November 2008 Health in the News Archive

[ Monthly Index of New Briefs ]

Something is fishy here. They conclude that mammograms detect some cancers that just go away, handled successfully by the immune system.

Researchers say they can't blame the increased incidence of breast cancer on more cases being found. So, two questions: Do some cancers go away on their own? Could the incidence of cancer be 22 percent higher in the group regularly screened because radiation is carcinogenic? Odd there was no mention of that documented possibility. X-rays, the kind in mammography, can break the chemical bonds in molecules, including DNA molecules, thereby disturbing their normal functioning. In 2005, the National Toxicology Program classified X-radiation and gamma radiation as known human carcinogens. A 2005 National Research Council report stated, "The risk of cancer proceeds in a linear fashion at lower doses of ionizing radiation without a threshold and that the smallest dose has the potential to cause a small increase in risk to humans."

According to Dr. Sam Epstein, Chairman of the Cancer Prevention Coalition, The premenopausal breast is highly sensitive to radiation, each 1 rad exposure increasing breast cancer risk by about 1 percent. Radiation risks are some four-fold greater for the 1 to 2 percent of women who are silent carriers of the A-T (ataxia-telangiectasia) gene; by some estimates this accounts for up to 20 percent of all breast cancers diagnosed annually.

Since 1928, physicians have been warned to handle "cancerous breasts with care -- for fear of accidentally disseminating cells" and spreading the cancer. Nevertheless, mammography entails tight and often painful breast compression, particularly in premenopausal women, which could lead to distant and lethal spread of malignant cells by rupturing small blood vessels in or around small undetected breast cancers. At the Arizona Center for Advanced Medicine, we use thermography for breast cancer screening. Read more about it. Thermography does not use radiation or compression and can detect suspicions of cancer years earlier than a mammogram can.

We are looking at a huge fight for access to a very profitable market: Organic food was worth $4.7 billion in sales in 2007, and that until the last few months, has grown between 13 percent and 33 percent a year, according to the Nielsen Co.

An organic tomato must flourish without conventional pesticides; an organic chicken cannot be fed antibiotics. What exactly will make a fish organic? Apparently, one that feeds on a non-organic diet.

But consider the other side of the coin: As a food label, "organic" has in the past basically required that the plant or animal be controlled throughout its life, because that's a sure way to know what's in it. If that applies to fish, then "organic" farmed fish has room to make an argument since the oceans are polluted.

Farmed fish are a consequence of the loss of worldwide fish harvests and increasing demand. However, we must be careful what we ask for. In agriculture, Monsanto promised to solve the supply and demand problem with genetically modified foods, and got the government to turn a blind eye to the hazards to human health when you tamper with Mother Nature. Now we want to hijack the organic standards to make farmed fish more attractive to consumers. Might "wild" fish just might go by the wayside because no one will be the wiser?

Hawaii just had a vivid lesson in health-care economics, learning that if you offer people insurance for free, they'll quickly drop other coverage to enroll.

Universal coverage in any form is an increasingly elusive goal. Several states (including California, Pennsylvania, Illinois and Wisconsin) have attempted major efforts to advance toward health coverage for all citizens. All have had to turn back because the costs were prohibitive.

Massachusetts enacted a universal-coverage law in 2006 - but state officials no longer claim that achieving that goal is even possible.

The health care debate needs to get beyond the issue of better insurance coverage for more people. We also need fewer people who need to go to the doctor, fewer prescriptions filled to simply "manage" diseases. We need a healthier population. To get there, a more holistic approach toward the whole concept of insurance and health care is needed.

We need to turn around the epidemic of chronic disease in this country. I shudder when I see people walk in to my office saying how terrible they feel, and pulling out their five or six bottles of prescription medication. It doesn't have to be that way.

What would it look like if we made it priority to have a healthier population in America? What if "health" insurance really believed in, and paid for, treatments which promote health?

