Ulcers from Africa

This article tells how the bacterium Helicobacter pylori traveled with humans when they left Africa and migrated into other areas of the world. I thought this was a very interesting article, complete with map, showing the routes of the migrations and their approximate time frames. The science of genetics is helping us understand more about subjects like these. Fascinating.


homo sapiens, evolution, migration, Africa, H. pylori, Helicobacter pylori, ulcers, stomach, prehistoric, genetics, health,

Plastics

I’m mentioning this article just for your information: bisphenol-A (BPA) a substance found in many everyday things, including dental sealants “may have long-term effects on female fertility.” Read the article for more details. (One further detail: this chemical has been mentioned in connection with some cancer.) What you can do about any of this I’m not sure, but it is a little scary. Use the Google search link on the right to look for more information.


news, women, bisphenol A, BPA, prostate cancer, breast cancer, fertility, cancer, plastic, health, longevity,

Tinnitus: Researchers at UC Irvine have had at least some partial success in treating tinnitus using low-pitched sound delivered through an MP3 player. Check this story. Wouldn’t it be great if this treatment, or one like it really worked and those who suffer from tinnitus got some relief?


tinnitus, hearing loss, health,

You can say what you want to about a high carb diet, but at least it doesn’t seem to cause colon cancer, unlike some other diets we might mention (for example eating red meat.) Is it time to go vegetarian or vegan? I already did, and I’m glad.


carbohydrates, carbs, meat, red meat, vegan, vegetarian, cancer, colon cancer, diet, food, health,

Antipsychotic Medication: Researchers may have found out why these drugs make patients gain weight. Apparently some of these medications “increase the activity of an enzyme called AMPK in cells in the part of the brain that regulates eating behaviour.” Hopefully they can use this knowledge to counter this troublesome side effect.

The above article says, “Zyprexa, which is considered to be the best therapeutic agent, causes the most weight gain.” I can understand that Zyprexa may cause the most weight gain. I know someone who took that drug and gained A LOT of weight. When the person switched to Risperdal the weight went away. They are very glad they didn’t contract diabetes in the process. But I don’t understand why they say Zyprexa is “considered to be the best therapeutic agent.” First, if it causes the most weight gain, is it really the best therapeutic agent? Second, in my experience as an observer, Zyprexa was very slow to work, if it worked at all. When this person I know who was on Zyprexa switched medications, Risperdal worked much faster, seemed to be more effective, and had fewer side effects. This is admittedly only one person’s experience, but maybe this perspective will help someone who has to deal with an illness like this firsthand. Good luck.


news, Zyprexa, Risperdal, antipsychotic, atypical, AMPK, enzyme, brain, mental illness, psychotic, psychosis, health, obesity, diabetes, side effects

I love Indian food. Now there is a new blog that also says “I love Indian food.” It’s called Benefits of Indian Food, and they explore the reasons why Indian food may be good for you. Check it out. A sibling site is The Indian Recipe Club.


curry, turmeric, antioxidants, Alzheimer's disease, inflammation, curcumin, cholesterol, diet, food, health, vegetables, vegetarian, recipe

Reverse Diabetes? We’ve talked about this before. Now apparently Dr. Neal Barnard has written a book on reversing diabetes using a low fat vegan diet. Good for him. Diabetes is a horrible disease that robs people of many things, including time. Here is a link with more information. And here is a link with info on the vegan diet. If you go to Google and type in Reverse Diabetes (there’s a search box here on the right of this page) you can find more information on reversing diabetes, including this article. (BTW, all this is similar to Dr. Dean Ornish’s program for reversing heart disease, so what’s good for one thing is also good for another. Also I wouldn’t leave out its effect on cancer prevention. So that is at least three things that this program is good for.)

I would like to say a word or two: eating a vegan diet does not have to be a bad thing. I used to eat meat, fast food, whatever, but now I am vegan and I like it. Sometimes you have to use a little imagination, but there is a lot of good food out there that is vegan and that tastes good. Some people are afraid they are going to miss food that other people are eating, but I think that people who eat a typical American diet are missing the food that I eat. I eat a lot of really good, not too spicy Indian food. I eat a lot of hummus, nuts, fruit, vegetables, salads. I usually eat at Whole Foods once a week. Those on a typical American diet don’t usually eat what I eat, and they don’t know what they’re missing. Also, if you search Google for Vegan Recipe you can find a lot of stuff that tastes really good and that’s good for you. And I plan to add more vegan recipes to this blog eventually.


diabetes, vegan, vegetarian, weight loss, breast cancer, obesity, cancer, cholesterol, colon cancer, diet, fat, food, health, heart disease,

Health Notes

Here are some miscellaneous articles that I thought might be of interest:

Can vitamin D prevent breast cancer and colon cancer? Here’s another article.

