Bone Strengthening Drug Linked to Fractures
March 10, 2010
ABC News
By Christine Romo and Lara Salahi
Sandy Potter, 59 of Queens, New York, was jumping rope with neighborhood children when she felt her thigh bone snap.
“I went up in the air and I came straight down to the ground,” Potter said. “The pain was excruciating.”
Potter, who was diagnosed with osteoporosis at age 48, had been taking the popular osteoporosis drug Fosamax for eight years before her femur literally snapped in two.
Fosamax, one in a class of drugs called bisphosphonates, is supposed to make bones stronger. But now there’s mounting evidence that for some women, taking Fosamax or its generic alendronate for more than five years could cause spontaneous fractures.
“We are seeing people just walking, walking down the steps, patients who are doing low-energy exercise,” said Dr. Kenneth Egol, professor of orthopedic surgery at NYU Langone Medical Center. “Very unusual, the femur is one of the strongest bones in the body.”
Egol said X-rays of some of his patients look more like an injury endured by a car accident than an otherwise minimal fall.
“Over the last 18 months we are seeing this more frequently,” he said.
Sue Heller, 60, of Castle Rock, Colo., had been on Fosamax for almost 10 years. She broke both of her femur bones.
“I’m sure there are a lot of women who have brittle bones right now that maybe are ready to break, and they’re not aware of it,” said Heller. “And my heart aches for them.”
Sales of the popular drug increased when doctors began prescribing it not only to women showing signs of osteoporosis, but also those who were osteopenic, and thus, at risk for the disease. Now some doctors worry that staying on the drug for more than five years can cause some women’s bones to become more brittle.
Weighing the Risks
This is not the first time that many doctors have reported an opposite effect for many people taking the drug. Fosamax has already been linked to severe musculoskeletal pain, as well as to a serious bone-related jaw disease called osteonecrosis.
“In worldwide post-marketing experience with FOSAMAX/FOSAMAX Plus D, rare reports consistent with osteonecrosis of the jaw have been received. Many of these reports lack sufficient clinical details to make definitive assessments and/or are confounded, particularly since a generally accepted definition of ONJ in the general population is unknown,” responded Merck in a written response to the suggested link. “Rare cases of ONJ have also been reported in patients who do not have osteoporosis and who have not taken any bisphosphonate medicines.”
In 2008, the Food and Drug Administration reached out to the pharmaceutical company Merck about the reports of femur fractures. After 16 months, Merck added patients’ reports of femur fractures to the list of possible side effects reported by patients included in the drug’s package insert.
“It took Merck an entire year to respond,” said ABC News senior health and medical editor, Dr. Richard Besser. “Just six words: ‘low energy femoral shaft and subtrochanteric fractures.’”
The FDA has also never made an effort to inform the public or doctors across the country who prescribe bisphosphonates of the possible side effect, said Besser.
Both the FDA and Merck declined ABC News’ request for an interview. The FDA said they are looking into reports of fractures.
“Nothing is more important to Merck than the safety of its medicines,” according to a written statement by Merck to ABC News. A causal relationship between Fosamax and these fractures has not been established, according to Merck.
“The drug companies have to recognize when there is a problem, they have to be up front with the public. If there’s a concern, they have to voice it and at least give everybody a fair chance to look at this carefully,” said Dr. Joseph Lane, orthopedic trauma surgeon at the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York City.
How Much for How Long
Many studies suggest an overall benefit from taking the medication for women who are at risk for osteoperosis. In fact, bisphosphonates can help prevent hip and spine fractures, which for many women may lead to death.
“Normally your bone is constantly being remade,” said Dr. Joseph Lane, chief of metabolic bone disease at the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York City. “These patients don’t remake their bone and they acquire damage, microdamage, the collagen gets altered and we need to rejuvenate the skeleton.”
In 2008, bisphosphonate sales exceeded $3.5 billion according to data from IMS Health. In 2008, over 37 million prescriptions were written for the osteoporosis medications.
