WHAT DOCTORS DON’T TELL YOU - E-NEWS BROADCAST No. 120 - 13 January 2005

[Guest guest]

" WDDTY e-News " <e-news

 

 

WDDTY e-News e-News Service - 13 January 2005

Fri, 14 Jan 2005 03:33:24 0000

 

 

WHAT DOCTORS DON'T TELL YOU - E-NEWS BROADCAST No. 120 - 13 January 2005

 

 

 

 

NEWS CONTENTS

 

 

Olive oil and pizza: They're both great for your health

Leukemia: Vitamin A is better, and safer, than chemo

Gut problems: Attend our free workshop

Drug alert: Now the entire NSAID family gets a warning

 

 

First thoughts of 2005: With my mind already overwhelmed by the human

tragedy caused by the tsunami in Asia, I happened to pick up a recent

edition of the Journal of the American Medical Association. It

contained an article about children who were dying from cancer, and

their heart-rending accounts of what was happening to them. No age

was immune, and it contained the words of children as young as three,

trying to understand death and leaving behind their mummies and

daddies. For some inexplicable reason my thoughts turned to a poem by

Philip Larkin, written after he had accidentally killed a hedgehog

while mowing the lawn. In the face of meaningless destruction, the

only thing we can do is to love each other, he wrote. It is perhaps

the one intelligent response we can make. May it be ours in 2005.

 

 

 

WORK AT WDDTY: A new year, and maybe it could be a new start for you.

We at What Doctors Don't Tell You are looking for a full-time

editorial assistant to work at our offices in Wimbledon, south-west

London. The ideal candidate will be a graduate, and will have some

training and experience in journalism. Most of all, you will believe

in the old-fashioned ideals of investigative journalism. The job

entails research and writing, as well as some of the more mundane

aspects of office life, such as the opening of the morning mail and

responding to readers' correspondence. If this appeals, please e-mail

us at: jobs, including a mini-CV and current salary (if

applicable). Alternatively, write to Lynne McTaggart at: WDDTY, 2

Salisbury Road, London SW19 4EZ.

 

 

 

OLIVE OIL AND PIZZA: They're both great for your health

 

If food is our medicine, scientists are beginning to understand why.

They have started to uncover the secrets of the famed Mediterranean

diet and its protective qualities against cancer, and especially

breast cancer.

 

The key seems to be the olive oil dressing, which is rich in oleic

acid, a monounsaturated fatty acid. In laboratory experiments

scientists have discovered that oleic acid can dramatically reduce

breast cancer cells, and in some tests eliminated 46 per cent of the

cancer cells.

 

The scientists believe that oleic acid does not just protect against

breast cancer, it can also prolong the lives of those with the cancer.

Lead researcher Dr Javier Menendez of the Feinberg School of Medicine

at Northwestern University believes that oleic acid can also protect

against heart disease and is an anti-ageing agent.

The key is to use extra virgin olive oil as a cold dressing on salads

or vegetables. It loses its protective qualities when it's used to

cook food.

 

Extra virgin olive oil isn't the only food that's good for our health.

Step forward the humble pizza as a protector against heart attacks.

People who regularly eat 'Italian pizza' halved their risk of an acute

myocardial infarction, or heart attack, compared with those who ate

pizza only occasionally. Even those who eat four portions or less a

month still gained some protection.

 

The discovery was made by doctors at a Milan hospital who analysed the

eating habits of 507 patients who had suffered their first heart

attack, and compared them with 478 patients who had been admitted with

other health problems.

 

Those who were 'frequent' eaters of pizza - defined as eating two or

more 200 g portions of pizza a week - had the greatest protection, and

compared with 'regular' consumers, who ate more than one a week, while

the ones who had the least protection ate just one to three portions a

month.

 

The doctors emphasise that the patients were eating pizzas from

traditional pizzerias in Italian, where the quality of the ingredients

is presumably higher. This may also explain the 'Clinton effect'.

Former US president Bill Clinton is an avowed pizza eater, but he

still recently underwent a quadruple coronary by-pass, so presumably

the standard fast-food pizza isn't going to do the job.

