Blueberries Stop Hardening of Arteries
October 20th, 2010
Natural News
By: S.L. Baker
Atherosclerosis is a disease marked by plaque in the arteries. Made up of fat, cholesterol, calcium, and other substances found in the blood, plaque hardens overtime not unlike concrete — and that narrows arteries and limits the flow of oxygen-rich blood throughout the body. The result can be potentially fatal strokes and heart attacks.
But now, for the first time, scientists have direct evidence that a side-effect free natural substance exists that can help prevent these harmful atherosclerotic plaques from increasing in size and narrowing arteries. What is this powerful hardening of the arteries fighter? Blueberries.
Principal investigator Xianli Wu, who works with the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Agricultural Research Service (ARS) Arkansas Children’s Nutrition Center in Little Rock and with the University of Arkansas Center for Medical Sciences, led the new study which was just reported in the current issue of the Journal of Nutrition. Dr. Wu’s research team compared the size of atherosclerotic lesions in 30 young laboratory mice with this form of heart disease. These animals were deficient in apolipoprotein-E (which helps regulate fats in the body), making them highly susceptible to forming atherosclerotic lesions.
Half of the rodents were fed diets supplemented with freeze-dried blueberry powder for 20 weeks. The blueberry-spiked diet contained the equivalent of about a half-cup of fresh blueberries. The mice in the control group did not eat food containing the berry powder. At the end of the study, the plaques measured at two sites on the aorta (arteries leading from the heart) were 39 and 58 percent smaller in the mice who ate the blueberry powder compared to the plaque lesions in the animals whose diet did not contain blueberry powder.
Previous studies have suggested that eating blueberries may help prevent cardiovascular disease but this is the first direct evidence that something in the berries causes plaque in arteries to regress. Next, Dr. Wu’s group wants to figure out the mechanism or mechanisms by which blueberries help control lesion size. For example, according to a statement to the media, the scientists want to see if blueberries reduce oxidative stress, a known risk factor for atherosclerosis, by boosting the activity of antioxidant enzymes.
In future studies, Wu’s group plans to investigate whether eating blueberries in infancy, childhood and young adulthood will protect against the onset and progression of atherosclerosis in later years. As NaturalNews has reported previously, blueberries are turning out to be a true “super food” — with research showing they may prevent obesity, cancer and even boost memory.
Click here for the full report from Natural News
Hormone Replacement Therapy Increases Breast Cancer Death Risk
October 19th, 2010
CNN
By: Leslie Wade
A study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association confirms that postmenopausal women who take combined hormone replacement therapy (HRT) are at an increased risk of dying from breast cancer.
“Women on combined hormone therapy with estrogen plus progestin were twice as likely to die from breast cancer compared to women receiving placebo,” says medical oncologist and study author Dr. Rowan Chlebowski.
The researchers looked at more than 16,000 postmenopausal women who were part of a large government study called the Women’s Health Initiative. The women took either Prempro, a drug made by Pfizer that combines both estrogen and progestin, or a placebo or sugar pill. In 2002 the study was stopped early after five and a half years of treatment because of concerns about heart health, breast cancer and other health problems. This latest research looks at 11 years of follow-up on the health of these women and the authors found that those who had used the therapy were not only more likely to develop but to die from breast cancer.
For decades women have been prescribed HRT – medications containing female hormones to replace the ones the body no longer produces after menopause. These drugs can be very effective at alleviating the hot flashes, night sweats and other discomforts of menopause. They have also been shown to help with bone health and may decrease the risk of colon cancer. But HRT, long heralded as being protective for heart health, has not lived up to its billing and women are now warned about the possible increase risk for heart attack and stroke. Last year a study found that combined HRT also increased a woman’s risk of dying from lung cancer.
Dr. Peter Bach, pulmonologist from Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, who was not involved in the most recent study, wrote an editorial published in the journal editorial. It reads in part: “It took a lot of work for these investigators to unwind what ended up being a lot of incorrect assumptions about the safety of hormone replacement therapy particularly with combined agents like Prempro.”
Pfizer, maker of Prempro, released a statement in response to the study: “As a science-based company, we take this analysis seriously. It is important to view the data in the full context of both the symptoms of menopause as well as the extensive body of information – developed over more than 60 years – on the known benefits and risks of hormone therapy.”
The use of combined HRT declined sharply in the United States after the HRT part of the Women’s Health Initiative study was stopped in 2002. Researchers have subsequently seen a decline in the rate of new breast cancer cases. 15 to 20 percent of postmenopausal women now take HRT, down from 35 to 40 percent prior to the study.