As the Center for Food Safety says, "There has been a complete abdication of any responsible legislative or regulatory oversight of genetically engineered foods … genetic engineering is looming as one of the greatest and most intractable environmental challenges of the 21st Century. Already, this novel technology has invaded our grocery stores and our kitchen pantries by fundamentally altering some of our most important staple food crops. It is estimated that upwards of 60 percent of processed foods on supermarket shelves--from soda to soup, crackers to condiments--contain genetically engineered ingredients."

A number of studies over the past decade have revealed that the health effects of genetically engineered foods can include higher risks of toxicity, allergies, antibiotic resistance, immune-suppression and cancer.

Stop the presses! Forbes didn't report both sides of the story. First, they failed to tell you the study was paid for by the drug company AstraZeneca which makes Crestor. Second, there was an editorial accompanying the study in which Mark Hlatky, a Stanford University health-policy professor, said the study was poorly controlled and excluded people with diabetes and uncontrolled high blood pressure. He said the study also failed to explain how heart disease risk changed for particular groups, such as women.

Harried primary care physicians often pay attention to a high cholesterol number. They simply can write a prescription for a drug and move on to the next patient. Boom. No interest in what is causing the inflammation in the patient. And likewise, Forbes had no interest in mentioning any of statins' nasty side effects like cognitive difficulties and muscle weakness.

And apparently Forbes overlooked the January 17th, 2008 cover story of Business Week which – finally – openly questioned the high cholesterol issue. "(Doctors) are being pushed by the national guidelines, by patients' own requests, and by pay-for-performance rules that reward physicians for checking and reducing cholesterol," says University of Texas' Dr. Howard Brody. "I now see it as myth that everyone should have their cholesterol checked," he says. 'In hindsight it was obvious. Duh! Why didn't I see it before?"

Clearly efforts are being made to hype the statins. Wall Street analysts estimate this study could end up doubling Crestor's sales by 2015, to $6.3 billion.

John Abramson makes an excellent point, that prescribing drugs does not improve net health. This kind of reporting perpetuates the philosophy that putting more people on more drugs is the thing to do. Perhaps Forbes could have mentioned this year's study from the University of Pennsylvania Health System where researchers found that alternative therapy with fish oils and yeast rice supplements lowered bad cholesterol better than statins. The group given supplements saw their cholesterol reduced 42.4 percent reduction; the statin group experienced a 39.6 percent reduction. The study was reported in the July issue of Mayo Clinic Proceedings.

Dr. Davis challenged the medical community to begin to practice "green" medicine - recycling and other ways of controlling medical waste in an ecologically sound manner.

Last year, the Arizona Homeopathic and Integrative Medicine Association wrote an open letter to Dr. Davis, as President of the AMA, pledging that we would undertake recycling in our offices.

In our office, the Arizona Center for Advanced Medicine, we make every effort to leave as small an environmental footprint as possible. We designed the office space to be eco-friendly. How can we expect to stay healthy if we are breathing toxic materials every day? And how can we possibly expect our patients to get healthy if they have to come to a toxic office space for their appointments? All the office furniture is recyclable and contains no formaldehyde or any other organic outgassing materials. The flooring is made of recyclable materials, without any volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in the materials or in the adhesives. We used energy-efficient full-spectrum fluorescent lighting. Our janitors use cleaning products which are free of chlorine, ammonia and chemical fragrances.

We have switched to recyclable glass bottles (in all sizes available) instead of plastic bags for our intravenous treatments. We recycle all our paper and plastic trash. We recycle our printer cartridges. We recycle all our bottled water bottles. I confess that we do use a medical waste disposal company for our needles and any blood-contaminated products or devices.

The office park where my office is located has a huge recycling bin which is used by the entire complex.

Our staff almost always brings lunch to work in recyclable containers. The food they bring is home cooked for the most part. We have no sodas or drinks made with anything artificial in the office. We test for allergies with preservative-free antigen – so that we are not injecting preservatives into our patients. We recommend supplements which contain no additional or artificial ingredients. We hardly ever use pharmaceutical medications, and when we do use them, we generally have them compounded, to keep them free of sugar, artificial sweeteners, other chemicals and food colorings.

