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Dallas Massage Therapist & Holistic Healer Dr. Stephen Duncan, D.CH., R.M.T. |
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Latest
Healthcare News
**IMPORTANT**
Microwaved Water
- See What It Does To Plants... 4-13-06
NOTE: We received the following link from Ms.
Nenah Sylver and found it of such importance
that we are posting it hoping that the author
will contact us so we can give full attribution.
-ed
Below is a science fair project that my
granddaughter did for 2006. In it she took
filtered water and divided it into two parts.
The first part she heated to boiling in a pan on
the stove, and the second part she heated to
boiling in a microwave. Then after cooling she
used the water to water two identical plants to
see if there would be any difference in the
growth between the normal boiled water and the
water boiled in a microwave. She was thinking
that the structure or energy of the water may be
compromised by microwave. As it turned out, even
she was amazed at the difference.
I have known for years that the problem with microwaved anything is not the radiation people used to worry about, it's how it corrupts the DNA in the food so the body can not recognize it. So the body wraps it in fat cells to protect itself from the dead food or it eliminates it fast. Think of all the Mothers heating up milk in these "Safe" appliances. What about the nurse in Canada that warmed up blood for a transfusion patient and accidentally killed them when the blood went in dead. But the makers say it's safe. Never mind then, keep using them. Ask your Doctor. I am sure they will say it's safe too. Proof is in the pictures of living plants dying. Remember You are also Living. Take Care. Action Alert from the Organic Consumers Association: Congress Poised to Pass Bill Taking Away Right to Know What's in Your Food Tell your Congressman or Congresswoman to vote "No" on House of Representatives Bill H.R. 4167, the "National Uniformity for Food Act"
The House will vote March 2, 2006 on a bill that would gut state food safety and labeling laws. H.R. 4167, the "National Uniformity for Food Act," lowers the bar on food safety by overturning state food safety laws that are not "identical" to federal law. Hundreds of state laws and regulations are at risk, including those governing the safety of milk, fish, and shellfish. The bill is being pushed by large supermarket chains and food manufacturers, spearheaded by the powerful Grocery Manufacturers of America. Big food corporations and the biotech industry understand that consumers are more and more concerned about food safety, genetic engineering, and chemical-intensive agriculture, and are reading labels more closely. They understand that pesticide and mercury residues and hazardous technologies such as genetic engineering and food irradiation will be rejected if there are truthful labels required on food products. Industry-sponsored H.R. 4167 is gaining momentum and must be stopped! Act now! Preserve local and regional democracy and protect yourself and your family from unsafe food by sending an email or calling your Representative and urging them to vote "No" on H.R. 4167.
Please Take Action Now--Send a Message to Your
Congress Member in the House of Representatives
to Vote "No" on H.R. 4167 And please call your Congress Member at 202-224-3121 Regards & Solidarity,
Ronnie Cummins,
ORGANIC CONSUMERS ASSOCIATION
FDA Commission Lester Crawford abruptly resigned on
Friday, Sept. 23, 2005.
His resignation is effective immediately.
Support Consumer Access to
Health Information (HR
2352) - This bill would
ensure that the FDA does not suppress accurate
health claims.