Medical experts recommend that if women choose HRT, they take the lowest dose for the shortest duration. Check with your doctor about what is right for you and for information about other therapies that may help alleviate unpleasant menopausal symptoms.
The results of the estrogen only arm of the Women’s Health Initiative trial will be released later this year. Estrogen only therapy is the preferred HRT treatment for women who, because of a hysterectomy, no longer have a uterus.
Click here for the full report from CNN
UK To Track Every Email, Phone Call And Web Visit
October 20th, 2010
The Telegraph
By: Tom Whitehead
It will allow security services and the police to spy on the activities of every Briton who uses a phone or the internet.
Moves to make every communications provider store details for at least a year will be unveiled later this year sparking fresh fears over a return of the surveillance state.
The plans were shelved by the Labour Government last December but the Home Office is now ready to revive them.
It comes despite the Coalition Agreement promised to “end the storage of internet and email records without good reason”.
Any suggestion of a central “super database” has been ruled out but the plans are expected to involve service providers storing all users details for a set period of time.
That will allow the security and police authorities to track every phone call, email, text message and website visit made by the public if they argue it is needed to tackle crime or terrorism.
The information will include who is contacting whom, when and where and which websites are visited, but not the content of the conversations or messages.
The move was buried in the Government’s Strategic Defence and Security Review, which revealed: “We will introduce a programme to preserve the ability of the security, intelligence and law enforcement agencies to obtain communication data and to intercept communications within the appropriate legal framework.
“This programme is required to keep up with changing technology and to maintain capabilities that are vital to the work these agencies do to protect the public.
“Communications data provides evidence in court to secure convictions of those engaged in activities that cause serious harm. It has played a role in every major Security Service counter terrorism operation and in 95 per cent of all serious organised crime investigations.
“We will legislate to put in place the necessary regulations and safeguards to ensure that our response to this technology challenge is compatible with the Government’s approach to information storage and civil liberties.”
But Isabella Sankey, director of policy at Liberty, said: “One of the early and welcome promises of the new Government was to ‘end the blanket storage of internet and email records’.
“Any move to amass more of our sensitive data and increase powers for processing would amount to a significant U-turn. The terrifying ambitions of a group of senior Whitehall technocrats must not trump the personal privacy of law abiding Britons.”
Guy Herbert, general secretary of the No2ID campaign group, said: “We should not be surprised that the interests of bureaucratic empires outrank liberty.
“It is disappointing that the new ministers seem to be continuing their predecessors’ tradition of credulousness.”
Click here for the full report from the Telegraph
UK Slashes 500,000 Government Jobs
October 20th, 2010
BBC News
Chancellor George Osborne has unveiled the biggest UK spending cuts since World War II, with welfare, councils and police budgets all hit.
The pension age will rise sooner than expected, some incapacity benefits will be time limited and other money clawed back through changes to tax credits and housing benefit.
A new bank levy will also be brought in – with full details due on Thursday.
Mr Osborne said the four year cuts were guided by fairness, reform and growth.
But shadow chancellor Alan Johnson, for Labour, called the review a “reckless gamble with people’s livelihoods” which risked “stifling the fragile recovery” – a message echoed by the SNP, despite smaller than expected cuts in Scotland.
Mr Osborne ended his hour-long Commons statement by claiming the 19% average cuts to departmental budgets were less severe than expected. This is thanks to an extra £7bn in savings from the welfare budget and a £3.5bn increase in public sector employee pension contributions.
‘Frontline cuts’
The chancellor claimed it meant his savings were less than the 20% cuts Labour had planned ahead of the general election.
BBC Economics Editor Stephanie Flanders said that, at first glance, “the cuts to the welfare benefit are regressive, in the most basic sense of costing families in the lower half of the income distribution more”.
Local councils are also in the firing line, with the amount of money they receive from government cut by 7.1% from April.
The Local Government Association said the move would “hit councils and the residents they serve very hard and will inevitably lead to cuts at the frontline”.
Outlining the £81bn cuts package, Mr Osborne vowed to restore “sanity to our public finances and stability to our economy”.
He told MPs: “Today is the day when Britain steps back from the brink, when we confront the bills from a decade of debt.
“It is a hard road, but it leads to a better future.”
The main new welfare savings come from abolishing Employment and Support Allowance, which replaces incapacity benefit, for some categories of claimant after one year, raising £2bn.