While some physicians use bone density scans to help drive their decisions, doctors generally prescribe them to women who are at an increased risk for either osteoporosis or fractures from osteoporosis they already have. A new tool developed by the World Health Organization can determine the risk of having fractures and can help doctors determine which women with osteoporosis should be treated with medications.
Although bisphosphonates are generally recommended for postmenopausal women, research does not indicate how long women should be on the drug. Many doctors now recommend a five-year limit.
“When they are on it for five, six, seven or eight years, they lost their ability to remodel and regenerate their skeleton,” said Lane. “[Some women] are very vulnerable and they will then develop problems of brittle bone.”
Additional time on the medication depends on doctors’ orders, said Besser.
Click here for the full report.
In Support of Breastfeeding for Healthy Babies
February 24. 2010
Natural News
By David Gutierrez
Providing breastfeeding education and support to new mothers could prevent more than one million child deaths every year, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).
Although the WHO recommends that infants start breastfeeding within one hour of birth and consume nothing but breast milk — not even water — for the first six months of life, less than 40 percent of mothers worldwide meet this goal. Insufficient breastfeeding is a problem in both rich and poor countries, the agency says.
Because breast milk provides the exact combination of nutrients that a developing infant needs, no artificial formula or adult food can match its nutritive value. In addition, breast milk provides important antibodies to the underdeveloped infant immune system, and helps children’s immune systems develop in a healthy way. Even a formula that provides nutrition similar to that of breast milk does not provide this critical, immune-boosting function.
If 90 percent of women met the WHO breastfeeding guidelines, the agency says, 13 percent of global deaths under the age of five could be prevented, translating into 1.3 million lives saved per year.
Although many women start out breastfeeding, large numbers abandon the practice because they are unable to get the baby to latch on properly or do not know how to breastfeed without suffering unbearable pain or discomfort.
“When it comes to doing it practically, they don’t have the practical support,” said the WHO’s Constanza Vallenas.
WHO Director-General Margaret Chan noted that during disasters, well-meaning donations of formula may encourage women to stop breastfeeding just at the time when the practice is most critical.
“During emergencies, unsolicited or uncontrolled donations of breast milk substitutes may undermine breastfeeding and should be avoided,” she said. “The focus should be on active protection and support of breastfeeding.”
Chan said that mothers in disaster zones need more support to be able to continue or resume breastfeeding.
Click here for the full report.
WHO Advising Swine Flu Vaccine to be Combined With Regular Flu Vaccine
February 22, 2010
Associated Press
The World Health Organization is recommending that swine flu be added to the regular flu vaccine next season.
WHO said in a statement Thursday that it held a meeting this week to decide which flu strains should be recommended to drug makers for their vaccines during the northern hemisphere’s next flu season, which begins in the fall.
Flu vaccines have three virus strains — which experts decide on after estimating which strains made the most people sick last season.
Last year, the swine flu pandemic virus, or H1N1, emerged too late to be added to the regular flu vaccine and a new vaccine was needed.
Click here for the full report
Swine Flu ‘Pandemic’ Was a Hoax
February 11, 2010
Prison Planet
By Paul Jospeh Watson
Appearing on The Alex Jones Show, outgoing Chair of the Council of Europe’s Sub-committee on Health Wolfgang Wodarg said that his panel’s investigation into the 2009 swine flu outbreak has found that the pandemic was a fake hoax manufactured by pharmaceutical companies in league with the WHO to make vast profits while endangering public health.
The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, a 47 nation body encompassing democratically elected members of parliament, began hearings last month to investigate whether the H1N1 swine flu pandemic was falsified or exaggerated in an attempt to profit from vaccine sales.
Wodarg said that governments were “threatened” by special interest groups within the pharmaceutical industry as well as the WHO to buy the vaccines and inject their populations without any reasonable scientific reason for doing so, and yet in countries like Germany and France only around 6 per cent took the vaccine despite enough being available to cover 90 per cent of the population.
Wodarg said he was alarmed when the WHO cited early cases in Mexico as a threat and quickly moved to pandemic status, despite the fact that the cases were relatively mild and the virus was not new.
