Lu. “And an important property of SAMe that makes it an attractive agent for chemoprevention and treatment of HCC is its ability to selectively kill liver cancer cells,” she added.
During the study researchers injected H4IIE cells into rats and found a 1cm tumor developed in the liver two weeks after injection. A regimen of IV SAMe was started one day after injecting the cells and continued for ten days. The researchers monitored the animals using MRI, ultrasound, and visual inspection to assess the liver tumors. “Treatment with IV SAMe by continuous infusion significantly reduced the tumor size and significantly prevented tumor development after 11 days,” researchers discovered.
Researchers found that if SAMe infusion was started after sizable tumors had already formed it failed to reduce the rate of tumor growth after 24 days of treatment. This is because of a compensatory response of the liver to metabolize SAMe and prevent its accumulation. “The observation that SAMe failed to exert any therapeutic effect in already established HCC is disappointing,” said Dr. Lu. “But whether SAMe can be effective in treating HCC in man remains unclear because this compensatory mechanism may not work properly in human HCC. Nevertheless, effectiveness of SAMe in chemoprevention of human HCC deserves study now.”
Lu et al. S-adenosylmethionine in the chemoprevention and treatment of hepatocellular carcinoma in a rat model. Hepatology, 2009; 50 (2): 462
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/07/090730111156.htm

Food Additive May One Day Help Control Blood Lipids And Reduce Disease Risk
ScienceDaily (Aug. 1, 2009) — Scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have identified a substance in the liver that helps process fat and glucose. That substance is a component of the common food additive lecithin, and researchers speculate it may one day be possible to use lecithin products to control blood lipids and reduce risk for diabetes, hypertension or cardiovascular disease using treatments delivered in food rather than medication.
"Currently, doctors use drugs called fibrates to treat problems with cholesterol and triglycerides," says the study's co-first author Irfan J. Lodhi, Ph.D., a postdoctoral fellow in endocrinology and metabolism. "By identifying this substance that occurs naturally in the body — and also happens to be used as a food additive — it may be possible to improve the treatment of lipid disorders and minimize drug side effects by adding particular varieties of lecithin to food."
Lecithin is found at high concentrations in egg whites. It also is in soybeans, grains, fish, legumes, yeast and peanuts. Most commercially used lecithin comes from soybeans. Lecithin can alter food taste and texture and also can be mixed with water to disperse fats, making it a common additive in margarine, mayonnaise, chocolate and baked goods. Lecithin is a mixture of fatty compounds called phosphatidylcholines. Various types of phosphatidylcholines house different kinds of fatty molecules linked to a common core.
This new study demonstrates that in the liver, a specific type of lecithin binds with a protein called PPAR-alpha, allowing PPAR-alpha to regulate fat metabolism. Scientists long have known that PPAR-alpha is involved in lipid and glucose metabolism. When doctors prescribe fibrate drugs to lower triglycerides and elevate good cholesterol in the blood, those drugs work by activating PPAR-alpha.
Although fibrates activate the protein, no one previously had identified any naturally occurring substance that could perform that task. Reporting in the Aug. 7 issue of the journal Cell, the Washington University research team describes how it found the link between lecithin and PPAR-alpha.
They first created a strain of mice that could not make fatty acid synthase in the liver. When humans or animals eat, we take in sugars. Fatty acid synthase converts those sugars to fatty acids in the liver, where they play important roles in energy metabolism.
"To our surprise, animals missing fatty acid synthase in the liver were just like animals that couldn't make PPAR-alpha. They had lower fasting insulin levels, and they were prone to develop fatty liver disease," says senior investigator Clay F. Semenkovich, M.D., the Herbert S. Gasser Professor and chief of the Division of Endocrinology, Metabolism and Lipid Research. "When we gave the animals fibrate drugs that activated PPAR-alpha, the mice returned to normal, leading us to suspect that fatty acid synthase also was involved in the activation of PPAR-alpha. Although we knew that fibrate drugs would regulate PPAR-alpha, we also knew that our ability to regulate the metabolism of fats and sugars was in place long before humans started making drugs. But until now, no one had identified how it worked."
Semenkovich, Lodhi, John Turk, M.D., Ph.D., professor of medicine and of pathology, and the rest of the team used mass spectrometry and gene expression studies to isolate the phosphatidylcholine, or lecithin compound, that activated PPAR-alpha in the liver.
One reason fatty acid synthase had never been connected to PPAR-alpha function was the distance of the two proteins from each other, according to Semenkovich. PPAR-alpha is a nuclear receptor. That is, it's housed in the nucleus of the cell. Fatty acid synthase, on the other hand, lives out in the cell body, or cytoplasm.
"The neighborhoods where PPAR-alpha and fatty acid synthase live aren't very close together," says Semenkovich. "The synthase is way out in the cytoplasm — that's like being in the suburbs — whereas the PPAR-alpha lives right in the middle of the 'city.' These are all microscopic distances, but to the cell, they're worlds apart, so it's amazing that the two are linked."
It's also fortunate, he says, that an extremely common compound like lecithin binds to a key drug target like PPAR-alpha.
"That information could be used to make better drugs or even to develop what people sometimes refer to as nutriceuticals — nutrients that have pharmaceutical-like properties," Semenkovich says.
This work was funded by grants from the National Institutes of Health, the Jay and Betty Van Andel Foundation and the American Diabetes Association.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/07/090730141656.htm

Americans Spent $33.9 Billion Out-of-pocket On Complementary And Alternative Medicine In One Year

ScienceDaily (Aug. 1, 2009) — Americans spent $33.9 billion out-of-pocket on complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) over the previous 12 months, according to a 2007 government survey1. CAM is a group of diverse medical and health care systems, practices, and products such as herbal supplements, meditation, chiropractic, and acupuncture that are not generally considered to be part of conventional medicine. CAM accounts for approximately 1.5 percent of total health care expenditures ($2.2 trillion2) and 11.2 percent of total out-of-pocket expenditures (conventional out-of-pocket: $286.6 billion2 and CAM out-of-pocket: $33.9 billion1) on health care in the United States.
Approximately 38 percent of adults use some form of CAM for health and wellness or to treat a variety of diseases and conditions, according to data from the 2007 National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) 3. The CAM component of the NHIS was developed by the National Institutes of Health's (NIH) National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM) and the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The data provide estimates of the cost of CAM use, the frequency of visits made to CAM practitioners, and frequency of purchases of self-care CAM therapies.
"With so many Americans using and spending money on CAM therapies, it is extremely important to know whether the products and practices they use are safe and effective," said Josephine P. Briggs, M.D., director of NCCAM. "This underscores the importance of conducting rigorous research and providing evidence-based information on CAM so that health care providers and the public can make well-informed decisions."
Of the $33.9 billion spent on CAM out-of-pocket, an estimated $22.0 billion was spent on self-care costs—CAM products, classes, and materials—with the majority going to the purchase of nonvitamin, nonmineral, natural products ($14.8 billion) such as fish oil, glucosamine and Echinacea. U.S. adults also spent approximately $11.9 billion on an estimated 354.2 million visits to CAM practitioners such as acupuncturists, chiropractors, massage therapists, etc.
To put these figures in context, the $14.8 billion spent on nonvitamin, nonmineral, natural products is equivalent to approximately one-third of total out-of-pocket spending on prescription drugs, and the $11.9 billion spent on CAM practitioner visits is equivalent to approximately one-quarter of total out-of-pocket spending on physician visits.
"These data indicate that the U.S. public makes millions of visits to CAM providers each year and spends billions of dollars for these services, as well as for self-care forms of CAM," said Richard L. Nahin, Ph.D., MPH, acting director of NCCAM's Division of Extramural Research and lead author of the cost of complementary and alternative medicine analysis. "While these expenditures represent just a small fraction of total health care spending in the United States, they constitute a substantial part of out-of-pocket health care costs."
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/07/090730121041.htm

Got Zinc? New Zinc Research Suggests Novel Therapeutic Targets
ScienceDaily (July 31, 2009) — Everyone knows that vitamins "from A to zinc" are important for good health. Now, a new research study in the August 2009 print issue of the Journal of Leukocyte Biology suggests that zinc may be pointing the way to new therapeutic targets for fighting infections. Specifically, scientists from Florida found that zinc not only supports healthy immune function, but increases activation of the cells (T cells) responsible for destroying viruses and bacteria.
"It has been shown that zinc supplementation significantly reduces the duration and severity of childhood diarrhea, lower respiratory infections, and incidence of malaria in zinc-deficient children," said report co-author, Robert Cousins, Ph.D., who also is the director of the Center for Nutritional Sciences within the Food Science and Human Nutrition Department at the University of Florida. "Age-related declines in immune function have also been related to zinc deficiency in the elderly."
Scientists administered either a zinc supplement or a placebo to healthy volunteers to assess the effects of zinc on T cell activation. After isolating the T cells from the blood, scientists then simulated infection in laboratory conditions. Results showed that T cells taken from the zinc-supplemented group had higher activation than those from the placebo group. Specifically, cell activation stimulated the zinc transporter in T cells called "ZIP8," which transports stored zinc into the cell cytoplasm where it then alters the expression of a T cell protein in a way needed to fight infections.
"As the debate over zinc supplementation in healthy individuals continues," said John Wherry, Ph.D., Deputy Editor of the Journal of Leukocyte Biology, "studies like this help shed light on how zinc may enhance the ability of our immune systems to fight off foreign invaders. Equally important, this work points toward new possible targets for entirely new drugs to help augment immune function and prevent or stop infections that might be resistant to traditional antibiotics."
Aydemir et al. Zinc transporter ZIP8 (SLC39A8) and zinc influence IFN- expression in activated human T cells. Journal of Leukocyte Biology, 2009; 86 (2): 337
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/07/090730103740.htm

