Antidepressants Promote Rapid Weight Gain
November 18th, 2010
Natural News
By: Jonathan Benson
Taking antidepressant drugs like Risperdal (risperidone) and Seroquel (quetiapine fumarate) could cause you to gain a lot of weight very quickly, according to a recent report in CNN. Atypical antipsychotic drugs are responsible for causing voracious hunger episodes in roughly 30 percent of patients who take them, which can lead to some seriously rapid weight gain.
Earlier in the year, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) began an investigation into antipsychotic drugs and their link to weight gain. The announcement came shortly after the agency approved two popular antipsychotic drugs for children between the ages of 13 and 17.
The drugs — which include the aforementioned as well as Zyprexa (olanzapine), Abilify (aripiprazole), and Geodon (ziprasidone) — appear to trigger enzymes that induce appetite. In one case, a young girl taking risperidone gained 5.5 pounds, or 14 percent of her body weight, within one year. And a 19-year-old college student on the same drug as well as other anti-anxiety medications gained 25 pounds in just six months.
A 2007 study conducted by researchers from Johns Hopkins University and the University of Vermont found that both Zyprexa and Clozaril (clozapine) increased appetite levels by 400 percent. And earlier this year, a study published in the journal Obesity found that men who took Zyprexa for a mere two weeks increased their eating consumption by an average of 18 percent.
Experts are urging the public to be cautious about the use of such antipsychotic drugs. Not only do they induce appetite and subsequent weight gain, but they can also lead to high blood pressure, elevated blood-sugar levels, heart disease, and diabetes.
Click here for the full report from Natural News
Teens Carry 30 Percent More BPA Than Adults
November 18th, 2010
Natural News
By: David Gutierrez
Teenagers carry 30 percent more of the toxic chemical bisphenol A (BPA) in their bodies than older adults, according to a study conducted by researchers from Statistics Canada.
BPA is an industrial chemical used to make hard, clear plastics for water bottles and baby bottles, and resins to line food and beverage cans. It is also found in the special paper used to print receipts. An endocrine disruptor, it mimics the effect of estrogen in the human body and interferes with the function of other hormones.
“Phthalates and [BPA] … aren’t quite identical to the natural hormone molecules in men’s or women’s bodies, but they come close enough that they occupy the same receptors on estrogen-sensitive tissues and exert their own unique effects on human health,” writes David Steinman in his book Safe Trip to Eden.
BPA has been linked with an increased risk of cancer, reproductive and nervous problems, including changes in the brain.
Researchers collected urine samples from more than 5,400 Canadians between the ages of six and 79, testing for traces of BPA. They found traces of the toxin in 91 percent of those tested.
Teenagers might have higher levels because they consume more food relative to their body weight, the researchers suggested, or because they metabolize it differently. Researchers expressed concern that these higher levels might pose an even more severe risk of developmental problems at an age when the body is undergoing major changes.
The average level of BPA found was just over one part per billion, 1,000 times the level at which estrogen is naturally found in the body.
Health Canada has officially designated BPA as a toxic chemical and ordered its removal from baby bottles, but most other countries have yet to follow suit.
“The No. 1 priority at the moment has got to be getting it out of the lining of tin cans,” said Rick Smith of Environmental Defense. “When nine out of 10 Canadians have a hormonally active chemical in their body, for which easy alternatives are available … why not make some further changes with respect to BPA?”
Click here for the full report from Natural News
Statin Drugs Are Over Prescribed in Healthy People
November 18th, 2010
Natural News
By: S.L. Baker
Mainstream medicine has been calling for more and more people to be placed on “miracle” drugs known as statins that lower cholesterol. There have even been suggestions that statins should be sold over the counter or given out free when people buy junk, fat-loaded fast food. After all, the rationale goes, by lowering cholesterol, arteries won’t clog and heart attacks and strokes can be prevented.
However, there have long been two obvious flaws in that theory. For starters, high cholesterol along with most other cardiovascular risk factors can be lowered in most people naturally by lifestyle changes such as exercise, a healthy diet and keeping weight under control. Secondly, statins come with a host of dangerous and even deadly side effects, including liver damage, impaired brain function, sometimes irreversible muscle damage and eye disorders.
