| Interestingly, recent studies reported in the new england journal of medicine have shown that 93 percent of the people in Boston are deficient in vitamin D—even those taking multivitamins.14 Other studies are now revealing that the RDA of vitamin D is too low (200 IU) and patients need to take 500-800 IU of vitamin D, which is again an optimal level. This dosage is still considered to be well within a safe range.15
Niacin (Vitamin B3)
High doses of niacin supplementation may create flushing to the skin, nausea, and liver damage. |
| There is now great interest in the therapeutic benefits that Alzheimer's patients could receive from antioxidants. The new england journal of medicine reported in April 1997 a study showing that high doses of vitamin E could significantly decrease the progression of Alzheimer's dementia. Patients with moderate Alzheimer's who took 2,000 IU of vitamin E in supplementation were able to remain at home an additional two to three years longer than the control group members, who took a placebo. |
| Last April, the new england journal of medicine published an article titled "The Messenger Under Attack— Intimidation of Researchers by Special-Interest Groups," which detailed three cases of harassment by advocacy groups, physicians' associations, or academic consultants who often failed to disclose their close ties to drug companies. With more and more pressure groups weighing in on what research gets financed and promoted, the article said, "Such attacks may become more frequent and acrimonious."15
McCully knew the dangers of homocysteine. |
Bill Sardi
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 Drowned out in the front-page publicity over Herceptin is the fact the Food & Drug Administration just issued a warning to doctors about the increased risk for heart failure when Herceptin is used with another chemotherapy drug, like the one used in the new england journal of medicine report. The incidence of heart failure rose over 500% (from 0.8% to 4.1%) among women receiving Herceptin and chemotherapy. [FDA Bulletin] [FDA Patient Safety News: #45, November 2005]
The news media, in typical fashion, unquestionably heralds Herceptin as a cure for breast cancer. |
Paul D. Blanc, M.D.
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 As chief of clinic of the "Nervous Department" of the College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York, he was well positioned to publish his report of three cases of carbon disulfide poisoning in the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal (latet tenamed the new england journal of medicine). |
Bill Sardi
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| Mayo Clinic doctors publish a study in the new england journal of medicine that involves
150 patients with ad-
Vitamin C and Cancer: An Interview With Dr. Ewan Cameron
What began as a treatment of last resort may also be the best preventative, according to this Scottish doctor.
IIOMINICK HOSCO
Oat at aj Ant . after bacotnlnr a Putvumott editor four roan tfo m to writ* "Vitamin C and Cancer: Caaa No. IB " Um $Xary of a track driver with Urmin*] c*nc*r. The man had the good fort una to be traatcd for hit diaaaae by Alias Campbell. U.D.. and Ewan Cameron. Mi:, CJvR. |
Shannon Brownlee
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 A cardiac surgeon writing in the new england journal of medicine estimated that in 1980 members of his specialty were earning an average of $3co,ooo a year on bypass surgeries alone. When the other surgeries they performed were included, their incomes could easily top $ coo,000, the equivalent of more than $ 1 million in 200c. Between 19C0 and 1978, physician fees rose 43 percent faster than other wages, and within a little more than a decade of Medicare's enactment, total spending on health care exceeded 1 o percent of the gross national product. |
| This astonishing finding, that many hospitals are failing to deliver the simplest—yet often most effective—care, has been corroborated by another massive study, which was published in 2003 in the new england journal of medicine. Led by Elizabeth McGlynn, a researcher with the RAND Corporation, the study involved combing through thousands of medical records for information about 439 indicators of the quality of health care. Did migraine sufferers get the right drugs? Did people who came to the hospital with a broken hip receive heparin to prevent a stroke or heart attack? |
| This finding was supported most recently by a Veterans Affairs study published in the new england journal of medicine. And while the elective use of angioplasty and stents has skyrocketed over the past ten to fifteen years, there has been no change in the rate of heart attacks.
Only recently have cardiologists begun to understand why this is so. They once believed that plaque in the coronary arteries accumulated slowly over decades, like sludge in a pipe, until one day it finally blocked an artery completely and triggered a heart attack. |
| In an editorial published in the new england journal of medicine, Richard Lange and L. David Hillis, a colleague from Texas, place a portion of the blame for unnecessary procedures at the feet of heart disease patients and their families, who often expect and insist upon aggressive treatment. "In an era in which invasive cardiac procedures are a manifestation of high-technology," write Lange and Hillis, "the term 'conservative management' may project the impression (to physicians and patients alike) of obsolescence, inadequacy, and inferiority . . . |
| In 2002, the new england journal of medicine published a startling study that found a fourfold difference in the number of neonatologists, the physicians who specialize in caring for sick newborn babies, in different regions across the country. The researchers looked at birth and death records for nearly four million babies born in 199 c to see if having more neonatologists in a region reduced the chances that an infant would die within the first month of life. They found that having about 4.3 neonatologists per ten thousand births in a region was best for reducing the chances of death. |
| In an eloquent and disturbing essay published in the new england journal of medicine, Goodwin writes about the medicalization of aging, the tendency for doctors and patients to see the inevitable breakdown of the body as a series of treatable diseases.