Nature's Answer to Arthritis

The New Straits Times 08-03-09
IT is not news anymore. People are just rejecting synthetic drugs in favour of natural remedies.
Indeed, more than 40 percent of arthritis sufferers in the United States now report using complementary and alternative medicine. This includes dietary supplements.
Turmeric is one of the most studied of the natural remedies. It has been used for centuries by practitioners of Ayurvedic medicine to treat inflammatory disorders.
Turmeric extract containing the ingredient curcumin is marketed widely in the Western world as a dietary supplement for the treatment and prevention of a variety of disorders, including arthritis.
Turmeric has been found to be extremely safe for human use even at dosages way in excess of what is used.
A study published in the November 2006 issue of Arthritis & Rheumatism examined the effect and mechanism of turmeric on arthritis. The University of Arizona College of Medicine may open new doors for the claims on the effectiveness of turmeric in arthritis.
The study was funded by the US government and was carried out by some of her top professionals.
Janet L. Funk, MD, at the UA College of Medicine worked with Barbara N. Timmermann, PhD who was then-director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH)-funded Arizona Centre for Phytomedicine Research at the University. They set out to determine whether and how turmeric works as an anti-arthritic.
Dr Funk and her colleagues tested on animals a whole extract of turmeric root using only the essential oils and an oil-depleted extract containing the three major curcuminoids found in the rhizome.
Of the three extracts, the one containing the major curcuminoids was most similar in chemical composition to commercially available turmeric dietary supplements.
It also was the most effective, completely inhibiting the onset of rheumatoid arthritis.
Dr Funk, an endocrinologist, says this study provides several noteworthy "firsts".
Completed with the researchers' own prepared, well-defined extracts, the study represents the first documentation of the chemical composition of a curcumin-containing extract tested in a living organism, in vivo, for anti-arthritic efficacy.
It also provides the first evidence of anti-arthritic efficacy of a complex turmeric extract that is analogous in composition to turmeric dietary supplements.
This study also provides the first in vivo documentation of a mechanism of action - how curcumin-containing extracts prevent arthritis.
The researchers found that the curcuminoid extract inhibits a transcription factor called NF-KB from being activated in the joint. A transcription factor is a protein that controls when genes are switched on or off.
Once the transcription factor NF-KB is activated, or turned on, it binds to genes and enhances production of inflammatory proteins, destructive to the joint.
The finding that curcuminoid extract inhibits activation of NF- KB suggests that turmeric dietary supplements share the same mechanism of action as anti-arthritic pharmaceuticals under development that target NF-KB.
It also suggests that turmeric may have a use in other inflammatory disorders, such as asthma, multiple sclerosis and inflammatory bowel disease.
In addition to preventing joint inflammation, Dr Funk's study shows that the curcuminoid extract blocked the pathway that affects bone resorption (breakdown).
The National Health Institute is now funding a major study here involving post menopausal women.
"In summary", the authors state, "just as the willow bark provided relief for arthritis patients before the advent of aspirin, it would appear that the underground stem (rhizome) of a tropical plant (turmeric) may also hold promise for the treatment of joint inflammation and destruction."
However, you need blood and tissue levels of 1200mg of curcumin. The biggest problem with the actives of turmeric is the poor absorption. Less than one per cent is absorbed. This would mean consuming three to 12 teacupfuls of turmeric powder everyday!
However, Belgian scientists have worked on "caging" the molecule with a safe and known carbohydrate molecule to enhance the absorption more than 4000 times. This is almost like giving you an injection.
You just take one to two capsules a day and you get the pain killing and swelling reducing effects. What more, you also prevent further destruction of bone tissues.
It does work somewhat slowly but it is effective. It is certainly without any major side effects.
http://www.lef.org/news/LefDailyNews.htm?NewsID=8592&Section=Disease
July 31, 2009

SAMe shows promise in liver cancer prevention

Life Extensions, August 3, 2009
The August, 2009 issue of the journal Hepatology published the discovery of researchers at the University of Southern California (USC) of a role for S-adenosylmethionine (SAMe) in the prevention of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), or primary liver cancer.
In one experiment, Shelly Lu, MD, of USC’s Keck School of Medicine and her associates injected rats with liver cancer cells, which resulted in 1 centimeter tumor formation in 80 percent of the animals after two weeks. Beginning 24 hours after the injection, 6 rats received 150 milligrams per kilogram intravenous SAMe and another 6 received a control substance daily for 11 days. At the end of the treatment period, the animals were examined for tumor presence and size. While two of the rats treated with SAMe were found to have small tumors, much larger tumors were discovered in four of the animals that received the control substance.
In another experiment, rats with established tumors of at least 1 centimeter in size were given intravenous SAMe for 24 days. Examination of animals determined that SAMe was not effective in halting the growth of these tumors, and that, although plasma SAMe remained elevated, liver SAMe levels were only 30 percent above the control levels at the end of the study. In their discussion of the results, the scientists proposed a compensatory response by the liver to metabolize SAMe in order to prevent its accumulation.
“The observation that SAMe failed to exert any therapeutic effect in already established HCC is disappointing.” Dr Lu stated. But whether SAMe can be effective in treating HCC in man remains unclear because this compensatory mechanism may not work properly in human HCC. Nevertheless, effectiveness of SAMe in chemoprevention of human HCC deserves study now.”
http://www.lef.org/whatshot/2009_07.htm#SAMe-shows-promise-in-liver-cancer-prevention

Carrots not the only food beneficial for eyes

Deutsche Presse-Agentur (dpa) 08-03-09
Berlin (dpa) - Carrots, rich in beta-carotene, are not the only food beneficial to your eyes, points out Silke Restemeyer, spokesperson for the German Nutrition Society (DGE). Spinach, tomatoes, broccoli and mangoes also contain beta-carotene, which the body converts into vitamin A.
As Restemeyer explains, vitamin A helps protect the eye's retina and lens from free radicals, which are unstable molecules that can damage cells.
Beta-carotene is a carotenoid - a plant and animal pigment - and other carotenoids that perform a similar function are lutein and zeaxanthin, Restemeyer says.
Found mainly in leafy green vegetables and corn, these substances can lower the risk of grey cataracts and macular degeneration, a form of retinal damage, usually in older adults, that results in vision loss.
The antioxidant properties of vitamins C and E protect eye cells from damage caused by exposure to sunlight, Restemeyer notes. Citrus fruits are a primary source of vitamin C, and vitamin E is found in vegetable oils, hazelnuts and whole grains.
A representative survey of 1,000 Germans by the French market- research company Ipsos showed that 83 per cent knew that carrots were beneficial to the eyes. The corresponding figures for broccoli and spinach were 32 per cent and 27 per cent, respectively.
http://www.lef.org/news/LefDailyNews.htm?NewsID=8591&Section=Nutrition

Anthocyanins linked to improved cholesterol levels

Nutringredients.com, 03-Aug-2009

Increased intakes of antioxidant anthocyanins may improve levels of HDL and LDL cholesterol, according to results of a new human study with 120 people.
Consumption of berry-derived anthocyanin supplements resulted in a 13.7 per cent increase in levels of HDL cholesterol, and a 13.6 per cent reduction in levels LDL cholesterol, according to findings published online ahead of print in theAmerican Journal of Clinical Nutrition.
Chinese scientists from Sun Yat-Sen University randomly assigned 120 people aged between 40 and 65 with abnormal blood lipid levels (dyslipidemia) to receive either a daily dose of 320 mg of anthocyanins or placebo for 12 weeks.
The study builds on earlier results form animal studies, which showed beneficial effects of the antioxidant compounds on lipid levels.
High cholesterol levels, hypercholesterolaemia, have a long association with many diseases, particularly cardiovascular disease (CVD), the cause of almost 50 per cent of deaths in Europe, and reported to cost the EU economy an estimated €169bn ($202bn) per year.
Study details
Using a double-blind, randomised, placebo-controlled trial design, the Chinese researchers studied the effects of a twice daily dose of 160 mg anthocyanins on the lipid levels of the participants.
After 12 weeks of supplementation, HDL cholesterol levels increased by almost 14 per cent in the anthocyanin group, compared to a rise of only 2.8 per cent in the placebo group. Furthermore, LDL cholesterol levels decreased by 13.6 per cent in the anthocyanin group, compared to an increase of 0.6 per cent in the placebo group.
The removal of cholesterol from cells, the so-called cellular cholesterol efflux, was found to increase by 20 per cent in the anthocyanin group, compared to a 0.2 per cent in the placebo group.
In terms of the potential mechanism, the activity of a protein called plasma cholesteryl ester transfer protein (CETP) was studied. CETP works by collecting triglycerides from LDL and exchanging them for cholesteryl esters from HDL, and also the reverse.
Supplements of the anthocyanins was found to reduce the activity of CETP by 6.3 per cent, while CETP activity fell by only 1.1 per cent in the placebo group, said the researchers.
“The change in HDL cholesterol was negatively correlated with the change in CETP activity,” they wrote. “The change in LDL cholesterol was positively correlated with the change in CETP mass,” they added.
“Anthocyanin supplementation in humans improves LDL- and HDL-cholesterol concentrations and enhances the cellular cholesterol efflux to serum,” wrote the researchers. “These benefits may be due to the inhibition of CETP,” they concluded.
Source: American Journal of Clinical Nutrition
Published online ahead of press, doi:10.3945/ajcn.2009.27814
“Anthocyanin supplementation improves serum LDL- and HDL-cholesterol concentrations associated with the inhibition of cholesteryl ester transfer protein in dyslipidemic subjects”
Authors: Y. Qin, M. Xia, J. Ma, Y. Hao, J. Liu, H. Mou, L. Cao, W. Ling
http://www.nutraingredients.com/Research/Anthocyanins-linked-to-improved-cholesterol-levels