And now there’s a third reason not to jump on Big Pharma’s money making band wagon known as statin therapy. Johns Hopkins research just presented November 16th at the American Heart Association’s (AHA) annual Scientific Sessions in Chicago, gives clear evidence these drugs are over-prescribed. In fact, pushing these drugs as “preventive therapy” for future heart attacks in healthy men and women who don’t already have artery clogging calcium deposits is just plain bad medicine.
The new findings are from the Johns Hopkins-led Multi-Ethnic Study on Atherosclerosis, or MESA. The research was designed to be the first to pinpoint exactly who among the more than 6 million healthy American adults with normal blood cholesterol levels should be candidates for so-called preventive statin therapy.
According to results of the JUPITER trial (short for the Justification for the Use of Statins in Primary Prevention: An Interventional Tool Evaluating Rosuvastin) published in 2008, the statin drug rosuvastatin (sold and widely advertised on television as Crestor), was effective in preventing heart attack and stroke in some individuals, all of whom had high levels of C-reactive protein (CRP). But when the Johns Hopkins team checked these findings with a new investigation — they came up with a dramatically different conclusion.
They selected MESA study participants, who met the same criteria used for the JUPITER study, from a pool of 7,000 ethnically diverse adults, including African Americans, Chinese Americans, Caucasians and Hispanics. All the 950 volunteers were monitored at Johns Hopkins and five other medical centers in North America.
The results showed that only the people with measurable buildup of artery-hardening calcium in their blood vessels had a high rate of heart emergencies over the course of the six year study. But almost half of the study participants had no detectable levels of calcium in their blood vessels and those people had a very low rate (about 5 percent ) of heart-disease related events — meaning that taking daily statin drugs as a “preventive measure” wouldn’t have offered any coronary protection. But taking the drugs would have exposed them to potentially serious side effects.
So, despite all the cholesterol measuring near-hysteria of past decades, the Johns Hopkins researchers are now calling for an emphasis on measuring coronary artery calcium deposits to find out who is really at risk of suffering a heart attack “It certainly is not the case that all adults should be taking it (statin therapy) to prevent heart attack and stroke, because half are at negligible risk of a sudden coronary event in the next five to 10 years,” lead investigator Michael Blaha, M.D., a cardiology fellow at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and its Heart and Vascular Institute, said in a media statement.
And remember all the media hype claiming that high levels of CRP in the blood are predictive of a future heart attack? Participants in the Johns Hopkins study were found to have varying blood levels of the inflammatory byproduct, which has been called a predictor of all kinds of coronary disease. But it turns out, according to the new research, that’s not true either. In fact, an elevated CRP score at or above 2 milligrams per liter offered no predictive value after established risk factors were taken into account, including age, gender, ethnicity, hypertension, blood cholesterol levels, obesity, diabetes, smoking and a family history of heart disease.
Bottom line: the new statistical comparison of results showed that few if any heart attacks or strokes would have been prevented within five years had anyone in the study taken statin drugs, unless there was already some calcium buildup in their blood vessels. But even in people with moderate calcium buildup, only one heart attack would have been averted in every 94 people treated, and one stroke in every 54.
“Statin therapy should not be approached like diet and exercise as a broadly based solution for preventing coronary heart disease. These are lifelong medications with potential, although rare side effects, and physicians should only consider their use for those patients at greatest risk, especially those with high coronary calcium scores,” study co-investigator and cardiologist Roger Blumenthal, M.D., a professor and director of the Ciccarone Preventive Cardiology Center at Johns Hopkins, emphasized in a press statement.
He also pointed out that as many as 5 percent of people on statins develop serious side effects, such as muscle pain. In addition, one in 255 will develop diabetes because of the drugs.
Click here for the full report from Natural News
What Happens if You Decline a Full Body Scan?
November 18th, 2010
AOL Travel
By: Fran Golden
When you ask a friend to join you for a nice weekend cruise from Miami, you don’t expect the friend to be hauled away by Transportation Security Administration (TSA) agents into a private room where she says she was practically strip-searched. But that’s what happened at Logan International Airport in Boston.
I breezed through security, taking off my shoes, putting my stuff on the belt and walking through the traditional metal detector machine. The process took less than five minutes.
Then I looked over to the adjacent security line and saw to my horror my red-faced friend questioning TSA officers after she was chosen at random for, and refused to go through, a full body scanner.