Universal benefits for pensioners will be retained as budgeted for by the previous government and the temporary increase in the cold weather payment will be made permanent.
But a planned rise in the state pension age for men and women to 66 will start in 2020, six years earlier than planned.
In other measures, rail fares will be allowed to increase by 3% above RPI inflation from 2012, higher education spending will be cut by 40%, flood defences by 15% and sport England and UK Sport cut by 30%.
Click here for the full report from BBC News
Drug Company Money Affects Doctors’ Prescriptions
October 20th, 2010
AOL News
By: Katie Drummond
Drug companies and doctors are pairing off to shell out prescription medications, with patients often paying more than they need to and even popping pills that are sometimes ill-suited to their ailments, according to a new study.
There’s no question that doctors in the United States engage in complex, sometimes troubling, financial relationships with pharmaceutical companies. Last year, companies shelled out more than $57 billion for doctor-targeted drug promotion.
But a new analysis of 58 studies done worldwide, more than half of them in the U.S, concludes that the ties aren’t always beneficial to the patient and that doctors are unduly influenced by pharmaceutical cash, contrary to claims often made by companies and doctors.
“Many doctors claim they are not influenced, and having done the review, that is not supported,” Geoffrey Spurling, the study’s lead author, told Reuters. “You have to say that at least some of the time, doctors are influenced.”
The study was done by researchers at the University of Queensland in Brisbane and Healthy Skepticism, an international nonprofit research, education and advocacy association.
Of all the studies reviewed, 38 found that doctors who were proffered information from drugmakers would be more likely to prescribe those medications. And the information, provided by company staffers known as “detailers,” is often accompanied by gratis meals or event tickets.
“Most doctors get most of their information about drugs from the drug industry,” said Dr. Sid Wolfe of the U.S. advocacy group Public Citizen, adding that “practicing good medicine” should mean seeking out information from other facilities and institutions, along with close study of peer-reviewed research.
And doctors being courted by drugmakers were more likely to prescribe newer, pricier and riskier drugs to their patients, according to the report. That’s despite federal mandates that doctors stick to older, generic drugs whenever possible in treating several common ailments, including diabetes.
But the doctor-pharma financial ties don’t stop there. A new report, issued by ProPublica and NPR, presents data on 17,700 practitioners who were paid nearly $260 million by drugmakers since 2009 to promote certain drugs to fellow doctors.
Worst of all for patients, many of the influential doctors have less-than-stellar track records.
“A review of physician licensing records in the 15 most-populous states and three others found sanctions against more than 250 speakers, including some of the highest paid,” the report states. “Their misconduct included inappropriately prescribing drugs, providing poor care or having sex with patients. Some of the doctors had even lost their licenses.”
Click here for the full report from AOL News
Drug Companies Hire Troubled Doctors As Experts
October 19th, 2010
NPR
Drug companies say they hire the most-respected doctors in their fields for the critical task of teaching about the benefits and risks of the companies’ drugs.
But an investigation by ProPublica has uncovered hundreds of doctors receiving company payments who had been accused of professional misconduct, were disciplined by state boards or lacked credentials as researchers or specialists.
To vet the industry’s handpicked speakers, ProPublica created a comprehensive database that represents the most accessible accounting yet of payments to doctors. Compiled from disclosures by seven companies, the database covers $257.8 million in payouts since 2009 for speaking, consulting and other duties. The companies include Lilly, Cephalon, AstraZeneca, GlaxoSmithKline, Johnson & Johnson, Merck and Pfizer.
Although these companies have posted payments on their websites — some as a result of legal settlements — they make it difficult to spot trends or even learn who has earned the most. ProPublica combined the data and identified the highest-paid doctors, then checked their credentials and disciplinary records.
That is something not all companies do.
“Without question, the public should care,” said Dr. Joseph Ross, an assistant professor of medicine at Yale School of Medicine who has written about the industry’s influence on physicians. “You would never want your kid learning from a bad teacher. Why would you want your doctor learning from a bad doctor, someone who hasn’t displayed good judgment in the past?”
ProPublica senior reporter Charles Ornstein detailed the findings with Morning Edition’s Renee Montagne.
NPR: Tell us a little about the database. What have you found, and who’s on it?
Charles Ornstein, ProPublica: For many years, the pharmaceutical industry has been paying doctors to speak and consult on their behalf, but the names of those doctors have largely been a secret. So, for the first time we’re seeing from the companies who they’re paying for. Now we have a chance to take a look at their backgrounds and what they’re doing for the money.
