Birth Defects Sharply Rise When Using ACE Inhibitors

This article from Mercola.com has lots of useful information that is not well-known in the general public. First, the obvious: that ACE inhibitors used for high blood pressure can lead to birth defects if used in the first trimester. Second, that high blood pressure can be resolved fairly easily and that it is caused by elevated insulin levels. Third, it is actually healthy to allow your skin sun exposure instead of slathering on the sunscreen. Here is the article:

http://tinyurl.com/jlgl4

It's Bathing Suit Season!

When you looked in the mirror, what did you see? For many women, this Memorial Day weekend was a nightmare because they did not like what they saw glaring back at them. The winter weight was still there, and coupled with the winter weight gained 4 years ago and every year since, it's just not looking so good!

Each year that goes by, I get more and more worried about the fat/skinny war going on in the media. Yes, we all know that normal people are not that skinny. But to get back at the girls in the magazines, we pretend to be perfectly happy with our weight. We even rationalize it by finding women out there larger than us and figure as long as there are women larger, we are doing okay. There are organized groups out there who actually rebut "Fat Actress" Kirstie Alley for portraying a large woman who just does not want to be large anymore. Then there is Oprah, who claims the "disease" of obesity. Come on! The disease is that she doesn't stop eating when she knows she should!

The truth is, intelligent woman all over this country are eating foods that they should not be eating, drinking junk that does not belong in the human body, and they are not exercising. Plain and simple. And sadly, many of these women who influence our children like teachers, coaches, and school office staff hand down these horrible habits when they bring in fast food, dole out candy, and sip on soda all day. Where is it going to stop?

We have become a society that does not eat for nourishment. We eat for pleasure, and the foods that once gave us pleasure have been replaced by artificial colors and flavors, sugar, corn syrup, and white flour. We are killing ourselves and even scarier: our children are projected to be the first generation that does not live longer than their parents did.

You might not like the way you fit in your bathing suit, but it's more than weight. It's more than being happy in your body, no matter how big or small it is. It's about being healthy. And for all of the women who are pretending to be happy in bodies that are either suffering from or on the brink of suffering from high blood pressure, elevated cholesterol, heart disease, insulin resistance, and diabetes; THAT is not beautiful.

The time is NOW. NOW you must make a change. For your bathing suit, for your health, and for your children's health, you can not go on as before. You just can't.

I would like to share what I have done and what others have done who needed to lose over 100 lbs. First, you want to start with a RESET kit. And you are in luck, because they are on SALE!! After the 5-day RESET, you will continue to eat low-glycemic foods. As you continue to lose weight, you will feel more energetic and you will actually have the energy to exercise. You can have treats when you need them, but at least 80% of your diet will come from low glycemic foods. There are some very important things to note about this program:

• You will not go hungry. If you get hungry, eat.
• You will not eat 3 meals. You will eat 5-6 mini-meals.
• You must eat breakfast. Once you finish the RESET, you might want to purchase shake mixes so that you can have a shake each morning. If not, opt for eggs or long-cook oatmeal.
• You need to drink water. Stop drinking soda, especially "Diet" Soda
• While you will lose weight eating low glycemic foods alone, you should also incorporate additional exercise to your day.
• This "diet" will help those with 5 lbs. to lose, or 200 lbs.

Perhaps your doctor has thrown up his hands. He doesn't know what to tell people anymore. Patient after patient comes into his office, 20, 30, 50 lbs. overweight and he doesn't know how to help them. DOCTORS DON'T KNOW EVERYTHING. Wouldn't you LOVE to have lost 30 lbs. before your next doctor's visit? So instead of shaking his head, he will smile, pat you on the back, and YOU can educate him about weight loss and what he should already know. Not to mention, you can help all your friends lose weight, too!

(Here's where I say...consult your doctor before starting any...blah, blah, blah...) Hey- just do it and consult your doctor when you've got good news for her.

Reversal of Metabolic Syndrome through a Lifestyle Change Program involving a Low Glycemic Diet and Exercise

So you want to just look good in your bathing suit? The RESET will help you lose 5-10 lbs. the first 5 days, which is a great start. Depending on how much weight you need to lose, if you start now, you can wear that bathing suit with pride before the end of the summer! Have a great one and stop looking at those magazines!

Higher Antioxidant Intakes Reduce Risk of Lung Cancer in Male Smokers

Don't avoid antioxidant supplements if you are a smoker or former smoker. Research in the 1990's seemed to indicate that high dosages of beta-carotene supplements may increase lung cancer risk in smokers. However, a new analysis of dietary records from one of these studies came to a different conclusion. Male smokers with the highest overall antioxidant intake, including beta-carotene, actually had a reduced risk of lung cancer.

In observational studies, a high intake of individual antioxidants was related to increased lung cancer risk in male smokers. However, data from many experiments suggest that there are interactions among antioxidant nutrients; therefore, consideration of multiple antioxidants simultaneously may be important in terms of assessing risk.