Supplement users may have better cancer survival: Study

Nutraingredients.com, 31-Jul-2009

Lung cancer patients who were regular dietary supplement users prior to diagnosis may have better survival chances than non-users, says a new study from Norway.
Use of cod liver oil supplements was associated with a 44 per cent lower risk of death for lung cancer patients, while daily use of other dietary supplements was associated with a 30 per cent reduction in the risk of death among lung cancer patients, according to findings published in the International Journal of Cancer.
“This study has shown that in lung cancer patients taking dietary supplements before diagnosis was associated with better survival. Whether this is due to beneficial effects of supplements, or differences between supplement users and non-users cannot be determined,” wrote the researchers, led by Guri Skeie from the University of Tromso.
“More research is needed to understand the interplay between nutrients, whether in food or supplements and cancer survival.”
The study also indicated that the benefits of supplement use may even extend beyond lung cancer. The use of cod liver oil and other supplements was associated with improved survival statistics for people with any kind of solid tumour, including breast and colorectal cancer.
“Given that randomized controlled trials have demonstrated no effects or increased incidence of lung cancer in supplementation studies in well-nourished populations, our results may be somewhat surprising,” wrote the researchers.“However, these studies used pharmacological doses of specific nutrients, and cannot easily be compared with ours.”
Study details
Diet and supplement use was established for the 68.518 participants of the Norwegian Women and Cancer study using a food frequency questionnaire. The most common supplement used was cod liver oil, said the researchers, followed by multivitamin and mineral supplements.
After adjusting the data to account for smoking status, the age at which the participants were diagnosed, and the stage of the cancer, Skeie and his co-workers report that consumption of cod liver oil daily for a year prior to diagnosis was associated with a 23 per cent reduction in the risk of death in patients with solid tumours, and a reduction of 44 per cent in lung cancer patients.
Additionally, daily and occasional use of other dietary supplements was associated with 30 and 45 per cent reduction, respectively, in the risk of death among lung cancer patients.
“When use of cod liver oil and other dietary supplements were combined into one variable daily use of both cod liver oil and other dietary supplements was associated with improved survival in lung cancer patients,” added Skeie.
Before or after?
Commenting on their study design, the researchers noted: “If the most relevant period for supplementation is after diagnosis, it is likely that our results underestimate the effect of supplementation, as some of the patients most likely have initiated supplementation.
“On the other hand, if a certain level of the nutrients or long-term supplementation is required for an effect, dietary supplement use before diagnosis might be more relevant for the association with survival.
“And if dietary supplement use only is an indicator of a set of health behaviours or beliefs, prediagnosis use might be more important, as these characteristics probably are stronger in those who already take supplements before diagnosis, than in those who initiate use afterwards.”
The researchers called for more research to study the apparent benefits of supplement use for survival chances in people with solid tumours.
“In countries where dietary supplement use is common, analyses of survival in cancer patients, particularly lung cancer patients, should take dietary supplement use into account,” they concluded.
Source: International Journal of Cancer Volume 125, Pages 1155-1160 "Cod liver oil, other dietary supplements and survival among cancer patients with solid tumours" Authors: G. Skeie, T.
http://www.nutraingredients.com/Research/Supplement-users-may-have-better-cancer-survival-Study

Rooibos can fight cancer, says South African group

Nutraingredients.com, 03-Aug-2009

South African food maker, Fair Cape, has won official cancer-fighting recognition for a yoghurt fortified with an extract from the native South African Rooibos plant.
As part of a Cancer Association of South Africa (CANSA) campaign to increase dietary knowledge among the South African population, it authorised Fair Cape to use its Smart Choice emblem on its Free Range Rooibos Yoghurts, after eight years of research and more than one million Rand spent.
“CANSA is officially recognising Rooibos as a source of chemicals that can help to prevent cancer in both humans and animals,” said CANSA head of research, Dr Carl Albrecht.
CANSA said the Smart Choice emblem was only issued to those “suppliers who comply with a strict set of criteria” that included being additive and hormone-free and produced in an environmentally friendly way that includes the use of recyclable and biodegradable plastic.
The supplier of the Rooibos extract to Fair Cape is Rooibos Ltd.
Measures and actions
“CANSA recognises Fair Cape Free Range Rooibos Yoghurts as a Smart Choice, mainly because it contains the equivalent Rooibos extract of one cup of tea and is a high-standard yoghurt,” CANSA said, noting quality control measures had also been important.
“CANSA is keen to see that the Rooibos extract used in the yoghurt is 100 per cent natural and standardised. Sophisticated analytical tests have been put in place to ensure this,” the group said.
It said the Smart Choice scheme rewarded products that used natural ingredients in preference to artificial products, some of which, “have been shown to increase the risk of cancer”.
“Owing to the sensitivities around preservatives, this yoghurt contains a natural, state-of-the-art polypeptide preservative that is readily digested in the gut and does not get absorbed by the blood,” CANSA said.
“CANSA also recognises the high concentration of probiotic bacteria in the yoghurt and is aware of growing research suggesting that these bacteria could reduce cancer risk. It furthermore increases immune cell activity in the gut and suppresses the growth of bacteria that could convert procarcinogens into carcinogens (cancer-causing chemicals).”
The extract is thought to be effective in cancer treatment because it replenishes glutathione, an antioxidant produced in the body that decreases with age.
“CANSA research has found that Rooibos raised the ratio of reduced glutathione to oxidised glutathione by 100 per cent in humans who consumed six cups a day over a period of three months,” said Dr Albrecht.
http://www.nutraingredients.com/On-your-radar/Botanicals/Rooibos-can-fight-cancer-says-South-African-group

Breastfeeding could save 1.3 million child lives: WHO
Last Updated: 2009-07-31 11:02:53 -0400 (Reuters Health)
GENEVA (Reuters) - Teaching new mothers how to breastfeed could save 1.3 million children's lives every year, but many women get no help and give up trying, the World Health Organization said on Friday.
Less than 40 percent of mothers worldwide breastfeed their infants exclusively in the first six months, as recommended by the WHO. Many abandon it because they don't know how to get their baby to latch on properly or suffer pain and discomfort.
"When it comes to doing it practically, they don't have the practical support," WHO expert Constanza Vallenas told a news briefing in Geneva, where the United Nations agency is based.
This is a problem in both rich and poor countries, she said, calling for more assistance in hospitals, health clinics and communities for new mothers who need information and help.
Pregnant women should also be made aware of the risks they face from both seasonal flu and the new H1N1 pandemic, the WHO said, calling as well for more attention to influenza symptoms in the vulnerable group.
Expectant mothers should get top priority for antiviral drugs like Tamiflu, ideally administered within 48 hours of the onset of illness, WHO spokeswoman Aphaluck Bhatiasevi told reporters.
"Pregnant women, when they get flu, are at risk and they should see a doctor," she said. "It adds to the risk and it is really essential for pregnant women to seek medication."
U.S. health experts have said that pregnant women should also be first to get vaccines against the H1N1 virus, known as swine flu, with caregivers for infants second.
The WHO recommends that babies start breastfeeding within one hour of their birth, and ingest only breast milk for the first six months, avoiding water and other drinks and foods.
This can give children vital nutrients and strengthen their immune system to fight diseases like diarrhea and pneumonia. Formula milk does not provide the same immunity and local water can be contaminated or unsafe in many parts of the world.
Raising to 90 percent the global breastfeeding rate for infants to six months would save an estimated 13 percent of the 10 million under-age-5 deaths a year, Vallenas said.
In a statement released to mark World Breastfeeding Week, August 1-7, WHO Director-General Margaret Chan said it was also important that mothers in disaster zones be given the support they need to continue or restart breastfeeding.
"During emergencies, unsolicited or uncontrolled donations of breast milk substitutes may undermine breastfeeding and should be avoided," Chan said, arguing abandoning breastfeeding could put vulnerable child lives at extra risk. "The focus should be on active protection and support of breastfeeding."
http://www.reutershealth.com/archive/2009/07/31/eline/links/20090731elin010.html

Human Heart Regenerates Cells Automatically: One Percent Each Year
David Gutierrez, NaturalNews.com  August 3, 2009 

(NaturalNews) In a groundbreaking new study, researchers from the Karolinska Institute in Sweden have demonstrated that heart cells are able to regenerate themselves, overturning the conventional wisdom that the body cannot replace damaged heart cells.