AMA Study Antibiotics could increase the risk for breast cancer by affecting bacteria in the digestive system in ways that interfere with the way the body uses foods that protect against cancers and other diseases. Or antibiotics increase the risk by affecting the immune system. Remember, "Everything you put in your mouth that isn't food, has side-effects!" Here is a case in point! - Dr. Robin Surface Journal of
the American Medical Association: Antibiotic use is associated with an increased risk for breast cancer, a new study has found, raising the possibility that women who take the widely used medicines are prone to one of the most feared malignancies. The first-of-its-kind study of more than 10,000 women in Washington state concluded that those who used the most antibiotics had double the chances of developing breast cancer, that the association was consistent for all forms of antibiotics and that the risk went up with the number of prescriptions, a powerful indication that the link was real. A variety of experts quickly cautioned, however, that the findings should not stop women from taking the often lifesaving drugs when needed to treat infections. There could be other explanations for the association, and much more research is needed before scientists understand what the surprising results mean, they said. "This is not saying that women should stop taking antibiotics. Women should take antibiotics for infections," said Stephen H. Taplin, a senior scientist at the National Cancer Institute who helped conduct the study. "We need to follow up and find out if this is a real association." Nevertheless, the consistency of the findings in a study with such careful methodology could indicate that antibiotic use is an important, previously unrecognized risk factor for breast cancer, experts said. Antibiotics could increase the risk for breast cancer by, for example, affecting bacteria in the digestive system in ways that interfere with the way the body uses foods that protect against cancer, experts said. Another possibility is that antibiotics increase the risk by affecting the immune system. Even if it turns out that antibiotics do not increase the risk for breast cancer, the finding is likely to be important because it could lead to the discovery of whatever it is about women who use the drugs that appears to make them prone to the disease, researchers said. "This has opened up a picture that people had not been thinking about," Taplin said. "The important thing is more research and asking more questions about what it could be." Until the results are sorted out, experts said, the findings provide yet another reason for doctors to more judiciously prescribe antibiotics, which are often used unnecessarily. Link first proposed in 1981 Scientists first proposed that antibiotics may increase the risk for breast cancer in 1981, but the only other study to examine the question was in Finland in 2000. That study also found an association, but prompted the new research. The study's design, however, made it impossible to rule out the chance that women who tend to use the medicines are biologically predisposed to breast cancer for other reasons, such as by having weak immune systems or a hormonal imbalance that could be the cause of both their increased risk for breast cancer and for infections that prompted antibiotic use. "Antibiotics are used extensively in this country and in many parts of the world. The possible association between breast cancer and antibiotic use was important to examine," said Christine M. Velicer, an epidemiologist with Group Health Cooperative's Center for Health Studies who was the lead author of the study. Breast cancer strikes more than 211,000 women each year in the United States and kills more than 40,000, making it the leading cause of cancer and the second leading cancer killer among women. Velicer, Taplin and their colleagues examined computerized pharmacy and cancer screening records of 2,266 women in the Group Health Cooperative, a Seattle area health plan, who developed breast cancer, and 7,953 similar women who did not. Women who had more than 25 individual prescriptions for antibiotics over an average period of 17 years had twice the risk of breast cancer as those who had taken no antibiotics. The risk was lower for women who took fewer antibiotics, but even those who had between one and 25 prescriptions were about 50 percent more likely to develop breast cancer, the researchers found. "It was surprising for me that there was an association," Velicer said. "The overall consistency across a number of common antibiotics was really notable." The researchers tried to explain the results by looking at other known risk factors, such as a family history of breast cancer and hormone use. But none could. They also did an analysis comparing women who were taking large amounts of antibiotics because of a skin condition associated with a hormonal imbalance with those taking antibiotics because of respiratory infections to see if the real cause might be the hormonal imbalance. That, too, failed to explain the findings, though it could not completely rule it out. Jeanne Calle, the society's director of analytical epidemiology, called the study important because "it appears to be the first major work to describe a possible association between antibiotic use and the increased risk of cancer." Antioxidants may protect kids from asthma FRIDAY, Feb. 13 (HealthDayNews) — Children with high levels of antioxidants have lower rates of asthma, a new study finds. The reduction in asthma prevalence proved most dramatic, Cornell University researchers report in the February issue of the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine. "This study raises the possibility that dietary intervention may be something to consider for prevention or treatment of asthma," says study author Patricia Cassano. The Cornell researchers focused on 6,153 children, aged 4 to 16, who took part in the third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, conducted by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from 1988 to 1994. The researchers looked at results of a health exam, a household questionnaire on whether asthma had been diagnosed, and blood tests measuring antioxidant levels and exposure to cigarette smoke. Children with higher levels of selenium had a 10 percent reduction in asthma prevalence compared with other children. In children exposed to secondhand smoke, the reduction associated with selenium climbed to 50 percent. Higher beta carotene levels in children also were associated with a reduction in asthma — by 40 percent among those exposed to secondhand smoke and by 10 percent among those not exposed to smoke. Higher vitamin C levels, too, were associated with reducing asthma, by about 40 percent for those exposed to smoke and by 10 percent for others. Beta carotene is found in fruits and vegetables such as carrots, mangos and oranges. Vitamin C is plentiful in oranges and other citrus fruits, as well strawberries, red and green peppers, broccoli and Brussels sprouts. Selenium can be found in liver, grains, fish and some nuts. Other research has linked chronic asthma and low levels of antioxidants in the lungs. "I agree that antioxidants play a role in inflammation, and there might be a role for using these agents" in asthma patients, says Dr. Marianne Frieri, director of allergy and immunology at Nassau University Medical Center in East Meadow, N.Y. With higher levels of antioxidants, "you can potentially help certain forms of asthma," says Frieri, who's also a professor of medicine at the Stony Brook University, part of the State University of New York. But, she adds, asthma has many different triggers. The American Lung Association estimates that 6.3 million U.S. children under 18 have asthma, the leading serious chronic illness among children. The number of cases of asthma has been on the rise, but the reason why remains unclear. Dr. Jerry Shier, a doctor at the Asthma and Allergy Center in Montgomery County, Md., calls the Cornell study "provocative" and says the possible relationship between antioxidants and asthma deserves further study. "Everyone's looking for a reason why we should have this increase in asthma cases —poor nutrition," says Shier, an assistant clinical professor at George Washington University School of Medicine. "Has our diet changed, leading to an increase in asthma?" -- Gary Gately, Health Day News
Drug
Alert Warning
Fatness kills...