“This was the mildest flu ever and the people were much more clever than the government so we have to find out what was going on with WHO – why did they do this pandemic alarm,” asked Wodarg, noting that pharmaceutical interests within the World Health Organization were instrumental in creating the panic and reaping the financial dividends.
“We don’t know what really happened, we only know that they changed the definition of a pandemic, which was a very dangerous thing before and now is just a normal flu, and this is why business for pharmaceutical companies was open,” said Wodarg, adding that select pharmaceutical companies were handed a monopoly on creating the vaccine.
“It is their trick that they always try to monopolize this and we pay much more like this,” said Wodarg, noting that if patents were left open, vaccines would be produced much quicker and far cheaper.
Wodarg said there was “no other explanation” for what happened than the fact that the WHO worked in cahoots with the pharmaceutical industry to manufacture the panic in order to generate vast profits, agreeing with host Alex Jones that the entire farce was a hoax.
He also explained how health authorities were “already waiting for something to happen” before the pandemic started and then exploited the virus for their own purposes.
Wodarg said that the investigation was likely to recommend an end to the undue influence of pharmaceutical companies on public health institutions in Europe.
However, Wodarg pointed out, “There is no law for WHO, there is no one who punishes those people in WHO, we only have national law, so this is very important that we collect the information and on the national level we try to find those people responsible and we try to punish them.”
“Have investigations, have a deep look, we cannot tolerate such a development, we cannot have this next winter again, we don’t want such fake pandemics,” concluded Wodarg.
Wodarg said that vast quantities of unused vaccines were now being dumped on the third world and that other countries were simply trying to push ahead with vaccination programs even though the virus has proven not to be a major threat.
“The Japanese bought vaccines for 110 million people and they cannot return from this vaccine contract so they are in a very big political dilemma now and they already have problems because the Japanese people already know it wouldn’t be necessary to get vaccinated,” Wodarg told The Alex Jones Show.
Click here for the full report
More Studies on Radiation and Full-Body Scans
February 8, 2010
Bloomberg.com
By Jonathan Tirone
Air passengers should be made aware of the health risks of airport body screenings and governments must explain any decision to expose the public to higher levels of cancer-causing radiation, an inter-agency report said.
Pregnant women and children should not be subject to scanning, even though the radiation dose from body scanners is “extremely small,” said the Inter-Agency Committee on Radiation Safety report, which is restricted to the agencies concerned and not meant for public circulation. The group includes the European Commission, International Atomic Energy Agency, Nuclear Energy Agency and the World Health Organization.
A more accurate assessment about the health risks of the screening won’t be possible until governments decide whether all passengers will be systematically scanned or randomly selected, the report said. Governments must justify the additional risk posed to passengers, and should consider “other techniques to achieve the same end without the use of ionizing radiation.”
President Barack Obama has pledged $734 million to deploy airport scanners that use x-rays and other technology to detect explosives, guns and other contraband. The U.S. and European countries including the U.K. have been deploying more scanners at airports after the attempted bombing on Christmas Day of a Detroit-bound Northwest airline flight.
“There is little doubt that the doses from the backscatter x-ray systems being proposed for airport security purposes are very low,” Health Protection Agency doctor Michael Clark said by phone from Didcot, England. “The issue raised by the report is that even though doses from the systems are very low, they feel there is still a need for countries to justify exposures.”
3-D Imaging
A backscatter x-ray is a machine that can render a three- dimensional image of people by scanning them for as long as 8 seconds, the report says. The technology has also raised privacy issues in countries including Germany because it yields images of the naked body.
The Committee cited the IAEA’s 1996 Basic Safety Standards agreement, drafted over three decades, that protects people from radiation. Frequent exposure to low doses of radiation can lead to cancer and birth defects, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Most of the scanners deliver less radiation than a passenger is likely to receive from cosmic rays while airborne, the report said. Scanned passengers may absorb from 0.1 to 5 microsieverts of radiation compared with 5 microsieverts on a flight from Dublin to Paris and 30 microsieverts between Frankfurt and Bangkok, the report said. A sievert is a unit of measure for radiation.
