Top 15 Killers Of Americans

January 11. 2012

CNN

By Madison Park

The leading killers of Americans continue to be non-infectious diseases like heart disease, strokes and lung diseases.

But one of the perpetual causes of death fell off the top 15 list this year: Homicides.

“Most of the changes were positive,” said Sherry Murphy, a statistician at the National Center of Health Statistics and one of the authors of the annual mortality report. “Homicides fell from among the 15 leading causes for the first time since 1965.”

The rest of the common killers remained fairly consistent compared with 2009, according to the report released Wednesday. The death rate in the United States dropped slightly from 749.6 deaths per 100,000 in 2009 to 746.2 deaths per 100,000.

The life expectancy in the United States inched up a tiny bit from 78.6 years in 2009 to 78.7 years in 2010.

The leading causes of death in 2010 remained nearly the same as in 2009 – kidney diseases became the 8th leading cause of death –- it had been 9th in the previous year. It swapped spots with flu and pneumonia.

The 15th leading killer is pneumonitis due to solids and liquids, an illness more likely to strike the elderly. This is inflammation of the lungs due to inhaling substance inside the lung such as dust, mold or inhalants.

Click here for the full report from CNN.

Vitamin E May Lower Women’s Lung Disease Risk

April 28th, 2011

WebMD

By: Kathleen Doheny

Long-term, regular use of vitamin E supplements appears to reduce the risk of chronic obstructive lung disease or COPD in women, according to a new study.

But men may not get the same benefit, according to another study. Both studies were presented this week at the American Thoracic Society international conference in New Orleans.

The risk reduction for women on vitamin E supplements was equal in people who smoked — the primary risk factor for getting COPD — and people who didn’t, says Anne Hermetet Agler, a PhD candidate at Cornell University and lead author of the study involving women.

”We saw a 10% reduction in risk,” she says. The women took 600 IU of vitamin E every other day. Of the effect, she says, “It is limited to just women.”

Vitamin E, an antioxidant, has been looked at as a lung disease preventive because it is thought to protect against free radicals, molecules that damage cells and one of the proposed processes by which lung disease is thought to develop. But previous research has found little or no effects of antioxidants on lung outcomes, Agler says. And other research has found increasing vitamin E may slightly increase lung cancer risk and other ill effects.

More than 16 million Americans have COPD, also known as emphysema and chronic bronchitis, according to the National Lung Health Education Program.

Vitamin E and Women’s COPD Risk

Agler and her co-researchers analyzed data that had already been gathered for the Women’s Health Study. The long-term research effort ended in 2004 and focused on what effects aspirin and vitamin E had in the prevention of cardiovascular disease and cancer in nearly 40,000 women, age 45 and older.

During that study, women were randomly assigned to groups that took either 600 IU of vitamin E every other day, 100 milligrams of aspirin every other day, or placebo. None of the women had COPD at the start of the study.

During the nearly 10-year follow-up, there were 760 new reports of COPD in the vitamin E group and 846 in the placebo group, translating to a 10% risk reduction for the supplement group.

The effect held when Agler considered a number of other factors, including smoking status, age, and multivitamin use.

Even though the vitamin E reduced the overall risk of COPD in both smokers and nonsmokers, the current smokers were more than four times as likely as never smokers to get COPD, the researchers found.

Agler also looked at the effect of vitamin E on new diagnoses of asthma, but found little or no association.

Click here for the full report from WebMD

Vitamin C – Cure Colds to Cancer

December 21st, 2010

Natural News

By: Paul Fassa

Vitamin C from citrus was introduced a couple of centuries ago as a cure for scurvy rampant among British mariners. But just what is scurvy? Scurvy is actually defined as a deficiency of vitamin C. Its myriad manifestations appear today. It appears that scurvy was not a particular disease, but a condition that led to other diseases.

The difference today is there are many other new names assigned to diseases that are often related to scurvy. This benefits Big Pharma`s bottom line for creating new expensive pharmaceuticals. It`s no surprise that inexpensive Vitamin C`s ability to safely cure maladies from colds to cancer is marginalized by the Medical Mafia.