Obesity catching tobacco as top preventable cause of early death By MARK SHERMAN Associated Press Writer WASHINGTON (AP) - Americans are sitting around and eating themselves to death, with obesity closing in on tobacco as the nation's No. 1 underlying preventable killer. The government is offering constructive, even lighthearted, advice to fight what it calls an epidemic of expanding waistlines. Americans will be told in a new ad campaign they can lose midsection "love handles" and double chins one step at a time if they eat less and exercising more. "We're just too darn fat, ladies and gentlemen, and we're going to do something about it," Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson said Tuesday at a news conference. A poor diet and physical inactivity caused 400,000 deaths in 2000, a 33 percent jump over 1990, said a study released Tuesday by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Tobacco-related deaths in the same period climbed by less than 9 percent and the gap between the two narrowed substantially. "This is tragic," said Dr. Julie Gerberding, the CDC's director and an author of the study. The report predicts obesity would surpass tobacco if current trends continue. "Our worst fears were confirmed," Gerberding said. The study is the latest in a long line of research documenting widespread weight gain _ and its consequences _ among Americans, from children to seniors. The researchers analyzed data from 2000 for the leading causes of death and for those preventable factors known to contribute to them. Like tobacco, obesity and inactivity increase the risks for the top three killers: heart disease, cancer and such cerebrovascular ailments as strokes. Obesity and a sedentary lifestyle also strongly increase the risk of diabetes, the sixth leading cause of death. The results appear in Wednesday's Journal of the American Medical Association. Americans' fast-food lifestyle, increased use of computers and a decline in school physical education programs all were cited by Thompson and other officials as factors contributing to the nation's fat problem. Two out of three adults and 9 million children are overweight or obese, they said. Rather than call for dramatic changes in diet and exercise, Thompson said Americans could begin a gradual exercise program. They could get off the bus a block farther from their homes, he said, and slowly cut back on unhealthful foods. The new public service announcements debuted by Thompson use humor to tell people they can slowly trim their waistlines. In one ad, someone turns in a pair of love handles found near the stairs in a shopping mall. "Lots of people lose them taking the stairs instead of the escalator," says a clerk at the lost and found. In another ad, a shopping cart gets stuck on a double chin that someone lost near a supermarket's fruit and vegetable display. Thompson said President Bush would play a prominent part in the campaign, but did not elucidate. Thompson, a fierce anti-smoking advocate, drew parallels between the drives to stop smoking and to get Americans to eat less and exercise more. But unlike his campaign to end smoking, he is advocating only voluntary measures at this point. The Food and Drug Administration also is expected to issue a report on obesity later this week. The FDA has been considering whether to require restaurants to provide more nutrition information and change nutrition labels on food sold in grocery stores and other outlets to help consumers. Thompson praised McDonald's for its decision to end Supersize fries and drinks in its more than 13,000 U.S. restaurants by year's end except for special promotions. Several soft-drink makers also have announced steps to offer a larger number of healthier products. Thompson would not take a position on the bill to be debated Wednesday in the House. It would shield restaurants and fast food franchises from lawsuits seeking to blame them for obesity and health problems related to it. The bill was prompted by the fast-food industry's complaints about a rash of lawsuits that fault their food for Americans' bulging bellies. Many states are making attempts to slow the increase in obesity among children. About two dozen of them are considering bans or limits on vending machine products in schools. Roughly 20 states already restrict students' access to junk food until after lunch. The Texas Agriculture Department is revamping rules on what foods public schools in the state can serve to their 4.2 million students, cutting out deep-fried foods and reducing fat and sugar in menus. Americans need to drastically reduce our consumption of "poor "food choices, and dramatically increase our consumption of "good" food choices like fruits, vegetables, and grains in our daily lives.