Yale University researchers evaluated dietary records of participants in the Alpha-Tocopherol, Beta-Carotene Cancer Prevention Study (ATBC). A group of over 27,000 Finnish male smokers aged 50-69 had food records analyzed along with intakes of carotenoids, flavonoids, vitamin E, selenium, and vitamin C. After evaluating the overall intake of antioxidants in this group, the conclusion differs somewhat from the original study.

According to this new analysis, the men with higher overall intakes of antioxidants had lower relative risks of lung cancer, regardless of their assigned study group (beta-carotene or placebo). While researchers of the ATBC study concluded that high-dose beta-carotene supplementation may increase lung cancer risk in male smokers, these findings support the hypothesis that a combination of dietary antioxidants reduces lung cancer risk in men who smoke.

Am J Epidemiol 2004 Jul 1;160(1):68-76

Expert Deception

Authors expose PR industry’s mind games. by Tate Hausman 2/6/2001

Think about how many times you’ve heard an evening news anchor spit out some variation on the phrase, “According to experts ....” It’s such a common device that most of us hardly hear it anymore. But we do hear the “expert” — the professor or doctor or watchdog group — tell us whom to vote for, what to eat, when to buy stock. And, most of the time, we trust them.

Now ask yourself, how many times has that news anchor revealed who those experts are, where they get their funding, and what constitutes their political agenda? If you answered never, you’d be close.

That’s the driving complaint behind Trust Us, We’re Experts, a new book co-authored by John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton of the Center for Media and Democracy. Unlike many so-called “experts,” the Center’s agenda is quite overt — to expose the shenanigans of the public relations industry, which pays, influences and even invents a startling number of those experts.

The third book co-authored by Stauber and Rampton, Trust Us hit bookstore shelves in January. We caught up with John Stauber, who is currently on a nationwide publicity tour, to ask him a few questions about the book, the PR industry and the egregious manipulation of facts for corporate profit.

Tate Hausman: What was the most surprising or disturbing manipulation of public opinion you reveal in your book?

John Stauber: The most disturbing aspect is not a particular example, but rather the fact that the news media regularly fails to investigate so-called “independent experts” associated with industry front groups. They all have friendly-sounding names like “Consumer Alert” and “The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition,” but they fail to reveal their corporate funding and their propaganda agenda, which is to smear legitimate heath and community safety concerns as “junk-science fear-mongering.”

The news media frequently uses the term “junk science” to smear environmental health advocates. The PR industry has spent more than a decade and many millions of dollars funding and creating industry front groups which wrap them in the flag of “sound science.” In reality, their “sound science” is progress as defined by the tobacco industry, the drug industry, the chemical industry, the genetic engineering industry, the petroleum industry and so on.

Hausman: Have you taken heat from the PR industry about this or any of your previous work?

Stauber: We are occasionally attacked in print by PR professionals, but the more prevalent attitude shared with us off the record is to compliment our work, and tell us that we have an accurate portrayal of the business of propaganda, but that in fact all that goes on in the PR world is even worse that we can imagine. I always respond by telling the PR worker that they should write their own book, bare their soul and educate the public about their years of propaganda for firms like Edelman, Burson-Marsteller, Ketchum and the rest. But that usually short-circuits the conversation.

Hausman: Is the public becoming more aware of PR tactics and false experts? Or are those tactics and experts becoming more savvy and effective?

Stauber: The truth is that the situation is getting worse, not better. More and more of what we see, hear and read as “news” is actually PR content. On any given day much or most of what the media transmits or prints as news is provided by the PR industry. It’s off press releases, the result of media campaigns, heavily spun and managed, or in the case of “video news releases” it’s fake TV news — stories completely produced and supplied for free by former journalists who’ve gone over to PR. TV news directors air these VNRs as news. So the media not only fails to identify PR manipulations, it is the guilty party by passing them on as news.

Hausman: What’s the solution for the excesses of the PR industry? Just more media literacy and watchdog organizations like yours? Or should the PR industry be regulated in some way?

Stauber: In our last chapter, “Question Authority,” we identify some of the most common propaganda tactics so that individuals and journalists and public interest scientists can do a better job of not being snowed and fooled. But ultimately those who have the most power and money in any society are going to use the most sophisticated propaganda tactics available to keep democracy at bay and the rabble in line.

There are some specific legislative steps that could be taken without stepping on the First Amendment. One is that all nonprofit, tax-exempt organizations — charities and educational groups, for instance — should be required by law to reveal their institutional funders of, say, $500 or more. That way when a journalist or a citizen hears that a scientific report is from a group like the American Council on Science and Health, a quick trip to an IRS Web site could reveal that this group gets massive infusions of industry money, and that the corporations that fund it benefit from its proclamations that pesticides are safe, genetically engineered food will save the planet, lead contamination isn’t really such a big deal, climate change isn’t happening, and so on. The public clearly doesn’t understand that most nonprofit groups (not ours, by the way) take industry and government grants, or are even the nonprofit arm of industry.

Hausman: What led you, personally, to become one of the PR industry’s most vocal critics?

