Welcome to my blog - please tell me what YOU think about some of the things I post. I enjoy your comments. Remember,many of the links to other articles in these posts have a finite existence: there is no way to tell how long they will be in place before being moved or removed!
We can be grateful for the fact that somewhere in the world, there is an independent organization looking out for our health.
Along with most nutritional experts, I have always harbored extreme doubts about the safety of Aspartame. Call me paranoid, but all artificial sweeteners worry me: any time the hand of man interferes between a natural substance and what we put in our our mouths, I become concerned.
We have previously gone into the many ways a study of a natural substance can lead to a negative result, some an inevitable consequence of studies intended for synthetic substances, some which almost feel engineered to fail - here is a new one.
I am sure all of us who use herbal medicine remember the negative study of Echinacea and its use against the common cold? Now comes another study which shows it to be very effective.
Research from the University of Connecticut School of Pharmacy published in the Lancet shows "Using a method that calculates the Odds Ratio of incidence of the common cold in the pooled participants, the researchers found that echinacea decreased the odds by 58 per cent (the statistically significant odds ratio was 0.42 with a 95 per cent confidence interval ranging from 0.25 to 0.71).
They also found by using a random effects statistical model that the effect of echinacea was to reduce the duration of a cold by 1.4 days (the statistically significant weighted mean difference was -1.44 with a 95 per cent confidence interval ranging from -2.24 to -0.64)."
The reason for the different results? The first study looked only at Echinacea's effect on Rhinovirus - which is only one of app. 199 viruses involved in the common cold. Echinacea may not help with Rhinovirus, but is apparently extremely effective against the rest!
These were sent to me by a friend and I thought I would share the giggles. Enjoy!
The Washington Post's Mensa Invitational once again asked readers to take any word from the dictionary, alter it by adding, subtracting, or changing one letter, and supply a new definition. Here are this year's winners. Read them carefully. Each is an artificial word with only one letter altered from a real word.
1. Intaxication: Euphoria at getting a tax refund, which lasts until you realize it was your money to start with.
2. Reintarnation: Coming back to life as a hillbilly.
3. Bozone (n.): The substance surrounding stupid people that stops bright ideas from penetrating. The bozone layer, unfortunately, shows little sign of breaking down in the near future.
4. Cashtration (n.): The act of buying a house, which renders the subject financially im potent for an indefinite period.
5. Giraffiti: Vandalism spray-painted very, very high.
6. Sarchasm: The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn't get it.
7. Inoculatte: To take coffee intravenously when you are running late.
8. Hipatitis: Terminal coolness.
9. Osteopornosis: A degenerate disease. (This one got extra credit.)
10. Karmageddon: It's like, when everybody is sending off all these really bad vibes, right? And then, like, the Earth explodes and it's like, a serious bummer.
11. Decafalon (n.): The gruelling event of getting through the day consuming only things that are good for you.
12. Glibido: All talk and no action.
13. Dopeler effect: The tendency of stupid ideas to seem smarter when they come at you rapidly.
14. Arachnoleptic fit (n.): The frantic dance performed just after you've accidentally walked through a spider web.
15. Beelzebug ( n.): Satan in the form of a mosquito, that gets into your bedroom at three in the morning and cannot be cast out.
16. Caterpallor (n.): The color you turn after finding half a worm in the fruit you're eating.
As this report says, "What if an estimated 100,000 breast cancer patients got drugs that did nothing to combat their cancer, but put them at risk for heart failure and leukemia?"
The drugs in question, anthracyclines turn out to have almost no effect in 92 percent of breast cancer cases.
Weighing the benefit in 4% of patients against the possibility of heart attack or leukemia is a grave responsibility for a Doctor, and a horrible dilemma for a patient - always assuming they are given the facts and allowed to choose.
The only bright side is that the advance in knowledge this research brings may lead to more care in prescribing the drugs.
The latter is especially interesting when you consider that Melatonin has often been recommended for jet lag - I personally found it very helpful on my trips to Europe.
A recent Spanish study takes this a step further, and links low Melatonin levels to aging and inflammation.
When I consider how many older people come to me complaining of insomnia, and the number of those who also have inflammatory conditions, and I correlate that with the fact that cancer risk rises as one ages - a little supplementation with Melatonin begins to sound like a really good strategy.