What are these 17,000 doctors listed in the database doing for the seven drug companies that have released information?
The drug companies rely on doctors to speak locally and travel around the country to educate other doctors about the risks and benefits of the drugs. And they can get paid a lot of money. In our database we found that there were 384 doctors who, over the course of just the past 18 months, have received at least $100,000 from the drug companies that have reported so far.
What kind of money are we talking about, and what is that buying the drug companies in the way of sales?
We’re talking about big money. Just from these seven companies, they’ve paid out more than $257 million in the past 18 months, and remember not all of these companies have even disclosed their payments for that whole period of time, so it’s likely going to be substantially more, just for these seven companies.
What do they get for it? They wouldn’t be spending this kind of money if they weren’t getting returns from the perspective of increasing their brand in the market, letting doctors know about it, encouraging them to prescribe it. They say that doctors’ success at increasing prescriptions is not a means in which they’re measured, but some of the lawsuits against the industry have said that prescriptions and return on investment absolutely play a role.
And you have found among those doctors a few who have backgrounds that are a bit shocking, especially considering they’re representing these drug companies and, in a sense, representing themselves as experts.
If you take a look at the pharmaceutical company websites, you see that they take great pride in that they’ve recruited the top names in the field, the leading experts and academicians to speak on behalf of their products and consult with them, and when you start looking at the backgrounds, you find some, indeed, are the top names in their fields. But some you can’t find any information about.
We found several dozen of the top speakers did not have board certifications — which means they were not certified in their medical specialties — and then we found more than 250 doctors who had some type of sanction taken against them by a state medical board. And we just looked at a sampling of states.
Some of the discipline was really quite serious. The Ohio Medical Board, for example, voted a couple of years back to revoke the license of William David Leak, whom they accused of performing unnecessary nerve tests on 20 patients and subjecting some to an excessive number of invasive procedures. Dr. Leak is appealing the penalty, and his license is still active, but since 2009 he has received $85,000 from Eli Lilly and Co.
Another one is a hospital disciplinary case out of Georgia — the state appeals court in Georgia in 2004 upheld a hospital’s decision to kick Dr. Donald Ray Taylor off its staff. He’s an anesthesiologist, and he admitted to giving young female patients rectal and vaginal exams without documenting why. He had also been accused of exposing women’s breasts during medical procedures, and when he was confronted by a hospital official, he said, “Maybe I am a pervert; I honestly don’t know.”
Click here for the full report from NPR
Pictures of Nature Help Reduce Cancer Pain
October 20th, 2010
The Telegraph
By: Peter Hutchison
Scientists at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, America, claimed that patients’ feelings can be lifted without them having to leave their beds.
Looking at pictures of tranquil scenery is enough to help alleviate the suffering of excruciating cancer treatment, they discovered.
Researchers analysed patients undergoing bone marrow aspiration and biopsy (BMAB), a painful form of cancer treatment in which marrow is extracted from the pelvic bone with a local anaesthetic.
Some were treated in a standard hospital environment while others were exposed to the sights and sounds of outdoors – either the tranquillity of birds and waterfalls or the stress of cities and traffic.
The nature scene often involved surrounding the patient in images of Victoria Falls in Zambia.
The researchers measured the levels of pain felt and found that those subjected to the peacefulness of nature experienceed less pain.
Levels of pain in a stressful urban setting were the same as they were under standard procedure, the Hopkins Pain Rating Instrument showed.
The findings prove that it is not necessary just to distract a patient to alleviate pain but that the distraction must have a calming effect.
It also gives hope to sufferers who have tried other techniques which have failed to reduce pain, such as hypnosis or sedation.
Noah Lechtzin, who led the research, said: “I think there are certain elements of nature that are beneficial and others that could be frightening.
“You wouldn’t want to have rocks that potentially dangerous animals could hide behind, whereas our scene was a very open picture that had running water, the sounds had birds chirping and wind rustling through trees.”
Click here for the full report from the The Telegraph
Cancer Patients Radioactive!
October 20th, 2010
MyWay News
By: Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar
Cancer patients sent home after treatment with radioactive iodine have contaminated hotel rooms and set off alarms on public transportation, a congressional investigation has found.
They’ve come into close contact with vulnerable people, including pregnant women and children, and the household trash from their homes has triggered radiation detectors at landfills.
Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass., says the problem stems from a decision years ago by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to ease requirements that thyroid cancer patients remain in the hospital a few days after swallowing doses of radioactive iodine to shrink their tumors.
