By Geoffrey Cowley and Karen Springen
NEWSWEEK, July, 22-29, 2002
LUCKILY THERE WAS good news for the menopausal woman, “if only she be a clever member of her sex.” Lorand had discovered that extracts from pigs’ ovaries could “put off old age for a score of years,” or at least “mitigate its effects when it has asserted itself with all its terrors.” By the early 1940s, drugmakers were mass-producing estrogen from pregnant mares’ urine (hence the brand name Premarin). And by 1960 the august New England Journal of Medicine was recommending the stuff for “everyone with evidence of an estrogen lack”—which is to say virtually every woman over 50. Last year U.S. pharmacists filled some 45 million prescriptions for Premarin and an additional 22 million for Prempro, which consists of the same drug with a progestin chaser.
Small wonder, then, that news last week about hormone-replacement therapy caused such gasps. This wasn’t just another isolated study contradicting the last one to make headlines. Federal health officials announced last Tuesday that the jury was finally in—and that Prempro does significantly more harm than good when taken for long periods. Women had been told for decades that estrogen taken with progestin would not only ease hot flashes and insomnia but help preserve bone strength, mental acuity and, most important, heart health. There’s no question that HRT can ease the acute symptoms of menopause, and the claim about bone strength has held up to scrutiny. But after observing more than 16,000 women for roughly five years, researchers found conclusively that the hormones in Prempro raise the risk of heart attack, stroke, blood clots and breast cancer. The federally sponsored study was supposed to run for eight years, but the five-year results were so decisive that researchers cut it short and urged the participants to stop taking their pills. Dr. JoAnn Manson, a women’s health expert at Harvard Medical School, calls it “the most dramatic sea change I’ve seen in clinical medicine.”
NOT RULED OUT
She’s not alone in that sentiment. The announcement caused a near panic among the more than 13 million American women now on hormone-replacement therapy. Doctors’ offices were overwhelmed by calls, and Wyeth Pharmaceuticals, the maker of Prempro, saw its stock price plunge by 25 percent overnight. Fortunately, the study didn’t uncover huge, unimagined dangers to patients. “This is not like an urgent medical alert or the withdrawal of a drug from the market,” says Dr. Jacques Rossouw, acting director of the federal Women’s Health Initiative, which organized the trial. The findings don’t rule out Prempro as a short-term remedy for menopausal symptoms. And they don’t apply to women who take estrogen without progestin following hysterectomy. But for millions of women juggling the pros and cons of long-term HRT, the new findings offer something virtually unprecedented, which is clarity. The evidence is in, and an era is ending.
Why has it taken us so long to assess the risks of estrogen? How could a practice that does more harm than good become such a medical mainstay? “The incestuous relationship between the pharmaceutical companies and the medical establishment is part of it,” says Dr. Susan Love, a prominent women’s health specialist and longtime critic of HRT. “A lot of the information doctors get is channeled through the companies. I would bet the average doctor thought this was already proven.”
Does the medical establishment devote adequate resources to studying women's health?
No. Researchers have always focused on men and they always will
No. But women are getting much more attention than they used to
Yes. It seems as if heatlh news these days is all about women
But lazy dupes were not the only ones prescribing Prempro. Until recently, the available research suggested that long-term HRT was a boon to women’s health. When scientists observed large groups of women through their later years, the hormone users always seemed to fare best.
Those on long-term treatment suffered more than their share of breast cancer, but they experienced far fewer heart attacks (a seemingly predictable finding, since estrogen helps modulate cholesterol). Since heart disease dwarfs breast cancer as a health threat, the overall advantages seemed clear. “We thought most postmenopausal women should take HRT unless they were already at high risk of breast cancer,” says Dr. Deborah Grady, the head of a panel that wrote the American College of Physicians’ once authoritative 1992 guidelines. There was just one problem: nobody knew whether hormones made women healthy—or whether healthy women were more likely to take hormones.
ETHICAL QUESTIONS
The study cut short last week was designed specifically to tackle that question. Instead of passively monitoring women who had made their own choices about HRT, researchers at 40 clinics across the country recruited 16,608 healthy volunteers, ages 50 to 79, and randomly assigned them to take either Prempro or an identical dummy pill once a day for eight years. When the study began in 1997, critics questioned the ethics of giving people placebo when HRT had such huge ostensible benefits. But like any large clinical trial, this one had an independent monitoring board that would analyze the data as they accumulated, and halt the study early if decisive risks or benefits emerged. To the dismay of women like Janice Marabella, that’s exactly what happened. Marabella, a 62-year-old office worker in San Jose, Calif., joined the trial five years ago and felt fine until last week, when she followed the directive to stop taking her pills. It turned out she had been on hormones, not placebo, and she found herself teary and volatile within days of quitting the regimen. She now plans to resume treatment as a private patient, if only to wean herself more slowly. “The hot flashes and night sweats I could deal with,” she says. “The mood swings are something else.”
Marcia Stefanick, Ph.D., of Stanford University School of Medicine
Why should she give it up at all? What dangers has this huge clinical trial brought to light? It was clear during the first year of the study that Prempro was creating hazards as well as benefits. And as the researchers reported last week in The Journal of the American Medical Association, the ratio grew less favorable over time. Over the course of the study, women on HRT reduced their hip-fracture rate by a third (compared with women on placebo) and suffered significantly less colon cancer as well. Their chances of suffering a heart attack or pulmonary blood clot were elevated throughout the study, and their stroke risk was high from the second year on. None of those hazards caused a decisive imbalance. But five years into the study, it became clear that women on Prempro were developing invasive breast cancer at a higher rate than the control group. “That alone wouldn’t have stopped the trial,” says Marcia Stefanick of Stanford, who chairs the Women’s Health Initiative’s steering committee. “But when we combined it with the cardiovascular outcomes, it became very clear that the risks of treatment exceeded the benefit.”
That doesn’t mean HRT poses grave risks to individual women. During the study, the heart-attack rate was 29 percent higher in the treatment group than it was in the control group. The stroke rate was 41 percent higher, and the risk of invasive breast cancer was 26 percent higher. The odds sound alarming when you frame them that way, less so when you consider the rates at which these conditions actually occur. In a typical year, heart attacks struck 37 of every 10,000 Prempro users in the study, versus 30 out of 10,000 placebo users. In other words, taking Prempro boosted a woman’s annual heart-attack risk from 0.3 percent up to 0.37 percent. The annual stroke rate rose from 21 to 29 per 10,000, and the breast-cancer rate increased from 30 to 38 per 10,000.
ASSESSING RISKS
Unfortunately, even a small risk to individuals can have big consequences when applied to a large population. The study suggests that, on balance, a group of 10,000 long-term Prempro users would suffer 31 excess health crises each year (strokes, heart attacks, blood clots, breast cancers), while avoiding only 11 bone fractures and colon cancers. That’s a net increase of 20. If 100,000 people take up long-term HRT, they’ll suffer 200 of these needless events each year. A million long-term Prempro users will experience 2,000 of them annually—which means 20,000 over the course of a decade. This is no way to prevent hip fractures.
domingo, 22 de julho de 2007
Estudo liga homossexualidade ao número de irmãos
Comportamento
Segunda, 26 de junho de 2006
Estudo liga homossexualidade ao número de irmãos
O último filho homem de uma família de muitos meninos é mais propenso à homossexualidade, afirmam cientistas canadenses em um estudo publicado nesta segunda-feira na edição on-line da publicação US Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
O estudo, conduzido por Anthony Bogaert, da Universidade Brock, perto de Toronto, revela que "a mais consistente correlação biodemográfica de orientação sexual dos homens é o número de irmãos mais velhos" e não as influências sociais.
"Só irmãos mais velhos biológicos e não qualquer outra característica entre os irmãos ou irmãs, inclusive de irmãos mais velhos não-biológicos, influencia a orientação sexual dos homens, indiferentemente da quantidade de tempo passada com estes irmãos ou irmãs", alega Bogaert.
Segundo esta teoria, o sistema imunológico da mãe interpreta e registra os fetos masculinos - não os femininos - como estranhos e cria "anticorpos maternais antimasculinos" que afetam a parte do cérebro que determina a sexualidade.
O efeito é cumulativo e por isso é mais provável que venha a causar homossexualismo no último de uma série de filhos nascidos da mesma mãe. Os fetos de meninas não são afetados porque as mães, por serem mulheres, não criam anticorpos durante sua gestação.
Os pesquisadores, que entrevistaram 944 homens canadenses para a realização do estudo, não investigaram o mecanismo em ação, mas os resultados sustentam uma teoria de "efeito de ordem fraternal" sobre a homossexualidade em homens precedidos por outros, acrescenta o estudo. Outras teorias sugerem que a idade da mãe ou o nível de estresse durante a gravidez podem afetar a sexualidade masculina.
AFP
Comentário do Editor:
Tal matéria apenas apresenta as inúmeras possibilidades da bioquímica humana ainda não investigadas, o desenvolvimento e evolução humana, como também das espécies, vai de encontro ao ambiente que nos encontramos como também entendemos que tal ambiente é constantemente construído pelos seus elementos, vivos ou inanimados.
Segunda, 26 de junho de 2006
Estudo liga homossexualidade ao número de irmãos
O último filho homem de uma família de muitos meninos é mais propenso à homossexualidade, afirmam cientistas canadenses em um estudo publicado nesta segunda-feira na edição on-line da publicação US Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
O estudo, conduzido por Anthony Bogaert, da Universidade Brock, perto de Toronto, revela que "a mais consistente correlação biodemográfica de orientação sexual dos homens é o número de irmãos mais velhos" e não as influências sociais.
"Só irmãos mais velhos biológicos e não qualquer outra característica entre os irmãos ou irmãs, inclusive de irmãos mais velhos não-biológicos, influencia a orientação sexual dos homens, indiferentemente da quantidade de tempo passada com estes irmãos ou irmãs", alega Bogaert.
Segundo esta teoria, o sistema imunológico da mãe interpreta e registra os fetos masculinos - não os femininos - como estranhos e cria "anticorpos maternais antimasculinos" que afetam a parte do cérebro que determina a sexualidade.
O efeito é cumulativo e por isso é mais provável que venha a causar homossexualismo no último de uma série de filhos nascidos da mesma mãe. Os fetos de meninas não são afetados porque as mães, por serem mulheres, não criam anticorpos durante sua gestação.
Os pesquisadores, que entrevistaram 944 homens canadenses para a realização do estudo, não investigaram o mecanismo em ação, mas os resultados sustentam uma teoria de "efeito de ordem fraternal" sobre a homossexualidade em homens precedidos por outros, acrescenta o estudo. Outras teorias sugerem que a idade da mãe ou o nível de estresse durante a gravidez podem afetar a sexualidade masculina.
AFP
Comentário do Editor:
Tal matéria apenas apresenta as inúmeras possibilidades da bioquímica humana ainda não investigadas, o desenvolvimento e evolução humana, como também das espécies, vai de encontro ao ambiente que nos encontramos como também entendemos que tal ambiente é constantemente construído pelos seus elementos, vivos ou inanimados.
sexta-feira, 20 de julho de 2007
Grapefruit pode aumentar risco de câncer de mama, diz estudo
Da BBC
Comer grapefruit (fruta também conhecida como toranja) todos os dias pode aumentar em mais de 30% o risco de desenvolver câncer de mama, segundo cientistas americanos.
Um estudo com mais de 50 mil mulheres que já tinham passado pela menopausa descobriu que comer apenas um quarto de uma grapefruit por dia aumentou o risco da doença.
Segundo informações publicadas na revista especializada British Journal of Cancer, a fruta aumenta o nível de estrogênio, o hormônio sexual feminino associado ao maior risco de desenvolvimento do câncer de mama.
Os pesquisadores e outros especialistas afirmam, no entanto, que precisam de mais estudos sobre o assunto para reforçar a teoria.
Questionário
As mulheres que participaram da pesquisa tiveram que preencher um questionário em que contavam com qual freqüência consumiam a fruta e o tamanho das porções consumidas.
Os pesquisadores, das universidades do Sul da Califórnia e do Havaí, descobriram que as mulheres que comiam um quarto de uma grapefruit, ou porções maiores, todos os dias tinham um risco maior de desenvolver câncer de mama do que as que não consumiam a fruta.
Estudos anteriores mostraram que uma molécula chamada citocromo P450 3A3 (CYP3A4) está envolvida no metabolismo do hormônio estrogênio.
A grapefruit pode aumentar os níveis de estrogênio no sangue ao inibir esta molécula, permitindo o acúmulo do hormônio.
Os pesquisadores descobriram que em mulheres que comiam pelo menos um quarto de grapefruit diariamente os níveis de estrogênio eram maiores.
"Já foi estabelecido que o estrogênio está associado com o risco de câncer de mama. Então, se o consumo de grapefruit afeta o metabolismo levando a maiores níveis (de estrogênio) circulando, então é biologicamente plausível que o consumo regular de grapefruit aumente o risco de câncer de mama em mulheres", afirmaram os cientistas.
Mais pesquisa
Os cientistas dizem que mais pesquisa é necessária para confirmar as descobertas, que podem ter sido afetadas pelo fato de ter sido levado em consideração o consumo da fruta, e não do suco da fruta.
O câncer de mama corresponde a quase um terço de todos os tipos de câncer em mulheres e outros hábitos já foram ligados à doença como o consumo de álcool e estar acima do peso.
"Esta pesquisa é interessante, mas este estudo é simplesmente uma peça do quebra-cabeça que pode nos ajudar a entender como nossas dietas afetam a saúde", disse Joanne Lunn, cientista do setor de nutrição na Fundação Britânica de Nutrição.
Lunn afirma que alguns padrões de dieta estão associados com um risco reduzido de certos tipos de câncer e uma dieta rica em várias frutas e vegetais pode ajudar a reduzir o risco de doenças do coração e alguns tipos de câncer.
Comer grapefruit (fruta também conhecida como toranja) todos os dias pode aumentar em mais de 30% o risco de desenvolver câncer de mama, segundo cientistas americanos.
Um estudo com mais de 50 mil mulheres que já tinham passado pela menopausa descobriu que comer apenas um quarto de uma grapefruit por dia aumentou o risco da doença.
Segundo informações publicadas na revista especializada British Journal of Cancer, a fruta aumenta o nível de estrogênio, o hormônio sexual feminino associado ao maior risco de desenvolvimento do câncer de mama.
Os pesquisadores e outros especialistas afirmam, no entanto, que precisam de mais estudos sobre o assunto para reforçar a teoria.
Questionário
As mulheres que participaram da pesquisa tiveram que preencher um questionário em que contavam com qual freqüência consumiam a fruta e o tamanho das porções consumidas.
Os pesquisadores, das universidades do Sul da Califórnia e do Havaí, descobriram que as mulheres que comiam um quarto de uma grapefruit, ou porções maiores, todos os dias tinham um risco maior de desenvolver câncer de mama do que as que não consumiam a fruta.
