What’s New In Medicine

Nano technology is the science of using particles that are extremely small. A nano meter is a billionth of a meter and to put that into perspective a human hair is about 50,000 to 100,000 nanometers. The initial thoughts were that the smaller the particle the better it would penetrate the skin and there fore be more efficacious. Well now Nanophobia is setting in and scientists are afraid that nanoparticles may not only penetrate the skin effectively but then also accumulate in certain organs. Silver is being used in cosmetics and soaps in nanoparticles to supposedly kill skin bacteria and give you a smoother look. But ask any physician who was practicing in the 1950’s or 60’s and he will remind you or a cough syrup that had silver in it. It was incredibly effective in stopping coughs but it then accumulated in the skin and these people then had skin that looked like they were made of aluminum. And that was permanent. Gold is being used in upscale cosmetics in nano-sized particles. Gold is injected directly into peoples veins for Rheumatoid Arthritis. There are a lot of allergies but when it works it really loosens up the joints. It will be an interesting observation to see if those who can afford to use a nano gold cream actually have less wrinkles and no joint pain?? Up until now it was Nano this or Nano that but with the scientific community now asking a lot of questions many of the cosmetic companies are backing off of their Nano advertizing.

Movies to Reality

Since most of my readership is female and most guys are more into technology then this one is to pass onto your husbands. Remember the scene in start wars when they wanted to communicate with each other and princess Leah appeared in a mid air holographic image …well it looks like we will have that by 2018. A group of European Universities have combined their talents to produce just such T.V. Firstly will come the home movies with the glasses and then in the next three years will come the three D on your television set with out glasses and then the ultimate holographic floating in mid air “T.V.” That’s only 11 years away….how long ago was 1998?. What’s the old saying “the only difference between men and boys is the size and expense of their toys” !!!

Heart Disease Reversible without Surgery

The most common cause of heart disease is thought to be genetics, bad dietary habits with excessive amounts of cholesterol and triglycerides, lack of exercise, obesity, smoking and now micro RNA. It turns out that small pieces of microRNA can actually cause heart damage but when these were blocked the heart damage was “reversible”.
Studies using animals were dramatic and exciting and human studies should be getting under way soon. It promises to not only prevent heart disease but also reverse existing damage. Maybe some day soon treating heart disease with Statin drugs will seem so old fashioned.

Another Deficiency Study

Here comes another deficiency study showing that Vitamin D deficiency is an unrecognized cardiovascular risk factor. The article was published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology and states that up to 50% of American may be affected.
OK here my cynical response to all of the deficiency studies. If they had looked at kidney function or brain function there probably would have been some untoward bad side effect and risk factor there too. In fact if you were deficient in that vitamin almost any organ would be adversely affected not just the heart. If you took just about any nutrient and made anyone deficient it would have an adverse effect on whatever organ system you looked at.
The body requires a homeostatic balance of all nutrients…not Just Vitamin D but all vitamins and minerals, amino acids, phyto nutrients, fats and proteins…. So no matter what you study if you are deficient in anything something is going to show an adverse effect.
The collerary of that are the Vitamin pitches which go like this …this vitamin prevents this or that condition or disease…not included in that statement is that you probably don’t need it in the first place, secondly the disease only exists in third world countries or in end stage alcoholics, you’re probably getting more than you need from other food sources, and the pitch “you’re preventing” implies that you’ll probably get the disease if you don’t take the supplement which has no basis in fact to begin with.
I get so irritated with pseudoscience capitalistic exploitation of the public!!!!!!!

Finally Something for Jet Lag

Most sleeping meds are either benzodiapepines or their derivatives which means in one way or another they are addictive. Another sideeffects that people get when taking them long term is a form of depression which is marked by loss of motivation, loss of joy in theirs lives and generalized lassitude. Rozerem was the first Melatonin drug to help with sleep but left people with a heaviness when they awoke, now come Tasimelteon which is a drug that activates the Melatonin receptors thereby modifying the circadian rhythm. This is going to be a great drug for jet lag, shift workers and people who have to go to bed too early to rise for work early. Because it is a melatonin receptor inducer it is NOT habit forming. But please remember that 20% of all Melatonin users experience a paradoxical response, ie the are stimulated…..mmmm
let me see maybe for those this has other uses???

If there is one thing that scares all of us it’s the thought that we might one day contract cancer.
With the rate of breast cancer now approaching 1:9, the rise in pancreatic cancer, and the ever present lung cancer for smokers, it’s no wonder that we’re all a little afraid. So obviously our next question should be what can I do now and how can I prevent it?

Lets first talk about one of the main preventable causes of breast cancer and that is excessive fat. You see estrogen is stored in your fat so the more of it that you have the greater your stores of estrogen are. Most cancers have a promoter and an initiator. Many believe that the excessive estrogen in your fat combined with the hormones that are present in our chicken and beef act as promoters….we don’t know what the exact initiators are but let’s face it if you reduce the promoter you have less of a chance of initiating something. Let’s go through some of the things you can do to lessen your chances of getting cancer.

1. Exercise. We could spend hours and days talking about the benefits of exercise but suffice it to say that in those populations that exercise regularly their incidence of cancer is greatly reduced!