Dangerous Supplements: Still at large
If you can buy it at a clean, well-lighted store, if it’s “all natural,” it’s not going to do you serious harm, right? That’s what many Americans assume about dietary supplements. But while most supplements are probably fairly benign, Consumer Reports has identified a dozen that according to government warnings, adverse-event reports, and top experts are too dangerous to be on the market. Yet they are. We easily purchased all 12 in Feburary in a few days of shopping online and in retail stores. These unsafe supplements include Aristolochia, an herb conclusively linked to kidney failure and cancer in China, Europe, Japan, and the U.S.; yohimbe, a sexual stimulant linked to heart and respiratory problems; bitter orange, whose ingredients have effects similar to those of the banned weight-loss stimulant ephedra; and chaparral, comfrey, germander, and kava, all known or likely causes of liver failure. (For a complete list of the “dirty dozen.” U.S. consumers shelled out some $76 million in
2002 for just three of these supplements:
androstenedione, kava, and yohimbe, the only ones
for which sales figures were available, according to
the Nutrition Business Journal, which tracks the
supplement industry. The potentially dangerous effects of most of these products have been known for more than a decade, and at least five of them are banned in Asia, Europe, or Canada. Yet until very recently, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration had not managed to remove a single dietary supplement from the market for safety reasons. After seven years of trying, the agency announced a ban on the weight-loss aid ephedra in December 2003. And in March 2004 it warned 23 companies to stop marketing the body-building supplement androstenedione (andro). Despite these actions against high-profile supplements, whose dangers were so well known that even industry trade groups had stopped defending them, the agency continues to be hamstrung by the 1994 Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act (DSHEA, pronounced de-shay). While drug manufacturers are required to prove that their products are safe before being marketed, DSHEA makes the FDA prove that supplements on the market are unsafe and denies the agency all but the sketchiest information about the safety record of most of them. “The standards for demonstrating a supplement is hazardous are so high that it can take the FDA years to build a case,” said Bruce Silverglade, legal director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a Washington, D.C., consumer-advocacy group. At the same time, the FDA’s supplement division is understaffed and underfunded, with about 60 people and a budget of only $10 million to police a $19.4 billion-a-year industry. To regulate drugs, annual sales of which are 12 times the amount of supplement sales, the FDA has almost 43 times as much money and almost 48 times as many people. “The law has never been fully funded,” said William Hubbard, FDA associate commissioner for policy and planning. “There’s never been the resources to do all the things the law would command us to do.” The agency has learned that it must tread carefully when regulating supplements. The first time it tried to regulate the dangerous stimulant ephedra, in 1997, overwhelming opposition from Congress and industry forced it to back down. As a result, the FDA is sometimes left practicing
what Silverglade calls “regulation by press
release”--issuing warnings about dangerous
supplements and hoping that consumers and health
practitioners There are signs of hope. The FDA has said that if the ban on ephedra holds up against likely legal challenges, it plans to go after other harmful supplements. Legislation has been introduced to strengthen the FDA’s authority under DSHEA and give the agency more money to enforce the act. But the supplement marketplace still holds hidden hazards for consumers, especially among products that aren’t in the headlines. “Consumers are provided with more information about the composition and nutritional value of a loaf of bread than about the ingredients and potential hazards of botanical medicines,” said Arthur Grollman, M.D., professor of pharmacological sciences at the State University of New York, Stony Brook, and a critic of DSHEA. A question of safety Supplement-industry advocates say the ephedra ban demonstrates that DSHEA gives the FDA enough power to protect consumers from unsafe products. “I don’t think there’s anything wrong except that FDA has only recently begun vigorous and active enforcement of the law,” said Annette Dickinson, Ph.D., president of the Council for Responsible Nutrition, a major trade association for the supplement industry. But critics of DSHEA think the ban illustrates the extremes to which the FDA must go to outlaw a hazardous product. When the agency initially tried to rein in ephedra use in 1997, after receiving hundreds of reports of adverse events, it sought not an outright ban but dosage restrictions and