Researchers immediately hailed the study as providing new hope for prevention and treatment of diseased hearts.

"I think this will be one of the most important papers in cardiovascular medicine in years," said Dr. Charles Murry, a heart researcher at the University of Washington in Seattle. "It helps settle a longstanding controversy about whether the human heart has any ability to regenerate itself."

Unlike most cells in the body, heart cells mostly stop reproducing themselves relatively early in life. When injured, the heart tends to simply scar, rather than replacing damaged tissue the way other organs do. For decades, scientists assumed that the heart was simply incapable of natural regeneration. 

This idea was challenged in 1987 by Piero Anversa, now a researcher at Harvard Medical School. Anversa believes that the heart regenerates a rate allowing it to replace all of its cells four times in 80 years. Clinical evidence for this idea has been lacking, however.

To determine rates of cell regeneration in animals, scientists typically flood an animal's body with radiation and track the rate at which non-radioactive cells replace the radioactive ones. In one of these so-called pulse labeling experiments in mice, researchers found that mouse heart cells regenerated at a rate of about 1 percent per year -- much lower than the rate hypothesized by Anversa, but still higher than the conventional wisdom.

Although pulse labeling experiments are banned in humans, researcher Jonas Frisen realized that the technique could be replicated by measuring heart cells' levels of the radioactive isotope carbon-14.

Because carbon-14 decays at a fixed rate, researchers can use levels of the isotope to estimate the dates of organic materials that are tens of thousands of years old -- but the isotope decays far too slowly to be used in dating of living cells.

Aboveground nuclear tests in the 1960s, however, injected large quantities of carbon 14 into the air that were then absorbed by life forms around the world. When aboveground testing was banned, atmospheric levels of the isotope began to drop. This means that the amount of carbon-14 contained in a given cell could serve as an indicator of what year that cell was formed.

Examining the heart tissue of 50 people over the course of four years, Frisen and colleagues found that on average, new heart cells appeared to replace old ones at a rate of approximately 1 percent per year in youth and 0.5 percent per year by age 75. 

"If you exchange cells at this rate it means that even if you live a very long life you will not have exchanged more than 50 percent of your cells," Frisen said. "So at any given time your heart is a mosaic of cells you carry with you from birth and cells that that have been added later to replace cells that have been lost during life."

Anversa said he was "ecstatic" at the study's findings.

"Now let's discuss the magnitude of the process, and that will let us think about how we can apply this concept to heart failure," he said.

Researchers now hope to find ways to stimulate the regeneration of heart cells, as a way to avoid heart transplants and help people recover from heart attacks. Alternatively, the heart might already be regenerating heart cells after an injury but those cells might simply be dying without getting established. If this is the case, scientists could find a way to help those new cells survive.

Frisen also noted that different regeneration rates might explain why some people are more predisposed to heart disease.

"We are interested in studying whether some heart diseases could potentially be caused by too low an ability to replace heart cells," he said.
http://www.naturalnews.com/026761_heart_cells_disease_labeling.html

Caffeine May Prevent and Help Reverse Alzheimer's Disease
S. L. Baker, NaturalNews.com  August 3, 2009 

(NaturalNews) There is probably no more dreaded and feared disease than memory-destroying and life-robbing Alzheimer's. According to the National Institute on Aging (NIA), as many as 2.4 to 4.5 million Americans are currently living with Alzheimer's Disease (AD) and, as Baby Boomers age, those numbers are expected to soar. Unfortunately, despite millions spent on research and the development of drugs to delay or help symptoms, the bottom line is nothing works to truly prevent, stop or heal the disease. At least, nothing from Big Pharma. The National Institutes of Health's NIA web site does list some natural strategies -- a nutritious diet, exercise, social engagement, and mentally stimulating pursuits -- which may prevent or delay AD. But now there's new and stunning research that strongly suggests a substance found in nature offers another a way to fight Alzheimer's and maybe even reverse its effects: caffeine.

In experiments with lab mice especially bred to develop symptoms of Alzheimer's disease, University of South Florida (USF) researchers at the Florida Alzheimer's Disease Research Center ADRC gave the aged animals the equivalent of the caffeine in five cups of coffee a day. The results? Their severe memory impairment was reversed.

This study, along with other AD research by the same group of scientists, was just published in the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease. Both studies show that caffeine significantly decreased abnormal levels of beta amyloid (the protein linked to AD) in both the brains and blood of lab rodents who had symptoms of Alzheimer's. This research follows on the heels of previous ADRC research that found caffeine given to this same strain of mice when they were young prevented memory problems from developing -- even though the animals were bred to develop Alzheimer's symptoms as they grew old.

"The new findings provide evidence that caffeine could be a viable 'treatment' for established Alzheimer's disease, and not simply a protective strategy," said lead author Gary Arendash, PhD, a USF neuroscientist with the Florida ADRC, in a statement to the media. "That's important because caffeine is a safe drug for most people, it easily enters the brain, and it appears to directly affect the disease process."

Dr. Arendash and his research team began investigating caffeine's ability to possibly treat Alzheimer's after they read a Portuguese study conducted a few years ago that found people with Alzheimer's had consumed far less caffeine over the last 20 years than people who never came down with AD. There have also been several uncontrolled clinical studies that have noted moderate caffeine consumption seems to offer protection against memory decline during normal aging. So the ADRC scientists decided to conduct highly controlled experiments using Alzheimer's afflicted mice in order to distinguish the effects caffeine might actually have on memory from other lifestyle factors such as diet and exercise.

The Florida ADRC study used 55 of the genetically altered mice who develop memory problems identical to Alzheimer's disease as they become old. Behavior tests were conducted to confirm the mice were experiencing memory problems when they reached the age of 18 to 19 months, the equivalent of a human who's around 70. Then the scientists gave half the mice caffeine-laced water -- in all, they received the equivalent of five eight oz. cups of regular coffee a day. As a control, the other half of the mice in the study group received plain water.

After two months, the caffeinated mice could perform much better on tests designed to measure their memory and ability to think. Although the mice that drank plain water continued to show mental deterioration, the mice on caffeine not only had stopped losing their memories, their memories were identical to normal aged mice without dementia. Moreover, the caffeinated mice showed an approximate 50 percent reduction in beta amyloid, the substance linked to sticky lumps of plaques in the brain that are the key sign of Alzheimer's disease.

More experiments by the same research team suggest that caffeine has the ability to restore memory by reducing the enzymes needed to produce beta amyloid. In fact, the Florida scientists think caffeine may suppress inflammatory changes in the brain that lead to the AD-associated increase of beta amyloid. 

"These are some of the most promising Alzheimer's mouse experiments ever done showing that caffeine rapidly reduces beta amyloid protein in the blood, an effect that is mirrored in the brain, and this reduction is linked to cognitive benefit," Huntington Potter, PhD, director of the Florida ADRC and an investigator for the caffeine studies, said in the media statement. "Our goal is to obtain the funding needed to translate the therapeutic discoveries in mice into well-designed clinical trials." 

Based on their groundbreaking findings in mice, scientists at Florida ADRC and Byrd Alzheimer's Center at USF want to carry out human trials to see if caffeine can benefit people with mild cognitive impairment or early Alzheimer's disease. There's strong reason to think caffeine can fight AD. The researchers have already determined in preliminary studies that caffeine given to elderly non-demented humans quickly affects their blood levels of beta amyloid, just as it did in the Alzheimer's lab animals. 

If larger, well documented and controlled clinical studies do confirm caffeine can prevent and/or treat Alzheimer's in humans, as it does in mice, the ramifications will be nothing short of mind-boggling. According to the Alzheimer's Association, at least half of the US population 85 and older have or end up with AD and the disease and other dementias triple healthcare costs for Americans 65 and older, in addition to causing untold suffering .

Editor's note: NaturalNews is opposed to the use of animals in medical experiments that expose them to harm. We present these findings in protest of the way in which they were acquired. We are also opposed to the idea of using large volumes of caffeine as a "treatment" for Alzheimer's, especially given the adrenal depletion caused by ongoing caffeine consumption. The conclusions presented in this story are interesting, but in no way does NaturalNews condone the regular consumption of caffeine as a brain stimulant.

References :
Caffeine Reverses Cognitive Impairment and Decreases Brain Amyloid-B Levels in Aged Alzheimer's Disease Mice; Gary W Arendash, Takashi Mori, Chuanhai Cao, Malgorzata Mamcarz, Melissa Runfeldt, Alexander Dickson, Kavon Rezai-Zadeh, Jun Tan, Bruce A Citron, Xiaoyang Lin, Valentina Echeverria, and Huntington Potter; Journal of Alzheimer's Disease, Volume 17:3 (July 2009).

Caffeine Suppresses Amyloid-B Levels in Plasma and Brain of Alzheimer's Disease Transgenic Mice; Chuanhai Cao, John R Cirrito, Xiaoyang Lin, Lilly Wang, Deborah K Verges, Alexander Dickson, Malgorzata Mamcarz, Chi Zhang, Takashi Mori, Gary W Arendash, David M Holzman, and Huntington Potter; Journal of Alzheimer's Disease, Volume 17:3 (July 2009
http://www.naturalnews.com/026760_Alzheimers_caffeine_disease.html

Omega-3s From Fish Oil Protect Against Prostate Cancer
David Gutierrez, NaturalNews.com  August 1, 2009 

(NaturalNews) A higher dietary intake of omega-3 fatty acids may protect men from prostate cancer even if they have a genetic predisposition to the disease, researchers have found.