2. Cancer thrives on sugar, its gasoline to your cancer.
Substitute with a natural honey or molasses. Synthetic substitutes are also dangerous in different ways.

3. Cancer feeds on mucous in the gastrointestinal tract and the number one thing that causes mucous is milk. Rice Dream and Soy products are better

4. The great colon cancer rates of the 1960’s were a result of all of the beef and pork our parents ate. They produce an acidic environment in the gastrointestinal tract, which cancer thrives on, range fed organic chicken and blue water wild fish are your best substitutes.

5. The Mediterranean diet is all about fresh whole grain cereals, fruits, nuts, and of course also a little wine. Those people who partake of this diet which is about 80% of the above have 50% less heart disease and 30% less cancer. So increase your vegetables, preferably raw and drink more natural juices.

6. Large amounts of acidic drinks are also promoters, so minimize your intake of these. Distilled water is dead water, avoid it. Filter out the toxins in our drinking water with a Britta or Pur water filter and drink more green tea. It has a substance in it called catechin which is both a promoter and initiator reducer.

7. Undigested food tends to slow the gut transit time down which can then allow meats to become stagnant and putrefied. If then these meats have unwanted hormones in them this could act as a promoter. In addition it ties up many of the enzymes necessary for other digestion which could be fighting cancer cells elsewhere.

8. Vitamins, antioxidants, and immune system boosters all complement your diet and help against cancer. Of course these should be processed organically and have an organic source. Many so called healthy vitamins are grown in the Far East in toxic soil, so you can only imagine what else your getting. Remember the FDA does not control health supplements. It’s buyer beware.

9. The hardest thing in life is to forgive someone who has really hurt you, but failure to do so means that that person is controlling you from a distance.

The quest to slow the facial aging process is occurring on all fronts and it is now generally believed that that simply stretching the skin over an aging skeleton is somewhat short sighted and shallow.

The mid-face, which is defined as that area from the brow to the end of the nose is where most all of the facial aging tends to occur.

Using new information obtained from MRIs of the face for dental surgery, has shown us that not only is there contraction of the maxillary bone (cheek bone) but that it also moves toward the back of the head and upward. This would then cause sort of a shortening and contraction of the bones around the nose. The frontal bone (forehead) on the other hand moves forward and downward, again causing a more forward mid-face contraction look. If you then add the fact that the size of our teeth are contracting anywhere from .5 mm to 1mm on both the top and bottom its no wonder we tend to lose that open smooth look of youth as we age.

Studies are also showing us that our faces have individual pockets of fat, which tend to dissolve over time. In the past we thought of the facial fat as one continuous but interrupted layer, but now we find that the pockets are not only separated but each one has its own time table of falling and disappearance.

All of this is not to depress you but to realize that if we can identify the specific type of aging you are undergoing then the more specific and better your results can be.
So it’s not just about stretching, but also thermal lifting and replacement of the volume.
Reversing the facial signs of aging is primarily about replacing the youthful volume that has diminished.

At the Murray Center we have believed this for many years and that is why our approach has been to lift with the Silhouette threads (not barbed sutures), revolumize
with Sculptra, and tighten with the laser Thermascan. This way there are virtually no scars to deal with, the look is a natural look (not stretched and wind-blown) and should the day arrive when surgery is indicated it can be done with the best possible results.

That’s the title of the article from The Seattle Times. At the Annual American Academy of Family Physicians where they usually talk about diabetes and high blood pressure there were ten continuing courses ranging from Chemical peels, facial fillers and Botox. The courses are so popular they have waiting lists. The Family Physicians like it but as one plastic surgeon said ‘patients don’t come to me to get a pap smear’. The main reason cited by F.P.’s is that they don’t have to deal with insurance companies.

Authors Note: I believe that this is just one more sign that we are ready to try and circumvent the two greatest impediments to ‘proper’ costing, quality health care, namely the insurance companies and the drug companies.

With socialized Health Care looming on our horizon a recent study by the British Medical Association showing the attitudes and working conditions of our counterparts on the other side of the ocean many be useful.

11,000 G.P.’s were asked how things are now vs. five years ago and 53.2% said things were now worse. 63% said that practicing good medicine was now harder, 52% said they would not recommend medicine as a career, 53% said they thought extending office hours would be good if they got paid for it, but 72% said that would be a bad allocation of resources. Considering that the first year G.P’s get about $200,000.00 dollars salary, which is substantially more than their American counterparts, it may surprise many that American Doctors will be financially better off with a Universal Socialized Health Care system.

Authors Note: As a private practicing physician of 30 years I have only had four two week vacations in my entire working life, the rest being either one weekers or long weekends. Being salaried sounds pretty good to me because my 3000+ dollars a day overhead would be eliminated, 6 weeks of vacation a year sound unbelievable, having my own health care provided for, minimalized risk of mal-practice, and anything approaching a 40 hour work week would be almost unbelievable. From my stand point, call it what you want, Socialized Health Care, Universal Health Care, Hillary Health Care, I believe doctors would have better quality of lives than under our current system.