European Union regulators plan to finish a study in April on the effects of scanning technology on travelers’ privacy and health. Amsterdam, Heathrow and Manchester are among European airports that have installed the devices or plan to do so.
The U.S. Transportation Security Administration has said that it ordered 150 scanners from OSI Systems Inc.’s Rapiscan unit and will buy an additional 300 imaging devices this year. The agency currently uses 40 machines, which cost $130,000 to $170,000 each, produced by L-3 Communications Holdings Inc. at 19 airports including San Francisco, Atlanta and Washington D.C.
Click here for the full report.
New Superbugs Coming from China
February 8, 2010
Telegraph.co.uk
By Peter Foster
Chinese doctors routinely hand out multiple doses of antibiotics for simple maladies like the sore throats and the country’s farmers excessive dependence on the drugs has tainted the food chain.
Studies in China show a “frightening” increase in antibiotic-resistant bacteria such as staphylococcus aureus bacteria, also know as MRSA . There are warnings that new strains of antibiotic-resistant bugs will spread quickly through international air travel and internation food sourcing.
“We have a lot of data from Chinese hospitals and it shows a very frightening picture of high-level antibiotic resistance,” said Dr Andreas Heddini of the Swedish Institute for Infectious Disease Control.
“Doctors are daily finding there is nothing they can do, even third and fourth-line antibiotics are not working.
“There is a real risk that globally we will return to a pre-antibiotic era of medicine, where we face a situation where a number of medical treatment options would no longer be there. What happens in China matters for the rest of the world.”
Particular alarm has been raised by resistance rates of MRSA in Chinese hospitals, which has more than doubled from 30 per cent to 70 per cent, according to Professor Xiao Yonghong of the Institute of Clinical Pharmacology at Beijing University.
Last year researchers found a new strain of MRSA in Chinese pigs imported into Hong Kong and called for urgent new studies into its potential to infect humans after an infection of the new strain was confirmed in Guangzhou, where many of the pigs were farmed.
A Beijing-based health expert with access to unpublished surveys showed that the situation in China was actually worse earlier studies had indicated.
“The Chinese Ministry of Health has all the data,” the expert warned, “but they seem unable or unwilling to believe it. The situation has global implications and is highly disturbing.”
The Chinese Ministry of Health failed to respond to requests for an interview or information by phone, email and fax over a three-day period.
New prescription guidelines to restrict antibiotic use being issued by the Chinese Ministry of Health in 2004.
“The guidelines are not being followed effectively,” added Professor Xiao, “over just the last five years, for example, our studies show the rate antibiotic-resistant E.coli has quadrupled from 10 per cent to 40 per cent.”
Public health experts say the rampant over-use of antibiotics in China is primarily caused by China’s under-funded healthcare system where hospitals derive up to half of their operating income from selling drugs. In some cities, such as Chongqing, almost half of all drugs sold are antibiotics.
“In Chinese hospitals our data shows that 60 per cent of in-patients are being prescribed antibiotics compared with the WHO guideline of 30 per cent,” added Professor Xiao who also heads China’s National Antibiotic Resistance Investigation Network.
China’s State Food and Drug Administration bans the sale of antibiotics without prescription but a survey by the The Daily Telegraph found the drugs were still easily obtainable over-the-counter.
Three out of five chemists agreed to sell antibiotics after a cursory consultation with the ‘patient’ who complained of a sore throat.
At one outlet a pharmacist handed over a course of the second-generation antibiotic, Cefuroxime Axetil, with minimal hesitation.
Asked if the sale could “get her into trouble” she said that the pharmacy would get a doctor to write the prescription later to cover their sales records. She added that even doctors from the nearby Capital Institute of Pediatrics came to buy antibiotics without prescription.
“When the surveillance is strict, we won’t risk selling antibiotics,” Ms Zhang added. Asked to elaborate, she explained, “For example during the 2008 Olympic Games period, we didn’t sell them”.