"We detected strong protective associations between increasing intake of long-chain omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids and more advanced prostate cancer," said lead researcher John S. Witte. "These fatty acids are primarily from dark fish such as salmon." 

"And the decrease in risk may be even more pronounced if one has a high-risk genetic variant," he said.

In a study published in the journal Clinical Cancer Research, Witte and colleagues compared the diets and genetic profiles of 466 men suffering from aggressive prostate cancer with those of 478 healthy men of similar age and ethnic distribution. Average participant age was 65, and cancer patients were recruited an average of 4.7 months after diagnosis. Healthy controls were recruited from among men undergoing standard annual healthcheckups.

The researchers focused only on aggressive tumors because these represent the most dangerous form of the disease. Many men with non-aggressive, slow-growing tumors die of other causes before ever experiencing any cancer symptoms.

Researchers had all participants fill out food frequency questionnaires, classifying their intake of various kinds of fish as "never," "one to three times per month," or "one or more times per week." All men were screened for nine different mutations of the cox-2 gene. These variables were then analyzed for their relationship with prostate cancer, adjusting for other known risk factors such as smoking, obesity, family cancer history and prior prostate screening results.

The study was conducted by researchers from the Institute for Human Genetics, University of California and University of Southern California, and funded by the National Institute of Health and a dean's grant from Laval University McLaughlin.

The researchers found that men with cancer had a significantly higher intake of calories, fat and linoleic acid (an omega-6) than healthy men. They had a significantly lower intake of omega-3s, shellfish and dark fish.

Men who ate dark fish one to three times a month had a 36 percent lower chance of developing an aggressive prostate cancer than those who ate it rarely or never, while those who ate such fish once a week or more had a 63 percent lower risk.

"The strongest effect was seen from eating dark fish such as salmon one or more times per week," Witte said.

The researchers found that men with a particular cox-2 gene variant, rs4647310, had 5.5-times the risk of aggressive prostate cancer as men without that variant. This elevated risk was not seen, however, among men with a high omega-3 intake.

"Men with low intake of dark fish and the high-risk variant had a substantially increased risk of more advanced prostate cancer," Witte said.

Omega-3s are believed to decrease the risk of cardiovascular disease, cancer, and autoimmune disorders, and to improve cognitive health. The mechanisms for these benefits are not well understood, but are believed, in some cases, to be linked to reduced inflammation. 

The cox-2 gene is known to play a role in prostate inflammation, a risk factor for prostate cancer.

"Previous research has shown protection against prostate cancer [by omega-3s]," Witte said, "but this is one of the first studies to show protection against advanced prostate cancer and interaction with cox-2."

Prostate cancer is the most common male cancer in the United States, and the second most common cause of male cancer death. In the United Kingdom, it is the second most common cause of overall cancer death. Obesity is one of the most well-known risk factors for the disease.

"One way men can reduce their risk of developing advanced prostate cancer, as well as risk of many other diseases, is to maintain a healthy weight," said Eric Jacobs of the American Cancer Society.
http://www.naturalnews.com/026752_cancer_Prostate_prostate_cancer.html

Additive Used in U.S. Meat Production May Be Too Dangerous Even for Codex
Barbara Minton, NaturalNews.com  August 3, 2009 
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(NaturalNews) The latest session of the U.N. Codex Alimentarius ended without final adoption of a maximum residue level for ractopamine, a feed additive widely used in pork and beef production. The commission agreed to review additional information on the drug to be submitted by China, a country that has outlawed its use. Although this is very good news for meat eaters, the U.S. delegation to Codex expressed disappointment in the commission's decision to delay adoption of a minimum residue level for ractopamine, and urged that the review of information from China be completed by the Codex meeting in July, 2010. The National Pork Producers Council has been pushing the commission to adopt a minimum residue level for ractopamine, even though no evidence has surfaced to suggest its use is safe for animals or for the humans that consume products from animals bulked up with this drug.

Ractopamine's only benefit is to fatten up meat producers' bottom lines

Ractopamine was approved in 1999 for use on finishing swine, pigs that are being fed and readied for market. The drug directs nutrients away from the production of fat deposition and promotes an increase of lean meat, resulting in more weight gain, increased carcass leanness, and fatter bottom lines for pork producers. In early 2003, the FDA approved ractopamine for use as a growth promoter in cattle during the last 28 to 42 days of the finishing period for feedlot steers and heifers. No long term studies documented the safety of ractopamine prior to its approval for hogs or cattle.

Ractopamine is a product of Elanco technology, a company owned by Eli Lilly. It trades under the name Paylean for use with hogs, and Optaflexx for use with cattle. Producers of hogs love Paylean because it improves feed efficiency by 13 percent, and average daily weight gain by 10 percent. Average daily feed intake is reduced by 6 percent, and total lean meat production is boosted by 25 to 37 percent. Paylean use can net a pork producer an extra $5 to 10 per hog, and can increase profits by more $320,000 a year in a fairly good sized operation.

For cattle fed with Optaflexx, the additional weight gain is about 14.2 lbs when fed with 200 mg per head per day. Feed efficiency is improved up to 15.9 percent. The net increase to cattle producers who use the drug averages $8.00 per head. According to industry data, red meat yield is increased with no affect on marbling.

No clearance period prior to slaughter mandated for ractopamine

Animals can dine on ractopamine laced feed right up until they enter the slaughtering chute. There is no required clearance period for this drug as there is with other drugs used by producers. If a clearance period were required for ractopamine, the animals' unnaturally produced weight gain would evaporate and so would the extra profits. Other drugs used on hogs and cattle require a clearance time of two weeks before the animal can be turned into steaks and chops. This relaxation of clearance time is in the face of industry research which has shown it takes a full seven days for 97% of Paylean to be excreted following a one-time typical dose in pigs. This means that every time one of the traditional American favorite hot dogs or hamburgers is eaten, the person doing the eating will be ingesting ractopamine.

Ractopamine is cardiac stimulator and possible carcinogen

Ractopamine belongs to the class of beta-adrenoceptor agonists. This class of drugs binds to beta-receptors in the heart. The overall effect of beta-agonists is cardiac stimulation, including increased heart rate and systemic dilation of blood vessels. Other drugs in this class have been found to be carcinogenic.

Although there have been no long term studies of the effects of ractopamine in humans and no data exists to determine the outcome of long-term exposure to the chemical, short-term animal studies have shown destabilization of heart rate, reduced testicular and uterine weight, and heart weight increase. Studies using rats have shown reduction in mean litter size and an increase in total number of fetuses that fail to develop.

Since some beta-adrenoceptor agonists have been found to be carcinogenic, Dr. L. Ritter of the Bureau of Veterinary Drugs at Health and Welfare Canada has recommended studies of Paylean's genotoxicity and pharmacology, and surveys of all non-therapeutic effects of long term use of the drug class in humans. He sees this as essential in the prediction of the consequences from long-term intake of ratopamine residues by consumers of treated products.

In April of this year, the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) concluded that the metabolic fate of ractopamine hydrochloride is similar in pigs, cattle, laboratory animals, and humans. Their Panel on Additives and Products or Substances used in Animal Feed found from an acute study in dogs that tachycardia and peripheral vasodilatation occurred. Their report specified that NOAELS (no observable adverse effect levels) derived from pharmacological repeated dose studies should not be regarded as a meaningful basis for establishing an acceptable daily intake (ADI) because of the observed down regulation of lung beta-adrengergic receptors. They explained that when evaluating hypothetical risks for consumers, data from acute pharmacological studies would better reflect the consumer situation after intake of a single meal containing ractopamine residues.

According to this panel, significant subpopulations which may be at higher risk for adverse events after beta-adrenergic stimulation require particular consideration when estimating the safety factor. Attempts to derive an ADI so far have not sufficiently taken into account these population subsets at higher risk. The panel concludes that 5 mg, the lowest administered dose, cannot be considered a no-effect dose. Human study cannot be taken as a basis to derive an ADI as previously purposed, and no MRL could be established. The Committee for Medical Products for Veterinary Use concurred with this conclusion. This is in conflict with the Codex Joint Expert Committee on Food Additives which says ractopamine is a safe treatment for all concerned.

Others studying ractopamine have concluded that it may be more toxic after its first pass through the liver because metabolites have their own individual profiles. Ractopamine has not yet been studied after passage through animal livers in the form in which it would be present in the tissues of animals fed with it.

Paylean label says it's not for human use

There may be no clearing period required before turning ractopamine fed animals into dinner, but the Paylean label suggests significant hazards for humans using the substance. It clearly warns that individuals with cardiovascular disease should use special caution to avoid exposure. Persons mixing and handling Paylean are advised to use protective clothing, impervious gloves, protective eyewear, and NIOSH approved dust masks, as well as to wash themselves thoroughly immediately after handling Paylean.

Other countries say no to ractopamine

Only 24 counties support the use of ractopamine. It is banned in 160 countries including the EU, China and Tiawan, where punishment for its use includes fines and imprisonment. Imported meat is tested and turned away if traces of ractopamine are discovered.