My pal happens to be a Boston media personality and crime reporter, Michele McPhee. She is not a shy lady. When this tough blond makes up her mind she makes up her mind. There was no way she was going to be convinced to do a body scan if she didn’t want to.
So instead, she opted for a pat down and was whisked away, barefoot, by two women – a TSA officer and her supervisor – to a private room, where McPhee says a very intrusive body search was conducted.
“They run their hands inside your leg and under your bra strap and patted the front of my breasts,” she says. “If someone had done that to me at a nightclub I’d call the cops.”
McPhee says the officers were “nice and apologetic” and seemed to feel bad they couldn’t give her her shoes back until after the search, especially when she pointed out how dirty the floor of the terminal was. The whole process took about 15 minutes.
So why did she reject the full body scan? McPhee says her big issue is privacy when it comes to the images that are taken.
“I have questions about privacy. I don’t really trust the TSA to keep these things private,” she says.
McPhee says she’d also like to know who profits from the proliferation of the body scanner machines the TSA is rolling out.
With some grass roots groups calling for a boycott of full body scanners on Nov. 24, the day before Thanksgiving and one of the busiest travel days of the year, McPhee says she’s all for it if it shakes things up.
“People need to know why we need body scanners,” she says. “The humiliation of walking across a crowded, dirty terminal in bare feet, escorted by two TSA agents, dragged into a room and essentially assaulted, I really did leave mad.”
The TSA maintains both pat downs and full body scans are designed to find dangerous items such as explosives and bomb parts that can be concealed on the body.
Coming back from Florida, at the airport in Fort Lauderdale, neither of us was asked to go through a body scanner or given a pat down.
Click here for the full report from AOL Travel
Dr. Bob Marshall – Quantum Nutrition Center
Click the picture or link below to hear Kevin’s interview with the founder of the Quantum Nutrition Center, Dr. Bob Marshall, and find out why magnesium stearate and stearic acid are SO hazardous to your health!
Dr. Bob Marshall on The Kevin Trudeau Show 11/17/10
Debt Collectors Utilize Facebook to Embarrass Those Who Owe
November 18th, 2010
WTSP.com
By: Beau Zimmer
Debt collectors can be relentless and downright rude on the phone, but now a St. Petersburg woman is filing suit alleging the company that financed her car loan began harassing family members over the social networking website Facebook.
Melanie Beacham says she fell behind on her car payment after getting sick and taking a medical leave from work. She contacted MarkOne Financial to explain the situation but says the harassing phone calls, as many as 20 per day, kept coming. Then one day she got a call from her sister saying the company contacted her in Georgia.
“I was telling her, ‘No way, because you’re not even a reference,’” said Beacham, who later found out MarkOne contacted her sister and other relatives via Facebook.
Beacham says the company claimed they were doing nothing wrong but, upset over what happened, she contacted Tampa based consumer attorney Billy Howard of Morgan & Morgan.
“Now Facebook does a debt collectors work for them. Now it’s not only family members, it’s all of your associates. It’s a very powerful tool for debt collectors to use,” says Howard.
He believes Facebook will soon become a regular method for contact if nothing is done.
“It’s getting the desired result, and that is to start a domino effect of panic and embarrassment among family and friends, and people will do anything to stop that.”
Howard has now filed a first of its kind lawsuit against MarkOne asking a judge to ban the company from using Facebook and other social networking websites to contact friends and family members over a debt.
10 News was unable to reach MarkOne Financial for comment Monday regarding the suit filed in Pinellas County.
Beacham hopes the lawsuit will keep debt collectors from exploiting consumers on Facebook.
“Nobody should have to go through what I went through,” said Beacham. “I was hurt because I just felt I didn’t need my family going through that.”
Facebook is also one of websites attorneys in divorce and family issues are looking to help their cases. Join a discussion about what people post on Facebook on MomsLikeMe.com.
Click here for the full report from WTSP.com
Murdoch Warns of China Economic Prowess
November 18th, 2010
NewsCore
The US faces an immense economic challenge from China’s explosive economic growth, free trade has gotten a bad rap, and President Barack Obama will have trouble getting reelected, News Corp. Chairman and CEO Rupert Murdoch told FOX Business Tuesday in a wide-ranging interview.
Speaking with Fox Business’ Liz Claman, Murdoch also explained that the US is still in the middle of a very bad recession and defended the motives of the up-and-coming Tea Party.