What is it with sciatic nerve pain? Here is an article that suggests that sciatica may not always be caused by disc problems, but could be a result of piriformis syndrome.

Can patients with heart failure reduce their risk of hospitalization by taking Lipitor?

Regular exercise may cut the risk of developing dementia or Alzheimer’s disease by 40%.

Stroke survivors may increase their risk of having another stroke if they stop taking aspirin.


vitamin D, sciatica, piriformis syndrome, Alzheimer's disease, heart failure, breast cancer, Lipitor, dementia, cancer, stroke, aspirin, colon cancer, diet, exercise, health, heart disease,

Are you a smoker, or a former smoker – and a male between the ages of 65 and 75? According to this article you need to be screened for an aneurysm of the abdominal aorta. This is pretty important. Aneurysms are no fun, and they are very dangerous. Aortic aneurysms kill 9,000 Americans each year.


smoking, aging, aneurysm, abdominal aorta, screening, health, heart disease,

This article says, “One of the unfortunate things that we have in our medical system is we are willing to pay for ... bypass surgery but we are not willing to pay for preventive therapy.” I agree. We should be more proactive and less reactive. Also, everybody talks about providing universal health care insurance, but I don’t hear anyone talking about eating healthy food and living a healthy lifestyle. Maybe that kind of talk would be unpopular with the public, but that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be said. You hear loud voices all the time advocating unhealthy food choices. The voices advocating healthy food choices and healthy lifestyles need to turn up the volume on their messages, at least until they are heard, and at least until they are heeded. Marion Nestle discusses some of these issues in her book Food Politics, and also in her other writings.


smoking, smoking cessation, bypass, surgery, blood pressure, health care, politics, lifestyle, healthy, diet, exercise, health, heart disease,

Obesity appears to be a strong risk factor for developing diabetes, although I don’t know why there is any controversy over that contention. I am fully convinced, for example, that my own mother would not have become diabetic and died early if she had not first been obese.


obesity, diabetes, diet, exercise, food, health, heart disease,

Health Notes

Here are a few miscellaneous items that I thought might be of interest.

Can men get osteoporosis too?

Here is an article on brittle nails.

Here is an article on prenatal vitamins.

Appearing to confirm something that I have thought for a long time, this article says kids do most of their growing while they sleep.

There may be a potential new cancer drug on the horizon.

osteoporosis, men, nails, vitamins, pregnancy, prenatal, cancer, growth, children, sleep, cure, medication, health,

OK, there are now three things I want to remember if I ever need coronary bypass surgery: try to get bloodless surgery; have the operation performed off the pump, i.e., with the heart still beating; and see if I can talk the surgeon into using aminocaproic acid or tranexamic acid to limit my blood loss instead of aprotinin. This article says:

More deaths occurred in patients treated with aprotinin than in those treated with two other blood-loss-limiting drugs -- aminocaproic acid and tranexamic acid.

The scientists concluded that 10,000 deaths could have been avoided over the five-year period "had aprotinin been replaced with either of these generic agents."

The report is published in the Feb. 7 issue of The Journal of the American Medical Association.

bypass, surgery, coronary, death, blood loss, side effects, aprotinin, aminocaproic acid, tranexamic acid, health, heart disease,

Can too much cholesterol in your diet give you Alzheimer’s disease? Read this article and the comments at the end. I used to eat meat, saturated fat, trans fat, whatever. I stopped. I think we should all make healthy choices for our diet. I think the person who commented on this article had a problem with knowing what those healthy choices are. It does seem that every day there is a new article about what we should or should not eat, and often the information seems contradictory. Of course everyone has to make his or her own choices. I have chosen to be a vegan. It works for me.


vegan, aging, Alzheimer's disease, calorie restriction, cholesterol, diet, exercise, fat, food, health, heart disease,

Will there ever be a cure for cancer? Excusing the syntax in the title of this blog post, the writer seems to think there might be.

When considering the question of cancer, it seems to me that there are basically two things to think about. I do know that when the human body is working properly we usually don’t get cancer. When the body’s defenses break down, as when we age, then we get more cancers. If we could find some way to boost those defenses, then we would have fewer cancers.

But sometimes we are attacked by something to which we have no defense, something like the human papillomavirus (HPV). It doesn’t matter how healthy we are, if HPV strikes us it is very likely that we will get sick. Some vaccines can prevent things like HPV, and perhaps some targeted therapies can eliminate some cancers as well.

Now that I think about it, there are other things that increase our risk of cancer. Some of our lifestyle – perhaps obesity, as an example – increases our risk. Then there are things in the environment, manmade toxins that give us cancer or increase our risk.