So little of what is done for old people seems aimed in any direct way at making the patient feel better. With medicalization, the role of physicians has become so expanded and technologized that we fail at our most important task—providing relief from suffering. Medical care of the elderly is particularly distorted by this new focus. |
Thomson Healthcare, Inc.
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 Similarly, a discussion on managing menopausal symptoms published in the new england journal of medicine in 2006 identified mixed but primarily negative evidence for the effectiveness of Black Cohosh in regard to its ability to improve the frequency or severity of menopausal hot flashes. The author points out that Black Cohosh could possibly bind estrogen receptors and pose the same risk for adverse outcomes that estrogen poses; studies have not been of size or duration to fully document the safety of Black Cohosh (Grady, 2006). |
Bill Sardi
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| Stunning," "revolutionary," "jaw-dropping," "wonder drug," "cuts disease recurrence in half," are the words used to describe the three reports published in the new england journal of medicine involving Herceptin (trastuzumab). But if the published results are so "jaw-dropping," why weren't they heralded earlier, when they were first reported at the American Society of Clinical Oncology meeting?
Women battling breast cancer are never going to hear the details of these studies. They are already rushing to line up for treatment. |
Caldwell B. Esselstyn, Jr., M.D.
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 Recently, the new england journal of medicine reported on a study in which massive doses of cholesterol-lowering drugs were used to reduce total cholesterol well below 150 mg/dL. Three out of four of the heart patients involved seem to do very well under this regimen. But it was not a complete success. Even with their cholesterol levels satisfactorily reduced, one out of every four of the patients in the study sustained a new cardiovascular event or died within two and a half years of starting this treatment. |
Paul D. Blanc, M.D.
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| In October 1964, the new england journal of medicine carried a report entitled "Benzene and Leukemia," cowritten by Dr. Enrico Vigliani. Based in Milan, Dr. Vigliani had a long and painful familiarity with the link between benzene used as a glue solvent and cancer in those who applied it. His first paper on the subject had been published more than a quarter of a century before, in 1938. His 1964 report, however, was far from historical.
Of the forty-two cases it described, the most recent had died of leukemia less than a year before the article was published. |
Benjamin H. Natelson, M.D.
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 The echinacea study, which was reported in a major American medical journal, the new england journal of medicine, was particularly thorough. People may continue buying echinacea, but, if it works, it does so because of their belief in its efficacy rather than because it has a specific antiviral effect.
Nutraceuticals
Echinacea is an example of a nutraceutical, a class of food-based chemicals that are thought to have an effect on health. |
Bottom Line Health
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| Elderly May Be Taking Unsafe Meds
Philip Wang, MD, DrPH, psychiatrist and epidemiologist, Brigham and Women's Hospital, and assistant professor of psychiatry, medicine and health-care policy, Harvard Medical School, both in Boston.
The new england journal of medicine.
Older antipsychotic medications appear to be no safer than newer antipsychotic drugs in elderly people, and should not be used to replace the newer drugs without careful consideration, according to a study.
THE STUDY
In this study, Dr. |
| McGlynn, PhD, associate director, Rand Health.
The new england journal of medicine.
All Americans are at risk of receiving substandard health care, regardless of gender, race, income or even insurance status. In fact, a recent study found that only 54.9% of the patients surveyed received the care that experts usually recommend for their condition.
"There's no question that disparities exist, but the big variations are not between groups, but between what people are getting and what people should be getting," says Dr. Steven M. Asch, study author and with Rand Health. |
| Barker, MD, PhD, professor of medicine, Heart Research Center, Oregon Health and Science University, Portland.
The new england journal of medicine.
Researchers say they've identified a pattern of growth in children that is strongly linked to an increased risk of cardiovascular trouble decades later.
A CLEAR PATTERN
A review of the medical histories of 357 men and 87 women who were born in Helsinki, Finland, between 1934 and 1944, and who developed coronary heart disease as adults by 2003 showed a clear pattern, explains Dr. David J. |
Michael Pollan
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 A Clinical Trial of the Effects of Dietary Patterns on Blood Pressure," new england journal of medicine, Vol. 336, No. 16, April 17, 1997.) Neither of these studies relied on food-frequency questionnaires; rather, the researchers prepared the meals for the participants. The Lyon Diet Heart Study found that the Mediterranean diet, when compared to a Western diet, offered protection against a second heart attack during the four years patients were followed. (Michel de Lorgeril et al. |
| Daviglus, "Fish Consumption and the 30-Year Risk of Myocardial Infarction," new england journal of medicine, 1997; 336: 1046-53. K.W Lee and G.Y. Lip, "The Role of Omega-3 Fatty Acids in the Secondary Prevention of Cardiovascular Disease," QJM:An International Journal of Medicine, 2003 July; 96(7):46S-80.