Some Scurvy Symptoms

Some of the many scurvy symptoms include: Exhaustion, lethargy, sunken eyes, pale complexion, anemia, depression, and weakness. The afflicted person may experience joint and muscle pain, headaches, and nausea as well as fainting or dizziness.

Lung and kidney disease may result from scurvy conditions. Bruising occurs easily, and wounds heal slowly. Internal tissues may bleed as capillaries weaken. Ultimately, jaundice and water retention may occur with decreased urination.

Do any of those symptoms remind you of any other maladies or diseases by a different name? Yet IV mega-dose vitamin C therapy starting at 15 grams is rarely utilized for these symptoms.

Vitamin C Therapy

According to orthomolecular physician Ronald Hunninghake, MD, cancer victims are vitamin C deficient. In other words, they have scurvy. He has worked with orthomolecular cancer pioneer Dr. Hugh Riordan, MD, for over two decades. Their work has been a continuation of Dr. Linus Pauling`s insights into vitamin C for preventing and curing infectious diseases and cancer.

Success with cancer patients using Dr. Riordan`s protocol is not widely publicized. These and other orthomolecular physicians, who rely solely on vitamin and mineral supplementation for curing patients, want to avoid the flack from the medical establishment that exploded around Linus Pauling`s vitamin C revelations years ago.

Besides claiming that vitamin C could cure cancer, Linus Pauling also ruffled the cancer industry`s feathers when he publicly proclaimed that “the war on cancer is largely a fraud”. As the saying goes, you don`t draw flack until you`re over the target!

So perhaps Dr. Hunninghake is a bit guarded when he says mega-dosing vitamin C is a great adjunct for other cancer therapies. Cancer has been cured with mostly IV mega-dose vitamin C therapy during recent decades. Instead, Hunninghake cites the fact that cancer patients are relieved of their scurvy from IV mega-dose vitamin C, thus allowing them to feel better and endure the side effects of conventional cancer protocols.

Despite Hunninhake`s protective diplomacy, Dr. Riordon has demonstrated that Vitamin C in large doses is selectively cytotoxic to cancer cells. When the dosage is high enough, vitamin C shifts from anti-oxidant to oxidant. Normally anaerobic cancer cells perish when exposed to oxygen.

Though largely ignored by mainstream medicine`s blind allegiance to Big Pharma, Vitamin C mega-dosing has proven extremely effective against many infectious diseases. Pathogens are also anaerobic. A dramatic recovery from a lung infection and leukemia while in a coma under life support is highlighted in this Natural News article.

Occasional Confirmations from Mainstream Medicine

Perhaps mainstream medicine is beginning to catch on. Dr. Karel Tyml and his colleagues at The University of Western Ontario have discovered that vitamin C can reverse sepsis, a potentially fatal disease with symptoms resembling – scurvy!

Dogs normally produce their own vitamin C. However, our canine companions don’t have enough C to control distemper, which is considered incurable. But mega-dose C has cured distemper and kept dogs from dying or being euthanized.

Click here for the full report from Natural News

Quitting Smoking Carries Diabetes Risk

January 06, 2010

Reuters

By Charles Dick

Smoking is well known as a risk factor for type 2 diabetes, but scientists said on Monday that quitting the habit can raise the risk even more in the short term.

A study by U.S. researchers found that people who stop smoking have a 70 percent increased risk of developing type 2 diabetes in the first six years without cigarettes as compared to people who never smoked.

The researchers said they suspected the increased diabetes risk comes from extra weight gain common in people who quit.

But they said no one should use their findings as an excuse to continue smoking — a habit which can also cause lung disease, heart disease, strokes and many types of cancer.

“The message is: Don’t even start to smoke,” said Hsin-Chieh Yeh of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in the United States, who led the study.

“If you smoke, give it up. That’s the right thing to do. But people have to also watch their weight,” she added.

Type 2 diabetes — often called adult-onset diabetes — is a common disease that interferes with the body’s ability to properly use sugar and insulin, a substance produced by the pancreas which normally lowers blood sugar after eating.

Overweight people and those with a family history of the disease have an increased risk of developing it, as do smokers.

Diabetes is reaching epidemic levels, with an estimated 180 million people suffering from it around the world.