sterner warning labels. The industry mounted a furious counter-attack, including the creation of a public-relations group called the Ephedra Education Council and a scientific review from a private consulting firm, commissioned by Dickinson’s trade group, that concluded ephedra was safe. After the U.S. General Accounting Office said the FDA “did not establish a causal link” between taking ephedra and deaths or injuries, the agency was forced to drop its proposal. The industry continued to vigorously market and defend ephedra. Metabolife International, a leading ephedra manufacturer, did not let the FDA know that it had received 14,684 complaints of adverse events associated with its ephedra product, Metabolife 356, in the previous five years, including 18 heart attacks, 26 strokes, 43 seizures, and 5 deaths. It took the pressure of congressional and Justice Department investigations to get the company to turn over the complaints in 2002. Then Steve Bechler, a pitcher for the Baltimore Orioles, died unexpectedly in 2003 while taking another ephedra supplement, Xenadrine RFA-1. With sales suffering from the bad publicity, manufacturers began to replace ephedra with other stimulants such as bitter orange, which mimics ephedra in chemical composition and function. “All of a sudden Congress dropped objections to an ephedra ban andstarted demanding the FDA act,” said Silverglade. To amass the necessary scientific evidence that it hoped would satisfy the demanding standard set by DSHEA, the FDA took aggressive action: It commissioned an outside review from the RAND Corporation, analyzed adverse-event reports, and pored over every available shred of scientific evidence. “We’ve gone the whole nine yards to collect and evaluate all the possible evidence,” Mark McClellan, commissioner of the FDA, said in announcing the ban. “We will be doing our best to defend this in court, and if that’s not sufficient, it may be time to re-examine the act.” Drugs vs. supplements In an October 2002 nationwide Harris Poll of 1,010 adults, 59 percent of respondents said they believed that supplements must be approved by a government agency before they can be sold to the public. Sixty-eight percent said the government requires warning labels on supplements’ potential side effects or dangers. Fifty-five percent said supplement manufacturers can’t make safety claims without solid scientific support. They were wrong. None of those protections exist for supplements--only for prescription and over-the-counter medicines. Here are the major differences in the safety regulations: Testing for hazards. Before approval, drugs must be proved effective, with an acceptable safety profile, by means of lab research and rigorous human clinical trials involving a minimum of several thousand people, many millions of dollars, and several years. In contrast, supplement manufacturers can introduce new products without any testing for safety and efficacy. The maker’s only obligation is to send the FDA a copy of the language on the label. “Products regulated by DSHEA were presumed to be safe because of their long history of use, often in other countries,” said Jane E. Henney, M.D., commissioner of the FDA from 1998 to 2001. “As their use dramatically increased in this country after the passage of DSHEA, the presumption of safety may have been misplaced, particularly for products other than traditional vitamins and minerals. Some, like ephedra, act like drugs and thus have similar risks.” The only exceptions to this “presumption of safety” are supplement ingredients that weren’t being sold in the U.S. when DSHEA took effect. Makers of such “new dietary ingredients” must show the FDA evidence of the products’ safety before marketing them. The FDA invoked that rarely used provision in its action against androstenedione. After years of allowing andro to be marketed without restriction, the agency declared that it was “not aware” that the supplement was used before DSHEA, so it couldn’t be sold without evidence of safety. Disclosing the risks. Drug labels and package inserts must mention all possible adverse effects and interactions. But supplement makers don’t have to put safety warnings on the labels, even for products with known serious hazards. We bought a product called Relaxit whose label had no warning about the kava it contained, even though the American Herbal Products Association, an industry trade group, recommends a detailed, though voluntary warning label about potential liver toxicity on all kava products. Ensuring product quality. Drugs must conform to “good manufacturing practices” that guarantee that their contents are pure and in the quantities stated on the label. While DSHEA gave the FDA authority to impose similar standards on supplements, it took until 2003 for the agency to propose regulations--as yet not final--to implement that part of the law. Contaminants, too, regularly turn up in supplements. In 1998 Richard Ko, Ph.D., of the California Department of Health Services reported that 32 percent of