Estudos anteriores mostraram que uma molécula chamada citocromo P450 3A3 (CYP3A4) está envolvida no metabolismo do hormônio estrogênio.
A grapefruit pode aumentar os níveis de estrogênio no sangue ao inibir esta molécula, permitindo o acúmulo do hormônio.
Os pesquisadores descobriram que em mulheres que comiam pelo menos um quarto de grapefruit diariamente os níveis de estrogênio eram maiores.
"Já foi estabelecido que o estrogênio está associado com o risco de câncer de mama. Então, se o consumo de grapefruit afeta o metabolismo levando a maiores níveis (de estrogênio) circulando, então é biologicamente plausível que o consumo regular de grapefruit aumente o risco de câncer de mama em mulheres", afirmaram os cientistas.
Mais pesquisa
Os cientistas dizem que mais pesquisa é necessária para confirmar as descobertas, que podem ter sido afetadas pelo fato de ter sido levado em consideração o consumo da fruta, e não do suco da fruta.
O câncer de mama corresponde a quase um terço de todos os tipos de câncer em mulheres e outros hábitos já foram ligados à doença como o consumo de álcool e estar acima do peso.
"Esta pesquisa é interessante, mas este estudo é simplesmente uma peça do quebra-cabeça que pode nos ajudar a entender como nossas dietas afetam a saúde", disse Joanne Lunn, cientista do setor de nutrição na Fundação Britânica de Nutrição.
Lunn afirma que alguns padrões de dieta estão associados com um risco reduzido de certos tipos de câncer e uma dieta rica em várias frutas e vegetais pode ajudar a reduzir o risco de doenças do coração e alguns tipos de câncer.
quinta-feira, 19 de julho de 2007
How Mercury Damages Your Brain
If you've ever questioned just how dangerous mercury is for your brain, this short film from the University of Calgary will put your suspicions to rest. The film shows, in vivid detail, exactly what happens to your brain cells when they're exposed to mercury, making it easy to understand why mercury has been linked to a host of harmful reactions like autism, heart disease, Parkinson's disease, multiple sclerosis, infertility and many more.
..............
Clique aqui e veja o videosinho:
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2007/07/17/how-mercury-damages-your-brain.aspx
..............
Clique aqui e veja o videosinho:
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2007/07/17/how-mercury-damages-your-brain.aspx
A Dirty World - Air Pollution
Environmental Medicine
A Dirty World - Air Pollution
International Medical Veritas Association
As much as 40 per cent of children from certain heavily polluted areas suffer from asthma. [i]
If you are sick and are living in a city where you can literally see the air when looking from a distance you need not wonder so much about the cause of your illness. It is right there in the air you breathe. It might not be the only source of your disease but it is a cause, part of the etiology. Every human being on the planet is being poisoned but in some places it is like a low intensity gas chamber, slowly forcing poisons into our bodies until we get sick and then die.
As adults we make certain decisions as to where we work and live and that is just a fact of life. It is sad though, tragically so, that our young ones have neither choice nor option in this regard. They are much more vulnerable to environmental threats and the statistics are showing that. Researchers from all over the globe are posting information about the chemical hazard that sits like a background radiation cloud across our once pristine planet. Chemical radioactivity is an appropriate phrase to describe what the situation is with mercury and other chemicals that are causing disease rates and cancer to sore through the stratosphere.
For every 10ug/m3 increase in pollution, the thickness of the lining of the neck artery increased by between 3.9% and 4.3%.
Researchers at The University of Southern California have found that for every 10ug/m3 increase in pollution, the thickness of the lining of the neck artery increased by between 3.9% and 4.3%. Professor Nino Kuenzli, author of this study said the public health implications of the findings "could be immense." Scores of new studies each year demonstrate that air pollution can be harmful to human health and that children are the most susceptible. Fine particle pollution cuts the average life expectancy by about the same amount as road accidents reported the U.N. Economic Commission for Europe in 2004 saying, "It is relatively recently that scientific studies have begun to show the extent of the health effects and how these can be linked to the concentrations of fine particles in the air." [ii]
Business has virtually free rein in its use of deadly toxins. US industries manufacture and import about 75,000 chemicals, using 3,000 of them at the rate of more than a million pounds a year.
According to the Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR) about 100 million Americans, more than one-third of the population, suffer from some form of chronic disease like asthma, diabetes, cancer, heart and kidney disease or arthritis.
EPA experts acknowledge that there are tools available today that can measure the toxic dangers in any locality, which can dramatically improve decisions on where people can safely live, work, and go to school or play. What no one has communicated bluntly is that those safe places have become virtually extinct leaving us and our children with no safe place, no haven from a chemical onslaught that will only get worse with each passing year.
The first principle of detoxification and chelation (the removal of heavy metals) is the directive to avoid exposure in the first place. Absolute avoidance of exposure is virtually impossible today but that does not mean we should not try. Eating organic food is the obvious first step but for many moving out of ones city and even country would be required. Utterly reject mercury fillings in the mouth and a pledge to never take mercury preserved vaccines, or any vaccines for that matter, would be logical second steps.
As our knowledge about the etiology of disease progresses, the evidence for environmental contributions to disease grows.
Most of the world's urban dwellers are exposed to intense pollution and entire countries like China and certain parts of the United States are like vast poison fields. Most cities are toxic traps for all who lives within. It's much worse than you can imagine for you are not imagining the mercury problem the entire globe, but especially certain parts, are having. (Survival Medicine will have a two hundred page section called The Rising Tide of Mercury. Everyone needs to understand the mercury issue deeply if they want to survive what is happening just with this issue alone.)
It's not only in the huge cities that citizens are at risk.
Dr. Palmer from the University of Texas informed us a while ago that t here is a significant increase in the rates of special education students and autism rates associated with increases in environmentally released mercury. On average, for each 1,000 lb of environmentally released mercury, there was a 43% increase in the rate of special education services and a 61% increase in the rate of autism.[iii]
And a new study estimated that 1 in 58 children in the UK has autism with similar numbers feared in Ireland.
The Division of Environmental and Occupational Disease Control, California Department of Health Services, explored associations between autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and environmental exposures, by linking the California autism surveillance system to estimated hazardous air pollutant (HAP) concentrations compiled by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The adjusted odds ratios (AORs) were elevated by 50% in the top quartile of chlorinated solvents and heavy metals [95% confidence intervals confirming Dr. Palmer and his alarming assertions.
States that are reporting the highest levels of mercury emissions also have the highest rates of developmental disorders including autism. (Dr. John Palmer)
A two-year study of mercury accumulation in the town of Steubenville, Ohio, by federal EPA researcher Matt Landis and the University of Michigan disputes the basic EPA policy on mercury; showing emissions to be much more concentrated in local areas around power plants than thought before. The EPA contends only about 8% of the mercury from coal-burning plants, incinerators and boilers settles to the ground locally. The Steubenville study contends nearly 70% of the mercury found in the Steubenville area came from local sources [iv]
The astounding array of pollutants in the newborn and unborn should be a wake up call that the existing material frameworks of the world should be changed.
What this means is that it is dangerous to live anywhere near coal-burning plants, incinerators and boilers. If mercury spreads widely, as presumed by the model commonly used by the EPA, communities near coal-fired plants face no greater risk than those elsewhere. If large amounts of mercury from those plants settle within 60 to 120 miles of a plant, then local communities face a much larger risk. You have to decide who or what to trust in this regard.
Actually we lose in either direction for what it means is that if the mercury falls far from the source it means that the high winds are taking it all over the world, to every square inch of the planet, though like with radiation patterns, certain places would be much hotter than others.
It is now accurate, scientific and medically sound to state that we are poisoning every man, woman and child on earth.
To get a birds eye view of the hurricanes of toxicity we face on the parts per billion and million level it is helpful to know that air pollution in major cities is now being seen as dangerous to health as radiation exposure suffered by survivors of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster. A recent study suggests high levels of urban air pollution cut short life expectancy more than the radiation exposure of emergency workers who were sent into the 19-mile exclusion zone around Chernobyl straight after the accident. [v]
Women living in areas of high air pollution were at greater risk of heart disease and death, while children living within 500m of motorways suffered more permanent lung damage and lower life expectancy.
Jim Smith, a scientist at the government's Centre for Ecology and Hydrology in Dorchester, assessed the health risks faced by emergency workers at Chernobyl directly after the explosion and those who unofficially set up home in the exclusion zone afterwards. He compared them with the more familiar risks of air pollution, obesity, and passive and active smoking. "The immediate effects of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombs led to approximately 210,000 deaths in the two cities. However, radiation exposures experienced by the most exposed group of survivors led to an average loss of life expectancy significantly lower than that caused by severe obesity or active smoking," the report states.
This is not to diminish the threat of radiation from medical tests, nuclear reactors and the totally insane use of depleted uranium weapons and the intentional injecting of mercury into children's bodies and teeth. What this is telling us specifically is that we are in huge danger from the air we breathe, and that is only one part of our exposure. The water we drink is compromised as are the foods we eat. We are talking about nightmares of the worst kind, chemical and radioactive ones that are accumulating, building up in intensity everywhere including in our very own bodies.
Mercury is not an ordinary air pollutant nor is it classified as such. Because it is a neurotoxin that causes neurological problems, it is considered a hazardous air pollutant, which gives it a different legal status. This is a very polite way of saying that mercury is a nerve poison, which even at the lowest concentrations imaginable causes problems for the young. We are only in the beginning phases of becoming aware of the tremendous problem with thousands of tons of mercury being poured into the air each year. If one gram of mercury can pollute a 20-acre lake, or anything near that size, or kill a child, imagine what 8 to ten billion grams of it would do. [vi]
Lead and mercury are highly toxic to the brain, nervous system, kidneys, reproductive system, and immune system.
Power plants in the US put 48 tons of mercury a year into the atmosphere through burning coal. [vii] China spews 600 tons of mercury into the air each year, accounting for a great part of the world's non-natural emissions. And the volume is rising quickly with more coal fired energy plants now under construction in China than exists in the entire country of England. China all by itself is bringing on a mercury crisis. By 2020, China will have nearly 1,000 gigawatts of total electricity-generating capacity, more than twice the current amount, according to the State Power Economic Research Center.
We have reached a milestone in human history. Awaiting each and every child born on the planet is a life doomed to being poisoned.
China will this year burn about 1.9 billion tons of coal, a 12% increase from last year, and consumption is expected to keep rising. In fifteen years we can expect China to be pumping 1,400 tons of mercury into the air or approximately 60 additional tons a year as new capacity comes online. [viii] This is a huge number and will join the already enormous amount of mercury bellowing up from China's more than 2,000 coal-fired power plants.
This mercury soars high into the atmosphere and then around the globe on what has become a transcontinental conveyor belt of mercury polluted air. On Mount Bachelor, in Oregon, considered one of the cleanest sites in the Northwest, scientists from the University of Washington have been sampling the air on the 9,065 foot mountain top since 2004.
They are monitoring for pollutants such as mercury as well as gases, including carbon monoxide, ozone and nitrogen oxides. This site is also used by Staci Simonich's lab at OSU to look at long-distance travels of pesticides and other pollutants. "It's sort of ironic that we have to go to one of the cleanest locations to look for pollutants," said Daniel Jaffe, a professor of atmospheric and environmental chemistry at the University of Washington, Bothell. Some of what they are finding comes from China. [ix] The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that on certain days nearly 25 percent of the particulate matter in the skies above Los Angeles can be traced to China. Some experts predict China could one day account for a third of all California's air pollution.
According to the observations made by the internationally recognized medical researcher, Dr. Yoshiaki Omura, all cancer cells have mercury in them. Since mercury is the second most toxic substance on this planet, its presence provides a strong initiating factor for disrupting cell function. Support for this idea comes from Dr. Hans Nolte who states that, "The wave spectrum of mercury contains more than thirteen wavelengths, whereas only one or two frequencies or wavelengths are usually observed for the other heavy or noble metals." It is Dr. Nolte's belief that the many harmful effects of mercury could be explained to some degree on the basis of this great variety of wavelengths. Dr. Omura's clinical observation concludes that one of the primary reasons cancer returns is because residual mercury reignites a pathological environment even after surgery, chemotherapy, radiation, and alternative therapies report a positive effect. [x]
Meanwhile Beijing recently persuaded the World Bank to cut from a report finding that p ollution causes about 750,000 premature deaths in China each year. The Financial Times reported saying that, "The World Bank was told that it could not publish this information. It was too sensitive and could cause social unrest," one unnamed adviser told the Financial Times. [xi] Capitalists on the other hand would use a different rational excuse but clearly governments and corporations on both sides of the great political divide are not concerned that they are the ones who are driving up cancer rates through the stratosphere.
The brains of our children are our most precious economic resource, and we haven't recognized how vulnerable they are. We must make protection of the young brain a paramount goal of public healthprotection. You have only one chance to develop a brain. (Philippe Grandjean - Harvard School of Public Health)
Children's brain development is being impaired by some of the more than 70,000 human-made chemicals on the market, according to the WWF. [i] [xii] The report, which surveyed current research in the field, charges chemicals with such neurological effects as poor memory, reduced visual recognition and motor skills, and lower IQ, and cites other U.S. research that already ties 10 percent of all neurobehavioral disorders to chemical exposure. While it singles out some chemicals by name -- particularly brominated flame-retardants, PCBs, and dioxins -- the report laments that there is little to no safety information available on most chemicals floating about in the environment and in households.
"In effect, we are all living in a global chemical experiment of which we don't know the outcome," said WWF's Helen McDade. Environmental contaminants are suspected to cause cancer, birth defects, immune system defects, reduced IQ, behavioral abnormalities, decreased fertility, altered sex hormone balance, altered metabolism and specific organ dysfunctions. Every day children are exposed to chemicals that have not been tested for safety.
Exposure (particularly prenatal exposure) to certain endocrine disrupting chemicals (e.g. PCBs) can have adverse effects on neurological development ... and behavior... delays in...cognitive development has been found to be associated with neonatal PCB exposure. (World Health Organization)
Also according to the WWF in 1929 the world was producing 1 million tons of chemicals and pharmaceuticals a year. Today that number has climbed to 400 million tons. That means that we pollute the earth at a rate that until only recently took decades to accomplish. Easily in one year we now do the damage it took from 1930 to 1960 to effect. In the next ten years we will collectively produce 4 billion tons of chemicals, which in one way or another eventually end up as toxic pollutants in the environment.
Mark Sircus Ac., OMDDirector International Medical Veritas Association http://www.imva.infohttp://www.magnesiumforlife.com
.........................
