Month: October 2010

Researchers at Universite Laval, Canada, found that using prescription drugs to treat insomnia and anxiety increases one's mortality risk by 36 percent, even after controlling for lifestyle behaviors that affect mortality rate, such as alcohol use, smoking, health condition and the level of physical activity.

The conclusion reached by Professor Genevieve Belleville and his team was based on 12 years of records of some 14,000 Canadians from Statistics Canada's National Population Health Survey. According to the team, the data comes from surveys which were carried out every two years between 1994 and 2007. It contains information on the social demographics, lifestyle and health of participants between the ages of 18 to 102.

The researchers proposed that the side effects caused by sleeping and anti-anxiety medications could be the reasons behind the link. Sleeping pills and anti-anxiety drugs are known to slow reaction time, cause drowsiness, impair thinking and wreck havoc on coordination. These effects would significantly increase one's chances of meeting with an accident, especially among the elderly.

Statement about the study added that: "They [Sleeping and anti-anxiety medications] may also have an inhibiting effect on the respiratory system, which could aggravate certain breathing problems during sleep. These medications are also central nervous system inhibitors that may affect judgment and thus increase the risk of suicide."

What isn't mentioned is that there are also genuine safety concerns related to the use of tranquilizers and sleeping pills. Use them together or mix any of them with alcohol or FDA-approved painkillers can produce serious drug interaction and even cause death. In 2008, a casual combination of anti-anxiety and sleeping drugs ended Australian actor Heath Ledger's life abruptly. Initially thought to be a case of recreational drug abuse, an autopsy instead found Xanax, Valium, Restoril and other pharmaceuticals commonly used for treating insomnia, anxiety, depression and pain inside Ledger's body.

Recognizing the real dangers involving sleeping and anti-anxiety drugs, Dr. Belleville warned: "These medications aren't candy, and taking them is far from harmless. Given that cognitive behavioral therapies have shown good results in treating insomnia and anxiety, doctors should systematically discuss such therapies with their patients as an option."

Details of the study can be found in the Canadian Journal of Psychiatry.

Despite its name Vitamin D is a hormone. It belongs to the steroid hormone family which includes cortisol, progesterone, estrogen, and testosterone. The steroid hormone family loves to combine with other hormones to form partnerships. Vitamin D is no exception and when it combines with Vitamin A and the fatty acid DHA good things happen. Vitamin D and its partners have access to the nucleus in cells and it is there Vitamin D acts as grand controller of gene expression directing which genes get switched on and off and making sure gene operations run smoothly. In addition to gene expression duties the Vitamin D hormone facilitates mineral metabolism and bone growth.

Feeling a little blue? Can't find your keys? Perhaps a boost in Vitamin D levels is in order. As far as feeling a little down is concerned, decreased levels of Vitamin D correlates with decreased levels of serotonin, a brain messenger that gives a person a sense of well being. Raising one's Vitamin D intake along with magnesium makes serotonin metabolism easier and potentially elevates mood, especially where seasonal affective disorder is concerned.

We all know how important our memory is so let's do something to protect it. Vitamin D controls some aspects of nerve growth factors which are vitally important for memory capacity. Also, Vitamin D assists in brain repair when injury occurs, further protecting memories and learning processes. Research with Alzheimer's patients at Washington University in St. Louis, Mo. found that 58% of them had very low Vitamin D levels (20 or lower). Many experts think that low Vitamin D levels may contribute to the progression of dementia.

To say the least Vitamin D's importance can not be overstated. Its preventative and therapeutic effects are now being fully investigated and not a moment too soon.

 

Asthma in children has actually been on the rise at an alarming rate for the past two decades. Aside from speculation about dietary and environmental causes, there has not been solid evidence as to what the real cause is for this increase.

That is, until now. Studies have shown that acetaminophen use in toddlers resulted in asthma-like symptoms such as wheezing and difficulty catching breath. The correlation occurred because symptoms were noticed directly after taking this popular over the counter pain reliever.

Even after the data was adjusted, allowing for the increase in breathing difficulty which fevers and colds may cause, the statistics still showed a strong correlation. Toddlers and children may not be the only ones affected. Further studies suggest that teenagers who take acetaminophen products also are more prone to developing asthma.

The studies go further to suggest that teens that take this pain reliever at least once a month are also more prone to allergic reactions and eczema, an allergic skin condition. Collectively, data suggests that acetaminophen may be responsible for up to 40% of asthma attacks.

These separate research projects, when gathered together, suggest that acetaminophen increases our body`s allergic response as an unintended side effect. It seems counter intuitive because this drug is an "anti-inflammatory" drug, and inflammation is basically at the heart of allergic reactions and asthma.

However, it does help explain the steady increase in asthma cases over the past fifty years. Fifty years ago was about when this popular drug was introduced to a mass market.

NSAID`s (Non Steroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drugs), the family of pain relievers which acetaminophen belongs to, are no stranger to negative side effects. The laundry list of potential side effects include, but are not limited to, stomach ulcers, kidney failure, hypertension, diarrhea and vomiting.

