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Mercury’s Blowback - Autism (3/10/08) -- In the second reported case a boy aged 2 years and 10 months presented with “delayed speech and some autistic features.” Since weaning, the boy had eaten fish up to eight times a week. The child’s blood mercury level was 350 nmol/L. Two weeks after removing fish from the diet the child’s blood mercury level had fallen to 99 nmol/L. “However, his behavior did not improve, and he was subsequently diagnosed with classical autism.”
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Learning and Developmental Disabilities Linked to Environmental Toxins (2/25/08) -- Autism, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), dyslexia, mental retardation, lowered IQ and other learning and behavior disorders are very common in today’s American children. The occurrence of these learning and developmental disabilities (LDDs) appears to be rising with between 5 to 15 percent of all children under the age of 18 in the United States affected. In general, these disabilities have significantly increased over the past 40 years and now affect more than 12 million children in the United States.
On February 20, 2008 The Collaborative on Health and the Environment’s Learning and Developmental Disabilities Initiative published a Scientific Consensus Statement on Environmental Agents Associated with Neurodevelopmental Disorder. This statement signed by more than 50 national and international health professionals and scientists summarizes the most recent science about environmental contaminants associated with learning and developmental disabilities. The report that was drafted by this prestigious group contains over 200 scientific references.
“We know enough now to move on with taking steps to protect our children. This document pulls that knowledge together to further this vital effort," said reviewer Martha Herbert, PhD, MD, an assistant professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School and a pediatric neurologist with subspecialty certification in neurodevelopmental disabilities at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.
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Pesticides – The risk to human health (11/5/07) -- However, the carcinogenicity of pesticides isn’t the only cause for concern. Although it is well accepted that acute pesticide poisoning causes an array of health problems such as seizures, rashes, and gastrointestinal illness, the chronic effects are less well known. A study in Canadian Family Physician, examined all the scientific studies from 1992 to 2003 to examine the other consequences of pesticide use. In all, the study identified 124 quality studies to be included in their analysis.
In their analysis the authors found 3 non-cancer effects of pesticides – neurologic, reproductive, and genotoxic (causing DNA damage).
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No more migraines! – Barbara’s story (10/12/07) -- Picture a pulsating, painful headache that twice a month left you mostly bedridden for three to five days at a time. Imagine that headache was also accompanied with vomiting, dizziness, poor coordination, and a seemingly unending pain. That was the hellish reality for Barbara in the spring of 2007 who had suffered with full-blown migraines since she was a child. “I’ve been plagued with headaches which have become more painful and more frequent the older I got.”
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Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT) increases seizure risk in women with epilepsy (9/24/07) -- HRT was once hailed as the drug that would ease a woman through menopause while protecting the heart. However, despite these hopes numerous studies have shown that HRT causes a large number of serious problems including the increased risk of stroke, heart disease, breast cancer, endometrial cancer, ovarian cancer, deep-venous thrombosis, and gallbladder disease. The International Agency for Research on Cancer, which is the World Health Organization’s (WHO) cancer research group classifies both birth control pills and HRT as “carcinogenic to humans”.
Now adding to the list of negative consequences a recent study in the journal Epilepsia shows that HRT increases the frequency of seizures in postmenopausal women.
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CoQ10 helps relieve statin induced muscle pain (7/12/07) -- A study in the May issue of The American Journal of Cardiology examined the use of CoQ10 supplements to improve muscle symptoms in patients being treated with statins. The controlled, double-blind study provided half of 32 patients 100 milligrams (mgs) of CoQ10 a day for a month and the other half 400 IU of vitamin E.
At the end of the month the patients who were reporting statin related muscle pain that received the CoQ10 showed “decreased muscle pain by 40% and improved the interference of pain with daily life activities by 38%”. In contrast, the vitamin E group showed no improvement in muscle pain.
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Toxic Jewelry – The Gold Mercury Connection (6/8/07) -- Gold has been sought after and treasured since ancient times and represents to many wealth and status. Jewelry accounts for approximately 70 percent of the gold demand and wearing gold is considered by many to enhance a woman’s appearance.
The demand for gold has fostered a gold rush and increasingly impoverished people in developing countries have turned to small scale gold mining to earn a living. The choice of these miners to extract gold because it is easy, effective, and generally cheap is quicksilver also known as mercury.