For my readers interested in financial matters:
Our Economy is on an Artificial Life-support System
by Richard C. Cook
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=6239
[i] As much as 40 per cent of children from certain heavily polluted areas suffer from asthma by the time they reach six years of age. Asthma rates among children have increased almost five-fold since the 1970s and more than doubled in the past decade, according to research published in England at the end of 2004. The proportion of under-16s diagnosed with asthma has jumped from 5.5 per cent in 1973 to 12 per cent in 1988, and to 27.3 per cent last year.ABC News. Half Perth six-year-olds suffer asthma Sunday, November 14, 2004.
[ii] Asscociated Press. Nov. 29, 2004
[iii] Palmer RF, Blanchard S, Stein Z, Mandell D, Miller C. University of Texas Health Science Center, San Antonio Department of Family and Community Medicine, 7703 Floyd Curl Drive, San Antonio, Texas 78229-3900, USA. palmer@uthscsa.edu
[iv] http://msnbc.msn.com/id/13140004/
[v] Smith JT. Are passive smoking, air pollution and obesity a greater mortality risk than major radiation incidents? BMC Public Health. 2007 Apr 3;7:49. PMID: 17407581
[vi] The world is 510 million square kilometers and 71 percent of that is ocean. One gram of mercury poured into eighty million liters of water would be cause for concern under federal human health standards for drinking water, enough to contaminate a typical mid-western lake. Thus one gram pollutes a typical 20 acre lake and 20 acres equals .081 square kilometers. One ton of mercury contains 1 million grams which would thus pollute 81,000 square kilometers of lakes. One thousand tons would pollute 81 million square kilometers, so 7,000 tons of mercury would pollute a lake the size of the world. The world is not a lake, so the one gram rule does not quite work, but it offers us a good reference point. The oceans are quite deep and the atmosphere also holds a vast capacity to hold mercury, as does the soil. But over the last five hundred years we have dug up and used approximately 1 million tons of mercury. That is 1,000,000,000,000 grams (a trillion) or enough to blanket each 20 acres on earth with over 149 grams. It is these 149 grams that is responsible for mercury levels increasing by a factor of 20 times over the last 3 centuries.
[vii] DEP Commissioner Bradley Campbell statement about national emission levels. Associated Press. Fri, Nov. 05, 2004
[viii] Wall Street Journal. Invisible Export A Hidden Cost Of China's Growth: Mercury Migration
December 17, 2004
[ix] Scientists can use a computer model to find the wind origins for the last 10 days. If there is a big fire or dust storm across the globe, you can see the pollution crossing the ocean on satellite data. In lesser cases computers trace the path of Northwest winds to find origins. Nine years ago Jaffe's group first detected Chinese pollution on the Washington coast. Other scientists have since confirmed it, by identifying patterns of trace metals that are unique to Chinese pollution, much like a fingerprint, Jaffe said. Pollutants from China hitting Oregon Cascades; Associated Press; 8/27//06; oregonlive.com
[x] The Pathogenic Multi-potency of Mercury, Biological Therapy, Journal of Natural Medicine, Vol. VI, No. 3, June 1988
[xi] http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070703/ap_on_re_as/china_pollution;_ylt=AhO
...
A Dirty World - Air Pollution
International Medical Veritas Association
As much as 40 per cent of children from certain heavily polluted areas suffer from asthma. [i]
If you are sick and are living in a city where you can literally see the air when looking from a distance you need not wonder so much about the cause of your illness. It is right there in the air you breathe. It might not be the only source of your disease but it is a cause, part of the etiology. Every human being on the planet is being poisoned but in some places it is like a low intensity gas chamber, slowly forcing poisons into our bodies until we get sick and then die.
As adults we make certain decisions as to where we work and live and that is just a fact of life. It is sad though, tragically so, that our young ones have neither choice nor option in this regard. They are much more vulnerable to environmental threats and the statistics are showing that. Researchers from all over the globe are posting information about the chemical hazard that sits like a background radiation cloud across our once pristine planet. Chemical radioactivity is an appropriate phrase to describe what the situation is with mercury and other chemicals that are causing disease rates and cancer to sore through the stratosphere.
For every 10ug/m3 increase in pollution, the thickness of the lining of the neck artery increased by between 3.9% and 4.3%.
Researchers at The University of Southern California have found that for every 10ug/m3 increase in pollution, the thickness of the lining of the neck artery increased by between 3.9% and 4.3%. Professor Nino Kuenzli, author of this study said the public health implications of the findings "could be immense." Scores of new studies each year demonstrate that air pollution can be harmful to human health and that children are the most susceptible. Fine particle pollution cuts the average life expectancy by about the same amount as road accidents reported the U.N. Economic Commission for Europe in 2004 saying, "It is relatively recently that scientific studies have begun to show the extent of the health effects and how these can be linked to the concentrations of fine particles in the air." [ii]
Business has virtually free rein in its use of deadly toxins. US industries manufacture and import about 75,000 chemicals, using 3,000 of them at the rate of more than a million pounds a year.
According to the Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR) about 100 million Americans, more than one-third of the population, suffer from some form of chronic disease like asthma, diabetes, cancer, heart and kidney disease or arthritis.
EPA experts acknowledge that there are tools available today that can measure the toxic dangers in any locality, which can dramatically improve decisions on where people can safely live, work, and go to school or play. What no one has communicated bluntly is that those safe places have become virtually extinct leaving us and our children with no safe place, no haven from a chemical onslaught that will only get worse with each passing year.
The first principle of detoxification and chelation (the removal of heavy metals) is the directive to avoid exposure in the first place. Absolute avoidance of exposure is virtually impossible today but that does not mean we should not try. Eating organic food is the obvious first step but for many moving out of ones city and even country would be required. Utterly reject mercury fillings in the mouth and a pledge to never take mercury preserved vaccines, or any vaccines for that matter, would be logical second steps.
As our knowledge about the etiology of disease progresses, the evidence for environmental contributions to disease grows.
Most of the world's urban dwellers are exposed to intense pollution and entire countries like China and certain parts of the United States are like vast poison fields. Most cities are toxic traps for all who lives within. It's much worse than you can imagine for you are not imagining the mercury problem the entire globe, but especially certain parts, are having. (Survival Medicine will have a two hundred page section called The Rising Tide of Mercury. Everyone needs to understand the mercury issue deeply if they want to survive what is happening just with this issue alone.)
It's not only in the huge cities that citizens are at risk.
Dr. Palmer from the University of Texas informed us a while ago that t here is a significant increase in the rates of special education students and autism rates associated with increases in environmentally released mercury. On average, for each 1,000 lb of environmentally released mercury, there was a 43% increase in the rate of special education services and a 61% increase in the rate of autism.[iii]
And a new study estimated that 1 in 58 children in the UK has autism with similar numbers feared in Ireland.
The Division of Environmental and Occupational Disease Control, California Department of Health Services, explored associations between autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and environmental exposures, by linking the California autism surveillance system to estimated hazardous air pollutant (HAP) concentrations compiled by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The adjusted odds ratios (AORs) were elevated by 50% in the top quartile of chlorinated solvents and heavy metals [95% confidence intervals confirming Dr. Palmer and his alarming assertions.
States that are reporting the highest levels of mercury emissions also have the highest rates of developmental disorders including autism. (Dr. John Palmer)
A two-year study of mercury accumulation in the town of Steubenville, Ohio, by federal EPA researcher Matt Landis and the University of Michigan disputes the basic EPA policy on mercury; showing emissions to be much more concentrated in local areas around power plants than thought before. The EPA contends only about 8% of the mercury from coal-burning plants, incinerators and boilers settles to the ground locally. The Steubenville study contends nearly 70% of the mercury found in the Steubenville area came from local sources [iv]
The astounding array of pollutants in the newborn and unborn should be a wake up call that the existing material frameworks of the world should be changed.
What this means is that it is dangerous to live anywhere near coal-burning plants, incinerators and boilers. If mercury spreads widely, as presumed by the model commonly used by the EPA, communities near coal-fired plants face no greater risk than those elsewhere. If large amounts of mercury from those plants settle within 60 to 120 miles of a plant, then local communities face a much larger risk. You have to decide who or what to trust in this regard.
Actually we lose in either direction for what it means is that if the mercury falls far from the source it means that the high winds are taking it all over the world, to every square inch of the planet, though like with radiation patterns, certain places would be much hotter than others.
It is now accurate, scientific and medically sound to state that we are poisoning every man, woman and child on earth.
To get a birds eye view of the hurricanes of toxicity we face on the parts per billion and million level it is helpful to know that air pollution in major cities is now being seen as dangerous to health as radiation exposure suffered by survivors of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster. A recent study suggests high levels of urban air pollution cut short life expectancy more than the radiation exposure of emergency workers who were sent into the 19-mile exclusion zone around Chernobyl straight after the accident. [v]
Women living in areas of high air pollution were at greater risk of heart disease and death, while children living within 500m of motorways suffered more permanent lung damage and lower life expectancy.
Jim Smith, a scientist at the government's Centre for Ecology and Hydrology in Dorchester, assessed the health risks faced by emergency workers at Chernobyl directly after the explosion and those who unofficially set up home in the exclusion zone afterwards. He compared them with the more familiar risks of air pollution, obesity, and passive and active smoking. "The immediate effects of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombs led to approximately 210,000 deaths in the two cities. However, radiation exposures experienced by the most exposed group of survivors led to an average loss of life expectancy significantly lower than that caused by severe obesity or active smoking," the report states.
This is not to diminish the threat of radiation from medical tests, nuclear reactors and the totally insane use of depleted uranium weapons and the intentional injecting of mercury into children's bodies and teeth. What this is telling us specifically is that we are in huge danger from the air we breathe, and that is only one part of our exposure. The water we drink is compromised as are the foods we eat. We are talking about nightmares of the worst kind, chemical and radioactive ones that are accumulating, building up in intensity everywhere including in our very own bodies.
Mercury is not an ordinary air pollutant nor is it classified as such. Because it is a neurotoxin that causes neurological problems, it is considered a hazardous air pollutant, which gives it a different legal status. This is a very polite way of saying that mercury is a nerve poison, which even at the lowest concentrations imaginable causes problems for the young. We are only in the beginning phases of becoming aware of the tremendous problem with thousands of tons of mercury being poured into the air each year. If one gram of mercury can pollute a 20-acre lake, or anything near that size, or kill a child, imagine what 8 to ten billion grams of it would do. [vi]
Lead and mercury are highly toxic to the brain, nervous system, kidneys, reproductive system, and immune system.
Power plants in the US put 48 tons of mercury a year into the atmosphere through burning coal. [vii] China spews 600 tons of mercury into the air each year, accounting for a great part of the world's non-natural emissions. And the volume is rising quickly with more coal fired energy plants now under construction in China than exists in the entire country of England. China all by itself is bringing on a mercury crisis. By 2020, China will have nearly 1,000 gigawatts of total electricity-generating capacity, more than twice the current amount, according to the State Power Economic Research Center.
We have reached a milestone in human history. Awaiting each and every child born on the planet is a life doomed to being poisoned.
China will this year burn about 1.9 billion tons of coal, a 12% increase from last year, and consumption is expected to keep rising. In fifteen years we can expect China to be pumping 1,400 tons of mercury into the air or approximately 60 additional tons a year as new capacity comes online. [viii] This is a huge number and will join the already enormous amount of mercury bellowing up from China's more than 2,000 coal-fired power plants.
This mercury soars high into the atmosphere and then around the globe on what has become a transcontinental conveyor belt of mercury polluted air. On Mount Bachelor, in Oregon, considered one of the cleanest sites in the Northwest, scientists from the University of Washington have been sampling the air on the 9,065 foot mountain top since 2004.
They are monitoring for pollutants such as mercury as well as gases, including carbon monoxide, ozone and nitrogen oxides. This site is also used by Staci Simonich's lab at OSU to look at long-distance travels of pesticides and other pollutants. "It's sort of ironic that we have to go to one of the cleanest locations to look for pollutants," said Daniel Jaffe, a professor of atmospheric and environmental chemistry at the University of Washington, Bothell. Some of what they are finding comes from China. [ix] The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that on certain days nearly 25 percent of the particulate matter in the skies above Los Angeles can be traced to China. Some experts predict China could one day account for a third of all California's air pollution.
According to the observations made by the internationally recognized medical researcher, Dr. Yoshiaki Omura, all cancer cells have mercury in them. Since mercury is the second most toxic substance on this planet, its presence provides a strong initiating factor for disrupting cell function. Support for this idea comes from Dr. Hans Nolte who states that, "The wave spectrum of mercury contains more than thirteen wavelengths, whereas only one or two frequencies or wavelengths are usually observed for the other heavy or noble metals." It is Dr. Nolte's belief that the many harmful effects of mercury could be explained to some degree on the basis of this great variety of wavelengths. Dr. Omura's clinical observation concludes that one of the primary reasons cancer returns is because residual mercury reignites a pathological environment even after surgery, chemotherapy, radiation, and alternative therapies report a positive effect. [x]
Meanwhile Beijing recently persuaded the World Bank to cut from a report finding that p ollution causes about 750,000 premature deaths in China each year. The Financial Times reported saying that, "The World Bank was told that it could not publish this information. It was too sensitive and could cause social unrest," one unnamed adviser told the Financial Times. [xi] Capitalists on the other hand would use a different rational excuse but clearly governments and corporations on both sides of the great political divide are not concerned that they are the ones who are driving up cancer rates through the stratosphere.
The brains of our children are our most precious economic resource, and we haven't recognized how vulnerable they are. We must make protection of the young brain a paramount goal of public healthprotection. You have only one chance to develop a brain. (Philippe Grandjean - Harvard School of Public Health)
Children's brain development is being impaired by some of the more than 70,000 human-made chemicals on the market, according to the WWF. [i] [xii] The report, which surveyed current research in the field, charges chemicals with such neurological effects as poor memory, reduced visual recognition and motor skills, and lower IQ, and cites other U.S. research that already ties 10 percent of all neurobehavioral disorders to chemical exposure. While it singles out some chemicals by name -- particularly brominated flame-retardants, PCBs, and dioxins -- the report laments that there is little to no safety information available on most chemicals floating about in the environment and in households.
"In effect, we are all living in a global chemical experiment of which we don't know the outcome," said WWF's Helen McDade. Environmental contaminants are suspected to cause cancer, birth defects, immune system defects, reduced IQ, behavioral abnormalities, decreased fertility, altered sex hormone balance, altered metabolism and specific organ dysfunctions. Every day children are exposed to chemicals that have not been tested for safety.
Exposure (particularly prenatal exposure) to certain endocrine disrupting chemicals (e.g. PCBs) can have adverse effects on neurological development ... and behavior... delays in...cognitive development has been found to be associated with neonatal PCB exposure. (World Health Organization)
Also according to the WWF in 1929 the world was producing 1 million tons of chemicals and pharmaceuticals a year. Today that number has climbed to 400 million tons. That means that we pollute the earth at a rate that until only recently took decades to accomplish. Easily in one year we now do the damage it took from 1930 to 1960 to effect. In the next ten years we will collectively produce 4 billion tons of chemicals, which in one way or another eventually end up as toxic pollutants in the environment.