Alternative remedies and treatments for pain relief may gain even more ground thanks to this revealing discovery. Some of the alternative treatments that are available for pain relief include acupuncture, various herbal remedies, heat and hydrotherapy, and hypnosis.

Even though most of the chronic diseases people face are related to poor diet, medical school training focuses largely on drugs, surgical procedures and other reactionary interventions instead. In fact, some medical schools do not even teach a single course in nutrition.

Back in the mid-1980s, the National Academy of Sciences published a report about the lack of nutrition education in medical schools, and advised that such schools begin offering at least 25 hours in nutrition education to their students. But a recent study published in Academic Medicine, a Journal of the Association of American Medical College, reveals that conditions have either remained unchanged or actually gotten worse.

Researchers from the University of North Carolina (UNC) at Chapel Hill found that the average number of nutrition education hours offered by most medical colleges today has actually dropped by nearly half since six years ago. Today, only 25 percent of medical schools even offer the minimum recommended number of hours in nutrition education.

"Nutrition is really a core component of modern medical practice," emphasized Kelly M. Adams, registered dietitian at UNC and lead author of the study. "[Students] aren't getting enough [nutrition] instruction while in medical school."

For the past 15 years, UNC has been offering an online- and CD-ROM-based program that students can used to supplement their medical education. While the program has helped some, many medical school students still end up graduating with dismal knowledge in proper nutrition.

Those facts have been revealed by the first academic analysis of 1500 documents unsealed in a lawsuit against pharmaceutical giant Wyeth (now part of Pfizer). The litigation was filed in July of last year against menopausal hormone manufacturers by 14,000 plaintiffs whose claims related to the development of breast cancer while taking the hormone therapy (HT) Prempro (conjugated equine estrogens). The shocking facts that came out during the case resulted in a US federal court decision to release the documents to the public.

An investigation of these documents, which was just published in PLoS Medicine, reveals precisely how pharmaceutical companies used ghostwriters to insert what amounts to ads-in-disguise into articles published in medical journals and journal supplements. For example, Dr. Adriane Fugh-Berman, associate professor in the Department of Physiology at Georgetown University Medical Center in Washington DC, analyzed dozens of ghostwritten reviews and commentaries about Prempro which were published in medical journals and journal supplements.

She found that facts were manipulated within the articles to promote unproven benefits and to downplay the harms of Prempro. What's more, the articles were deliberately written in a way to place any competing therapies in a negative light. These articles were widely circulated to physicians directly as well as to Big Pharma drug reps who used them to convince doctors about how wonderful Prempro was and why the drug should be prescribed — and prescribed it was, by the millions.

So how did Wyeth accomplish this misleading spinning of medical information to sell more drugs? The Big Pharma giant hired a medical education and communication company, DesignWrite, to produce the ghostwritten articles. The hired writers were instructed to mitigate the perceived risks of breast cancer associated with HT and to defend and promote alleged cardiovascular benefits of HT — even though the supposed facts presented were unsupported by scientific evidence. Wyeth didn't stop there, either. The drug company also had the ghostwriters push for off-label, unproven uses of HT for the prevention of dementia, Parkinson's disease, vision problems, and even wrinkles, according to Dr. Fugh-Berman.

Putting inaccurate and misleading spin on scientific research to pump up drug sales was a profitable business for Wyeth — and folks at DesignWrite who did the spinning made out well, too. The analysis revealed that DesignWrite was paid $25,000 to ghostwrite articles reporting clinical trials, including four manuscripts about trials of low-dose Prempro. In addition, DesignWrite was assigned to write 20 review articles about the drug, for which they were paid $20,000 per article.

"Given the growing evidence that ghostwriting has been used to promote HT and other highly promoted drugs, the medical profession must take steps to ensure that prescribers renounce participation in ghostwriting, and to ensure that unscrupulous relationships between industry and academia are avoided rather than courted," Dr. Adriane Fugh-Berman concluded in her study.

"It is not an immediate effect. You don't take a vitamin today and your breast cancer risk is reduced tomorrow," researcher Jaime Matta said. "However, we did see a long-term effect in terms of breast cancer reduction."

The researchers conducted the study on 457 healthy women and 268 with breast cancer, all of whom had been taking vitamin and mineral supplements for the past five years. The women filled out a questionnaire about which vitamins and minerals they were taking, how regularly they took them, and if they were still taking them.

They then took samples of each woman's blood and measured her DNA's ability to repair itself of damage.

"This process involves at least five separate pathways and is critical for maintaining genomic stability," Matta said. "When the DNA is not repaired, it leads to mutation that leads to cancer."

The researchers found that calcium supplements significantly increased a woman's DNA repair capacity. Taking calcium supplements also decreased a woman's risk of breast cancer by 40 percent, while vitamin supplements decreased it by 40 percent.

Women who had a low DNA repair capacity, a family history of breast cancer, and no history of breast feeding were all more likely to suffer from breast cancer. When the researchers adjusted for calcium's effect on DNA repair capacity, they found little remaining effect on breast cancer risk.

This suggests that calcium helps prevent cancers by boosting DNA's ability to regenerate from damage. The mechanisms by which vitamin supplements protect the body from cancer were not determined.