When you start thinking about all the different ways you can get cancer, it is easy to become discouraged. There’s no way we can cover them all here. People write entire books on subjects like these.

So will there ever be a cure for cancer? I don’t know, but I am very hopeful that there will someday be a cure for most cancers and that people will live longer, healthier lives.


aging, longevity, HPV, blood cancer, breast cancer, human papillomavirus, calorie restriction, virus, cancer, cure, obesity, alcohol, cholesterol, colon cancer, pollution, diet, environment, fat, food, health, heart disease, immunity, prostate cancer, ovarian cancer, lymphoma

Is there already a cure for cancer, and are pharmaceutical companies keeping it secret? Monica Tele says she thinks the answer to that question is no. I’m not one for conspiracies, but it is an interesting question, one that I haven’t thought much about, but one that deserves serious consideration.

Ms. Tele says, “If you think about it . . . researchers, doctors, and those in the pharmaceutical industry would want a cure to be known to help their own families and those they know fighting the disease. It only makes sense.” Ms. Tele obviously has a higher regard for those people than I do.

There is an analogy I could make between the pharmaceutical industry and the tobacco industry. The people in the tobacco industry were happy to keep details about the hazards of cigarette smoking a secret as long as they made their billions. I doubt that pharmaceutical industry CEOs and vice presidents have many more scruples.

One only has to look at what happens whenever the safety of a drug product is called into question. (Is Vioxx an example? Someone else could probably answer that better than I.) Often the company strenuously denies a problem exists, they fight it with all the resources they have, and sometimes it turns out they were lying, as with Big Tobacco or with other companies.

And just the other day there was an article about how doctors will withhold information from patients if they somehow object to the information, etc, so I'm not sure I trust them all that much.

If you think about it, why would pharmaceutical companies publish information that would cause people to stop buying their products? Do they have a death wish?

On the other hand, if a company had a cure for cancer, they could charge a lot of money for it, so they would not necessarily have to lose any profits in the long run, at least not until the patent runs out.

I’m sure there are books about this subject. Just go to Amazon and type in “cancer industry” or “politics of cancer” or similar terms. Lots of books come up.

Is there already a cure for cancer that the pharmaceutical companies aren’t telling us about? I doubt it. Will pharmaceutical companies try to protect profits they are making now and try to increase profits in the future? I think so. It only makes sense. That’s what corporations do.


breast cancer, drug companies, pharmaceutical, cancer, Vioxx, doctors, conspiracy, colon cancer, cure, diet, medical research, medicine, tobacco, health, heart disease,

It’s good to know they are working on a project that would save the world’s seeds in one location and protect them from worldwide catastrophe; but in this entire article there is no mention of biotechnology or of genetic engineering. Maybe they didn’t want to provoke any controversy. But I think these are two things that are threatening biodiversity and the world’s seeds. Anyway, read more about the project here. And read more about the Global Crop Diversity Trust here.



news, biodiversity, biotechnology, genetic engineering, global warming, disaster, environment, agriculture, catastrophe, crops, seeds, Doomsday, arctic, food, health,

Here is an article on resveratrol niacin, sirtuins, and aging. (Resveratrol is one of my favorite substances.) Maybe they’ll figure out, before I die, how to make us live longer. In the meantime, I take resveratrol and niacin. I watch my weight and try to eat healthy food. Maybe all that will do me some good?


SIRT1, aging, sirtuins, resveratrol, niacin, calorie restriction, vitamin B3, cancer, longevity, wine, antioxidants, diet, food, health, heart disease,

I suppose people have been taking Pycnogenol mainly for its antioxidant properties. Recent research suggests that Pycnogenol “lowers blood glucose levels in type 2 diabetes.” That seems like pretty good news to me. I think I would talk to my doctor, though, before I started taking it for a medical condition.


Pycnogenol, antioxidants, procyanidins, flavonoids, blood sugar, diabetes, glucose, Precose, proanthocyanidin, health,

Students who believed that intelligence could be developed performed better than students who believed intelligence was fixed and could not change. When you think about that it seems obvious. It is the difference between believing you are capable of doing anything and believing you are limited. I have always said that whatever you believe is what you will do. If you believe you can learn to solve that math problem, then you will. If you believe you can’t, then you won’t, unless you just get lucky and somehow prove yourself wrong; or unless some very dedicated teacher steps in and teaches you how to do it. But the results of the above research point to a very interesting variable in education: student belief. If you really want to leave no child behind, then nurture the child’s belief in his or her capabilities. There really is power in positive thinking.


education, intelligence, self esteem, confidence, aptitude,