Mark Sircus Ac., OMDDirector International Medical Veritas Association http://www.imva.infohttp://www.magnesiumforlife.com
.........................
Getting Serious with Survival Issues
Last night an old friend and one of the very first subscribers to my online communications (nine years ago) sent me this picture he had found on the Internet, which is a land – river – waterfall for sale in the interior of Brazil. I happened to recognize the place right away for it is right next to the place that brought me to Brazil 17 years ago. And it happens to be for sale but it is a huge land (meaning quite expensive) quite a distance from town. There are several large places for sale in the region some with structures built already to support a community.
Though my wife is much more comfortable here on the coast in a modern city (with clear air because the wind blows strongly from the relatively clean ocean air) I am anxious to bring my family to the kind of environment you see above. Fortunately I am building a cancer clinic there so I have something very practical and necessary driving me back to the interior.
I was just reading about the most recent CODEX meeting and this organization wants to make sure we cannot get the nutrition to defend ourselves from the poisons on earth. Meaning they are going to make it harder and harder to live healthy lives inside of society. There are many forces at work that are moving in ways that will hinder us, hurt our chances for living good lives.
Survival through the next ten years is not a sure thing for many of us but survival as health happy human beings is the subject of Survival Medicine, which advises us to get serious in a hurry about some important concerns. I am basically shouting out to people in this chapter; but it is as if most of the people I am addressing were in the middle of a street about to be hit by a passing truck but they cannot hear me because the noise is so loud. It seems like humanity is in God's hands now, is meeting a self created destiny that mirrors the worst tragic flaws in us.
Certainly the government and media are not going to help with anything since they are at the heart of the problem. Governments are much more prepared than the public and have been training police all over the world for years to take control using the most modern methods of crowd control. As many governments probably see it, the move toward fascism is a necessity, otherwise in their eyes it will be total anarchy.
Last night an old friend and one of the very first subscribers to my online communications (nine years ago) sent me this picture he had found on the Internet, which is a land – river – waterfall for sale in the interior of Brazil. I happened to recognize the place right away for it is right next to the place that brought me to Brazil 17 years ago. And it happens to be for sale but it is a huge land (meaning quite expensive) quite a distance from town. There are several large places for sale in the region some with structures built already to support a community.
Though my wife is much more comfortable here on the coast in a modern city (with clear air because the wind blows strongly from the relatively clean ocean air) I am anxious to bring my family to the kind of environment you see above. Fortunately I am building a cancer clinic there so I have something very practical and necessary driving me back to the interior.
I was just reading about the most recent CODEX meeting and this organization wants to make sure we cannot get the nutrition to defend ourselves from the poisons on earth. Meaning they are going to make it harder and harder to live healthy lives inside of society. There are many forces at work that are moving in ways that will hinder us, hurt our chances for living good lives.
Survival through the next ten years is not a sure thing for many of us but survival as health happy human beings is the subject of Survival Medicine, which advises us to get serious in a hurry about some important concerns. I am basically shouting out to people in this chapter; but it is as if most of the people I am addressing were in the middle of a street about to be hit by a passing truck but they cannot hear me because the noise is so loud. It seems like humanity is in God's hands now, is meeting a self created destiny that mirrors the worst tragic flaws in us.
Certainly the government and media are not going to help with anything since they are at the heart of the problem. Governments are much more prepared than the public and have been training police all over the world for years to take control using the most modern methods of crowd control. As many governments probably see it, the move toward fascism is a necessity, otherwise in their eyes it will be total anarchy.
In the end survival entails action and the consequences of inaction become intolerable.
Survival Medicine puts serious survival tools in ones medicine cabinet and even advises us finally to purchase survival foods like spirulina that can do double duty; used as a nutritional medicine it is without equal and used as a survival nutritional resource it is the same. There are certain basic medicines we have to have on hand, and we need enough of them to last us a while. In fact the core of Survival Medicine is built upon medicinal substances that the FDA and CODEX will have a harder time controlling.
Hardly a soul alive at this exact moment in time does not need to remove lead and mercury from their systems. Hardly anyone alive is not going to need some emergency medicines, secure clean water supplies and food. Survival Medicine's protocol for survival is almost the same as its protocol for illness and disease so there is no paranoia in stocking up on what we and our loved ones need anyway. Believe me it is more than comforting to have essential items like iodine, magnesium chloride, calcium bentonite clay, sodium bicarbonate, natural chelators and spirulina, among other things, safely stocked in the house.
Conclusion
In this three part series The Cruel Winds of Change we have talked about the poisons that threaten us, the climate/food and the mental-spiritual insanities we are facing. I did not pick the title of this chapter or the title of this book lightly. We the generations who have had it easiest in the history of humankind are going to have to face difficulties we are not prepared for. It's a harsh reality, a cruel one for the multitudes. Actually we know it has already been that way for billions who live on less than ten dollars a day. They say a billion or more live on less than a dollar a day.
In this book I do not talk much about the deeper issues behind survival and all that I propose to do about it. My deepest design in withstanding the cruel winds of change is the formation of a new form of human consciousness called group consciousness. United we stand divided we fall is a truth we need to pay attention to if we are interested in surviving with grace during the troubled times ahead. Modern man has been beaten like a dog into living with the feeling of separation. Even husbands and wives experience the feelings of separation (lack of pure or perfect love) all the time even without getting separated or divorced.
The trip back to Oneness is a long one and a difficult one. For most it's too difficult and the journey is never started and that is sad. I am of course talking about love and I do have some unusual definitions for love. Love is listening and love is communication to me. Intimacy is love and is something I love as my friends know. So are devotion and dedication and commitment. Truth is another principle ray of love as is responsibility and trust. Honesty I think we are going to need all of these qualities in our attempt to survive and certainly if we ever stand a chance of building something new upon the ashes of what we have done wrong.
If the above qualities are envisioned as great pillars we can see that they have crumbled in modern man to a great extent. Like the ancient pillars in the Acropolis turning to dust there is no support for the continued expansion of civilization based on industrialization. But that is exactly what is happening in China, India and Brazil, billions simultaneously reaching for things that have are having a great impact on everyone. Whatever we have done to harm ourselves and our earth is in higher gear at this exact moment of time than at any moment before, especially the poisoning and destruction of the earth and everyone on it. Could I have not picked a more appropriate concept and name than Sanctuary?
Survival Medicine puts serious survival tools in ones medicine cabinet and even advises us finally to purchase survival foods like spirulina that can do double duty; used as a nutritional medicine it is without equal and used as a survival nutritional resource it is the same. There are certain basic medicines we have to have on hand, and we need enough of them to last us a while. In fact the core of Survival Medicine is built upon medicinal substances that the FDA and CODEX will have a harder time controlling.
Hardly a soul alive at this exact moment in time does not need to remove lead and mercury from their systems. Hardly anyone alive is not going to need some emergency medicines, secure clean water supplies and food. Survival Medicine's protocol for survival is almost the same as its protocol for illness and disease so there is no paranoia in stocking up on what we and our loved ones need anyway. Believe me it is more than comforting to have essential items like iodine, magnesium chloride, calcium bentonite clay, sodium bicarbonate, natural chelators and spirulina, among other things, safely stocked in the house.
Conclusion
In this three part series The Cruel Winds of Change we have talked about the poisons that threaten us, the climate/food and the mental-spiritual insanities we are facing. I did not pick the title of this chapter or the title of this book lightly. We the generations who have had it easiest in the history of humankind are going to have to face difficulties we are not prepared for. It's a harsh reality, a cruel one for the multitudes. Actually we know it has already been that way for billions who live on less than ten dollars a day. They say a billion or more live on less than a dollar a day.
In this book I do not talk much about the deeper issues behind survival and all that I propose to do about it. My deepest design in withstanding the cruel winds of change is the formation of a new form of human consciousness called group consciousness. United we stand divided we fall is a truth we need to pay attention to if we are interested in surviving with grace during the troubled times ahead. Modern man has been beaten like a dog into living with the feeling of separation. Even husbands and wives experience the feelings of separation (lack of pure or perfect love) all the time even without getting separated or divorced.
The trip back to Oneness is a long one and a difficult one. For most it's too difficult and the journey is never started and that is sad. I am of course talking about love and I do have some unusual definitions for love. Love is listening and love is communication to me. Intimacy is love and is something I love as my friends know. So are devotion and dedication and commitment. Truth is another principle ray of love as is responsibility and trust. Honesty I think we are going to need all of these qualities in our attempt to survive and certainly if we ever stand a chance of building something new upon the ashes of what we have done wrong.
If the above qualities are envisioned as great pillars we can see that they have crumbled in modern man to a great extent. Like the ancient pillars in the Acropolis turning to dust there is no support for the continued expansion of civilization based on industrialization. But that is exactly what is happening in China, India and Brazil, billions simultaneously reaching for things that have are having a great impact on everyone. Whatever we have done to harm ourselves and our earth is in higher gear at this exact moment of time than at any moment before, especially the poisoning and destruction of the earth and everyone on it. Could I have not picked a more appropriate concept and name than Sanctuary?
...............
For my readers interested in financial matters:
Our Economy is on an Artificial Life-support System
by Richard C. Cook
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=6239
[i] As much as 40 per cent of children from certain heavily polluted areas suffer from asthma by the time they reach six years of age. Asthma rates among children have increased almost five-fold since the 1970s and more than doubled in the past decade, according to research published in England at the end of 2004. The proportion of under-16s diagnosed with asthma has jumped from 5.5 per cent in 1973 to 12 per cent in 1988, and to 27.3 per cent last year.ABC News. Half Perth six-year-olds suffer asthma Sunday, November 14, 2004.
[ii] Asscociated Press. Nov. 29, 2004
[iii] Palmer RF, Blanchard S, Stein Z, Mandell D, Miller C. University of Texas Health Science Center, San Antonio Department of Family and Community Medicine, 7703 Floyd Curl Drive, San Antonio, Texas 78229-3900, USA. palmer@uthscsa.edu
[iv] http://msnbc.msn.com/id/13140004/
[v] Smith JT. Are passive smoking, air pollution and obesity a greater mortality risk than major radiation incidents? BMC Public Health. 2007 Apr 3;7:49. PMID: 17407581
[vi] The world is 510 million square kilometers and 71 percent of that is ocean. One gram of mercury poured into eighty million liters of water would be cause for concern under federal human health standards for drinking water, enough to contaminate a typical mid-western lake. Thus one gram pollutes a typical 20 acre lake and 20 acres equals .081 square kilometers. One ton of mercury contains 1 million grams which would thus pollute 81,000 square kilometers of lakes. One thousand tons would pollute 81 million square kilometers, so 7,000 tons of mercury would pollute a lake the size of the world. The world is not a lake, so the one gram rule does not quite work, but it offers us a good reference point. The oceans are quite deep and the atmosphere also holds a vast capacity to hold mercury, as does the soil. But over the last five hundred years we have dug up and used approximately 1 million tons of mercury. That is 1,000,000,000,000 grams (a trillion) or enough to blanket each 20 acres on earth with over 149 grams. It is these 149 grams that is responsible for mercury levels increasing by a factor of 20 times over the last 3 centuries.
[vii] DEP Commissioner Bradley Campbell statement about national emission levels. Associated Press. Fri, Nov. 05, 2004
[viii] Wall Street Journal. Invisible Export A Hidden Cost Of China's Growth: Mercury Migration
December 17, 2004
[ix] Scientists can use a computer model to find the wind origins for the last 10 days. If there is a big fire or dust storm across the globe, you can see the pollution crossing the ocean on satellite data. In lesser cases computers trace the path of Northwest winds to find origins. Nine years ago Jaffe's group first detected Chinese pollution on the Washington coast. Other scientists have since confirmed it, by identifying patterns of trace metals that are unique to Chinese pollution, much like a fingerprint, Jaffe said. Pollutants from China hitting Oregon Cascades; Associated Press; 8/27//06; oregonlive.com
[x] The Pathogenic Multi-potency of Mercury, Biological Therapy, Journal of Natural Medicine, Vol. VI, No. 3, June 1988
[xi] http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070703/ap_on_re_as/china_pollution;_ylt=AhO
...
segunda-feira, 16 de julho de 2007
Hypochondria Resurrected
Thomas Deichmann
Kolner Stadt-Anzeiger, July 10 2007
A brouhaha like this over food is nearly unprecedented. Seldom have so many emotional and financial resources been squandered, in order to repeatedly reach the same conclusion: MON863 corn is safe. But for many, this message is obviously so hard to swallow that they aren't even willing to hear it.
MON863 was developed in the genetic engineering laboratories of the US multinational Monsanto. It is equipped with the ability to defend against corn rootworm, it is grown on millions of acres - and eaten by countless humans and animals. And why not? It is exactly as safe as the yellow cobs we grow domestically. This was confirmed all over again last Thursday by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA).
The reason why the authority had to clarify matters once more is an announcement by the environmental group Greenpeace in March 2007. Its Hamburg office had reported a new "study by independent French scientists" who claimed that "gene-corn" carries "potential health risks." In rat feeding studies, the animals allegedly showed "symptoms of poisoning and damage to the liver and kidneys." And supposedly, for the first time, "a health risk for approved gene-plants has been proven."
In reality, however, there were no new sensational bioassays. Greenpeace had only reinterpreted old feeding studies, which were sufficiently examined already some years ago and verified. All smoke and mirrors, a finding immediately reached by several scientific institutions.
At the end of March, the Federal Institute for Risk Evaluation (Bundesinstitut für Risikobewertung) stated that the "renewed statistical analysis of the data does not provide any reason" to question the earlier findings. One month later, the same thing was notified by France's Sood Safety Authority (AFSSA). In the mean time, the EFSA experts had also begun to evaluate the new Greenpeace interpretations of the bioassays. From it "no new safety concerns" emerged, according to the latest announcement.
The nation has once again trembled because of a statement by the "German fear industry". For the anti-genetic-engineering-front, however, the accomplishment is trivial. The rat story of 2004 is simply resurrected. Just like the fairy tale of the collapse of Monarch butterflies, which drop from corn-stalks; the story about allergens released from transgenic Brazil nuts and the legends about "killer-potatoes." By the middle of June Greenpeace was already working on the next "scandal": This time it concerns the transgenic corn line NK603, which they claim is "possibly injurious to health". Rat feeding studies supposedly demonstrated "effects on the functions of the kidneys, brain, heart and liver." We'll see how much money and anxiety will be wasted this time around in examining Greenpeace's hypochondria.
Kolner Stadt-Anzeiger, July 10 2007
A brouhaha like this over food is nearly unprecedented. Seldom have so many emotional and financial resources been squandered, in order to repeatedly reach the same conclusion: MON863 corn is safe. But for many, this message is obviously so hard to swallow that they aren't even willing to hear it.