The largely unregulated flow of mercury is polluting waterways, land, and the miners themselves throughout Africa, South America, and Asia. Because the miners heat the gold-mercury amalgam in open pans elemental mercury is released into the atmosphere. UNEP estimates that “small-scale gold mining releases between 650 and 1,000 metric tons of mercury per year,” and that this pollution accounts for “about a third of all mercury releases to the environment from human activities.”
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The Mother of All Bubbles – Credit (5/8/07) -- The real estate market is crashing faster than anyone had anticipated. Housing prices have fallen in 17 of 20 of the nation's largest cities and the trend lines indicate that the worst is yet to come. March sales of new homes plummeted by a record 23.5% (year over year) removing all hope for a quick rebound. Problems in the subprime and Alt-A loans are mushrooming in previously "hot markets" resulting in an unprecedented number of foreclosures. The defaults have slowed demand for new homes and increased the glut of houses already on the market. This is putting additional downward pressure on prices and profits. More and more builders are struggling just to keep their heads above water. This isn't your typical 1980s-type "correction"; it's a full-blown real estate cyclone smashing everything in its path.
Tremors from the real estate earthquake won't be limited to housing-they will rumble through all areas of the economy including the stock market, financial sector and currency trading. There is simply no way to minimize the effects of a bursting $4.5 trillion equity bubble.
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Another consequence of global warming – ocean dead zones (5/2/07) -- There are special areas in the oceans called coastal upwelling ecosystems. They are formed from a combination of geologic and weather conditions. Coastal upwellings compose 1% of ocean surface, but 20% of wild caught ocean fisheries and are therefore very important.
In these coastal upwellings nutrient rich colder waters are brought to the surface that feed the microorganisms which in turn feed the smaller fish and then up the food chain. Upwelling of nutrients is critical to these ecosystems. In recent years there have been significant deviations from the norm of upwelling in these areas.
Massive phytoplankton blooms are being observed. The consequence of the blooms combined with changes in wind patterns results in a zone of low oxygen. The water oxygen level gets so low it is insufficient oxygen for most animals and they suffocate and die. That area of the ocean becomes a dead zone.
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Nurses work to reduce the over 100,000 deaths from bedsores (4/19/07) -- A study in the April 2007 issue of American Journal of Nursing examines the incidence and high cost of pressure ulcers and presents the results of an implemented protocol to reduce the occurrence of this widespread problem.
The study notes that “of more than 27 million deaths reported in the United States, pressure ulcers were listed as a cause of in 114,380, or 0.4%, of those deaths; in 21,365 (18.7%) of these, they were the primary (or underlying) cause of death.” That is equivalent over 300 deaths occurring each day in the United States where a bedsore is considered one of the causes.
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Half a million cases of children with ADHD linked to lead exposure and environmental tobacco smoke (3/24/07) -- A recent study in Environmental Health Perspectives, examined the relationship between ETS and environmental lead with ADHD. The authors examined over 4,700 children for this study for ADHD, exposure to cigarette smoke during pregnancy, and child blood lead concentrations.
After analysis the authors found a significant link in children that were exposed to prenatal ETS or had elevated blood lead concentrations to ADHD. “Our estimates indicate that 32.2% of ADHD cases among children 4-15 years of age were attributable to having either prenatal ETS exposure or blood lead > 2.0 μg/dL, which corresponds to 480,000 excess cases of ADHD among U.S. children 4-15 years of age.”
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Diet high in animal protein and intestinal bacteria key in colon cancer (2/5/07) -- African Americans have a high rate of colon cancer, occurring at a rate of 65 per 100,000. However, native African’s rate of colon cancer is far lower, occurring at less than 1 case per 100,000. Because African Americans have a rate 65 times higher of getting colon cancer than native Africans strongly suggests that differences in environment influence this disease.
The researchers also examined the colons of native Africans versus African Americans. They found that the colons of native Africans were “far healthier” than those of matched Americans. Epithelial cell proliferation is a marker for cancer risk and the researchers found that rate to be more than 10 times greater in African Americans which the researchers found “particularly striking”.
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Beta-Agonists may cause thousands of asthma-related deaths each year (1/2/07) -- Regular use of beta-agonists has been shown to increase bronchial hyperactivity regardless of some degree of bronchodilation. This effect along with the reduction in response to later rescue beta-agonist use “may worsen asthma control without giving any warning of increased symptoms.”
