The Medical Freedom Channel

What’s the healthiest city in America? It appears to be Burlington, Vt. … tops among U.S. metropolitan areas by having the largest proportion of people — 92 percent — who say they are in good or great health. It’s also among the best in exercise and among the lowest in obesity, diabetes and other measures of ill health, according to a recent report from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. This New England city of 40,000, on the shores of Lake Champlain, is in some ways similar to the unhealthiest city — Huntington, W.Va. Both are out-of-the-way college towns with populations that are overwhelmingly white people of English, German or Irish ancestry. But there the similarities end: * Burlington is younger, with an average age of 37, compared to 40 in Huntington, according to the Census Bureau. * Burlington is better off financially, with 8 percent living at the federal poverty level, compared to 19 percent in Huntington. * It’s much more educated, with nearly 40 percent of area residents having at least a college bachelor’s degree. Only 15 percent in the Huntington area do. The cultures are significantly different, too. Bicycling, hiking, skiing and other exercises are common in Burlington.” (11/16/08)

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,452810,00.html

“When it comes to preserving memories, we are sometimes our own worst enemies. The lives we lead often undermine the complex process of creating and retrieving memories. And they can boost the odds of our developing diseases — including Alzheimer’s — that further ravage the brain’s mechanisms of memory. Here are things that science tells us pose the greatest threat to our memories: Knowing them, says UCLA neurologist Dr. Gary Small, may allow us ‘to act early to prevent.’ Many medications prescribed widely in the U.S. can cause memory problems. Among the most likely to disrupt memory are benzodiazepines (including Ativan, Valium and Xanax).” (11/17/08)

http://tinyurl.com/5pavem

“A ‘note on the desk’ left by US President George W Bush’s Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt for President-elect Barack Obama tells him that the promise of personalized healthcare is ‘central to the future of healthcare.’ … He also warns the incoming President that the current models of paying for healthcare, which reward volume of care over value or quality, may hinder promising new avenues that would avoid expensive late-stage treatments or prevent disease. The Health Secretary’s comments, which appear in the second report of the Initiative on Personalised Health Care which he set up in 2006, caution that putting an effective personalized healthcare system in place will be the work of a generation.” (11/17/08)

http://www.pharmatimes.com/WorldNews/article.aspx?id=14752

“Tiny sacs released from tumor cells and circulating in the blood carry genetic information about the tumor, offering a new way to track and treat the cancer, U.S. researchers said on Sunday. ‘They contain a little piece of the tumor cell in the bloodstream. If you just look at these packets, you basically know what kind of mutations are in the tumor cell,’ said Xandra Breakefield of Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, whose study appears in the journal Nature Cell Biology. These membrane-covered packets, called exosomes, represent a new way of getting information about a cancer, offering a means of choosing the best therapy, seeing how a patient responds to treatment, and possibly offering a way to deliver therapies back to the tumor, Breakefield said.” (11/16/08)

http://www.reuters.com/article/healthNews/idUSTRE4AF1XN20081116

“A combination of fish oil, red yeast rice and lifestyle changes can produce as great a decrease in cholesterol levels as prescription drugs, according to a study conducted by researchers from the University of Pennsylvania Health System and published in the Mayo Clinic Proceedings. ‘These results are intriguing and show a potential benefit of an alternative, or naturopathic, approach to a common medical condition,’ researcher David Becker said. Researchers gave 74 people with high cholesterol a daily dose of either 40 milligrams of simvastatin (a generic cholesterol drug also marketed as Zocor) or a combination of fish oil, red yeast rice and a number of cardiovascular positive lifestyle changes.” (11/17/08)

http://www.naturalnews.com/024830.html

“Could an herbal therapy that’s been used for centuries in Chinese medicine to strengthen the immune system hold the key to an effective treatment for Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome, better known as AIDS? A new study by scientists at the UCLA AIDS Institute says that’s possible. The research, set to be published in the Journal of Immunology November 15th, concludes astragalus root contains a substance that could make it a powerful weapon in the fight against the HIV virus that causes AIDS.” [editor’s note: Once again, a natural remedy, “used for centuries in Chinese medicine,” may hold the key to yet another cure for a devastating illness, without Big Pharma’s intervention - SAT] (11/13/08)

http://www.naturalnews.com/024799.html

“Arizona seniors will be pioneers in a Medicare program that encourages patients to store their medical histories on Google or other commercial Web sites as part of a government effort to streamline and improve healthcare. The federal agency that oversees Medicare selected Arizona and Utah for a pilot program that invites patients to store their health records on the Internet with Google or one of three other vendors. The program allows patients to easily share their medical histories, which now often must be provided separately to doctors, hospitals, labs or pharmacies. That could help patients if they switch doctors, pick up prescriptions or get care at an emergency room. … But some have raised privacy concerns because there is no federal law that restricts how third-party vendors such as Google can use health records.” (11/13/08)

http://tinyurl.com/563p84

“Acupuncturists, Chinese medicine practitioners and medical herbalists should be formally regulated to ensure they are ‘fit to practice,’ the Health Professions Council (HPC) told the Government today. The professions are not currently subject to statutory regulation but the HPC formally recommended a system was introduced to make it easier to ensure people were ‘meeting standards.’ HPC chief executive Marc Seale said: ‘The HPC has made a recommendation to the Secretary of State for Health advocating the regulation of acupuncturists, medical herbalists and traditional Chinese medicine practitioners.’” [editor’s note: Some may want this, as a step to “legitimizing” Asian medicine and other alternative healing modalities; be vewwy careful what you ask for … from government! - SAT] (11/13/08)

http://tinyurl.com/6bpt2a

“A small fragment of genetic material may mean the difference between an easily treated local tumor and an aggressive cancer that spreads throughout the body, U.S. researchers said on Thursday. They found that when a bit of ribonucleic acid or RNA known as microRNA-101 goes missing, a protein called EZH2 starts to proliferate. EZH2 has been linked with aggressive forms of breast, prostate, skin and bladder cancer, but until now it has not been clear what triggers overproduction of EZH2.” (11/13/08)

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27703823/

“The same kind of deep brain stimulation used to treat some patients for Parkinson’s disease also helped a few people suffering from obsessive-compulsive disorder, French scientists reported. Their study involved only 16 patients, but in four of them, symptoms nearly disappeared. However, many patients had serious side effects. The treatment involved an experimental brain pacemaker, and it reduced repetitive thoughts and behaviors in some of the patients — just as it blocks tremors for some Parkinson’s sufferers. In the French study, symptoms were reduced more than 25 percent, the researchers said.” (11/13/08)

http://tinyurl.com/5czult