U.S. based Smithfield Foods, the largest slaughter plant in the world, supplies pork to China. A recent industry article announcing a large Chinese order from Smithfield explains how that order will be filled. Since Smithfield has full control over their swine production, they will stop feeding Paylean for three weeks until the pigs test clear. This is an industry admission that fully three weeks of clearance time is needed to export meat that will pass the standards of China for being ractopamine free, a conclusion that is inconsistent with the stance of Codex.

Even the U.S. may be wising up

Smithfield subsidiary, John Morrell has just announced contracts with several large swine farms to supply them with pork that is free of both Paylean and antibiotics. Until this announcement, only small niche slaughtering plants have been interested in processing Paylean and antibiotic free hogs.

Use of ractopamine is cruelty to animals

Animals pay a great price for the chance to boost their producer's bottom lines. One of the swine producers contracting his Paylean free hogs to Morrell says that Paylean has the effect on pigs that steroids have on body builders. It makes pigs walk like arthritic old men, and act just as crotchety. Pigs on Paylean become emotional, mean and stubborn, and have to be beaten to get them loaded for market and into the chutes for processing.

Chris Birky of Birky Farms says Paylean makes animals extremely agitated and miserable. They become aggressive toward each other, and the people raising them. They lose their ability to cope with stress and can turn purple, shake and even fall down dead of heart attacks during any stressful event. At the same time, their bodies are flooded with stress related hormones that can end up in tissues.
http://www.naturalnews.com/026741_Paylean_meat_meat_production.html

Urban Weeds Treat Urban Ailments
Melissa Sokulski, NaturalNews.com  August 1, 2009 

(NaturalNews) There is a belief in herbal medicine that plants tend to grow where people need them. Whether this is true or mere coincidence, a strong case can be made when one looks at what medicinal herbs grow wild in cities, and what types of ailments are most prevalent there.

It may be that there are similar ailments in the country, but in the city people are concentrated in high numbers, and the plants are there, too. Along the roadsides, in vacant lots, even growing through cracks in concrete of most major cities in the United States one finds mullein, mugwort, St. John's wort, dandelion, chicory, and the invasive Japanese Knotweed.

Cities, of course, have more pollution than rural areas, and people reflect that with coughs and other lung ailments. Second hand smoke is also more of a problem in the city, where more people are gathering outside buildings to smoke. Mullein generously grows all throughout most cities, in vacant lots and along roadways.

Mullein (Verbascum thapsus) has soft green-gray leaves and in the summer is recognized by it's second year flower spike: a usually unbranched flower stem decorated with delicate five-petaled yellow flowers. The leaves of this plant can be collected and dried. When brewed as tea it benefits the lungs. Brought over with European settlers, Native Americans adopted this mullein into their healing repertoire, often smoking the leaves as a treatment for lung maladies. The flowers can be steeped in oil and used to treat ear infections.

Another ailment we see in great amounts in the city is depression. City dwellers often get less sun exposure: people often move to the city for jobs which require long hours indoors. Deprivation of sunlight and Vitamin D deficiency can lead to depression via Seasonal Affective Disorder. We also see high amounts of stress and anxiety in cities, which can often accompany depression, or sometimes appear on its own.

Luckily, the urban medicine chest has remedies for all the above, often growing right outside people's doorstep, even growing through cracks in concrete sidewalks.

An often overlooked way to enjoy the sun's energy is through the chlorophyll of green plants. Plants directly use the light from the sun, and turn it into their green pigment, chlorophyll. Greens have a high nutritional profile, and wild greens often top cultivated varieties. The city boasts wild dandelion greens, chicory greens, plantain and even clover; it provides us with edible, nutritious greens which we can add to salads and smoothies to increase our chlorophyll and nutritional intake.

According to Paul Pitchford, chlorophyll purifies: stopping bacterial growth, removing drug deposits and halting tooth decay and gum infection. It is an anti-inflammatory, and it renews: building blood and tissue, counteracting radiation and promoting healthful intestinal flora. (1)

In addition to bringing sunlight and nutrition into our bodies through the chlorophyll of plants, another way to fight depression is with a tea or tincture made from the plant St. John's Wort (Hypericum perforatum), which grows abundantly on roadsides and lots in cities. Mugwort (Artemisia vulgaris), also grows plentifully in cities, and drying and burning this herb as a smudge helps relax the mind and ease anxiety. Mugwort's mind-relaxing made this plant a natural substitute for Hops in beer-making when Hops was illegal in the early twentieth century.

In addition, Peter Holmes reports that "mugwort herb is ideal for symptom relief during mensturation." (2) For this use it is taken as a tea or tincture.

Dandelions (Taraxacum officinale) seem to be the scourge of anyone with a lawn, including city dwellers, but dandelion provides huge benefits for people, especially in helping damaged or overworked livers. All parts of the dandelion are edible, and dandelion can clear jaundice, treat hepatitis, and help the liver cleanse the blood of all sorts of toxins, from medication and drug residue to air pollution that gets in our system.(3)

Dandelion roots can be dried and roasted as a coffee substitute, especially with dried roasted chicory roots (Cichorium intybus), which is the lovely sky-blue flower you see all over roadsides. While the alkaloids in coffee tend to congest the liver, the coffee substitute made from urban weeds like dandelion and chicory root actually have the opposite effect and are healing.

Finally, cities are currently overrun by invasive Japanese Knotweed taking over hillsides and growing abundantly, much to many city planners' and gardener's dismay. This plant contains its own natural herbicide which kills much of the plant life around it, allowing it to proliferate, grow and spread. Can there be any benefit to this plant?

In fact, Japanese Knotweed (Polygonum cuspidatum) is one of the highest natural sources of resveratrol. Many people think they need to drink red wine to get the benefits of resveratrol, but now supplements are available and the supplements are made not from red wine, but Japanese Knotweed.

When Japanese Knotweed first shoots out of the ground in early spring, the shoots are tender, lemony and edible. They can be steamed and eaten with a pat of butter just as one would eat asparagus, sauteed in oil with garlic, or juiced in a juicer with apples, for a refreshing lemonade-like drink.

The benefits of resveratrol are touted everywhere lately, and include anti-oxidant properties (ridding the body of dangerous free radicals that can lead to cancer), benefiting the central nervous system, regulating hormones and thinning the blood. Studies show resveratrol may benefit people with Alzheimer's (especially taken with vitamins E and C) and may be useful after a stroke or other injuries to the spine and central nervous system. Finally, resveratrol is believed to help prevent certain cancers, such as breast, and help decrease the risk of cancer spreading into the bones. (4)

Next time you take a walk around town, notice what weeds are growing around you. Get a wild edible plant guide or take a guided tour and find out just what potential medicines and foods might be right at your feet.
http://www.naturalnews.com/026755_dandelion_weeds_resveratrol.html