Click here for the full report.
The Swine Flu “Pandemic” is Over
February 5, 2010
Mail Online
By Jenny Hope
The swine flu pandemic, which has cost the nation more than £1billion, was declared over yesterday.
With the number of new cases plummeting, health chiefs announced the 24-hour flu helpline will close down next Thursday.
Critics said the seven-month outbreak had been mishandled by ministers and health officials, who had made a flawed assessment of the threat.
Swine flu has killed 411 Britons, with 124 more still in hospital – yet the 5,000 cases a week are far below the average for seasonal flu.
Chief Medical Officer Sir Liam Donaldson had warned the pandemic might claim 65,000 lives and Health Secretary Andy Burnham said 100,000 could be struck down with the disease every day.
Total cases stand at 800,000 so far. Around the world, an estimated 14,000 deaths have been reported – a fraction of the number dying each year from ordinary flu.
The Government is thought to have ordered tens of millions of doses of vaccine.
So far only 4.25million have been administered to priority groups in England.
Sir Liam is still urging the vulnerable to have the jabs.
He insists the vast cost of tackling the pandemic has been justified, from the £1billion cost of vaccines and antivirals to the £10.4million spent on publicity.
The National Pandemic Flu Service, which cost a further £13.5million to run, allowed patients to bypass their GP and collect antiviral drugs after a telephone assessment. Launched in July last year and employing 1,500 call centre staff, it led to 1.1million courses of antivirals being administered to patients – many of whom never had swine flu, according to research.
Anyone suspecting they have swine flu can still get antiviral drugs from their GP, while those in at-risk groups, including children under five, can receive a vaccination.
Sir Liam said: ‘When the virus returns I would very much like to see young children already protected.
‘From now on, most deaths from the pandemic flu virus should be regarded as potentially preventable.’
A spokesman for the Department of Health said: ‘Our priority remains to vaccinate those most at risk from swine flu, as people are still in hospital from the virus.
‘This is the first time we have had a vaccine to protect people while a pandemic virus has been circulating, so it has undoubtedly helped us save lives.’
However, the bumper revenues being reported by vaccine manufacturers – £4billion in windfall profits is predicted – have led to claims that the World Health Organisation fell under the influence of the industry when it declared a pandemic last June.
Matthew Elliott of the Taxpayers’ Alliance said: ‘The Government’s reaction to swine flu has proved to be excessive and poorly managed.
‘It beggars belief that they could have signed so many massive contracts with such a flawed assessment of the threat.’
But John Oxford, professor of virology at Bart’s and The London Hospital, defended the flu strategy.
‘Swine flu is behaving in a classic Darwinian fashion – the survival of the fittest – and has already displaced 98 per cent of the other flu viruses,’ he said.
‘My worry is that when it gets into the elderly next year, we could see many more deaths.
‘We should be proud that Britain responded in a way that prevented many more cases and deaths.’
Click here for the full report
Experts Say 40% of Cancers Can Be Avoided
February 5, 2010
Reuters
A report by the Geneva-based International Union Against Cancer (UICC) highlighted nine infections that can lead to cancer and urged health officials to drive home the importance of vaccines and lifestyle changes in fighting the disease.
“If there was an announcement that somebody had discovered a cure for 40 percent of the world’s cancers, there would quite justifiably be huge jubilation,” UICC president David Hill told Reuters in a telephone interview.
“But the fact is that we have, now, the knowledge to prevent 40 percent of cancers. The tragedy is, we’re not using it.”
Cervical and liver cancer, both caused by infections which can be prevented with vaccines, should be top priorities, the report said, not only in rich nations, but also in developing countries where 80 percent of global cervical cancer occur.
Cancer is a leading cause of death worldwide and the total number of cases globally is increasing, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).
The number of global cancer deaths is projected to rise by 45 percent from 2007 to 2030 from 7.9 million to 11.5 million deaths, driven partly by a growing and aging global population.