Stauber: In 1990 I found myself spied upon by the world’s largest PR firm, Burson-Marsteller. I had organized a conference in Washington, D.C., of a couple dozen leaders of farm, consumer, animal welfare and environmental groups all opposed to the FDA’s eventual approval of Monsanto’s genetically engineered bovine growth hormone, called rBGH.

Now, I personally knew everyone participating, except a young woman who claimed to be with the Maryland Consumers Council, a group of “housewives” who said they wanted to make sure their kids didn’t have to drink milk from cows injected with the hormonal drug rBGH. Well, a few months later a reporter called and asked if I knew that Monsanto had a spy in our meeting. I investigated and discovered that the consumer group was phony, that the woman worked for Burson-Marsteller, and that one of B-M’s clients was Eli Lilly corporation who along with Monsanto was one of the developers of rBGH.

I found out that this was typical of corporate PR, and I was outraged at having been spied upon and infiltrated. So I focused my activism onto the PR industry, founded PR Watch in 1993, and it has been very sweet revenge indeed.

If the PR industry doesn’t like what we do, they only have themselves to blame for our existence.

Tate Hausman is managing editor of Alternet, a San Francisco-based alternative news service.

Omega-3 fatty acids inhibit growth of liver cancer cells

Apr 3, 2006, 14:58, Reviewed by: Dr. Rashmi Yadav

By University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, Two new studies by a University of Pittsburgh research team suggest that omega-3 fatty acids--substances that are found in high concentrations in fish oils and certain seeds and nuts--significantly inhibit the growth of liver cancer cells. The studies, presented today at the annual meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR), at the Washington Convention Center in Washington, D.C., suggest that omega-3 fatty acids may be an effective therapy for both the treatment and prevention of human liver cancers.

The first study, Abstract number 2679, looked at the effect and mechanism of omega-3 and omega-6 polyunsaturated fatty acids in human hepatocellular carcinoma cells. Hepatocellular carcinoma accounts for 80 to 90 percent of all liver cancers and is usually fatal within three to six months of diagnosis.

"It has been known for some time that omega-3 fatty acids can inhibit certain cancer cells. So, we were interested in determining whether these substances could inhibit liver cancer cells. If so, we also wanted to know by what mechanism this inhibition occurs," said Tong Wu, M.D., Ph.D., a member of the division of transplantation pathology, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, in whose laboratory the research was conducted.

The investigators treated the hepatocellular carcinoma cells with either the omega-3 fatty acids docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) and eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) or the omega-6 fatty acid arachidonic acid (AA), for 12 to 48 hours. DHA and EPA treatment resulted in a dose-dependent inhibition of cell growth, whereas AA treatment exhibited no significant effect.

According to the investigators, the effect of omega-3 fatty acids on cancer cells likely is due to the induction of apoptosis, or programmed cell death. Indeed, the investigators found that DHA treatment induced the splitting up, or cleavage, of an enzyme in the cell nucleus known as poly (ADP-Ribose) polymerase, or PARP, which is involved in repairing DNA damage, mediating apoptosis and regulating immune response. The cleavage of this enzyme is considered a tell-tale indicator of apoptosis. Furthermore, DHA and EPA treatment indirectly decreased the levels of another protein known as beta-catenin, an overabundance of which has been linked to the development of various tumors.

"Beta-catenin is known to promote cell growth and also is implicated in tumor cell promotion. Therefore, our finding that omega-3 fatty acids can decrease levels of beta-catenin is further evidence that these compounds have the ability to interact on several points of pathways involved in tumor progression," explained Dr. Wu.

In the second study, Abstract number 2680, the investigators treated cholangiocarcinoma tumor cells with omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids for 12 to 48 hours. Cholangiocarcinoma is a particularly aggressive form of liver cancer that arises in the ducts that carry bile from the liver and has an extremely high mortality rate. Again, the omega-3 fatty acids DHA and EPA treatments resulted in a dose-dependent inhibition of cancer cell growth, while the omega-6 fatty acid AA treatment had no significant effect. Likewise, DHA treatment induced a cleavage form of PARP in cholangiocarcinoma cells, and DHA and EPA treatment significantly decreased the level of beta-catenin protein in the cells.

According to Dr. Wu, these findings suggest that omega-3 fatty acids not only may be an effective therapy for the treatment of human liver cancers but may also be a means of protecting the liver from steatohepatitis, a chronic liver disease characterized by the buildup of fat in the liver and believed to be a precursor of hepatocellular carcinoma. The next step in the process, he said, is to test the effects of omega-3 fatty acids in mice harboring human liver tumors.

- American Association for Cancer Research (AACR), at the Washington Convention Center in Washington, D.C. www.upmc.com

This work was supported by grants from the National Cancer Institute. Kyu Lim, Ph.D., in Dr. Wu's laboratory performed the major experiments. Other investigators involved in these studies include Chang Han, Ph.D., and Lihong Xu, Ph.D., all from the University of Pittsburgh.

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