MON863 was developed in the genetic engineering laboratories of the US multinational Monsanto. It is equipped with the ability to defend against corn rootworm, it is grown on millions of acres - and eaten by countless humans and animals. And why not? It is exactly as safe as the yellow cobs we grow domestically. This was confirmed all over again last Thursday by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA).
The reason why the authority had to clarify matters once more is an announcement by the environmental group Greenpeace in March 2007. Its Hamburg office had reported a new "study by independent French scientists" who claimed that "gene-corn" carries "potential health risks." In rat feeding studies, the animals allegedly showed "symptoms of poisoning and damage to the liver and kidneys." And supposedly, for the first time, "a health risk for approved gene-plants has been proven."
In reality, however, there were no new sensational bioassays. Greenpeace had only reinterpreted old feeding studies, which were sufficiently examined already some years ago and verified. All smoke and mirrors, a finding immediately reached by several scientific institutions.
At the end of March, the Federal Institute for Risk Evaluation (Bundesinstitut für Risikobewertung) stated that the "renewed statistical analysis of the data does not provide any reason" to question the earlier findings. One month later, the same thing was notified by France's Sood Safety Authority (AFSSA). In the mean time, the EFSA experts had also begun to evaluate the new Greenpeace interpretations of the bioassays. From it "no new safety concerns" emerged, according to the latest announcement.
The nation has once again trembled because of a statement by the "German fear industry". For the anti-genetic-engineering-front, however, the accomplishment is trivial. The rat story of 2004 is simply resurrected. Just like the fairy tale of the collapse of Monarch butterflies, which drop from corn-stalks; the story about allergens released from transgenic Brazil nuts and the legends about "killer-potatoes." By the middle of June Greenpeace was already working on the next "scandal": This time it concerns the transgenic corn line NK603, which they claim is "possibly injurious to health". Rat feeding studies supposedly demonstrated "effects on the functions of the kidneys, brain, heart and liver." We'll see how much money and anxiety will be wasted this time around in examining Greenpeace's hypochondria.
quinta-feira, 12 de julho de 2007
Longevity & Health
by: Mark Sircus Ac., OMD
Medical News - December 23, 2003
Longevity and health are related subjects. In fact they are inseparable. Both are crucial subjects if one wishes at all to avoid the horrors of disease and untimely miserable death. Disease obviously involves a great deal of pain and suffering and does the utmost to shorten our natural life spans. In an age where disease is on the rise one does well to invest oneself in a reasonable study of basic subjects like health and longevity. What is the point of living longer if we are going to spend the ending part of our life suffering from diseases? As everyone knows, cancer is not a good way to go.
There are four 'basic' legs to longevity, and thus to health. Today there is a group of scientists, philosophers, and futurists who advocate a strategy known as calorie restriction, or C.R. Food purists have always held the basic monopoly on longevity in health circles but they are standing on a chair with only one leg, though obviously an important one. The second leg is appropriate exercise. There is great common sense to eating right and getting plenty of exercise no matter how old one is. The third leg is more obscure and difficult to deal with even among the many who follow the first two paths. Emotional intelligence is a great factor in health and a lack of it an important issue in the formation of disease. A vast subject it can be represented by the example that a person prone to chronic anger will not last as long in life as a more peaceful and harmonious person. The fourth leg of our chair might be the most surprising one for it is sex and the quality of our sexuality is very much related to our emotional intelligence. Nothing lifts our boats over the waters of life with greater ease than a great sex life with someone we really love.
Each of these subjects is worthy of book length discussion and there are fine books that cover each separately. The challenge though for health enthusiasts is to put them together in a plan that is balanced and works right for them. When people, the press and health care officials take the subjects separately you get all kinds of distorted ideas. For example there's no shortage of skepticism about calorie restriction in the scientific community. An article in this month's issue of The American Journal of Preventive Medicine, the leading journal on obesity research, concluded that caloric intake was not as important in staving off death by cardiovascular disease as other factors, like physical activity. Others warn that extreme dieting like an ultra low-calorie regimen can lead to mental health problems. Clearly people who fixate too much on food have some kind of mild to severe obsessive-compulsive disorder with eating, which is most of us after all.
Calorie restriction is simple, the less we eat, to a point, the more efficiently our body works. Researchers have known about the powers of eating less since the 1930's, when a Cornell University nutrition professor unexpectedly discovered that dieting rats tend to live 30 percent longer. And in full view of the world, on the Japanese island of Okinawa, where residents have traditionally followed a diet similar to that of C.R., an unusually high number of people have lived a century or more. There is a lot of sense to slim and trim. Part of the point though is to eat clean organic substances that do not clog the body with pesticides, food preservatives and additives, or hormones that are pumped like crazy into milk, dairy and meat products. Getting a hold of ones eating life in a non-compulsive way is a great challenge for westerners for food is our great passion and number one compulsion. Within this category comes clean air and water and a minimum dependence on drugs that have side effects due to their toxicity. Clean and slim says it all here.
Exercise is the easiest of the four legs to deal with except for lazy people who cannot go down the block without their car. Though people can make a compulsion out of exercise it is perhaps the healthiest addiction anyone can have. Though there are people who literally run themselves into the ground, or who cannot listen to their body's feedback messages when they are overdoing it, it's the exception and not the rule. There is no reason to avoid exercise and there is always one well suited for one's age and lifestyle.
Perhaps before dealing with the complexity of emotional intelligence in health it would be simpler to talk about sex. A healthy sexual life is one of the most balancing aspects in our life and affects our physiological and psychological selves positively in all respects. The ancient Chinese were known to have said that a man or woman who can relax into sex could live for a thousand years. Though obviously prose with poetic meaning it was pointing to a truth which most westerners overlook. Modern sexologists are well aware of the health promoting effect of orgasm on the endocrine system of women and this is a crucial factor in how a woman enters mid life biological changes. For a man, as he ages, if his sexual strength is maintained his basic life vitality remains and this is very dependent on the number of orgasms he is having. As a man ages he needs to conserve his energy by restraining from physical ejaculations, which in youth seemed unlimited, but in doing so he has no need to restrain from making love. For the older man, the more he restrains from physical ejaculation the more he wants to and is capable of making love. In this subject the truth is exactly opposite to what most men think. There are levels of ecstasy and orgasm that transcend the quick release so common to western man but unfortunately few men and women discipline themselves to such things.
Emotional intelligence brings us to what I call Heart Intelligence or HeartHealth, which is the title and subject of a book (freely downloadable - see below). This is perhaps the most crucial leg we stand on for when this one crumbles all the others fall with it. Simply put, we are born with a vulnerability of being, and when we lose this we lose something enormously important to our health and happiness. Few people have been able to explain why one person falls ill and others do not. Why some people can chain smoke for decades and not get cancer and others do. Deep inside of us is our being, our feeling as opposed to our thinking center. How we are in our beings has more to do with what happens in our lives then any doctor will ever admit or know. Disease starts when we separate from our own feelings, from the heart center that just feels. Thus denial or repression of feelings in anyway gets mirrored almost immediately in the immune system. The immune system is really a reflection of the entire body plus the mind and our emotional health. That is why you can have, in the middle of an epidemic, those individuals who remain healthy because their immune system is very strong for the reason that their beings are centered in a power place.
A Dr. Reinhold Voll said, "For each pain, there is a reason in the depths of consciousness." And a Dr. Ryke Geerd Hamer discovered that deeply traumatic physical events combined with internal emotional reactions create what he called a 'biological conflict shock' that will manifest themselves as a visible physical transformation in the brain as well as measurable changes in physical-nervous parameters. Dr. Hamer traced most cancers back to such conflict shocks and insisted, "The main task in every case of cancer is to find the original emotional shock experience and make sure that it has been healed or is being healed." What both of these doctors are referring to are places and states of consciousness that only make sense when one understands what is or what is not happening on a being level. States of being, or states of consciousness, are beyond the understanding of the modern doctor who is trained obsessively on the physical level only.
Within this leg of emotional intelligence is also social intelligence, which includes important things like our listening and communication skills. What is happening or not happening in our most significant relationships is as crucial to our happiness and health as human beings as almost anything else in life. It is easy to knock someone off a chair with three legs and it's a miracle when we get by standing on only one. Health and medicine are not simple subjects especially when information is badly fragmented. In today's world it is difficult to get good information that defragments our inner programs and strangely there are people who would not like us to piece together any kind of story that would lead to a long life of good health since there is no money in it for them or their industries. Life is not easy in our fast paced world and the stress levels all around are increasing. We could sum this all up by just saying that it's safest and smartest to sit in a four-legged chair.
Los efectos de los agroquímicos y otros contaminantes en la salud
Pérdida de embarazos, malformaciones genéticas, mutaciones, cáncer, leucemia, afecciones respiratorias severas son sólo algunos de los problemas de salud cada vez más recurrentes. Las modificaciones en el medio ambiente no demoran mucho tiempo en advertirse en el hábitat, e irremediablemente en nuestros cuerpos.
Pérdida de embarazos, malformaciones genéticas, mutaciones, cáncer, leucemia, afecciones respiratorias severas son sólo algunos de los problemas de salud cada vez más recurrentes. Las modificaciones en el medio ambiente no demoran mucho tiempo en advertirse en el hábitat, e irremediablemente en nuestros cuerpos. Sin embargo, aún se discute si los casos que ya se contabilizan son debido a que hoy existe una mayor difusión de estos temas, o si en realidad se comienza a visualizar la real dimensión de las modificaciones en nuestro medio ambiente. Los organismos internacionales advierten sobre los peligros directos sobre nuestra salud.
Leitura completa aqui.
terça-feira, 10 de julho de 2007
DNA damage study probes inflammation, disease link
This illustration shows the chemistry of inflammation: Bacterial infections stimulate immune cells to generate highly reactive chemicals that can damage normal human tissue. Graphic / Jeff Dixon July 25, 2006
New research at MIT may help scientists better understand the chemical associations between chronic inflammation and diseases such as cancer and atherosclerosis. The work could lead to drugs that break the link between the two.
New research at MIT may help scientists better understand the chemical associations between chronic inflammation and diseases such as cancer and atherosclerosis. The work could lead to drugs that break the link between the two.
When an infection occurs, immune cells flock to the area and secrete large amounts of highly reactive chemicals to combat the invader. But, these inflammatory chemicals also attack normal tissue surrounding the infection and damage critical components of cells, including DNA. During chronic inflammation, that damage may lead to mutations or cell death and even to cancer and other diseases.
MIT researchers, led by toxicology graduate student Yelena Margolin of the Biological Engineering Division, have discovered that the DNA damage produced by one of these inflammatory chemicals, nitrosoperoxycarbonate, occurs at unexpected locations along the DNA helix. The finding counters the prevailing theory about where the DNA damage occurs and may shed light on new ways to diagnose and combat inflammation.
"We need to understand the mechanisms of inflammation in order to make new drugs that will break the link between inflammation and disease and to develop predictive biomarkers," said Dr. Peter Dedon, professor of toxicology and biological engineering and associate director of the Biological Engineering Division at MIT. "One of our goals is to develop biomarkers that can tell if you have inflammation and to define its extent, severity and location."Margolin, Dedon and their colleagues at MIT and New York University reported their findings in a recent advance online issue of Nature Chemical Biology.
For years researchers have studied how the chemicals associated with the body's response to infection can damage DNA. That process begins with the removal of an electron from guanine, one of the four base building blocks that determine the genetic code in DNA. That removal is called oxidation, and guanine is the most easily oxidized of the four building blocks.
The prevailing theory has been that oxidation occurs most frequently when the guanine is sandwiched between two other guanine bases in the DNA helix.
By using comprehensive chemical screening and analysis of the frequency of DNA damage, the researchers found that a chemical produced during inflammation, nitrosoperoxycarbonate, actually caused oxidative damage at guanines that were supposed to be the least easily oxidized. The damage did not occur in clusters of guanine as expected, but rather at locations where guanine precedes cytosine, another of the four building blocks.
"That observation overturns the prevailing theory for predicting the location of DNA damage in the genome and complicates our understanding of the basis for diseases arising from chronic inflammation," said Dedon. "But it is likely to stir up discussions in the DNA damage and mutagenesis fields that could help us better understand the consequences of inflammation."
Margolin's and Dedon's colleagues on the paper are Jean-Francois Cloutier, auxiliary professor of pharmaceutical chemistry at Université Laval in Québec and formerly of the Dedon lab; Vladimir Shafirovich, research professor of chemistry at New York University; and Nicholas Geacintov, professor of chemistry and department chair at New York University.
The research was funded by the National Cancer Institute
quarta-feira, 4 de julho de 2007
Chave da inflamação
Por Fábio de Castro
Agência FAPESP – O ácido retinóico, substância derivada da quebra da vitamina A no organismo, pode ter um papel fundamental na regulação de inflamações. Com participação decisiva de um cientista brasileiro, a descoberta feita por uma equipe do Instituto La Jolla para Alergia e Imunologia (Liai), nos Estados Unidos, poderá abrir caminho para novos tratamentos de doenças inflamatórias e auto-imunes, como artrite reumatóide e colite.
Os pesquisadores demonstraram em camundongos que a manipulação da quantidade de ácido retinóico afeta o número de células T inflamatórias, um tipo de glóbulo branco cuja ação está ligada a várias doenças auto-imunes e inflamatórias.
De acordo com Daniel Mucida, pós-doutorando do Liai e autor principal de artigo publicado no mês passado na revista Science, o estudo repercutiu especialmente entre os grupos que trabalham com artrite reumatóide e com modelos animais de esclerose múltipla. Além de gerar reportagens nos jornais USA Today e Washington Post, o estudo foi também citado na revista Nature e será comentado na edição de 13 de julho da revista Cell.
“Se a descoberta for eventualmente validada em humanos, ela poderá representar o primeiro passo para o desenvolvimento de terapias que usem o ácido retinóico para tratar essas doenças. A vantagem é que se trata de uma substância produzida naturalmente pelo corpo”, disse Mucida à Agência FAPESP.
Biólogo formado pela Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais (UFMG), Mucida foi bolsista da FAPESP de doutorado, que cursou no Departamento de Imunologia do Instituto de Ciências Biomédicas (ICB) da Universidade de São Paulo (USP).
Sob orientação do professor Momtchilo Russo, do ICB, o trabalho de doutorado de Mucida teve menção honrosa do Conselho Superior da Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (Capes), sendo premiado entre as três melhores teses do país em biologia. No começo de 2006, mudou-se para os Estados Unidos.
De acordo com o cientista, o ácido retinóico atua na modulação das duas linhagens distintas de células T: as células T reguladoras, que são antiinflamatórias, e as células Th17, inflamatórias.
Segundo Mucida, estudos anteriores mostraram que as células dendríticas dos intestinos têm capacidade única de produzir o ácido retinóico a partir da vitamina A. Quando o produzem, fazem com que as células T possam migrar para o órgão.