The UICC said it wanted to focus policymakers’ attention on cancer-preventing vaccines — like ones made by GlaxoSmithKline and Merck & Co against the human papillomavirus (HPV) which causes cervical cancer, and others against hepatitis B, which causes liver disease and cancer.
“Policymakers around the world have the opportunity and obligation to use these vaccines to save people’s lives and educate their communities toward lifestyle choices and control measures that reduce their risk of cancer,” Cary Adams, UICC’s chief executive, said in a commentary on the report.
Other cancer-causing infections include hepatitis C, human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and Epstein Barr, a herpes-type virus transmitted by saliva.
The experts said the risk of developing cancer could potentially be reduced by up to 40 percent if full immunization and prevention measures were deployed and combined with simple lifestyle changes like quitting smoking, eating healthily, limiting alcohol intake and reducing sun exposure.
Hill said national health authorities should also work to dispel widespread myths about cancer, in particular a sense of fatalism felt by many people in the face of the disease.
As part of this, the UICC is launching a campaign called “Cancer can be prevented too” on World Cancer Day on February 4 to encourage people to face up to the fact that smoking, poor diet and some infections carry high cancer risks.
European cancer experts issued a report last year warning that a wave of cancer now threatens developing countries, estimating that around half of the 12.4 million new cases in 2008 occurred in low and middle income countries.
Despite the availability of so much scientific knowledge about the disease’s causes, Hill said there was great concern among health experts that “the opportunity to prevent this huge escalation of cancer may be missed.”
Click here for the full report
WHO Scientist: Swine Flu Pandemic Was “Completely Exaggerated”
February 3, 2010
Info Wars
By Steve Watson
A scientist with the World Health Organisation has testified, during ongoing hearings in Strasbourg, France, that the swine flu pandemic was part of an overblown “angst campaign”, devised in conjunction with major drug companies to boost profits for vaccine manufacturers.
Professor Ulrich Keil, director of the WHO’s Collaborating Centre for Epidemiology, slammed the organization and its flu chief, Dr Keiji Fukuda while giving evidence before The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE).
“With SARS, with avian flu, always the predictions are wrong…Why don’t we learn from history?” Keil said. “It [swine flu] produced a lot of turmoil in the pubic and was completely exaggerated in contrast with all the really important matters we have to deal with in public health.”
The WHO adviser on heart disease, added that the decision had led to a “gigantic misallocation” of health budgets.
“We know the great killers are hypertension, smoking, high cholesterol, high body mass index, physical inactivity and low fruit and vegetable intake,” he said. “In spite of all these facts, governments instead wasted huge amounts of money by investing in pandemic scenarios whose evidence base is weak.”
PACE, a 47 nation body encompassing democratically elected members of parliament, will determine whether a “falsified pandemic” was declared by WHO in June 2009 on the advice of medical advisors, many of whom have close financial ties to the very pharmaceutical giants – GlaxoSmithKline, Roche, Novartis, – that produced the H1N1 vaccines.
It will also look into the controversy surrounding the fact that two shots were initially advised when it was later revealed that one dose was entirely suitable, as well as investigating concerns over hastily developed vaccines containing adjuvants.
Pharmaceutical companies are thought to have made a profit of somewhere in the region of $7.5-$10 billion on H1N1 vaccines, recouping the billions they had invested in researching and developing pandemic vaccines after the bird flu scares in 2006 and 2007.
The worldwide death toll from H1N1 is thought to be around 13,500, just over a third of the number who die from regular flu every year in the U.S. alone.
Heading the hearings is the former chairman of the Health Committee of PACE, Dr. Wolfgang Wodarg. A former German lawmaker, a medical doctor and epidemiologist. Wodarg has referred to the swine flu pandemic as “one of the greatest medical scandals of the century.”
Wodarg has pointed out that the WHO softened the definition of a pandemic from an outbreak in several continents at once with an above-average death rate, to one where the spread of the disease is constant.
Just one month after changing the definition, and with just 144 people having died from H1N1, the flu was given the highest threat classification possible, a “stage-six pandemic alert”. By comparison, the mildest 20th Century pandemic killed a million people.