Alzheimer's. Omega-6s supply the building blocks for a class of pro-inflammatory messenger chemicals involved in the body's rapid-response reaction to a range of problems. One of these compounds is thromboxane, which encourages blood platelets to aggregate into clots. |
| A ten-year study of heart disease mortality published in the new england journal of medicine in 1998 strongly suggests that most of the decline in deaths from heart disease is due not to changes in lifestyle, such as diet, but to improvements in medical care. (Though cessation of smoking has been important.) For while during the period under analysis, heart attack deaths declined substantially, hospital admissions for heart attack did not. |
Steven V. Joyal
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 In a study published in 2004 in the new england journal of medicine, researchers studied 470 obese and overweight children and adolescents of various ethnicities and compared them with their non-obese peers. As the level of obesity increased, so did the prevalence of metabolic syndrome, which reached 50 percent among the most severely obese youngsters. Levels of C-reactive protein also were high in the youngsters, and all of the overweight and obese children already had signs of cardiovascular disease. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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 In May, the new england journal of medicine published a study that found Avandia increases the risk of heart attacks. But FDA officials already knew that; indeed the drug's maker, GlaxoSmithKline LLC, based in London, told the agency of the risk two years ago. However, the FDA failed to pass along the warning to the one million Americans who already take the drug.
Even within the FDA, scientists have presented the risks of Avandia to colleagues and fellow committee members. Dr. |
Caldwell B. Esselstyn, Jr., M.D.
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| The new england journal of medicine published the results of his autopsy, noting an "absolutely remarkable" absence of calcification and fatty deposits in Pritikin's coronary arteries. Those blood vessels, the medical examiner declared, were like those of a teenager.1
Hans Diehl, who studied with Nathan Pritikin, has made healthier lifestyles his own lifelong cause. His Coronary Health Improvement Program—CHIP—trains entire communities in how to change their bad nutrition habits. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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 One, it's in the new england journal of medicine, which almost never prints anything positive about natural remedies.
Mike: Yes -- and look at who their advertisers are.
Teitelbaum: Well, look at all the drug companies, and where they advertise. You know, doctors should wear a button that says, "I do what the drug companies tell me to do," because all of our journals and all of our conferences, by and large, are paid for by the drug companies -- and also, our professors for the research. If you look at the study, the natural remedies are far more effective. |
Bottom Line Health
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| Maurizio Fava, director, Depression Clinical and Research Program, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston.
The new england journal of medicine.
Approximately half of the people battling depression can achieve complete remission by either adding one more drug to their regimen or by switching to a new medication, according to researchers.
Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) —which include citalopram (Celexa), paroxetine (Paxil), fluoxetine (Prozac) and sertraline (Zoloft)—are considered effective medications to treat depression. |
Connie Bennett, C.H.H.C. with Stephen T. Sinatra, M.D.
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 Hypoglycemic Disorders." new england journal of medicine 332 (1995):
1144-52.
Swisher, Natalie. "Healthy Woman: Hungry or Hypoglycemic?" M&F Hers. March 2003, 120-21. Tintera, John. "What You Should Know about Your Glands." Weston A. Price Foundation. http://www.westonaprice.org/archive/archive_tintera.html. Turner, B., et al. "The Effect of Evening Alcohol Consumption on Next-Morning Glucose Control in
Type 1 Diabetes." Diabetes Care 24, no. 11 (2001): 1888-93. UCSF Children's Hospital at UCSF Media Center. "Intensive Care Nursery House Staff Manual: Neo-
Natal Hypoglycemia." http://www. |
| Neurochemical Changes Following High-Dose Aspartame with Dietary Carbohydrates." new england journal of medicine 309 (1983): 429-30.
Yale-New Haven Hospital. "Eat Any Sugar Alcohol Lately?" www.ynhh.org/online/nutrition/advisor/ sugar_alcohol.html.
AFTERWORD: RAYS OF HOPE AND SIGNS OF PROMISE
Ascribe Business and Economics News Service. "Parents, Socially Conscious Food Companies Team Up to Promote Healthy Eating at Home," September 25, 2005. www.highbeam.com/browse/Business-Finance-AScribe+Business+~A~+Economics+News+Service/September-2005-pl-65k.
Brent Zook, Kristal. |
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