the Asian patent medicines he tested contained pharmaceuticals or heavy metals that weren’t on the label. The FDA has seized supplements adulterated with prescription drugs, including, in 2002, an herbal “prostate health” supplement called PC SPES that turned out to contain a powerful prescription blood thinner, warfarin. Reporting the problems. By law, drug companies are required to tell the FDA about any reports of product-related adverse events that they receive from any source. Almost every year, drugs are removed from the market based on safety risks that first surfaced in those reports. In contrast, supplement makers don’t have to report adverse events. Indeed, in the five years after DSHEA took effect, 1994 to 1999, fewer than 10 of the more than 2,500 reports that the FDA received came from manufacturers, according to a 2001 estimate from the inspector general of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. (Other sources of reports included consumers, health practitioners, and poison-control centers.) Overall, the FDA estimates that it learns of less than 1 percent of adverse events involving dietary supplements. THE ‘NATURAL’ MYSTIQUE Many makers market their supplements as “natural,” exploiting assumptions that such products can’t harm you. That’s a dangerous assumption, said Lois Swirsky Gold, Ph.D., director of the Carcinogenic Potency Project at the University of California, Berkeley, and an expert on chemical carcinogens. “Natural is hemlock, natural is arsenic, natural is poisonous mushrooms,” she said. A cautionary example is aristolochic acid, which occurs naturally in species of Aristolochia vines that grow wild in many parts of the world. In addition to being a powerful kidney toxin, it is on the World Health Organization’s list of human carcinogens. “It’s one of the most potent chemicals of 1,400 in my Carcinogenic Potency Database,” Gold said. “People have taken high doses similar to the doses that animals are given in tests, and they both get tumors very quickly.” The dangers of aristolochic acid have been known
since at least 1993, when medical-journal articles
began appearing about 105 patrons of a Belgian
weight-loss clinic who had suffered kidney failure
after consuming Chinese herbs adulterated with
Aristolochia. At least 18 of the women also
subsequently developed cancer near These findings prompted the FDA to issue a
nationwide warning against Aristolochia in 2001 and
to impose a ban on further imports of the herb. But
in early 2004, more than two years after the import
ban went into effect, Consumer Reports was
able to purchase products online that were labeled
as containing Aristolochia. Donna Andrade-Wheaton, a former aerobics instructor in Rhode Island, learned those facts too late to save her kidneys. After taking Chinese herbs containing Aristolochia for more than two years, she suffered severe kidney damage; her kidney tissues were found to contain aristolochic acid. In late 2002, at age 39, she underwent a kidney transplant. Andrade-Wheaton is suing both the acupuncturist who gave her the herbs and several companies that manufactured them. The acupuncturist declined to discuss the case on the record, and the manufacturer did not return our phone calls. There’s another widespread and false assumption about natural supplements: that they’re always pure, unprocessed products of the earth. Because DSHEA permits the marketing of concentrates and extracts, supplement makers can and do manipulate ingredients to increase the concentrations of pharmacologically active compounds. That’s especially true of the many weight-loss supplements designed for “thermogenic” stimulant effects--boosting calorie expenditure by revving the metabolic rate. On one Internet shopping tour, for instance, we bought a product called Thermorexin--”the Hottest new Thermogenic on the market!” Its label says it contains, among its 22 ingredients, 30 milligrams of theophylline derived from a black tea extract and the stimulant bitter orange. Sold as Theo-Dur and other brands, theophylline is a prescription drug and an effective asthma treatment, but most doctors seldom prescribe it because it can cause seizures and irregular heartbeats at relatively low doses. Larry Berube, president of Anafit, Thermorexin’s manufacturer, based in Orlando, Fla., described how the product’s combination of ingredients was developed: “Once we find out that the FDA says it’s OK, we put them together in the lab, run our tests, and do our trials, and if it comes up good, we capsulate it, put it online and in the stores and sell it,” he said. Those tests involved asking fitness professionals to use the supplement, and measuring their heart rate and blood pressure, Berube said. The company doesn’t use a control group, he said. Then “we go to the fitness discussion boards and let trainers and people know we have a new product and do they want to try it,” he said. “And then they try it, and they report back.” Berube said he has not heard of any bad reactions to Thermorexin.