“I have never heard such a worldwide echo to a health political action,” Wodarg, an epidemiologist who formerly led the health committee for the Council of Europe, said at Tuesday’s hearing.
“It was stated in panic- stricken terms that this was a flu that could threaten humanity and a great number of humans could fall ill. This is why billions of dollars of medications were bought.” Wodarg said.
He added that the the change in definition “made it possible for the pharmaceutical industry to transform this opportunity into cash, under contracts which were mainly secret.”
“In my view, the WHO undertook an incomprehensible action, which cannot be justified by scientific evidence. The Council of Europe should investigate this to see how WHO can undertake this kind of dangerous nonsense,” said Dr Wodarg.
WHO’s flu chief, Dr Fukuda, insisted that its swine flu scientists do not have conflicts of interest owing to close links with pharmaceutical companies.
“Let me state clearly for the record – the influenza pandemic policies and responses recommended and taken by WHO were not improperly influenced by the pharmaceutical industry.” Fukuda told the inquiry.
He said those calling the epidemic fake were wrong and irresponsible.
PACE’s findings are expected to be announced January 29 and will likely be followed by an in-depth study and recommendations to European governments.
Click here for the full report.
Take Fish Oil to Fight Mental Illness
February 3, 2010
Natural News
By Mike Adams
An important new study published in the Archives of General Psychiatry reveals that fish oil supplements beat mental illness. The study involved 81 people deemed to be at high risk for psychosis. The randomized, placebo-controlled study provided fish oil supplements to half the study subjects for just 12 weeks (the other half received placebo supplements). The results? While 11 people in the placebo group developed a psychotic disorder, only 2 in the fish oil group did.
Although the study was relatively small, it helps demonstrate the wide-ranging benefits of omega-3 fatty acids, which are thought to be the key nutritional factor in fish oils. We already know that omega-3 fatty acids / polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) help protect people against cardiovascular disease. We also know they can play a role in preventing diabetes and cancer. It’s little surprise that they also protect against mental illness, given the importance of healthy fatty acids for the functioning of the nervous system.
As the BBC reports, Alison Cobb, from the mental health charity Mind, said in response to this study: “If young people can be treated successfully with fish oils, this is hugely preferable to treating them with antipsychotics, which come with a range of problems from weight gain to sexual dysfunction, whereas omega-3s are actually beneficial to their general state of health.”
She’s exactly right: Antipsychotic drugs actually cause diabetes. They promote blood sugar disorders and weight gain, among other problems. Some psychiatric drugs have also been linked to school shootings and violent outbursts (suicides, murders, etc.). They’re also expensive and they pose an environmental hazard, since many of the chemicals used in those drugs pass right through the body and end up in waters downstream.
Fish oils have none of these negative side effects. In fact, they have positive effects throughout the body. That’s why fish oils are such a remarkable solution to replace antipsychotic drugs: They’re safer, cheaper and they work better!
You’re supposed to keep taking drugs, says Big Pharma
The drug companies, of course, are terrified that people might learn this truth. They want to keep patients on expensive, patented antipsychotic drugs while discrediting “natural remedies” like fish oils or nutritional supplements. The entire war being waged against nutrition and supplements is, of course, nothing more than the pharmaceutical industry trying to protect its own turf by destroying the competition.
Because, let’s face it: For (virtually) every popular pharmaceutical on the market, there’s a nutritional supplement that works better (and that’s also safer and more affordable). Antipsychotic drugs can be replaced with fish oils. Cholesterol drugs can be replaced with B vitamins. Anti-cancer drugs can be replaced with vitamin D and medicinal mushrooms. Diabetes drugs can be replaced with a healthy plant-based diet and targeted supplements. The list goes on and on…
Nutrition works so well that in this study, subjects experienced a protective effect from fish oils for an entire year even though they only took those fish oils for 12 weeks! Imagine how much better the outcome might have been if they continued on the fish oils for the entire year…
Get quality fish oils
Of course, when it comes to fish oils, don’t settle for just any cheap fish oil supplement. Many of the cheaper store-bought brands are largely made of olive oil filler combined with a tiny amount of fish oil extract. Search out quality supplements or oils from companies like Moxxor, Nordic Naturals or Carlson Labs.