“What was really scary,” Murdoch said, “was when Larry Summers, the chief economic adviser of the President, said, when we look back at the end of the century, people are not going to talk about this recession, they are going to talk about the rise of China.”
China, Summers pointed out in a speech earlier Monday at the Wall Street Journal’s CEO Council in Washington, has doubled its standard of living in less than ten years, compared to the US where it has doubled every thirty years over the last century.
“They [China] have enormous economic power,” Murdoch added. “I’m not saying they would use it to hurt people, they would use it to certainly help themselves.”
Saying that China’s staggering population of 1.3 billion will continue to drive the country’s economy, Murdoch added that, “They [China] are not going to give up on expanding and manufacturing jobs, service jobs — anything at all — so they can lift the standard of living of the whole population.”
The News Corp. chairman also lamented recent discourse on free trade.
“There is a lot of ignorant talk this morning about how free trade has become a dirty word with the public,” Murdoch said. “If we don’t have free trade, we don’t have Walmart, we don’t have low prices, we don’t have non-inflation.
“We have got to use free trade to sell more to these developing countries like Brazil, like China, like Vietnam and I think it is happening,” he added.
On the Tea Party, the political movement that helped energize Republican efforts to retake the House earlier this month, Murdoch said, “People talk about them being extremists. They’re not extremists, they’re moderate centrists. They simply say that we ought to have a balanced budget with a smaller government and people ought to take more responsibility for themselves and their own lives.”
And as to whether Obama will be re-elected president in 2012, Murdoch said, “I don’t know.”
“He’s talking the talk. Will he walk it — is the big question. I think he has a real problem. I think if he does the sort of things which his commissions are suggesting, then he would be in great danger of losing his left wing base.”
And as for the economy, “We’re still in a very deep recession,” Murdoch said.
“We have got a long way to go and there are a lot of people that are hurting. For a long time we have been living way beyond our means,” he added.
“The old-fashioned thing is you used to have to save before you bought your first house,” Murdoch said. “That all went by the board. That was all too easy. We have been on an enormous spending and borrowing spree, which is related right into people’s lives. Now it is going to be paid for and it is going to be tough on all people, wealthy people as well as poor people.”
Click here for the full report from myFoxNY.com
Weight Loss Drug ‘Caused Death of 500 People’
November 18th, 2010
The Telegraph
By: Henry Samuel
France’s second-largest pharmaceutical group was yesterday at the heart of a spiralling health scandal over Mediator, a drug initially reserved for obese people with diabetes that became a popular appetite suppressor.
Afssaps, the drug safety body, yesterday said expert epidemiologists believed Mediator, made by Servier, had been lethal for at least 500 people and had caused 3,500 others to be admitted to hospital since its launch in 1976.
Some 300,000 people were taking the drug when Afssaps pulled it from the market last November, saying it had little effect on diabetes and might lead to a dangerous thickening of heart valves. The European Medicines Agency followed suit.
But the ban was applied too slowly in France, it was claimed yesterday, given repeated warnings of its potentially lethal side effects. Dr Irène Frachon, who wrote a book on Mediator’s dangers and warned Afssaps in February last year, said: “The health authorities were late in withdrawing this drug despite several alerts.”
The drug was pulled from Italy and Spain in 2005, according to Servier, because it was not commercially successful enough. “Why didn’t they do it earlier [in France]?” asked Dr Frachon, whose book charts her difficulties in getting officials to admit the drug was dangerous. The result, she added, had been a “health disaster”.
Xavier Bertrand, France’s new health minister, advised anyone who had taken the drug – but above all those who took in the past four years – to see a doctor. “We will ask the health service to contact all patients concerned,” said Mr Bertrand just hours after taking up his new post after a reshuffle. Hundreds of thousands could now be seeking appointments with their doctor.
The Servier group dismissed the death count estimate as “theories founded on extrapolation”. A spokesman told The Daily Telegraph: “Simply observing a valve problem in a diabetic person does not allow it to be attributed to medicinal treatment which remains a very rare cause.”
Even accepting the official figures, the risk of death is only 0.005 per cent, the company added. “You have to weigh the benefits against risks in all drugs. If you made similar studies on others still on the market, probably even aspirin, you’d come up with similar results.”