The authors determined that because these medications are so widely used throughout the United States and the world that “salmeterol may be responsible for approximately 4,000 of the 5,000 asthma-related deaths that occur in the United States each year.”
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Paroxetine (Paxil or Paxil CR) can more than triple major cardiac birth defects (12/29/06) -- When the study authors examined a dose of paroxetine of greater than 25 mg (milligrams) they found a major increase in general birth and specifically cardiac defects. “Paroxetine was significantly associated with a two-fold increase in the risk of major congenital anomalies, and more specifically with a three-fold increase in the risk of major cardiac anomalies.”
Again, this study compared paroxetine with other antidepressant drugs so the 200% increase in major congenital birth defects and 300% increase in cardiac malformations could reasonably be 240% and 360% if compared to those not taking any antidepressant medication.
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NSAIDs (Advil, Aleve, Vioxx, etc.) increases risk of death from ulcers (12/18/06) -- The study authors examined the records of a number of hospitals from 1991 to 2003. They examined the 30-day risk of death after peptic ulcer perforation among users of COX-2 and traditional NSAIDs.
They found that traditional NSAIDs increased the risk of death from peptic ulcer perforation by 70% compared to non-NSAID users. Also, despite being developed to minimize gastrointestinal effects COX-2 NSAIDs increased the risk of death by 100%. “We found that current NSAID use predicts poor survival for patients hospitalized with peptic ulcer perforation. Use of newer COX-2 inhibitors rendered a similarly greater mortality.”
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Fish oil tackles arthritis and heart disease (12/11/06) -- A study in the Journal of Rheumatology, examined long-term use of fish oil in the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis and its effect on cardiovascular risk. The study group compared 18 patients taking fish oil over a 3-year period compared with a group of 13 patients who did not take fish oil.
The group taking the fish oil was found to have a much greater remission rate of the disease than the no fish oil group. “The proportion in remission at 3 years was greater in the fish oil-compliant group (72% vs. 31%).”
Those in the fish oil group were more likely to be able to stop using NSAIDs than the group not taking fish oil. “Discontinuation of NSAID in 75% of those taking NSAID at baseline in the fish oil group was significant, whereas the discontinuation by 37% of NSAID users in the no fish oil group was not significant.”
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Oral contraceptives increase breast cancer risk (12/6/06) -- The authors found that, “the results of the meta-analysis suggest that use of oral contraceptives (OCs) is associated with an increase in breast cancer risk among premenopausal women or women younger than 50 years.” The greatest increase in risk or 50% was for women who used oral contraceptives 4 or more years before their first full term pregnancy.
The study results agree with previous meta-analyses that were primarily conducted in the 1970s and 1980s. One study published in 1991 in the journal Contraception found an “increased risk of 40%”. Another study published in 1991 found a 60% increased risk of breast cancer for premenopausal women who used oral contraceptives for 96 months or more before their first full term pregnancy. Yet another study published in 1990 in the journal Cancer found that women younger than 46 years old who used oral contraceptives for 4 or more years before their first full term pregnancy had a “72% increased risk”.
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Reversing autism and seizures – Jonathan’s story (11/20/06) -- When Jonathan was four years old it was apparent that he wasn’t quite the way a four-year-old should be. He didn’t focus and was not very verbal. He often got angry and punched his own head and physically attacked others. He didn’t sing. He just didn’t seem normal.
His parents, Denise and Jose, took their son to the pediatrician. After several visits he was diagnosed with pervasive developmental disorder (PDD) and more specifically with autism. PDD refers to a group of disorders characterized by delays in the development of socialization and communication skills.
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I want an apology for... (11/3/06) -- I want an apology for the more than 2,800 Americans soldiers that have died in less than four years in the Iraq War. I want an apology for the 655,000 Iraqis that have died as a result of the invasion of Iraq. I want an apology for the Iraq war which has now cost nearly $380 billion dollars.
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Fruit and vegetable concentrate boosts immunity and decreases DNA damage (10/17/06) -- Diets rich in fruits and vegetables have been shown to be extremely important in maintaining health. Fruits and vegetables have been shown to reduce heart disease risk, decrease the risk for certain cancers, improve life expectancy, and lower body mass index (BMI).
At the end of the study the group that took the fruit and vegetable concentrate tended to have fewer self-reported illness symptoms than the placebo group. The fruit and vegetable group also increased antioxidant status and experienced a 30% increase in the number of gamma-delta T cells.
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