“Comparamos as células dendríticas do intestino com as de outros órgãos, como o baço. Com isso, vimos que as células intestinais têm capacidade de induzir mais células T reguladoras – que suprimem inflamações – e ao mesmo tempo são menos capazes de induzir células Th17, que são inflamatórias”, explicou.
Impedindo a inflamação
Fazendo três diferentes testes com o ácido retinóico, os pesquisadores elaboraram um mecanismo pelo qual é possível impedir o desenvolvimento da linhagem inflamatória da célula T – o que pode significar uma potencial aplicação farmacológica para a descoberta.
Em um dos modelos, os autores do estudo testaram como a redução do ácido retinóico afeta a inflamação. Foi usado um inibidor para bloquear a presença do ácido em camundongos. O teste levou à redução das celulas T antiinflamatórias, mostrando que a redução do ácido retinóico aumenta a inflamação.
“Depois, colocamos o ácido retinóico em uma cultura de células T e ocorreu o que esperávamos: inibimos as células inflamatórias TH17 e aumentamos as células reguladoras. Daí, partimos para estudar os mecanismos in vivo”, disse Mucida.
O ácido retinóico foi injetado em camundongos, elevando a quantidade deste metabólito da vitamina A nos animais. Isso suprimiu a formação de células T inflamatórias nos intestinos dos animais, demonstrando que o aumento do ácido retinóico reduz a inflamação.
Potencial para tratamentos
No terceiro teste, os cientistas trataram as células T com o ácido retinóico em ensaio in vitro. “Quando foram colocadas de volta nos camundongos – usamos modelos com infeccção intestinal (colite) – as células transferidas impediram totalmente a formação de células T inflamatórias em seus organismos, inibindo a colite”, explicou Mucida.
De acordo com o pesquisador, o último teste é especialmente notável, pois combinar o ácido retinóico e as células T fora do corpo pode evitar possíveis efeitos colaterais que são mais prováveis quando os cientistas tentam manipular os processos do organismo internamente.
“Confirmamos que podemos controlar a inflamação pela administração de ácido retinóico in vivo, ou podemos tratar células com ácido retinóico no tubo de ensaio e transferi-las para o organismo a fim de suprimir a inflamação in vivo, disse.
O artigo Reciprocal Th-17 and regulatory T cell differentiation mediated by retinoic acid, de Daniel Mucida e outros, pode ser lido por assinantes da Science no serviço Science Express em www.sciencexpress.org.
Agência FAPESP – O ácido retinóico, substância derivada da quebra da vitamina A no organismo, pode ter um papel fundamental na regulação de inflamações. Com participação decisiva de um cientista brasileiro, a descoberta feita por uma equipe do Instituto La Jolla para Alergia e Imunologia (Liai), nos Estados Unidos, poderá abrir caminho para novos tratamentos de doenças inflamatórias e auto-imunes, como artrite reumatóide e colite.
Os pesquisadores demonstraram em camundongos que a manipulação da quantidade de ácido retinóico afeta o número de células T inflamatórias, um tipo de glóbulo branco cuja ação está ligada a várias doenças auto-imunes e inflamatórias.
De acordo com Daniel Mucida, pós-doutorando do Liai e autor principal de artigo publicado no mês passado na revista Science, o estudo repercutiu especialmente entre os grupos que trabalham com artrite reumatóide e com modelos animais de esclerose múltipla. Além de gerar reportagens nos jornais USA Today e Washington Post, o estudo foi também citado na revista Nature e será comentado na edição de 13 de julho da revista Cell.
“Se a descoberta for eventualmente validada em humanos, ela poderá representar o primeiro passo para o desenvolvimento de terapias que usem o ácido retinóico para tratar essas doenças. A vantagem é que se trata de uma substância produzida naturalmente pelo corpo”, disse Mucida à Agência FAPESP.
Biólogo formado pela Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais (UFMG), Mucida foi bolsista da FAPESP de doutorado, que cursou no Departamento de Imunologia do Instituto de Ciências Biomédicas (ICB) da Universidade de São Paulo (USP).
Sob orientação do professor Momtchilo Russo, do ICB, o trabalho de doutorado de Mucida teve menção honrosa do Conselho Superior da Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (Capes), sendo premiado entre as três melhores teses do país em biologia. No começo de 2006, mudou-se para os Estados Unidos.
De acordo com o cientista, o ácido retinóico atua na modulação das duas linhagens distintas de células T: as células T reguladoras, que são antiinflamatórias, e as células Th17, inflamatórias.
Segundo Mucida, estudos anteriores mostraram que as células dendríticas dos intestinos têm capacidade única de produzir o ácido retinóico a partir da vitamina A. Quando o produzem, fazem com que as células T possam migrar para o órgão.
“Comparamos as células dendríticas do intestino com as de outros órgãos, como o baço. Com isso, vimos que as células intestinais têm capacidade de induzir mais células T reguladoras – que suprimem inflamações – e ao mesmo tempo são menos capazes de induzir células Th17, que são inflamatórias”, explicou.
Impedindo a inflamação
Fazendo três diferentes testes com o ácido retinóico, os pesquisadores elaboraram um mecanismo pelo qual é possível impedir o desenvolvimento da linhagem inflamatória da célula T – o que pode significar uma potencial aplicação farmacológica para a descoberta.
Em um dos modelos, os autores do estudo testaram como a redução do ácido retinóico afeta a inflamação. Foi usado um inibidor para bloquear a presença do ácido em camundongos. O teste levou à redução das celulas T antiinflamatórias, mostrando que a redução do ácido retinóico aumenta a inflamação.
“Depois, colocamos o ácido retinóico em uma cultura de células T e ocorreu o que esperávamos: inibimos as células inflamatórias TH17 e aumentamos as células reguladoras. Daí, partimos para estudar os mecanismos in vivo”, disse Mucida.
O ácido retinóico foi injetado em camundongos, elevando a quantidade deste metabólito da vitamina A nos animais. Isso suprimiu a formação de células T inflamatórias nos intestinos dos animais, demonstrando que o aumento do ácido retinóico reduz a inflamação.
Potencial para tratamentos
No terceiro teste, os cientistas trataram as células T com o ácido retinóico em ensaio in vitro. “Quando foram colocadas de volta nos camundongos – usamos modelos com infeccção intestinal (colite) – as células transferidas impediram totalmente a formação de células T inflamatórias em seus organismos, inibindo a colite”, explicou Mucida.
De acordo com o pesquisador, o último teste é especialmente notável, pois combinar o ácido retinóico e as células T fora do corpo pode evitar possíveis efeitos colaterais que são mais prováveis quando os cientistas tentam manipular os processos do organismo internamente.
“Confirmamos que podemos controlar a inflamação pela administração de ácido retinóico in vivo, ou podemos tratar células com ácido retinóico no tubo de ensaio e transferi-las para o organismo a fim de suprimir a inflamação in vivo, disse.
O artigo Reciprocal Th-17 and regulatory T cell differentiation mediated by retinoic acid, de Daniel Mucida e outros, pode ser lido por assinantes da Science no serviço Science Express em www.sciencexpress.org.
terça-feira, 3 de julho de 2007
Inflammation = Degenerative Disease
by Bonnie C. Minsky
Inflammation has long been linked to both rheumatoid arthritis and osteoarthritis. Now, there’s emerging research that also links chronic inflammation to allergies, asthma, Alzheimer’s disease, cancer, diabetes, digestive disorders, heart disease, hormonal imbalances and osteoporosis. Andrew Weil, holistic health M.D., Nicholas Perricone, M.D., an anti-aging expert, Jeffrey Bland, Ph.D., a biochemist who popularized the concept “genetic nutritioneering,” and health writer Jack Challem, author of The Inflammation Syndrome, have spoken widely about the damage that inflammation causes.
Injured tissues become inflamed and result in redness, heat, swelling, pain and loss of function. When acute inflammation doesn’t shut down, it becomes chronic and causes damage to the injured tissues. Bland, the nutritional biochemist, says, “Inflammatory stimuli, such as bacterial infection, trauma, ischemic events, stress-related events, toxic exposures, allergens and chronic viral infections activate the inflammatory response.”
According to the health experts I mention, the biggest culprit in causing abnormal inflammation is the pathetic “standard American diet” (SAD) of heavily processed convenience and fast foods. Perricone believes that “Inflammation equals aging. Inflammation is the reason you get wrinkles; why you forget everything from where you left your car keys to your neighbor’s first name; why you can be irritable and depressed and why you lose the healthy bloom of youth.”
Inflammation is what causes arthritic pain, stiffness when using your muscles, the wheezing of asthma and the discomfort of allergies. It is even possible that the progression of atherosclerosis is directly related to chronic inflammation in up to 50 percent of cases. Excess acid production also increases the inflammatory response leading to loss of bone and joint tissues.
To reduce degenerative disease, it’s necessary to avoid pro-inflammatory foods and rely exclusively on anti-inflammatory foods:
Pro-inflammatory foods to avoid:
* red meats from corn-fed, antibiotic/hormone laden animals
* saturated fats such as lard and meat fats
* fried foods
* partially hydrogenated (trans fats) found in margarines, chips, candies, cereals and baked goods
* cooking oils that are exclusively corn, safflower, sunflower or soy based
* soft drinks (both high sugar and diet varieties)
* excess sugar (both from heavily processed sources, such as candy and from naturally occurring sources such as fruit juice)
Perricone describes sugar as one of the most serious causes of inflammation, rapid aging and weight gain. Sugary foods quickly elevate blood sugar, creating an insulin release along with free radicals that oxidize fats. When oxidized, the fats form plaque deposits in our arteries, leading to disease. Thus, a diet high in sweets, pasta, fruit juices, cereals and even rice cakes can actually lead to heart disease. Insulin release also increases stored body fat and release of pro-inflammatory chemicals causing cell damage and accelerated aging.
Anti-inflammatory foods and dietary supplements to include:
* foods high in omega-3 fatty acids, especially cold water, wild-caught fish (or fish oil supplements)
* raw nuts and seeds (especially pecans, almonds, walnuts and flaxseeds)
* homemade soups made with poultry or meat bones (boiling the bones releases glucosamine and chondroitin into the soup which, when ingested becomes bioavailable in the body. They can reduce inflammation and helps repair cartilage)
* dark green vegetables (especially kale, seaweed and greens)
* antioxidants in supplement form (especially vitamins C and E, and quercetin)
* zinc taken in supplement form which assists healing and reduces inflammation
* extra virgin organic olive oil, expeller pressed grapeseed and avocado oils
If you are already showing chronic inflammatory symptoms, I recommend that you adopt the following 10 dietary recommendations:
1) Eat lean meats and poultry that are free-range, organic and not corn-fed (i.e. grass-fed preferably).
2) Eat a wide variety of vegetables (the deeper the colors, the better).
3) Use cold-pressed, uncooked olive oil (in salad dressings) and grapeseed or avocado oil for cooking.
4) Avoid products that contain added sugars (especially white sugar and high fructose corn syrup).
5) Avoid or limit your intake of cow’s milk products.
6) Avoid or limit your intake of heavily processed grains and grains containing gluten if you suspect an intolerance to them (brown rice, wild rice and millet are gluten-free).
7) Eat organic foods whenever possible.
8) Identify and avoid foods to which you have an allergy or sensitivity.
9) Eat wild, cold water fish at least three times weekly, especially salmon.
10) Eliminate all trans fats. Avoid added saturated fats.
Andrew Weil commented at a recent conference, “The idea on the medical horizon is that chronic inflammation is a root cause of degenerative diseases.”
It is time for medical schools to improve nutrition education. If physicians are trained to use “food as medicine,” they may not need to rely upon drugs (and their distressing side-effects) to treat the inflammatory process.
Disclaimer: This column is for information only and no part of its contents should be construed as medical advice, diagnosis, recommendation or endorsement by Ms. Minsky.
Bonnie Minsky is a Licensed and Certified Nutrition Specialist, Public Health Educator and Certified menopause Educator with a private practice in Northbrook, IL. She can be reached at nutritionalconcepts.com.
Five Eco-Diets Get Put to the Test
By Tyghe Trimble, Conscious Choice. Posted June 30, 2007.
I am your run-of-the mill vegetarian. I started up after a college cafeteria gave me dry Salisbury steak with a side of food poisoning, kept it going for a girl, then firmed up a deepening veggie philosophy with some essential reading. I stuck with it from there because I'm healthy as hell, think there is little more appealing than fresh arugula salad, and, really, who would doubt a diet promoted by Einstein?
But these days, regular old vegetarianism -- which 10 percent of Americans claim to be, by the way -- is just one jumping point for molding a healthy dietary conscience. As meals today come complete with a carbon footprint, more of us are eating with the health of the watershed, soil and sustainable farming in mind. Everyone's favorite (albeit omnivorous) food guru Michael Pollan said it best with his sage advice for healthy eating: "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants."
Still, like any new dietary trend, sustainable diets are subject to extremes, as well as their own fair share of loopholes and problems (think Atkins and a bunless triple-cheeseburger with bacon). I decided to see for myself what's on the menu for the vegan, for the 100-mile-dieter, for the raw foodist, the slow food advocate, and the strictly organic consumer, noting how these diets hold up beyond theory and in surreptitious practice ( i.e. is that really organic?). To aid my assessment of each diet's feasibility, sustainability, health and strain on the wallet, I attempted to practice each method for one week.
Don't Panic, It's Organic
Since J.I. Rodale began promoting organic farming in the 1940s, "organic" has come to mean opposition to the practices of industrial farming. The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) has now officially defined "organic" as, in short, food grown without pesticides, chemical fertilizers or sewage sludge, free from irradiation, genetic modification or -- for animal-products -- growth hormones or antibiotics. A USDA organic seal has been in existence under five years, but the time-consuming process of certification has limited the amount of farmers whose products carry the seal -- even if many (often smaller) farmers are practicing organic methods. This is bad news for me since I'm limiting my diet to USDA approved organics. Let the search begin…
Price: Quite pricey. Add $0.50 to $1.00 per item if you want to upgrade to organic. My grocery bill for the week went up a whopping $30.00.
Prep Time: Factor in conscientious label-reading, asking questions and spending quality time with a Sharpie, crossing off bogus terms like "all natural" from labels. Here's a cheat sheet: "USDA Organic" is made with 100 percent organic ingredients, just "Organic" means ingredients are 95 percent organic and "made with organic ingredients" must be over 70 percent organic. "All natural" means absolutely nothing.
Health: Organics guarantee no pesticides or harsh, petrol-based fertilizers, with a growing finding of health benefits.
Sustainability: When farmers are held to organic standards, the surrounding environment benefits. Still, a simple meal could log a hefty carbon footprint. My organic enchilada recipe went on one heck of Spring Break before arriving on my plate -- including Mexico, Chile and Argentina. When local farmers nearby have fresh tomatoes, it's going to be hard to argue that those hundreds of gallons of jet fuel are worth the guarantee of a pesticide-free salsa.