Interestingly, the findings of the Milan study mirror earlier studies

that found that tomatoes and tomato paste, which happen to be the most

common ingredients in pizzas, had protective qualities against heart

disease.

 

So what's the ideal meal? Why, fresh tomatoes swimming in cold extra

virgin olive oil dressing, of course.

 

Sources: Olive oil study - Annals of Oncology, 10 January 2005;

doi:10.1093/annonc/mdi090; Pizza study - European Journal of Clinical

Nutrition, 2004: 58; 1543-6).

 

 

 

LEUKEMIA: Vitamin A is better, and safer, than chemo

 

Oncologists have for the first time tested a therapy other than

chemotherapy to treat leukemia, and it worked. But it wasn't another

toxic, debilitating chemical that they turned to - it was vitamin A.

 

This simple therapy - which involved wrapping vitamin A inside bubbles

of fat - reversed a rare form of leukemia in up to a third of patients.

 

The key to the new therapy seems to be the delivery mechanism. When

it's put in a lipid carrier, it retains its potency whereas earlier

trials of vitamin A as an anti-carcinogen found that little of the

vitamin was being absorbed by the body when it was taken orally.

 

Not surprisingly, it's been patented, and is being licensed as the

'drug' Lipo-Atra, even though it is essentially a form of vitamin A

known as Atra, which was originally found to help leukemia patients in

studies in China.

 

It's been tested on a group of 34 patients with acute promyelocytic

leukemia (APL), 10 of whom have been in remission for an average of

five years, despite never having had chemotherapy.

Lead researcher Dr Elihu Estey at Texas University's Department of

Leukemia said: " This is the first time we have seen patients with an

acute leukemia potentially cured without use of chemotherapy. That's

an important development in the field of leukemia, because traditional

treatment with chemotherapy often produces side effects, even death,

in patients with different kinds of leukemia than the one studied

here. " He said it.

 

(Source: Annual proceedings of the American Society of Clinical

Oncology, 2004).

 

 

 

GUT PROBLEMS: Attend our free workshop, and see if we can help you

 

Dr Harald Gaier, What Doctors Don't Tell You's medical detective,

returns to the big health topic of gut-related problems in the next of

his free workshops for Enews readers.

 

The event is on Thursday, 20 January, and begins at 6.30pm at Harald's

offices at 50 New Cavendish Street, London W1 with welcome drinks and

snacks. The discussion begins at 7pm and lasts for an

hour-and-a-half, which includes a time for questions and answers.

Places are limited, so please reserve your free place by contacting

Karin on 0207 009 4650.

 

 

 

 

DRUG ALERT: Now the entire NSAID family gets a warning

 

America's drug 'watchdog', the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), had

a nice Christmas present for the pharmaceuticals. On Christmas Eve it

told all doctors in the USA to treat with extreme caution the entire

family of NSAIDs (non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs), such as

aspirin, and which embraces the more recent version, the COX-2 agents.

While nobody was especially surprised about the COX-2 warning after

their association with serious heart problems, few expected a blanket

warning about the entire NSAID family, one of the most lucrative to

the pharmaceutical industry.

 

The FDA has been very slow to act over the COX-2 drugs, which even the

manufacturers were admitting represented a danger to health as far

back as last September. Possibly sensitive to public concerns about

its role as watchdog, the FDA moved with speed in issuing a warning

about the entire NSAID range, so catching everyone out, including the

pharmaceutical companies.

 

Just days before the Christmas holidays the agency received the

results from a clinical trial that suggested long-term use of

naproxen, an NSAID, could cause heart problems.

This follows on from concerns about the COX-2 drugs Celebrex

(celecoxib) and Bextra (valdecoxib), which have been linked to an

increased risk of heart attack and stroke.

 

While the warning went out to doctors, the FDA is also concerned about

consumers who regularly buy an NSAID, such as aspirin, for long-term

use. Use them 'in strict accordance with the label directions', the

FDA states, and never take them for more than 10 days at a time.

(Source: FDA website).