The following report is a compilation of three recently released studies on the health of Americans.
In a study comparing the health of Americans with our European counterparts we were compared to Austria, Denmark, France, Germany Greece, Italy, Netherlands, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland. We have higher rates of cancer, diabetes, obesity and heart disease. So much so that it adds an additional 100-150 Billion dollars more than our European counterparts. The obesity rates for us are 33.1% vs. 17.1%, and for smokers 53%vs. 43%. We spend about $6,102 dollars per person in the U.S. which is nearly twice that of Netherlands, Germany or France. The study pointed out that the single thing Americans could do to reduce our spending costs is for the country to go on a diet. This would have a positive impact on diabetes, hypertension and health disease.
The study points out the fact that the American medical system is an intervention at point of disease contact and there is virtually no disease prevention as there is in Europe. The authors point out that the average American takes between one and two weeks vacation per year whereas our European counterparts believe it is a God given right for them to take 6 weeks per year, which they all do.

Authors Note: Having spent a large amount of time on both continents I have noted the following. Americans live to work Europeans work to live. They do take 6 weeks per year and I believe because of that they maintain a better balance in their lives. They take longer to eat and it takes them longer to prepare the food that they are going to eat. They spend more time socializing and less time in church, more time talking to each other and less time in front of the T.V., they walk more and drive less, and find more satisfaction in their lives with less accumulation of “stuff”.

The current status of our health. More than 109 million Americans report that they have one or more of the following:

Cancer 10,555,000 (3.7%)
Diabetes 13,729,000 (4.9%)
Heart Disease 19,145,000 (6.8%)
Hypertension 36,761,000 (13%)
Stroke 2,245,000 (.9%)
Mental Disorder 30,338,000 (10.7%)
Pulmonary Conditions 49,206,000 (17.4%)

The impact of these diseases on our economy is 1.3 trillion dollars per year. 277 billion is in the cost of treatment or 21% and 1.047 trillion dollars in lost productivity. It is estimated that by implementing preventive measures we could reduce the impact of all of these diseases on our economy by 18%.
If you could see a map of the highest prevalence of disease it would show that the entire Southeast has the highest incidence of disease, the mid west less and the entire western states are the healthiest.

Authors Note: If you add the above numbers up you find that there are 161,979,000 million Americans that are sick with some sort of on going disease. Since there are about 40 million children that are not in the above statistics and about 300,000,000 million Americans in general that means that 53% of adult Americans are SICK. One out of two Americans have a chronic illness!!! It’s no wonder we rank number 14 in the world for longevity. As shocking as these statistics are the real question is what can we do about it. I think the answer lies in my 13 Tip of a Healthier and Happier Life that you can get from the front web page. These by the way are just the out line of the book by the same title that will be out next year.

In a Finnish study involving 5000 workers farmers scored the lowest in job satisfaction. In questionnaires given in which personal productivity, health status and quality of life were evaluated farmers scored the lowest. Salaried workers came in second and entrepreneurs scored the highest.

More than 20,000 women are diagnosed with ovarian cancer every year in the U.S. Almost 80% of these will already have spread by the time they are diagnosed. Current early detection methods are a blood test called a CA125 and an intra-vaginal ultrasound. In several retrospective studies recently they determined that early detection was possible if the physicians asked the following questions to all women under going their annual pap smears.

1.Are you experiencing any pelvic pain?
2.Have you had any abdominal pain for more than 12 days per month?
3.Have you noticed any increase in the size of your abdomen?
4.Have you noticed more abdominal bloating lately?
5.Do you experience a rapid feeling of fullness when eating?
6.Have you had any difficulty in eating?

While these symptoms may sound vague they may be life saving if you bring them to the attention of your Doctor.

The College of London looked at death rates and compared them to black smoke and sulphur dioxide environmental exposure for the years 1982 through 1998. They found that black smoke and sulphur dioxide levels decreased by five and four times respectively during those years. However the death rates attributable to black smoke increased from 10% to 19% during the study and from 10% to 20% for sulphur dioxide. The study underwent critical statistical review and the results stood.

It is theorized that there may be other more potent pollutants that are not measured that could be causing the increase in death rates or they could be acting in synchrony with the existing pollutants thereby being more lethal.

Authors note: Whether you get second hand smoke from cigarettes or industrial pollution in the air, or increased ozone levels form global warming, or carcinogens in the water, each and everyone of us has a responsibility to try to change it for our children and grand-children.

An analysis of 50,000 suicides in England and Wales between 1993 and 2003 found that as the temperature rises so does the suicide rate. In fact for each degree above 18C there was a four percent rise in suicides – and for violent suicides the rate was 5%. Some of the reasons put forth were that people become more irritable and aggressive in hot weather, serotonin levels decrease in the summer, and people tend to drink more alcohol in hotter weather. In fact in the 1995 heat wave the suicide rate increased by 46.9%. The highest day for suicides was January 1 and the Mondays were the worst day. As with all suicides 75% are by men and 25% by women.
Authors Note: I was always under the assumptions that since Oregon and Washington have about 220+ days of rain and the suicide rate is highest in those states, that rainy weather was the culprit. Maybe we should do some comparative studies here in the U.S.