The Medical Freedom Channel

“As an epidemic of asthma left more and more children wheezing during the past two decades, scientists blamed everything from obesity to cockroach droppings to the way we build our houses. Now, researchers from Brigham and Women’s Hospital have identified another potential cause: child abuse. The Brigham doctors discovered that children in Puerto Rico who endure physical or sexual abuse are twice as likely to suffer from asthma as youngsters than those who do not face maltreatment. Abuse, the researchers found, was a more powerful predictor of whether a child would develop asthma than if a family was rich or poor. Stress has recently been implicated as a trigger for asthma.” [editor’s note: This is surface-research; they’d be well aadvised to study how parents create “stress” on their offspring … without ever lifting a hand in “discipline”! - SAT] (09/02/08)

http://tinyurl.com/5o43ga

“It’s not necessarily what you are eating that is causing your acid reflux — it could very well be what you are doing after you eat. For instance, does your job require you to bend over all the time? Are you wearing tight-fitting clothes? Do you eat late at night and then go straight to bed? Maybe the answer to your problems lies in your bed –- pun intended. In 2006, Dr. Lauren Gerson, a gastroenterologist and associate professor of medicine at Stanford University in California, published an article in the Archives of Internal Medicine that said raising the head of your bed was one of two ways to decrease acid reflux symptoms (losing weight was the other). The study found that even dietary restrictions were not as helpful in combating acid reflux as raising the head of the bed.” [editor’s note: Amen! Having suffered from “GERD symptoms” in the recent past, I made a point of not going to bed too soon after eating, taking probiotics (or even just a little yogurt) on a regular basis — and being smarter about what I ingested. Now, when I pay a little attention … no more problems - SAT] (09/02/08)

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,415281,00.html

“Women who smoke may develop heart disease at almost the same age as male smokers, wiping out the natural difference between the sexes, doctors said Tuesday. In research presented to the European Society of Cardiology, Norwegian researchers said that women who smoke have heart attacks nearly 14 years earlier than women who don’t smoke. For men, the figure is about six years. ‘This is not a minor difference,’ said Dr. Silvia Priori, a cardiologist at the Scientific Institute in Pavia, Italy. ‘Women need to realize they are losing much more than men when they smoke,’ she said. Priori was not connected to the research.” (09/02/08)

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26510114/

“TV ads for the world’s top-selling drug, cholesterol fighter Lipitor, are back, six months after Pfizer Inc. pulled them amid charges its use of a celebrity doctor endorser who’s never practiced medicine misled the public. This time, Pfizer is leaving out the celebrity. In the new ads, the endorser is a talent agent from the San Francisco Bay area who tells viewers he started taking Pfizer’s Lipitor after surviving a heart attack last year. … Lipitor generates more than $12 billion a year in revenue for New York-based Pfizer. Its patent expires in 2011, yet ads for the pill have been off the air since February.” (09/02/08)

http://tinyurl.com/5hpl2o

“BHT is an antioxidant and common food preservative, approved by the FDA for food, oils and fats. Over 25 years ago, a paper was published in the journal Science showing that BHT could inactivate herpes simplex and other lipid coated viruses in vitro. This was followed by another paper published in Science showing that BHT could prevent chickens from dying of Newcastle disease.(2) The herpes virus and the virus that causes Newcastles disease have a lipid envelope. That is, the nucleic acid core of these viruses is coated with a fatty membrane. Viruses of this type require an intact lipid membrane in order to penetrate cell walls and infect living cells.” (08/28/08)

http://tinyurl.com/6drsos

“Expensive advertising of prescription drugs directly to consumers may do little to encourage sales, U.S. and Canadian researchers reported on Monday. They said that even though companies spent an estimated $3 billion in 2005 on such ads in the United States, they did not appear to result in more prescriptions. Most countries ban direct advertising of prescription medications, with the exceptions of the United States and New Zealand. ‘People tend to think that if direct-to-consumer advertising wasn’t effective, pharma wouldn’t be doing it,’ Harvard Medical School’s Stephen Soumerai said in a statement. ‘But as it turns out, decisions to market directly to consumers are based on scant data.’” [editor’s note: Given the fact that overprescribed Pharma-drugs is a major factor in healthcare pricing, this has to be good news to true reformers! - SAT] (09/01/08)

http://www.reuters.com/article/healthNews/idUSN3147059820080901

“Eighty percent of all surgical-site infections that occur after face lifts are caused by methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), according to a study conducted by researchers from the Lennox Hill-Manhattan Eye, Ear, and Throat Hospital and published in the Archives of Facial Plastic Surgery. MRSA, an antibiotic-resistant form of the common ’staph’ infection, has already become the leading organism responsible for skin, soft tissue, and surgical-site infections in the United States in general. Due to its higher virulence and resistance to the most common first-line antibiotics, MRSA kills three times as many patients as more conventional S. aureus infections.” (09/01/08)

http://www.naturalnews.com/024047.html

“Take the generic drug clonidine for high blood pressure? Double-check that you didn’t leave the drugstore with Klonopin for seizures, or the gout medicine colchicine. Mixing up drug names because they look or sound alike — like this trio — is among the most common types of medical mistakes, and it can be deadly. Now new efforts are aiming to stem the confusion, and make patients more aware of the risk. Nearly 1,500 commonly used drugs have names so similar to at least one other medication that they’ve already caused mix-ups, says a major study by the U.S. Pharmacopeia, which helps set drug standards and promote patient safety.” (09/01/08)

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26497545/

“Ever since the Women’s Health Initiative halted a study of hormone replacement therapy in 2002 because of increased risk of breast cancer and heart disease, menopausal women have struggled with what to do about hot flashes. Many have turned to the herbal remedy, black cohosh, despite a lack of definitive evidence that it works. There’s no definitive evidence that it causes any harm, either, although there have been anecdotal reports of liver damage, hepatitis and even one report of the death of a woman as she awaited a liver transplant after taking the remedy. Now, a committee of the U.S. Pharmacopeia, a nongovernmental organization that sets standards for food ingredients and dietary supplements, has recommended cautionary labeling for black cohosh because of the possibility of liver damage.” (09/01/08)

http://tinyurl.com/5evbcl

“The gooey, golden stuff that builds up inside your ears should stay there, according to national guidelines on earwax removal released today. ‘[Earwax] is not intrinsically evil stuff, and consequently does not have to be removed merely because it’s present,’ said Peter Roland, an ear, nose and throat doctor at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas. ‘In fact, it serves a function and so if you don’t need to take it out, you should just leave it alone.’” (09/01/08)

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26443394/