Make sure your supplements are free from heavy metals, pesticides and other residues. Make sure they are harvested in a truly sustainable way, and make sure you can trust the source to provide consistent quality.
Fish oils can provide astonishing health benefits. If the medical industry were truly honest about researching what works for patients rather than what makes money for drug companies, they would have openly prescribed fish oils long ago (and abandoned many of the antipsychotic drugs they still push).
But as you already know, the pharmaceutical industry isn’t interested in what works for people unless it’s something they can sell at monopoly prices. They don’t want people to know about natural remedies, nutritional cures or healing foods. They would much rather see people stay ignorant about those things while pumping their minds full of advertisements and propaganda that ridiculously suggests the human brain is somehow deficient in Big Pharma’s patented chemicals and that the only way you’ll ever be truly healthy, happy or sane is to keep swallowing their pills for the rest of your life.
The real insanity in the world is not in the minds of mental patients; it’s in the evil plans of the FDA, the WHO and the pharmaceutical cartel — all of whom conspire to peddle dangerous medications when far safer, more natural and more effective alternatives are readily available.
Abstract of study from the Archives of General Psychiatry
Long-Chain Omega-3 Fatty Acids for Indicated Prevention of Psychotic Disorders
http://archpsyc.ama-assn.org/cgi/co…
A Randomized, Placebo-Controlled Trial
G. Paul Amminger, MD; Miriam R. Sch�fer, MD; Konstantinos Papageorgiou, MD; Claudia M. Klier, MD; Sue M. Cotton, PhD; Susan M. Harrigan, MSc; Andrew Mackinnon, PhD; Patrick D. McGorry, MD, PhD; Gregor E. Berger, MD
Arch Gen Psychiatry. 2010;67(2):146-154.
Context: The use of antipsychotic medication for the prevention of psychotic disorders is controversial. Long-chain omega-3 (omega-3) polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) may be beneficial in a range of psychiatric conditions, including schizophrenia. Given that omega-3 PUFAs are generally beneficial to health and without clinically relevant adverse effects, their preventive use in psychosis merits investigation.
Objective: To determine whether omega-3 PUFAs reduce the rate of progression to first-episode psychotic disorder in adolescents and young adults aged 13 to 25 years with subthreshold psychosis.
Design: Randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial conducted between 2004 and 2007.
Setting: Psychosis detection unit of a large public hospital in Vienna, Austria.
Participants: Eighty-one individuals at ultra-high risk of psychotic disorder.
Interventions: A 12-week intervention period of 1.2-g/d omega-3 PUFA or placebo was followed by a 40-week monitoring period; the total study period was 12 months.
Main Outcome Measures: The primary outcome measure was transition to psychotic disorder. Secondary outcomes included symptomatic and functional changes. The ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 fatty acids in erythrocytes was used to index pretreatment vs posttreatment fatty acid composition.
Results: Seventy-six of 81 participants (93.8%) completed the intervention. By study’s end (12 months), 2 of 41 individuals (4.9%) in the omega-3 group and 11 of 40 (27.5%) in the placebo group had transitioned to psychotic disorder (P = .007). The difference between the groups in the cumulative risk of progression to full-threshold psychosis was 22.6% (95% confidence interval, 4.8-40.4). Omega-3 Polyunsaturated fatty acids also significantly reduced positive symptoms (P = .01), negative symptoms (P = .02), and general symptoms (P = .01) and improved functioning (P = .002) compared with placebo. The incidence of adverse effects did not differ between the treatment groups.
Conclusions: Long-chain omega-3 PUFAs reduce the risk of progression to psychotic disorder and may offer a safe and efficacious strategy for indicated prevention in young people with subthreshold psychotic states.
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