Warning: Oil supplies are running out fast

Catastrophic shortfalls threaten economic recovery, says world's top energy economist
Steve Connor, Science Editor, The Independent UK
Monday, 3 August 2009
The world is heading for a catastrophic energy crunch that could cripple a global economic recovery because most of the major oil fields in the world have passed their peak production, a leading energy economist has warned.
Higher oil prices brought on by a rapid increase in demand and a stagnation, or even decline, in supply could blow any recovery off course, said Dr Fatih Birol, the chief economist at the respected International Energy Agency (IEA) in Paris, which is charged with the task of assessing future energy supplies by OECD countries.
In an interview with The Independent, Dr Birol said that the public and many governments appeared to be oblivious to the fact that the oil on which modern civilisation depends is running out far faster than previously predicted and that global production is likely to peak in about 10 years – at least a decade earlier than most governments had estimated.
But the first detailed assessment of more than 800 oil fields in the world, covering three quarters of global reserves, has found that most of the biggest fields have already peaked and that the rate of decline in oil production is now running at nearly twice the pace as calculated just two years ago. On top of this, there is a problem of chronic under-investment by oil-producing countries, a feature that is set to result in an "oil crunch" within the next five years which will jeopardise any hope of a recovery from the present global economic recession, he said.
In a stark warning to Britain and the other Western powers, Dr Birol said that the market power of the very few oil-producing countries that hold substantial reserves of oil – mostly in the Middle East – would increase rapidly as the oil crisis begins to grip after 2010.
"One day we will run out of oil, it is not today or tomorrow, but one day we will run out of oil and we have to leave oil before oil leaves us, and we have to prepare ourselves for that day," Dr Birol said. "The earlier we start, the better, because all of our economic and social system is based on oil, so to change from that will take a lot of time and a lot of money and we should take this issue very seriously," he said.
"The market power of the very few oil-producing countries, mainly in the Middle East, will increase very quickly. They already have about 40 per cent share of the oil market and this will increase much more strongly in the future," he said.
There is now a real risk of a crunch in the oil supply after next year when demand picks up because not enough is being done to build up new supplies of oil to compensate for the rapid decline in existing fields.
The IEA estimates that the decline in oil production in existing fields is now running at 6.7 per cent a year compared to the 3.7 per cent decline it had estimated in 2007, which it now acknowledges to be wrong.
"If we see a tightness of the markets, people in the street will see it in terms of higher prices, much higher than we see now. It will have an impact on the economy, definitely, especially if we see this tightness in the markets in the next few years," Dr Birol said.
"It will be especially important because the global economy will still be very fragile, very vulnerable. Many people think there will be a recovery in a few years' time but it will be a slow recovery and a fragile recovery and we will have the risk that the recovery will be strangled with higher oil prices," he told The Independent.
In its first-ever assessment of the world's major oil fields, the IEA concluded that the global energy system was at a crossroads and that consumption of oil was "patently unsustainable", with expected demand far outstripping supply.
Oil production has already peaked in non-Opec countries and the era of cheap oil has come to an end, it warned.
In most fields, oil production has now peaked, which means that other sources of supply have to be found to meet existing demand.
Even if demand remained steady, the world would have to find the equivalent of four Saudi Arabias to maintain production, and six Saudi Arabias if it is to keep up with the expected increase in demand between now and 2030, Dr Birol said.
"It's a big challenge in terms of the geology, in terms of the investment and in terms of the geopolitics. So this is a big risk and it's mainly because of the rates of the declining oil fields," he said.
"Many governments now are more and more aware that at least the day of cheap and easy oil is over... [however] I'm not very optimistic about governments being aware of the difficulties we may face in the oil supply," he said.
Environmentalists fear that as supplies of conventional oil run out, governments will be forced to exploit even dirtier alternatives, such as the massive reserves of tar sands in Alberta, Canada, which would be immensely damaging to the environment because of the amount of energy needed to recover a barrel of tar-sand oil compared to the energy needed to collect the same amount of crude oil.
"Just because oil is running out faster than we have collectively assumed, does not mean the pressure is off on climate change," said Jeremy Leggett, a former oil-industry consultant and now a green entrepreneur with Solar Century.
"Shell and others want to turn to tar, and extract oil from coal. But these are very carbon-intensive processes, and will deepen the climate problem," Dr Leggett said.
"What we need to do is accelerate the mobilisation of renewables, energy efficiency and alternative transport.
"We have to do this for global warming reasons anyway, but the imminent energy crisis redoubles the imperative," he said.
Oil: An unclear future
*Why is oil so important as an energy source?
Crude oil has been critical for economic development and the smooth functioning of almost every aspect of society. Agriculture and food production is heavily dependent on oil for fuel and fertilisers. In the US, for instance, it takes the direct and indirect use of about six barrels of oil to raise one beef steer. It is the basis of most transport systems. Oil is also crucial to the drugs and chemicals industries and is a strategic asset for the military.
*How are oil reserves estimated?
The amount of oil recoverable is always going to be an assessment subject to the vagaries of economics – which determines the price of the oil and whether it is worth the costs of pumping it out –and technology, which determines how easy it is to discover and recover. Probable reserves have a better than 50 per cent chance of getting oil out. Possible reserves have less than 50 per cent chance.
*Why is there such disagreement over oil reserves?
All numbers tend to be informed estimates. Different experts make different assumptions so it is under- standable that they can come to different conclusions. Some countries see the size of their oilfields as a national security issue and do not want to provide accurate information. Another problem concerns how fast oil production is declining in fields that are past their peak production. The rate of decline can vary from field to field and this affects calculations on the size of the reserves. A further factor is the expected size of future demand for oil.
*What is "peak oil" and when will it be reached?
This is the point when the maximum rate at which oil is extracted reaches a peak because of technical and geological constraints, with global production going into decline from then on. The UK Government, along with many other governments, has believed that peak oil will not occur until well into the 21st Century, at least not until after 2030. The International Energy Agency believes peak oil will come perhaps by 2020. But it also believes that we are heading for an even earlier "oil crunch" because demand after 2010 is likely to exceed dwindling supplies.
*With global warming, why should we be worried about peak oil?
There are large reserves of non-conventional oil, such as the tar sands of Canada. But this oil is dirty and will produce vast amounts of carbon dioxide which will make a nonsense of any climate change agreement. Another problem concerns how fast oil production is declining in fields that are past their peak production. The rate of decline can vary from field to field and this affects calculations on the size of the reserves. If we are not adequately prepared for peak oil, global warming could become far worse than expected.
Steve Connor, Science Editor
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/warning-oil-supplies-are-running-out-fast-1766585.html

Scientists Untangle Multiple Causes of Bee Colony Disorder

PULLMAN, Washington, July 29, 2009 (ENS) — A microscopic pathogen and pesticides embedded in old honeycombs are two major contributors to the bee disease known as colony collapse disorder, which has wiped out thousands of beehives throughout the United States and Europe over the past three years, new research at Washington State University has confirmed.
Working on the project funded in part by regional beekeepers and WSU's Agricultural Research Center, entomology professor Steve Sheppard and his team have narrowed the list of potential causes for colony collapse disorder.
"One of the first things we looked at was the pesticide levels in the wax of older honeycombs," Sheppard said. Using combs contributed by U.S. Department of Agriculture, Sheppard found "fairly high levels of pesticide residue."
Bees raised in those hives "had significantly reduced longevity," he said.
One easy solution is for beekeepers to change honeycombs more often. In Europe, for example, apiarists change combs every three years.
"In the U.S., we haven't emphasized this practice and there's no real consensus about how often beekeepers should make the change," said Sheppard. "Now we know that it needs to be more often."
Many researchers are investigating colony collapse disorder because domestic honeybees are essential for a variety of agricultural crops in the United States. Beekeepers truck their hives cross country to pollinate almond groves in California, field crops and forages in the Midwest, apples and blueberries in the Northeast and citrus in Florida.
Unlike other diseases that have plagued bees in the past, colony collapse disorder does not kill bees within the hive. It leaves a hive with a few newly hatched adults, a queen and plenty of food.
Another aspect of Sheppard's work, which is being conducted by graduate student Matthew Smart, focuses on the impact of a microsporidian pathogen known as Nosema ceranae, which attacks bees' ability to process food.
Beekeepers have considered it to be "the smoking gun" behind colony collapse disorder.
"Nosema ceranae was only recently described in the U.S., the first time in 2007," Sheppard said. "But while no one really noticed, it has spread throughout the country."
But in a 2007 study, Jeffery Pettis, who heads the U.S. Agriculture Department's Bee Reseach Laboratory, and colleagues reported that Nosema ceranae had been in the United States for at least 10 years.
Smart surveyed numerous bee colonies in both the Pacific Northwest and in California, and found Nosema ceranae to be very widespread.
Sheppard's earlier research found Nosema ceranae to be a tough bug to battle. Of 24 hives checked in early 2008, Nosema build-up was high in a majority of the bees sampled.
Beekeeper Eric Olson of Yakima, Washington said he treated a hive with a mega-dose of the antibiotic fumagillin. "That should have cause the Nosema to either disappear or at least go down," he said, "but the levels went up."
"What it basically does is it causes bees to get immune-deficiency disorder. So it's actually causing the bees to almost get a version of HIV," said Mark Pitcher, president of Babe's Honey and the biggest beekeeper in Saanich on Canada's Vancouver Island.
Pitcher told the "Saanich News" that once the bees' immune systems are compromised, they become susceptible to dying from a wide range of causes, including chemicals once used to protect the bees from parasites such as varroa mites.
Last summer, researchers at Pennsylvania State University found unprecedented levels of fluvalinate and coumaphos - pesticides used in the hives to combat varroa mites - in all honeycomb and foundation wax samples. They also found lower levels of 70 other pesticides and metabolites of those pesticides in pollen and bees.
The Penn State researchers worked with the National Science Laboratory of the U.S. Department of Agricultural Marketing Service that already tests commodities such as milk and fruits and vegetables.
"When we began doing this work, honey was not regularly analyzed, and bee pollen was not a commodity and so was not analyzed," says Mullin. "We decided to go with the types of screening the lab does for milk and apples which look at over 170 pesticides. Now, honey is included in the commodities to be analyzed."
All of the bees tested showed at least one pesticide and pollen averaged six pesticides with as many as 31 in a sample.
"We do not know that these chemicals have anything to do with colony collapse disorder, but they are definitely stressors in the home and in the food sources," says Penn State's Dr. Maryann Frazier. "Pesticides alone have not shown they are the cause of CCD. We believe that it is a combination of a variety of factors, possibly including mites, viruses and pesticides."
While beekeepers will have a difficult time controlling pesticide exposure outside the hive, the Penn State researchers tested a method for reducing the chemical load in beeswax.
Using gamma radiation from a cobalt 60 source housed at Penn State's Breazeale Reactor, they irradiated the sheets of beeswax that beekeepers use as the structural foundation for the bees to build their combs. They used radiation levels at the high end of that used to irradiate foods and found that in the wax, irradiation broke down about 50 percent of the acaricides, pesticides that kill mites.
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/jul2009/2009-07-29-094.asp

Discover the Power of Cocoa Powder
Frank Mangano, NaturalNews.com August 1, 2009

(NaturalNews) A cup of hot cocoa may not do much to cool you down from the summer swelter, but it may cool down your blood pressure. According to a new report filed in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, hypertensive rats fed a moderate dose of powdered chocolate dropped their systolic blood pressure rates by an average of 50 mmHg after a single dose. The cocoa content was 70 percent.

The study`s specimens were mice, some with normal blood pressure, others with high blood pressure. The rats were grouped in a fashion so that rats with normal blood pressure and high blood pressure received one of a range of cocoa doses (as low as 50 milligrams to as much as 600 milligrams of cocoa powder).

While the researchers did not observe any noticeable differences in blood pressure readings among the rats with normal blood pressure, the hypertensive rats that received 300 milligrams of cocoa powder had a systolic blood pressure reading that dropped 60 mmHg four hours after the dose.