Toxicity of any kind produces inflammation, which is the first step toward the development of cancer, a disease of chronic inflammation. You can read about one form of inflammation leading to increased incidence of cancer in the attached article which demonstrates an association between gum disease and cancer.

The longest journey does indeed start with the first step. We, as physicians, have an obligation to teach – in fact that is the definition of "doctor" – a teacher. Let us all pledge to teach healthy living, healing working conditions, healthy foods, healthy environments; and let us teach by example.

It is telling that the study, which has not yet been published, was small, involving 70 children ages 6 to 19, and several experts said the results would need to be replicated to be considered conclusive. And who funded this study so eagerly trotted out? Is this good science or more of a PR move to deflect criticism from the American Academy of Pediatrics' recent recommendation urging cholesterol screenings and statins for children? But drugs aside, there is a real problem with the state of children's health. Is anyone besides me thinking of Pottenger's cats? We are into at least the third generation of poor nutrition and excessive chemical exposure. Now it's not just the brain that is affected (as in autism and AD/HD). Now it's the body as well. If you recall, Pottenger's cats did not reproduce a 4th generation. It is time to WAKE UP and get rid of the chemicals, put good food into our bodies, add supplements to replace all those things that our grandmothers and mothers did not have in sufficient quantity, and hope that we can turn this around. I look forward to getting to know my grandchildren.

The 600 pound gorilla is big – true - and could kill you if it sat on you – also true. But that doesn't make it right for it to sit on you when you are in your house, or a concert hall. We cannot put a fence around the gorilla – none of us is big enough to do that. However, we don't have to feed it bananas. We ALL have a choice of which products we purchase. If enough of us don't purchase products with BPA in them, then the chemical companies will get the message. Let us concentrate on what we CAN do to change the world, one step at a time, because we only have control of our own actions.

This comes on the heels of last year's Harvard study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association that said America's perceived progress in conquering disease is refuted by the statistics: Childhood obesity has increased by almost fourfold in the past three decades, asthma rates increased by twofold since the 1980s, and the number of attention-deficit disorder cases are increasing.

No one wants to take on the corporate entities whose ads pay for children's TV shows and sponsor groups like the American Academy of Pediatrics. There is little political will yet to do what must be done. But the good news is that bit by bit, parents are looking at what makes up "kid food" and are learning how to feed their children better nutrition. You can't pick up a newspaper today without reading a "green" story because people are interested now in what we can do to lower the body burden of chemicals that assault us every day.

The future holds even less potential when everyone is shoe-horned into one health care plan. The medical establishment is notoriously slow to adopt new ideas. The history of medicine is replete with examples of forward thinkers – Linus Pauling of vitamin C fame for example – being tarred and feathered by the mediocre in their ranks. Only decades later, when colleagues catch up, are forward thinkers finally recognized with a Nobel Prize. Studies show some 68 percent of the American public has departed from mainstream allopathic medicine and sought answers from complementary and alternative doctors. Many people see that conventional medicine is too much about drugs and invasive procedures for their taste, not enough about cures and prevention. We watched with amazement as the American Academy of Pediatrics recommended a few months ago that at-risk children be screened at age 2 for high cholesterol, and given statin drugs at age 8. The AAP could have help cut health care costs if they had recommended that parents stop buying food products with sugar and high fructose corn syrup. But that would have offended corporate sponsors who include soft drink companies. This is an example of the problem with government run health care proposals; government officials are too beholden to corporate sponsors to advocate for the public good. Thank you Dr. Novack for leading the way.

It is pretty sad commentary on the state of "modern" medicine that the only two options considered for children with depression are talk therapy and drugs. What about looking at food allergies, toxicity, neural development, auditory processing, neurotherapy? All these can have an enormous effect on mood and cognition. If the terrain is not properly prepared and fertilized, then we can plant all the seeds we want, and they will still grow up stunted – if they grow at all. At the Arizona Center for Advanced Medicine we test for allergies and toxicities, and we offer a program designed to repair the brain connections which have been distorted, so that both children and adults can heal from their anxiety without drugs.