SACRAMENTO -- April 6th, Lawsuits were filed in three separate California courts against twelve companies who either produce or use the artificial sweetener aspartame as a sugar substitute in their products. The suits were filed in Shasta, Sonoma and Butte County, California. The suits allege that the food companies committed fraud and breach of warranty by marketing products to the public such as diet Coke, diet Pepsi, sugar free gum, Flintstone's vitamins, yogurt and children's aspirin with the full knowledge that aspartame, the sweetener in them, is neurotoxic. Aspartame is a drug masquerading as an additive. It interacts with other drugs, has a synergistic and additive effect with MSG, and is a chemical hyper-sensitization agent. As far back as 1970, Dr. John Olney founded the field of neuroscience called excitotoxicity when he did studies on aspartic acid, which makes up 40% of aspartame, and found it caused lesions in the brains of mice. He made world news on the aspartame/brain tumor connection in l996. Dr. Ralph Walton, Professor and Chairman of the Department of Psychiatry, Northeastern Ohio Universities College of Medicine has written of the behavioral and psychiatric problems triggered by aspartame-caused depletion of serotonin. Aspartame causes headache, memory loss, seizures, vision loss, coma and cancer. It worsens or mimics the symptoms of such diseases and conditions as fibromyalgia, MS, lupus, ADD, diabetes, Alzheimer's, chronic fatigue and depression. Aspartame liberates free methyl alcohol. The resulting chronic methanol poisoning affects the dopamine system of the brain causing addiction. Methanol, or wood alcohol, constitutes one-third of the aspartame molecule and is classified as a severe metabolic poison and narcotic. Recent news is full of reports of world-class athletes and other healthy consumers of aspartame suddenly dropping dead. Sudden death can occur from aspartame use because it damages the cardiac conduction system. Dr. Woodrow Monte in the peer reviewed journal, Aspartame: Methanol and the Public Health, wrote: "When diet sodas and soft drinks, sweetened with aspartame, are used to replace fluid loss during exercise and physical exertion in hot climates, the intake of methanol can exceed 250 mg/day or 32 times the Environmental Protection Agency's recommended limit of consumption for this cumulative poison." The effects of aspartame are documented by the FDA's own data. In 1995 the agency was forced, under the Freedom Of Information Act, to release a list of ninety-two aspartame symptoms reported by thousands of victims. This is only the tip of the iceberg. H. J. Roberts, MD, published the medical text "Aspartame Disease: An Ignored Epidemic" -- 1,000 pages of symptoms and diseases triggered by this neurotoxin including the sordid history of its approval. Since its discovery in 1965, controversy has raged over the health risks associated with the sugar substitute. From laboratory testing of the chemical on rats, researchers have discovered that the drug induces brain tumors. On Sept 30, l980 the Board of Inquiry of the FDA concurred and denied the petition for approval. In l981, the newly appointed FDA Commissioner, Arthur Hull Hayes, ignored the negative ruling and approved aspartame for dry goods. As recorded in the Congressional Record of 1985, then CEO of Searle Laboratories Donald Rumsfeld said that he would call in his markers to get aspartame approved. Rumsfeld was on President Reagan's transition team and a day after taking office appointed Hayes. No FDA Commissioner in the previous sixteen years had allowed Aspartame on the market. In 1983, aspartame was approved for use in carbonated beverages. Today it is found in over 5000 foods, drinks and medicines. Neurosurgeon Russell Blaylock, MD, author of "Excitotoxins: The Taste That Kills" (www.russellblaylockmd.com) wrote about the relationship between aspartame and macular degeneration, diabetic blindness and glaucoma (all known to result from excitotoxin accumulation in the retina). All of these neurodegenerative diseases are worsened by aspartame. In addition, we now have evidence that excitotoxins play a major role in exacerbation of MS and other demyelinating disorders including trigeminal neuraliga. Blaylock says that new studies show excitotoxins trigger significant elevation of free radicals in the lining (endothelial cells) of arteries, which means that aspartame will increase the incidence of heart attacks and strokes (atherosclerosis). In original studies, aspartame has triggered brain, mammary, uterine, ovarian, testicular, thyroid and pancreatic tumors. Defendants in the lawsuits include Coca-cola, PepsiCo, Bayer Corp., the Dannon Company, William Wrigley Jr. Company, ConAgra Foods, Wyeth, Inc., The NutraSweet Company, and Altria Corp. (parent company of Kraft Foods and Philip Morris). Plaintiffs have asked for an injunction to stop companies from producing, manufacturing, processing, selling or using aspartame. Plaintiffs in all three cases are seeking a jury trial. If you would like to schedule someone from the National Justice League for an interview, please call or fax us at (530) 248-3483.
Dangers of Artificial Sweeteners
Detailed account
of the controversial sweetener: |
The
House of Representatives will vote this week on
a controversial "national food uniformity"
labeling law that will take away local
government and states' power to require food
safety food labels such as those required in
California and other states on foods or
beverages that are likely to cause cancer, birth
defects, allergic reactions, or mercury
poisoning. This bill would also prevent citizens
in local municipalities and states from passing
laws requiring that genetically engineered foods
and ingredients such as Monsanto's recombinant
Bovine Growth Hormone (rBGH) be labeled.