Writing in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, lead researcher Dr. Amaiya Aleixandre said, "The results obtained suggest that [hot cocoa] could be used as a functional food ingredient with potential therapeutic benefit in the treatment and prevention of hypertension." Dr. Aleixandre and her colleagues hail from Spain`s Universidad Complutense in Madrid.

While all chocolate contains flavonoids - the active ingredient in chocolate that helps lower blood pressure, among other healthful functions - the chocolate tested in this study is not like the kinds traditionally found on supermarket shelves. Unlike those, the cocoa tested in this study was dark chocolate, which has a much higher flavonoid yield than milk chocolate (the chocolate used had approximately 139 milligrams of flavonoids per gram of cocoa powder).

Contrary to popular belief, the average cup of hot cocoa contains more flavonoids than other highly concentrated antioxidant drinks, like red wine and green tea. Experts suggest the average person should get about 6.7 grams of chocolate in their diet per day, which amounts to about the size of a fun-size candy bar. Any more than that and the negatives begin to outweigh the positives.

But again, all cocoas and chocolates are not built the same. There`s a world of difference between raw cocoa and processed cocoa, the kind typically found in most candy bars and hot cocoa mixes.

For the most health benefit, look for all-natural sources of cocoa. Pay special attention to a product`s ingredients, specifically the percentage of pure cocoa powder used. The higher the percentage of cocoa, the better it is, and the higher it is in overall flavonoid content. Further, make sure that the cocoa is unprocessed. Any truly natural cocoa product should mention that in their ingredients.
http://www.naturalnews.com/026749_cocoa_blood_blood_pressure.html

Pu-erh Tea is a Chinese Cholesterol Remedy and Overall Health Tonic
Zephyr Faegen, NaturalNews.com August 1, 2009

(NaturalNews) For over 2000 years, a special tea that originates from the Yunnan Province of China has been coveted for its preventative and curative properties. This tea is known as Pu-erh or Yunnan Tuocha. The tea`s cultivation can be traced as far back as the Han Dynasty (202 BCE-220 CE) and was made from the leaves of da ye or broad leaf tea. The leaves of this variety of old wild tea tree when picked, are taken and put through a process of delicate maturation that ends in the creation of what is called maocha.

This maocha, meaning "rough tea", is then taken and put through one of two processes. Either it is immediately pressed into tea cakes where it is then classified as "raw/green pu-erh" or it is put through an artificial aging process for 30 to 40 days where daily the leaves are turned, splashed with water, covered with cloth, and then left to ferment. After this fermenting stage, the tea is then dried and pressed into tea cakes and classified as "cooked/black pu-erh". Traditionally, the tea was always pressed raw and then vaulted for up to 100 years to gain this fermented status, but this modern process of fermentation was developed by the Kunming Tea Factory in 1975 for economic reasons.

Pu-erh Tea has been used in traditional Chinese medicine for generations to inhibit "internal dampness" (a term used in Chinese medicine to describe a build up of internal energy due to the spleen`s inability to transform energy that it receives from the stomach) and to invigorate the activity of the spleen and stomach. Other traditional uses include the removal of toxins from the body, curing dysentery, weight loss, improving eyesight, promotingblood circulation and reviving those who have over indulged in alcohol.

More recently, researchers have taken interest in Pu-erh tea for its ability to reduce cholesterol, lower blood pressure, protect connective tissue, and its ability to attack free radicals within the body. In multiple studies done in several countries, pu-erh tea has shown significant success in reducingblood cholesterol. One study done at the Wun-Shan Branch Tea Research and Extension Station in Taipei, Taiwan compared the effects of green, black, oolong, and cooked/black pu-erh teas on cholesterol in rats. The study showed the rats fed the cooked pu-erh tea leaves had an increase of HDL-C (good cholesterol) and a decrease in LDL-C (bad cholesterol) where the rats given the other teas had varying decreases in both types. This means that with pu-erh tea you get the best of both worlds, an increase in the cholesterol that you do want and a decrease of the cholesterol that you don`t.

At China`s Kunming Medical College, another study that consisted of 86 patients with unusually high levels of blood cholesterol examined the differences in the treatment of patients with Pu-erh tea verses conventional cholesterol medication. 55 of the patients were given a regimented dose of pu-erh tea three times a day; the other 31 were given a cholesterol lowering drug called PCIB in doses of 1/2 a gram 3 times a day. At the end of a two month period, the patients drinking the Pu-erh tea showed a 64.29% reduction in blood cholesterol levels in comparison to 66.67% for the group taking PCIB. Cholesterol is not the only benefit that pu-erh tea has to offer though. In 2006, a study found that it has anti-aging and anti-cancerous properties by attacking free radicals within the body as well as actively protecting human fibroblast cells (connective tissue) from damage and deterioration

Pu-erh Tea is truly a wonder tonic but one must be careful when shopping for this sought-after tea. There are many knock-offs and fake pu-erh teas out there, and the older the tea, the more expensive it is. Sometimes tea cakes can sell for thousands of dollars. Another concern is for the quality of the tea leaf itself. Many of the cheaper teas can contain fluorine which, when ingested over a period of time, can lead to fluorosis or fluoride poisoning. When you are looking for a good pu-erh tea make sure that you are dealing with a reputable tea house or seller, make sure that the tea is from the Yunnan province of China, and make sure that the packaging states that the Tea was cultivated from wild da ye or broad leaf tea trees. This may be a difficult task because most pu-erh teas today are cultivated from multiple trees and from different areas. In the end it`s really the fermentation process that gives pu-erh its distinctive taste and curative properties but if you`re a tea purist, good luck hunting down a true aged Pu-erh tea; it`s difficult and you might just pay an arm and a leg.

Today we are constantly battling the toxicity of our everyday environment and our potentially toxin laden food. Drinking pu-erh tea is a great way to eliminate free radicals within the body, lower your cholesterol and blood pressure, fight cancer, and possibly look a little younger one cup at a time. If you are interested in more information on Pu-erh, please look through the links below.

References:

Comparative studies on the hypolipidemic and growth suppressive effects of oolong, black, pu-erh, and green tea leaves in rats.
Kuo KL, Weng MS, Chiang CT, Tsai YJ, Lin-Shiau SY, Lin JK.
Journal of agricultural and food chemistry, 2005 Jan 26;53(2):480-9.
http://www.naturalnews.com/026747_Pu-erh_blood_health.html

Live Naturally with Herbs: Thyme
Katherine East, NaturalNews.com August 1, 2009

(NaturalNews) Thyme is a well-known herb and is not only indispensable in cooking, but is also used in natural medicine. It holds immense power in its tiny leaves and in ancient days, thyme could be found in every healer`s medicinal box. The monks grew it in their gardens and dispensed it in teas and syrups for many ailments. The ancient Egyptians used it in embalming procedures and were well aware of its preservative properties. In ancient Greece it was used to preserve food, and livestock were encouraged to graze upon the slopes of the hillsides where the wild thyme grew. This was thought to make their meat tastier and healthier. The most commonly used thyme varieties are the common thyme (Thymus vulgaris) and lemon thyme (T. x citriodorus).

Health Benefits Of Thyme.

Thyme has an incredible range of healing properties. The essential oil, thymol, is distilled from its leaves and has many great benefits. Its antiseptic and antibacterial properties make it excellent for relieving a sore throat, inflamed tonsils, coughs, colds, allergic rhinitis, hay fever, a stuffy nose, aches and pains, backache, poor digestion, heartburn, colic, burping, flatulence and even bloating. The expectorant and antispasmodic properties are especially useful for helping alleviate asthma, bronchitis, whooping cough and chest infections. Poor circulation, ringworm, athlete`s foot, insomnia, inflammatory and fungal conditions and even scabies and lice can all be relieved with thyme.

Interesting Facts About Thyme

• Fresh thyme added to your food or taken as a tea assists in the digestion of fatty foods within the body.
• Thyme aromatherapy oil is rich in the volatile components: thymol geraniol and borneol. When Thyme oil is applied topically (always mixed in a carrier oil like almond oil), it shows antispasmodic, tension reducing, antibacterial and carminative actions.
• Thyme contains a variety of flavonoids, including apigenin, thymonin and luteolin, which increase thyme`s antioxidant capacity.
• Thyme is rich in manganese.
• Thyme is a wonderful insect repellent, so inter-planting some shrubs in your garden can help keep the insect population down.
• Thyme helps to increase brain function and is considered to be a valuable anti-ageing herb. It has been researched extensively, and has been found to protect the heart, brain and kidney cell membranes. It causes DHA (an omega-3 fatty acid) to increase and research highlights the value of including thyme in the diet for all age groups - including the elderly for brain function and for children with attention deficit disorders.
• Thyme was burned as an incense for sacred ceremonies in Greece and Italy, for courage, fortitude and strength.
• Thyme is associated with bravery and courage, and medieval ladies of the court embroidered a sprig of thyme on the scarves given to their knights as they set off on their crusades.
• The ancient Egyptians used thyme in the embalming oils used to preserve their dead Pharaohs.
• Thyme oil used for its antibacterial and cleansing properties features in third century pharmacopoeia - it was used for skin ailments and as a mouth wash.
• By the 16th century, thyme was among the first of the registered medicines.

http://www.naturalnews.com/026738_thyme_health_food.html