In the Garden of Vegan
The sustainable vegan diet focuses a critical eye on the conventional raising of livestock, a practice that is unsustainable and, many vegans believe, antiquated and cruel. The ecological problems stem from animal feedlot operations (AFOs). "By definition," reads a passage on the Environmental Protection Agency's website, "AFOs produce large amounts of waste in small areas. For example, a single dairy cow produces approximately 120 pounds of wet manure per day. The waste produced per day by one dairy cow is equal to that of 20-40 people." Meat and other animal products require gads of energy and water to produce. Mass-production of these products includes antibiotics and questionable feed practices, and leaves us with a whole lot of waste to contaminate the rest of our food chain. The vegan's answer? Cut out the animal products.
Price: Plenty of room to price shop on this diet, and by definition you sidestep some of the pricier parts of an “average” diet -- meat and dairy.
Prep Time: No time added.
Health: Moderate. As with any nutritional regimen, eating healthy on a vegan diet still requires making smart choices. While vegans substitute most major sources of fat and cholesterol like eggs, meat, cheese and milk with heart-healthier alternatives like soy, beans and nuts, a vegan diet isn’t necessarily all health heaven. French fries, a can of coke and a sugary slice of vegan carrot cake for dessert are all still fair game.
Sustainability: Good. For every hunk of beef, slice of cheese and glass of milk you replace, you are giving a nod to the veggie farmer and shying away from problems plaguing the animal products industries: run-off, overuse of antibiotics and growth hormones. Still, there are no limits on your food’s carbon footprint (grapes from Australia, anyone?).
A Raw Deal
While sticking to foods prepared under temperatures less than 118 F makes for meals packed with nutrients, consuming only fruits, vegetables and nuts in caloric quantities equivalent to your average carb-heavy cooked diet can take some getting used to. Just three days into this diet and I had a daylong headache, my stomach was in knots, and the rest of my digestive system wasn’t so happy. I caved and headed to a favorite vegan restaurant for a hot meal.
But this wasn’t necessarily a sign of the diet’s failing -- it just shows that eating uncooked, unprocessed food is a radically different take on preparing chow. Raw foodists believe that heating and processing ingredients kills important enzymes, those unseen creatures in our meal that break down the food, molecule-by-molecule, and aid in digestion. Less enzymes, claim raw foodists, makes for more toxicity in the body -- leading to lethargy, obesity and generally bad health.
After recovering from the initial shock of going raw, I got back in the saddle with one of the best meals of all the diets combined: raw lasagna (zucchini, squash, pine-nut ricotta and basil pistachio pesto) at New York City raw restaurant, Pure Food and Wine. Afterwards, I felt like a million bucks -- sated, energized and just plain healthy. Maybe raw foodists are on to something after all.
Price: Moderately high. Many raw foodists eat organic (understandably, as they are only rinsing their food), and favor exotic and costlier ingredients like cacao, cold pressed oils and tropical fruits.
Prep Time: You’d think time would be saved since you need not turn the stove on. But after slaving over a food processor and blender (simultaneously), triple washing, slicing, dicing, mincing and soaking food for hours -- think again. Expect to add up to an extra hour of prep time.
Health: Raw food dieters believe that cooking food destroys important enzymes, bacteria and micronutrients that aid the immune system and general health. The marriage of fire and food may kill many nutrients and good bacteria, but it also kills dangerous bacteria and helps make food easier to digest (although many raw dieters note the cleansing properties of the diet).
Sustainability: Strong. On par with an organic, vegan diet.
Livin’ Like a Locavore
The “100-mile diet” began in 2005 at the home of Alisa Smith and James MacKinnon in Vancouver, British Columbia. Inspired by a vacation in a new cabin where they ate off the land for a few weeks, the duo staged a year-long experiment of only eating food grown within 100 miles of their home. In part, Smith and MacKinnon’s 100-mile diet was a reaction to the growing organic movement. “The original ideals of the organic movement included local,” said Smith in a radio interview. “[And that’s] the system to shoot for… Organics will follow.” The “real crisis in the food system is a crisis of transparency,” added MacKinnon. Eating locally puts knowledge of the health and safety of the food supply back into the hands of the consumer.
Price: Farmers markets, co-ops and CSAs are usually cheaper than your average grocery story.
Prep time: Much creativity is required for preparation -- you’ll have to do a bunch of gardening if you don’t live near a great farmers market -- and you’re stuck with what’s in season, which means learning to cook that cardoon, celeriac and oyster root soup.
Health: The health concerns of the 100-mile diet are readily apparent. Your diet is limited to what is growing. This may mean milk and potatoes for days on end. Don’t live near olive trees? You’ll have to use local butter to cook your food. Bread shouldn’t be a problem, unless the wheat fields are just beyond 100 miles. Still, MacKinnon cites the benefit that local food is usually harvested at its peak, which means that it has developed to its nutritional max. And eating what’s in season breaks repetitive eating patterns (you can’t fall back on spaghetti and marinara sauce if it’s not tomato season), thus introducing a wider range of nutrients into your diet.
Sustainability: Shining. Eating locally counters the bulk of the carbon footprint created by the average diet, and promotes diverse -- and therefore more sustainable -- farming.
Slow Down, You Move too Fast
Slow Food begins with gastronomy, the science of good eating. “There isn’t a ‘Slow Food Diet’ per se,” says Jerusha Klemperer, of Slow Food, USA. “We basically consider Slow Food to be food that is good (in that it tastes delicious and is clean), produced in a way that is ecologically sustainable, and is fair (produced in a way that fairly compensates),” he says. Slow Food founder, Carlo Petrini says the goal is to “bring gastronomy in service of the environment.” Petrini believes this happens when people stop, (or slow down) and think about what they eat and where it comes from. But “ultimately,” says Klemperer, “Slow Food is about reviving the pleasures of the table, eating your meal in a communal setting -- not at your desk, not in front of the TV, but at a table, with other people.” Slow Food is an approach to diet as philosophy rather than regimen -- which comes as quite a relief to me, after all this dieting.
Price: To ascribe to the Slow Food movement, first and foremost you must “buy good food.” This means organic and local, fresh and unprocessed. Petrini says that the average person must get used to paying more than double what they pay now for food.
Prep time: To truly eat slow takes effort -- and is decidedly not conducive to a 50+ hour workweek. With full meals extending up to six hours to prepare and eat, a slow meal once a week -- as an event -- is probably the way to go.
Health: “Welcome to a society where we spend more money to lose weight than to eat,” says Petrini. Putting more time and thought into food, he believes, is a good way to reverse this backward way of looking at nutrition.
Sustainability: Excellent. Slow Food is based on the marriage of a good diet and smart ecology.
My Diet, Myself
If you haven’t seen the 2004 documentary Super Size Me, you should rent it -- if only to witness the intriguingly gruesome health collapse of the protagonist, who attempts to subsist on a diet of 100 percent fast food. But the shock doc’s main point is not that McDonald’s is bad for you -- because, well, duh -- but rather that the average American thinks so little about the quality and history of the food they put into their body.
The sustainable diets I’ve explored have one unifying priority -- they aim to return thought back into diet. But, once the rules become unthinking habit, loopholes appear. Sure going raw can be healthy, but eating three Chilean avocados a day could leave you with high cholesterol and a hefty carbon footprint. The trick to eating with a conscience is to mix and match ideologies to create meals that are healthiest for you and the planet. After this experiment, I’ve signed up for a share from a local farm, put a number of raw recipes on heavy rotation, bought more organic (but only when there’s no local choice), and thought twice before buying processed foods. I’m no longer following the set rules of any sustainable vegetarian diet in particular. Instead, I like to think that I have graduated from “run of the mill” to fully sustainable vegetarian.
Confira 20 "promessas" para emagrecer
A Folha ouviu especialistas em nutrição e em endocrinologia para desmitificar 20 itens que são difundidos como atalhos para emagrecer. Será que funcionam?
TATIANA DINIZ
da Folha de S.Paulo 06/04/2007
1. Moderadores de apetite
Sim. Mas esse tipo de medicamento precisa ser receitado por um médico competente e jamais deve ser tomado por iniciativa própria. O Brasil é recordista mundial no consumo de remédios para emagrecer. Um dos tipos mais antigos, as anfetaminas, são substâncias que agem no sistema nervoso central, inibindo o centro da fome e aumentando o gasto calórico. Podem ter sérios efeitos colaterais, como agitação, insônia, agressividade e até desencadeamento de quadros depressivos ou psicóticos. Hoje, muitos remédios usados para diminuir o apetite não são anfetaminas, e sim substâncias que compartilham com a anfetamina apenas o radical fenetilamina, responsável pelo efeito anorético. Nem todo mundo pode usar moderador de apetite: pacientes com ansiedade, depressão, hipertensão e doenças cardíacas, por exemplo, não devem usar.
2. Alcachofra
Não. Não existe nenhuma prova da sua eficiência como emagrecedor. Ao começar a consumir esse alimento, algumas pessoas dizem experimentar uma certa saciedade extra, mas esse efeito desaparece com o passar do tempo. A alcachofra deve estar presente na alimentação por ser uma hortaliça pouco calórica, mas é preciso não comê-la em molhos gordurosos. Cozida em água e sal e em molho de cebola ralada, limão ou vinagre, água, sal e azeite, não é engordativa.
3. Corrida
Sim. A corrida é uma das melhores atividades físicas para gerar a perda e a manutenção da perda de peso, pois tem gasto calórico elevado. Associada à reeducação alimentar, constitui um método eficiente para emagrecer. De modo geral, o exercício físico induz a adaptações metabólicas, aumentando o gasto energético diário e minimizando a diminuição do metabolismo de repouso ocasionado pela perda de peso. A combinação de restrição calórica e treinamento físico é excelente para o tratamento da obesidade. Mas a corrida só deve ser feita por pessoas que não tenham problemas clínicos que representem risco de complicações com a prática como, por exemplo, pessoas com problemas cardíacos ou com diferença significativa entre o tamanho das duas pernas.
4. Pilates
Não. O pilates não foi testado cientificamente. Alguns praticantes tornam-se motivados a perder peso, mas o gasto calórico desse tipo de exercício é relativamente baixo. O efeito emagrecedor pode ser obtido a partir da combinação com a mudança de alguns hábitos alimentares.
5. Café
Não. A cafeína tem efeito termogênico (aumenta o metabolismo), mas esse efeito é muito discreto. Pode ser obtido na dose de até quatro xícaras pequenas de café por dia, somente se a bebida for consumida sem açúcar. Em contrapartida, o excesso de cafeína pode causar ansiedade, que pode levar a comer mais.
6. Chá verde
Não. Pesquisas comprovaram o efeito termogênico (acelerador do metabolismo) do consumo do chá verde, mas tal efeito é muito pequeno quando comparado ao obtido pela prática de atividade física, por exemplo. Para emagrecer bebendo chá verde, é necessário ingerir aproximadamente um litro por dia, sem açúcar nem adoçante, em temperatura morna e preparado logo antes da ingestão. Sucos com chá verde e chá verde industrializado não são emagrecedores.
7. Comida integral
Não. Alimentos integrais são saudáveis, ricos em fibras e em vitaminas. Mas, se consumidos em grande quantidade, levam ao ganho de peso. Por outro lado, se consumidos com moderação, em substituição aos alimentos refinados, podem aumentar a sensação de saciedade, ajudando no controle do peso. Ou seja, quem come integrais em quantidades exageradas não vai emagrecer. O importante é consumir esses alimentos mais saudáveis em quantidades moderadas.
8. Sopas
Não. O uso de sopas em dietas tem um lado positivo e um negativo. Geralmente as sopas são feitas com verduras e legumes, pouco calóricos, que substituem refeições calóricas. Por outro lado, quando não mastigamos, nossa sensação de saciedade é menor e há o risco de não resistir à fome e comer alimentos que engordam. Além disso, há uma tendência ao uso de sopas industrializadas, que podem ser menos nutritivas e ter muitas calorias. Sopas devem ser consumidas ocasionalmente.
9. Reeducação alimentar
Sim. É a melhor solução para quem quer emagrecer e manter-se magro. Com ela, aprende-se a reduzir alimentos que prejudicam a saúde e o peso e a comer alimentos considerados deliciosos em quantidades moderadas e com prazer. Assim, dá para emagrecer gradativamente, sem sofrimento e respeitando os hábitos alimentares de cada um. Perder peso e conseguir manter-se nesse novo peso deve ser encarado como uma tarefa para ser cumprida em longo prazo.
10. Sauna
Não. Quem faz sauna fica exposto a altas temperaturas, o que aumenta a transpiração e gera perda líquida. Ao sair da sauna e subir numa balança, pode-se observar um peso inferior, mas essa diferença é rapidamente recuperada assim que a pessoa ingere os líquidos que seu organismo pede nas horas seguintes. A sauna não elimina gorduras e algumas pessoas têm queda de pressão ou tontura quando fazem sessões.
11. Drenagem Linfática
Não. Essa massagem corporal drena os líquidos do corpo, direcionando-os ao sistema linfático para que sejam eliminados na urina. Ajuda pessoas com tendência a retenção hídrica a diminuir o peso líquido, mas não elimina gordura.
12. Cigarro
Não. A nicotina leva a um discreto aumento da quantidade de calorias gastas ao longo do dia, mas o seu principal efeito é diminuir o paladar e a vontade de beliscar. Quem fuma costuma trocar a comida dos intervalos das refeições por cigarros e, por isso, tende a não engordar. Ao parar de fumar e passar a comer mais, as pessoas tendem a engordar. Mas não-fumantes obesos não vão emagrecer se começarem a fumar, e sim se diminuírem a compulsão de comer entre as refeições. Quem fuma para perder peso ou para manter o peso está cometendo um grande erro em relação à sua saúde. O hábito de fumar é a principal causa de mortalidade e morbidade e de aumento do risco de doenças passível de prevenção.
13. Cremes redutores de medidas
Não. Nenhum tipo de creme consegue mudar o metabolismo do organismo ou exercer qualquer efeito sobre ele. Nem mesmo o efeito localizado chega a ser muito intenso. Muitas vezes, o "resultado" é imperceptível. Alguns cremes reduzem sutilmente a gordura localizada, o que é completamente diferente de emagrecer. Nos poucos estudos clínicos em que se tentou provar que esse tipo de cosmético funciona, o resultado obtido foi igual ao do placebo.
14. Suco de limão
Não. O suco de limão é rico em vitaminas A, B e C e em sais minerais, é gostoso, natural e pode ser utilizado em diversas receitas, mas não emagrece. Pode colaborar para o emagrecimento quando, puro ou com adoçante, é utilizado como substituto de outra bebida com maior valor calórico (refrigerantes e sucos naturais ou processados, por exemplo). Se ingerido puro em grandes quantidades pode prejudicar o estômago.