“There is a strong likelihood that members of the public have been unwittingly exposed to radiation from patients,” Markey wrote Wednesday in a letter to the NRC that details findings by his staff. “This has occurred because of weak NRC regulations, ineffective oversight of those who administer these medical treatments, and the absence of clear guidance to patients and to physicians.”
The letter coincides with an NRC meeting Wednesday to examine the issue. It’s unclear whether the radiation exposure occurs at levels high enough to cause harm.
About 40,000 people a year develop thyroid cancer, which generally responds well to treatment. Certain types are treated by swallowing radioactive iodine, or iodine-131. It concentrates in the thyroid, but small amounts are excreted through urine, saliva and sweat.
People given high doses may be kept in the hospital, but many patients are sent home with instructions on how to minimize exposure to others over the next few days. Most of the radiation is gone in about a week, says the National Cancer Institute’s website for patients.
Traditionally such patients were kept in the hospital, but treatment has now shifted to less costly outpatient facilities. Patients sent home are supposed to follow specific precautions, such as sleeping alone in their beds and not giving hugs and kisses to young children. Markey’s investigation indicates that’s where the breakdown is occurring.
Staffers on the House Energy and Environment subcommittee that Markey chairs sent detailed questionnaires to states that enforce the NRC rules and conducted an online survey of more than 1,000 thyroid cancer patients.
The investigation found that:
- A patient who had received a dose of radioactive iodine boarded a bus in New York the same day, triggering radiation detectors as the bus passed through the Lincoln Tunnel heading for Atlantic City, N.J., a casino Mecca. After New Jersey state police found the bus and pulled it over, officers determined that the patient had received medical instructions to avoid public transportation for two days, and ignored them. The 2003 case highlighted that NRC rules don’t require patients to stay off public transportation.
- About 7 percent of outpatients said in the survey they had gone directly to a hotel after their treatment, most of them with their doctors’ knowledge. Hotel stays are a particular concern, since the patient can expose other guests and service workers. In 2007, an Illinois hotel was contaminated after linens from a patient’s room were washed together with other bedding. The incident would probably have gone unreported but for nuclear plant workers who later stayed in the same hotel and set off radiation alarms when they reported to work.
- About one-fourth of outpatients said in the survey they never discussed with their doctors how to avoid exposing pregnant women and children to radiation. The survey found 56 cases in which a patient shared a bathroom or bedroom with a pregnant woman or a child, or had other close contact, which is strongly discouraged in medical guidelines.
- At least two states – Maryland and Massachusetts – said they had encountered problems with household trash from the homes of patients treated with radioactive iodine. Garbage trucks set off radiation alarms at landfills, requiring loads to be unpacked and examined, exposing sanitation workers to a range of hazards.
Markey scolded the NRC for its previous assurances that current regulations are adequate to protect the public. “It is difficult to conclude based on the survey results that this belief is justified,” he wrote.
The congressman urged the agency to revise its rules so that more patients are kept in the hospital. Patient advocates say insurance companies routinely refuse to pay for a hospital room because it’s not required.
Markey also urged a ban on releasing patients to hotels and letting them take public transportation. And he called for tighter government oversight of medical facilities that provide treatment with radioactive iodine.
Click here for the full report from MyWay
Cops Serve Court Papers via Facebook
October 20th, 2010
Physorg.com
Victoria police got court approval to use the site after attempts to serve the order in person, over the telephone or via the post failed.
The “prolific” Facebook user was accused of, among other things, using the site to harrass, bully and threaten another person, and police said they transcribed all the court documents and sent them to his Facebook inbox.
A video was also made of the order being read “as if the Respondent was being directly spoken to” and sent electronically to him.
“He stated that he understood the seriousness of the orders, having read … documents served via the social media website and agreed to comply, stating that he would delete his Facebook profile,” a police statement said.
“In this instance we were able to deliver justice through the same medium as the crime committed,” said leading senior constable Stuart Walton, the officer in charge of the investigation.
“Police will always pursue traditional means to enforce the law and to protect the community, but we won’t shy away from innovative methods to achieve positive outcomes either.”
In 2008 an Australian lawyer won the right to serve legal documents via Facebook, the same year a Sydney court allowed lawyers to serve rugby player Sonny Bill Williams with a subpoena via SMS text message.
Australia, with a population of 22.5 million, has almost nine million Facebook users.
Click here for the full report from Physorg.com
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