Diabetes cases are forecast to triple in the United States in the next 25 years to 44 million with the costs of caring for them rising to $336 billion a year.

Yeh’s study, published in the Annals of Internal Medicine journal, looked at almost 11,000 middle-aged adults who did not yet have diabetes from 1987 to 1989. The patients were followed for up to 17 years and data about diabetes status, glucose levels, weight and more were collected at regular intervals.

The researchers found that people who quit smoking had a 70 percent increased risk of developing type 2 diabetes in the first six years after stopping compared to people who never smoked. The risks were highest in the first three years, and returned to normal after 10 years.

Among those who did not stop smoking the risk was lower, but the chance of developing diabetes was still 30 percent higher compared with those who never smoked.

Tobacco is the leading preventable cause of death in the world, killing more than 5 million people a year. A report by the World Lung Foundation last August said smoking could kill a billion people this century if trends hold.

Click here for full report

Obesity’s Rise May Hurt Smoking Gains In Lifespan

December 4, 2009

CNN

By Sarah Klein

Although fewer people are smoking — and therefore less likely to die from cigarette-related causes — the obesity epidemic may negate any gains in life span, according to a new study.

By 2020, the typical 18-year-old will gain 0.31 years due to the drop in smoking rates (above and beyond life span increases caused by other factors). But the increase in obesity rates during the same period will reduce life expectancy by 1.02 years, the researchers say.

During the next 10 years, in other words, we’ll lose 0.71 years of our life span, time that we would have gained if so many people weren’t overweight, according to the estimates published this week in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM).

In addition, the increase in quality-adjusted life expectancy — a measure that takes into account levels of disability and other quality-of-life factors — will be reduced by 1.32 years. If all U.S. adults were nonsmokers of normal weight, life expectancy would increase by 3.76 years, or 5.16 quality-adjusted years, according to the study.

Health.com: Make healthy lunches your kids will actually eat

“Life expectancy is not going to decline,” says the study’s lead author, Susan T. Stewart, Ph.D., a researcher at the National Bureau of Economic Research, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. “But it could have risen by that much more if it weren’t for the increases in obesity.”

Stewart and her colleagues forecast life expectancy through the year 2020 using national survey data. Smoking, a major risk factor for lung disease, heart disease, and cancer, has decreased by 20 percent in the United States in the past 15 years, according to the study.

Over the same period, obesity has increased by 48 percent. Obesity contributes to a host of serious health problems, including heart disease, diabetes, joint problems, stroke, and some sleep disorders.

Health.com: The 8 worst holiday foods (and what to eat instead)

By 2020, the report predicts, smoking will decrease by 21 percent, but 45 percent of the population will be obese.

Prior research has examined the effects of obesity on longevity, but this study is the first to examine the combined effects of obesity and smoking.

“No one ever has really done quite this linkage between smoking and obesity,” says S. Jay Olshansky, Ph.D., a professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at the School of Public Health at the University of Illinois at Chicago. “Some people have suggested we’re on the verge of dramatic increases in life expectancy because of reductions in smoking, but these authors are saying, ‘Hold on a minute; the negative effect of obesity is much greater.’”

The extent of obesity’s impact on life span “might be a real eye-opener,” says Stewart.

Health.com: 8 reasons to make time for family dinner

Many people will question how a sedentary lifestyle can be as unhealthy as a deadly habit such as smoking, she says, adding that this is exactly why she and her colleagues believe this research is important. “We wanted to bring attention to the health of a population [that] is already not as healthy as it could be, and will continue and worsen,” she says.

The study does have limitations. The authors based their projections on a steady rate of change in obesity, for instance.

However, “childhood obesity has been rising dramatically, so the trends in the future are going to change by how long people have been obese,” says Olshansky, who did not participate in the current research, but projected similar obesity trends in a 2005 paper in the NEJM. “Younger generations are going to carry the obesity with them much longer,” leading to additional or more serious weight-related health risks, he says.

“If we don’t intervene, we are in trouble,” Olshansky adds.

Reversing the obesity trends reported in the study will likely require a concerted public health campaign similar to the one that has reduced smoking rates.

Click here for the full report