15. Acupuntura na orelha
Não. Em estudos clínicos, a acupuntura mostrou-se eficaz para o emagrecimento durante, no máximo, três meses. Isso significa que o método pode gerar apenas um entusiasmo que leva à mudança de hábitos alimentares. A Sociedade Chinesa de Acupuntura reconhece, em publicação oficial, que não há comprovação do uso da técnica para tratamento de obesidade. A acupuntura não está entre as indicações médicas oficiais como tratamento para perda de peso.
16. Lipoaspiração
Não. Esse método cirúrgico faz apenas a retirada da gordura localizada. Isso não significa emagrecer nem leva a nenhum tipo de melhora na saúde de um obeso. Vale ressaltar ainda que, além de caro, o procedimento requer anestesia, costuma ser doloroso e tem recuperação lenta. Quem faz lipoaspiração e continua comendo da mesma maneira volta a ganhar peso.
17. Jejum
Não. De acordo com os especialistas, pular refeições para perder peso é uma prática errada e arriscada porque o organismo se readapta a estocar gordura a fim de tolerar esses períodos sem alimentação. Ou seja, quem faz jejum acaba acumulando mais gordura. O jejum prolongado (de ficar dias sem comer) faz a pessoa perder peso, mas prejudica a saúde e leva à perda de massa muscular. Quando volta a se alimentar, a pessoa engorda mais do que o normal, pois o organismo foi treinado para manter grandes reservas energéticas a fim de se prevenir de um novo período de jejum.
18. Comida light/diet
Não. Alimentos diet são aqueles em que alguma substância foi substituída por outra. No refrigerante diet, por exemplo, o açúcar foi substituído por adoçante. Chocolates diet podem conter mais calorias do que os normais e engordam. Alimentos light são aqueles que sofreram redução de pelo menos 25% na quantidade de calorias e/ou de algum nutriente (sódio, por exemplo) em relação a seus equivalentes normais. Iogurte desnatado é um produto light, pois seu teor de calorias é menor por não ter gorduras. Nos light, o efeito emagrecedor depende da quantidade ingerida. Dar preferência à ingestão de alimentos diet ou light não garante a redução de peso, principalmente quando se come demais.
19. Cintas modeladoras
Não. Antigas conhecidas das nossas avós, as cintas jamais emagrecem, apenas disfarçam as medidas, de acordo com os especialistas. Não queimam calorias nem têm impacto sobre gorduras localizadas.
20. Medicina ortomolecular
Não. A "dieta ortomolecular" nada mais é que uma dieta saudável. Em alguns casos, é acompanhada pela prescrição de medicamentos ortomoleculares que são formulados com anorexígenos, hormônio de tireóide ou diuréticos. O paciente também toma vitaminas e outras substâncias sem efeito emagrecedor comprovado. Para perda de peso saudável e sustentável, é necessária a reeducação alimentar com mudanças no estilo de vida. Remédios devem ser prescritos criteriosamente e o respaldo científico é fundamental.
Fontes: ALEX CARVALHO LEITE, endocrinologista do Hospital São Luiz, em São Paulo; ANITA SACHS, chefe do departamento de medicina preventiva da Universidade Federal de São Paulo; BRUNO GELEONEZE-NETO, endocrinologista da Abeso (Associação Brasileira para o Estudo da Obesidade da Síndrome Metabólica); CLÁUDIA COZER, diretora da Abeso; FERNANDA PISCIOLARO, nutricionista pelo Centro Universitário São Camilo e especialista em distúrbios metabólicos; MÁRCIA MARTINS SILVEIRA BERNIK, doutora em endocrinologia pela Faculdade de Medicina da USP; MARIA ANGELA ZACCARELLI MARINO, endocrinologista da Faculdade de Medicina do ABC; ZULEIKA HALPERN, endocrinologista e integrante do comitê de ética da International Association for the Study of Obesity; WALMIR COUTINHO, integrante do departamento de obesidade da Sociedade Brasileira de Endocrinologia e Metabologia
TATIANA DINIZ
da Folha de S.Paulo 06/04/2007
1. Moderadores de apetite
Sim. Mas esse tipo de medicamento precisa ser receitado por um médico competente e jamais deve ser tomado por iniciativa própria. O Brasil é recordista mundial no consumo de remédios para emagrecer. Um dos tipos mais antigos, as anfetaminas, são substâncias que agem no sistema nervoso central, inibindo o centro da fome e aumentando o gasto calórico. Podem ter sérios efeitos colaterais, como agitação, insônia, agressividade e até desencadeamento de quadros depressivos ou psicóticos. Hoje, muitos remédios usados para diminuir o apetite não são anfetaminas, e sim substâncias que compartilham com a anfetamina apenas o radical fenetilamina, responsável pelo efeito anorético. Nem todo mundo pode usar moderador de apetite: pacientes com ansiedade, depressão, hipertensão e doenças cardíacas, por exemplo, não devem usar.
2. Alcachofra
Não. Não existe nenhuma prova da sua eficiência como emagrecedor. Ao começar a consumir esse alimento, algumas pessoas dizem experimentar uma certa saciedade extra, mas esse efeito desaparece com o passar do tempo. A alcachofra deve estar presente na alimentação por ser uma hortaliça pouco calórica, mas é preciso não comê-la em molhos gordurosos. Cozida em água e sal e em molho de cebola ralada, limão ou vinagre, água, sal e azeite, não é engordativa.
3. Corrida
Sim. A corrida é uma das melhores atividades físicas para gerar a perda e a manutenção da perda de peso, pois tem gasto calórico elevado. Associada à reeducação alimentar, constitui um método eficiente para emagrecer. De modo geral, o exercício físico induz a adaptações metabólicas, aumentando o gasto energético diário e minimizando a diminuição do metabolismo de repouso ocasionado pela perda de peso. A combinação de restrição calórica e treinamento físico é excelente para o tratamento da obesidade. Mas a corrida só deve ser feita por pessoas que não tenham problemas clínicos que representem risco de complicações com a prática como, por exemplo, pessoas com problemas cardíacos ou com diferença significativa entre o tamanho das duas pernas.
4. Pilates
Não. O pilates não foi testado cientificamente. Alguns praticantes tornam-se motivados a perder peso, mas o gasto calórico desse tipo de exercício é relativamente baixo. O efeito emagrecedor pode ser obtido a partir da combinação com a mudança de alguns hábitos alimentares.
5. Café
Não. A cafeína tem efeito termogênico (aumenta o metabolismo), mas esse efeito é muito discreto. Pode ser obtido na dose de até quatro xícaras pequenas de café por dia, somente se a bebida for consumida sem açúcar. Em contrapartida, o excesso de cafeína pode causar ansiedade, que pode levar a comer mais.
6. Chá verde
Não. Pesquisas comprovaram o efeito termogênico (acelerador do metabolismo) do consumo do chá verde, mas tal efeito é muito pequeno quando comparado ao obtido pela prática de atividade física, por exemplo. Para emagrecer bebendo chá verde, é necessário ingerir aproximadamente um litro por dia, sem açúcar nem adoçante, em temperatura morna e preparado logo antes da ingestão. Sucos com chá verde e chá verde industrializado não são emagrecedores.
7. Comida integral
Não. Alimentos integrais são saudáveis, ricos em fibras e em vitaminas. Mas, se consumidos em grande quantidade, levam ao ganho de peso. Por outro lado, se consumidos com moderação, em substituição aos alimentos refinados, podem aumentar a sensação de saciedade, ajudando no controle do peso. Ou seja, quem come integrais em quantidades exageradas não vai emagrecer. O importante é consumir esses alimentos mais saudáveis em quantidades moderadas.
8. Sopas
Não. O uso de sopas em dietas tem um lado positivo e um negativo. Geralmente as sopas são feitas com verduras e legumes, pouco calóricos, que substituem refeições calóricas. Por outro lado, quando não mastigamos, nossa sensação de saciedade é menor e há o risco de não resistir à fome e comer alimentos que engordam. Além disso, há uma tendência ao uso de sopas industrializadas, que podem ser menos nutritivas e ter muitas calorias. Sopas devem ser consumidas ocasionalmente.
9. Reeducação alimentar
Sim. É a melhor solução para quem quer emagrecer e manter-se magro. Com ela, aprende-se a reduzir alimentos que prejudicam a saúde e o peso e a comer alimentos considerados deliciosos em quantidades moderadas e com prazer. Assim, dá para emagrecer gradativamente, sem sofrimento e respeitando os hábitos alimentares de cada um. Perder peso e conseguir manter-se nesse novo peso deve ser encarado como uma tarefa para ser cumprida em longo prazo.
10. Sauna
Não. Quem faz sauna fica exposto a altas temperaturas, o que aumenta a transpiração e gera perda líquida. Ao sair da sauna e subir numa balança, pode-se observar um peso inferior, mas essa diferença é rapidamente recuperada assim que a pessoa ingere os líquidos que seu organismo pede nas horas seguintes. A sauna não elimina gorduras e algumas pessoas têm queda de pressão ou tontura quando fazem sessões.
11. Drenagem Linfática
Não. Essa massagem corporal drena os líquidos do corpo, direcionando-os ao sistema linfático para que sejam eliminados na urina. Ajuda pessoas com tendência a retenção hídrica a diminuir o peso líquido, mas não elimina gordura.
12. Cigarro
Não. A nicotina leva a um discreto aumento da quantidade de calorias gastas ao longo do dia, mas o seu principal efeito é diminuir o paladar e a vontade de beliscar. Quem fuma costuma trocar a comida dos intervalos das refeições por cigarros e, por isso, tende a não engordar. Ao parar de fumar e passar a comer mais, as pessoas tendem a engordar. Mas não-fumantes obesos não vão emagrecer se começarem a fumar, e sim se diminuírem a compulsão de comer entre as refeições. Quem fuma para perder peso ou para manter o peso está cometendo um grande erro em relação à sua saúde. O hábito de fumar é a principal causa de mortalidade e morbidade e de aumento do risco de doenças passível de prevenção.
13. Cremes redutores de medidas
Não. Nenhum tipo de creme consegue mudar o metabolismo do organismo ou exercer qualquer efeito sobre ele. Nem mesmo o efeito localizado chega a ser muito intenso. Muitas vezes, o "resultado" é imperceptível. Alguns cremes reduzem sutilmente a gordura localizada, o que é completamente diferente de emagrecer. Nos poucos estudos clínicos em que se tentou provar que esse tipo de cosmético funciona, o resultado obtido foi igual ao do placebo.
14. Suco de limão
Não. O suco de limão é rico em vitaminas A, B e C e em sais minerais, é gostoso, natural e pode ser utilizado em diversas receitas, mas não emagrece. Pode colaborar para o emagrecimento quando, puro ou com adoçante, é utilizado como substituto de outra bebida com maior valor calórico (refrigerantes e sucos naturais ou processados, por exemplo). Se ingerido puro em grandes quantidades pode prejudicar o estômago.
15. Acupuntura na orelha
Não. Em estudos clínicos, a acupuntura mostrou-se eficaz para o emagrecimento durante, no máximo, três meses. Isso significa que o método pode gerar apenas um entusiasmo que leva à mudança de hábitos alimentares. A Sociedade Chinesa de Acupuntura reconhece, em publicação oficial, que não há comprovação do uso da técnica para tratamento de obesidade. A acupuntura não está entre as indicações médicas oficiais como tratamento para perda de peso.
16. Lipoaspiração
Não. Esse método cirúrgico faz apenas a retirada da gordura localizada. Isso não significa emagrecer nem leva a nenhum tipo de melhora na saúde de um obeso. Vale ressaltar ainda que, além de caro, o procedimento requer anestesia, costuma ser doloroso e tem recuperação lenta. Quem faz lipoaspiração e continua comendo da mesma maneira volta a ganhar peso.
17. Jejum
Não. De acordo com os especialistas, pular refeições para perder peso é uma prática errada e arriscada porque o organismo se readapta a estocar gordura a fim de tolerar esses períodos sem alimentação. Ou seja, quem faz jejum acaba acumulando mais gordura. O jejum prolongado (de ficar dias sem comer) faz a pessoa perder peso, mas prejudica a saúde e leva à perda de massa muscular. Quando volta a se alimentar, a pessoa engorda mais do que o normal, pois o organismo foi treinado para manter grandes reservas energéticas a fim de se prevenir de um novo período de jejum.
18. Comida light/diet
Não. Alimentos diet são aqueles em que alguma substância foi substituída por outra. No refrigerante diet, por exemplo, o açúcar foi substituído por adoçante. Chocolates diet podem conter mais calorias do que os normais e engordam. Alimentos light são aqueles que sofreram redução de pelo menos 25% na quantidade de calorias e/ou de algum nutriente (sódio, por exemplo) em relação a seus equivalentes normais. Iogurte desnatado é um produto light, pois seu teor de calorias é menor por não ter gorduras. Nos light, o efeito emagrecedor depende da quantidade ingerida. Dar preferência à ingestão de alimentos diet ou light não garante a redução de peso, principalmente quando se come demais.
19. Cintas modeladoras
Não. Antigas conhecidas das nossas avós, as cintas jamais emagrecem, apenas disfarçam as medidas, de acordo com os especialistas. Não queimam calorias nem têm impacto sobre gorduras localizadas.
20. Medicina ortomolecular
Não. A "dieta ortomolecular" nada mais é que uma dieta saudável. Em alguns casos, é acompanhada pela prescrição de medicamentos ortomoleculares que são formulados com anorexígenos, hormônio de tireóide ou diuréticos. O paciente também toma vitaminas e outras substâncias sem efeito emagrecedor comprovado. Para perda de peso saudável e sustentável, é necessária a reeducação alimentar com mudanças no estilo de vida. Remédios devem ser prescritos criteriosamente e o respaldo científico é fundamental.
Fontes: ALEX CARVALHO LEITE, endocrinologista do Hospital São Luiz, em São Paulo; ANITA SACHS, chefe do departamento de medicina preventiva da Universidade Federal de São Paulo; BRUNO GELEONEZE-NETO, endocrinologista da Abeso (Associação Brasileira para o Estudo da Obesidade da Síndrome Metabólica); CLÁUDIA COZER, diretora da Abeso; FERNANDA PISCIOLARO, nutricionista pelo Centro Universitário São Camilo e especialista em distúrbios metabólicos; MÁRCIA MARTINS SILVEIRA BERNIK, doutora em endocrinologia pela Faculdade de Medicina da USP; MARIA ANGELA ZACCARELLI MARINO, endocrinologista da Faculdade de Medicina do ABC; ZULEIKA HALPERN, endocrinologista e integrante do comitê de ética da International Association for the Study of Obesity; WALMIR COUTINHO, integrante do departamento de obesidade da Sociedade Brasileira de Endocrinologia e Metabologia
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