In total, Servier sold 145 million boxes of Mediator in France to almost three million people. Last year, it accounted for 30 million euros (£25 million) – less than 1 per cent of the group’s 3.6 billion-euro turnover.
Gérard Bapt, a cardiologist and head of a parliamentary health commission for the opposition Socialist party, suggested elements of the health authorities were under the influence of France’s pharmaceutical lobby. Mr Bapt pointed out that Mediator was almost identical to another Servier drug, Isoméride, banned in 1997. “I get the feeling some experts working for Afssaps are very close to this laboratory,” he told Le Parisien.
Isoméride’s American equivalent, Redux, was banned in the US in 1997, leading to a $12 billion-settlement (£7.6 billion) following class action by tens of thousands of patients.
Yesterday’s health statement was expected to spark a rash of legal action against Servier, already facing four lawsuits over Moderator and ordered to pay 210,000 euros to an Isoméride patient last year.
In September, European regulators pulled GlaxoSmithKline’s blockbuster diabetes pill, Avandia, off the market and the US Food and Drug Administration placed major restrictions on the drug following research suggesting links to heart attacks.
French governments have been extremely wary of health scandals since HIV-tainted blood was given to hundreds of haemophiliacs in the mid-1980s. A group of top doctors are currently on trial for indirectly causing the deaths of 117 children by injecting them with growth hormones tainted with the human form of mad cow disease.
Click here for the full report from the Telegraph
Fat Cell Hope for Heart Attacks
November 18th, 2010
BBC News
By: Helen Briggs
Fat cells taken from the waistline could hold promise in treating heart attacks, say researchers.
A pilot study on 14 patients in the Netherlands and Spain found that stem cells extracted from fat and delivered to the heart appeared to boost heart function after a heart attack.
Doctors now plan to extend the study to over 300 heart attack patients at 35 clinics in Europe.
A UK heart charity said the approach was “promising”.
The research, which was presented at the American Heart Association’s annual conference, followed 14 patients who had suffered a severe heart attack.
Doctors used liposuction to take fat from the abdomen of each patient, extracted millions of stem cells, then delivered these to the heart within 24 hours.
Ten of the patients were given stem cells; while four had a “dummy” treatment.
Six months on, the patients given stem cells had a lower amount of damaged muscle in their hearts – about 15% compared with 25% in the control group.
Lead author, Eric Duckers, of the Erasmus University Medical Centre in Rotterdam, Netherlands, said: “The study suggests that these cells can be safely obtained and infused inside the hearts of patients following an acute heart attack.”
Professor Jeremy Pearson of the British Heart Foundation, said small clinical trials in the last few years had tested whether stem cells from bone marrow could help the heart recover after a heart attack, “with some promising results”.
But he called for further research.
“This pilot study shows for the first time that stem cells from a patient’s fat tissue may be similarly beneficial, indicating a potential new and more convenient source of stem cells,” he said.
“However, since we still know very little about the way these cells could help to repair the damaged heart, there needs to be more research to understand what the stem cells actually do.
“That will help us to understand more about how they could be used for real patient benefit.”
The results of the study, known as Apollo, were not statistically significant, possibly because of its small size.
Researchers now plan a larger trial which will look at the treatment in more detail.
Click here for the full report from BBC News
The Kevin Trudeau Show: 11-17-10
Today, Kevin abolishes all rumors and gives you the truth behind inflation, the TSA and the government. Plus, Dr. Bob Marshall gives you the facts behind the dangers of Magnesium Stearate & Stearic Acid!
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Health:
Eating Healthy Is Bad For Economy
10 Things Snack Food Companies Don’t Want You To Know
Antibiotics Often Unnecessary For Kids Ear Infections
Drug Companies Exploit Legal Loophole
Wealth:
Inflation Is Already Here
Income Is Going Down, Inflation Is Going Up
TSA:
Video: The TSA Is Out Of Control
Full Frontal Nudity Doesn’t Make Us Safer
TSA Screener Terrorizes 3 Year Old Girl
Pilots & Passengers Angry Over New Airport Pat Downs
Body Searching Children A ‘No’ For Army, ‘Yes’ For TSA
Backlash Over TSA’s Naked Strip Searches
TSA Rage Hitting All Age Demographics Now
UK:
Sunscreen Causing Rickets In Middle Class English Children
British Gitmo Inmates Win Huge Payouts From UK
Manchester Airport Trials New Recognition Technology
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