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"“It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change."
--- Charles Darwin --
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May 30, 2008
May 28, 2008
Proof that Magnets Benefit Health
The alternative community has long known that magnets can benefit health. In fact, magnetic therapy has been used to promote well-being since the earliest civilizations in India, Egypt, China, Ancient Greece, and the Middle East, where a magnetic stone called magnetite was ground up and delivered in food and healing potions. But despite thousands of years of anecdotal evidence attesting to the healing properties of magnets, the mainstream medical community has been slow to embrace magnetic therapy, with many citing lack of scientific proof that it works.
For instance, in a recent article in Anesthesia & Analgesia entitled, "Magnet Therapy: Healing or Hogwash?" author Bruce L. Flamm, MD, writes, "...it is crystal clear that billions of dollars have already been spent on magnet therapy, or perhaps, wasted on magnet therapy. To be blunt, there is no proven benefit to magnet therapy."
Dr. Flamm today might wish that he had stuffed that particular article into a drawer instead of publishing it, because results of a new, NIH-funded study out of the University of Virginia prove that magnets can indeed enhance health. The study, led by the Chair of Biomedical Engineering, Thomas Skalak, investigated claims that magnets can increase blood flow to promote healing. And sure enough, after five years of research, the scientists found that magnetic fields do indeed have the capacity to increase blood flow as well as to decrease it.
May 22, 2008
20 Common Cooking Ingredients that Act Like Medicines
The use of herbal treatments for everything from sore throats to cancer has become more and more common with every passing year. We all know about the herbal supplements like St. John’s Wort that can help you with chronic health problems, but did you know that many common edible herbs can provide impressive health benefits?
While you probably already use these herbs in your home, you may not realize that they can do much more than just making your meals tasty and interesting. Here are five common herbs that do double duty as effective herbal treatments.
1. Turmeric. As anyone who has ever treated a head cold with a nice hot Indian meal already knows, turmeric is one of the best healing herbs available to us today. It contains the anti-inflammatory curcumin, which may function in the same way as some pharmaceutical arthritis drugs.
The next time your joints are aching, just have a healthy serving of curry and see if your symptoms respond to the exotic spice. Researchers recommend a daily serving of 400 mg each day.
Continue reading "20 Common Cooking Ingredients that Act Like Medicines" »
Pfizer Begins Settling Painkiller Cases
Pfizer has started settling cases over its Celebrex and Bextra painkillers, a New York lawyer said on Friday.
The company has begun negotiating settlements with individual plaintiff’s firms, David S. Ratner, a lawyer with Morelli Ratner, said in a phone interview. “It’s been going on for a few weeks,” he said.
Mr. Ratner, a member of a steering committee of lawyers for the drugs’ users, said he did not know which specific firms were involved in the settlements.
More than 3,000 patients have claimed that the drugs caused heart attacks and strokes. Celebrex, in the same class of medicines as Merck’s recalled Vioxx, is Pfizer’s third-best-selling drug. The product, which is still on the market, generated $2.3 billion in sales in 2007, a 12 percent increase from the previous year.
The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday that Pfizer had reached settlements with three law firms representing more than 200 of the thousands who sued over the drugs. Firms have been offered $40,000 to $50,000 a client to resolve Bextra cases and as much as $200,000 a client for Celebrex, The Journal reported, citing an unidentified lawyer.
Pfizer withdrew Bextra in April 2005 after it was tied to a potentially fatal skin condition.
Continue reading "Pfizer Begins Settling Painkiller Cases" »
May 20, 2008
Couple Plead Case Against Allergy Drug
FDA officials will collect personal stories of people experiencing unusual side effects while taking the allergy drug Singulair, a move that follows a meeting Friday with a Queensbury couple who blame the medication for prompting their son's suicide.
Kate and Dave Miller have been trying to raise awareness about potential side effects of the drug since their 15-year-old son, Cody, killed himself last August. The teen had taken the medication for less than three weeks to treat seasonal allergies.
The drugmaker, Merck & Co., added "suicidality" to the list of Singulair's side effects last year, and the FDA last month launched an investigation into the drug.
But Friday was the Millers' first meeting with anyone from the FDA to discuss their son and the dozens of stories they've gotten from other parents about strange behavior by children taking the medication.
The closed-door, hourlong meeting was arranged by Rep. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-Greenport, and included four officials from the FDA's Center for Drug Evaluation as well as New York state Sen. Elizabeth Little, R-Queensbury.
Afterward, Gillibrand described the meeting as "productive."
Continue reading " Couple Plead Case Against Allergy Drug" »
Beta Blockers Cost More Lives Than They Save
At least 800,000 deaths may have been caused worldwide in the past decade by preventive drugs which are routinely given to patients undergoing surgery to reduce the risk of heart attacks, researchers said yesterday.
The huge death toll was compared to that "from a world war" by the leader of the international study, carried out in 23 countries, who said it had been caused by "well-meaning physicians" handing out the drugs without considering the side-effects. The result was that they had cost more lives than they saved.
The drugs, called beta blockers, are recommended for patients undergoing surgery, to reduce the risk of heart attacks after operations. Guidelines published in 1996 by the American College of Cardiology and adopted worldwide, recommend they be used in all non-cardiac surgery – all operations except those on the heart. But a randomised trial involving 8,350 patients who had surgery in 190 hospitals across the world has found that those given beta blockers doubled their risk of a stroke (from 0.5 per cent to 1 per cent) and increased their overall risk of death by a third (from 2.3 per cent to 3.1 per cent) compared with a placebo, in the 30 days after their operation.
The drugs did lower the incidence of heart attacks by more than a quarter (from 5.7 per cent to 4.2 per cent), but the benefit was outweighed by the "side effects" of increased stroke and death, the researchers said.
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