Leukemia: Vitamin A is better, and safer, than chemo
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Date: 01/13/05
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Date: Thu, 13 Jan 2005 19:35:22 +0000 (UTC)
WHAT DOCTORS DON'T TELL YOU - E-NEWS BROADCAST No. 120 - 13 January 2005
Please feel free to email this broadcast to any friends you feel would
appreciate receiving it.
NEWS CONTENTS
Olive oil and pizza: They're both great for your health
Leukemia: Vitamin A is better, and safer, than chemo
Gut problems: Attend our free workshop
Drug alert: Now the entire NSAID family gets a warning
Christmas quiz: The answers and the winners
First thoughts of 2005: With my mind already overwhelmed by the human
tragedy caused by the tsunami in Asia, I happened to pick up a recent
edition of the Journal of the American Medical Association. It contained an
article about children who were dying from cancer, and their heart-rending
accounts of what was happening to them. No age was immune, and it contained
the words of children as young as three, trying to understand death and
leaving behind their mummies and daddies. For some inexplicable reason my
thoughts turned to a poem by Philip Larkin, written after he had
accidentally killed a hedgehog while mowing the lawn. In the face of
meaningless destruction, the only thing we can do is to love each other, he
wrote. It is perhaps the one intelligent response we can make. May it be
ours in 2005.
WORK AT WDDTY: A new year, and maybe it could be a new start for you. We
at What Doctors Don't Tell You are looking for a full-time editorial
assistant to work at our offices in Wimbledon, south-west London. The ideal
candidate will be a graduate, and will have some training and experience in
journalism. Most of all, you will believe in the old-fashioned ideals of
investigative journalism. The job entails research and writing, as well as
some of the more mundane aspects of office life, such as the opening of the
morning mail and responding to readers' correspondence. If this appeals,
please e-mail us at: jobs@wddty.co.uk, including a mini-CV and current
salary (if applicable). Alternatively, write to Lynne McTaggart at: WDDTY,
2 Salisbury Road, London SW19 4EZ.
OLIVE OIL AND PIZZA: They're both great for your health
If food is our medicine, scientists are beginning to understand why. They
have started to uncover the secrets of the famed Mediterranean diet and its
protective qualities against cancer, and especially breast cancer.
The key seems to be the olive oil dressing, which is rich in oleic acid, a
monounsaturated fatty acid. In laboratory experiments scientists have
discovered that oleic acid can dramatically reduce breast cancer cells, and
in some tests eliminated 46 per cent of the cancer cells.
The scientists believe that oleic acid does not just protect against breast
cancer, it can also prolong the lives of those with the cancer. Lead
researcher Dr Javier Menendez of the Feinberg School of Medicine at
Northwestern University believes that oleic acid can also protect against
heart disease and is an anti-ageing agent.
The key is to use extra virgin olive oil as a cold dressing on salads or
vegetables. It loses its protective qualities when it's used to cook food.
Extra virgin olive oil isn't the only food that's good for our health. Step
forward the humble pizza as a protector against heart attacks. People who
regularly eat 'Italian pizza' halved their risk of an acute myocardial
infarction, or heart attack, compared with those who ate pizza only
occasionally. Even those who eat four portions or less a month still gained
some protection.
The discovery was made by doctors at a Milan hospital who analysed the
eating habits of 507 patients who had suffered their first heart attack, and
compared them with 478 patients who had been admitted with other health
problems.
Those who were 'frequent' eaters of pizza - defined as eating two or more
200 g portions of pizza a week - had the greatest protection, and compared
with 'regular' consumers, who ate more than one a week, while the ones who
had the least protection ate just one to three portions a month.
The doctors emphasise that the patients were eating pizzas from traditional
pizzerias in Italian, where the quality of the ingredients is presumably
higher. This may also explain the 'Clinton effect'. Former US president
Bill Clinton is an avowed pizza eater, but he still recently underwent a
quadruple coronary by-pass, so presumably the standard fast-food pizza isn't
going to do the job.
Interestingly, the findings of the Milan study mirror earlier studies that
found that tomatoes and tomato paste, which happen to be the most common
ingredients in pizzas, had protective qualities against heart disease.
So what's the ideal meal? Why, fresh tomatoes swimming in cold extra virgin
olive oil dressing, of course.
(Sources: Olive oil study - Annals of Oncology, 10 January 2005;
doi:10.1093/annonc/mdi090; Pizza study - European Journal of Clinical
Nutrition, 2004: 58; 1543-6).
LEUKEMIA: Vitamin A is better, and safer, than chemo
Oncologists have for the first time tested a therapy other than chemotherapy
to treat leukemia, and it worked. But it wasn't another toxic, debilitating
chemical that they turned to - it was vitamin A.
This simple therapy - which involved wrapping vitamin A inside bubbles of
fat - reversed a rare form of leukemia in up to a third of patients.
The key to the new therapy seems to be the delivery mechanism. When it's
put in a lipid carrier, it retains its potency whereas earlier trials of
vitamin A as an anti-carcinogen found that little of the vitamin was being
absorbed by the body when it was taken orally.
Not surprisingly, it's been patented, and is being licensed as the 'drug'
Lipo-Atra, even though it is essentially a form of vitamin A known as Atra,
which was originally found to help leukemia patients in studies in China.
It's been tested on a group of 34 patients with acute promyelocytic leukemia
(APL), 10 of whom have been in remission for an average of five years,
despite never having had chemotherapy.
Lead researcher Dr Elihu Estey at Texas University's Department of Leukemia
said: "This is the first time we have seen patients with an acute leukemia
potentially cured without use of chemotherapy. That's an important
development in the field of leukemia, because traditional treatment with
chemotherapy often produces side effects, even death, in patients with
different kinds of leukemia than the one studied here." He said it.
(Source: Annual proceedings of the American Society of Clinical Oncology,
2004).
GUT PROBLEMS: Attend our free workshop, and see if we can help you
Dr Harald Gaier, What Doctors Don't Tell You's medical detective, returns to
the big health topic of gut-related problems in the next of his free
workshops for Enews readers.
The event is on Thursday, 20 January, and begins at 6.30pm at Harald's
offices at 50 New Cavendish Street, London W1 with welcome drinks and
snacks. The discussion begins at 7pm and lasts for an hour-and-a-half,
which includes a time for questions and answers.
Places are limited, so please reserve your free place by contacting Karin on
0207 009 4650.
* FOLLOW THE DETECTIVE: The strange case of a young woman whose cold sores
went away when she drank coffee is explored and explained by Harald Gaier in
the latest issue of What Doctors Don't Tell You. To subscribe, just click
here: http://www.wddty.co.uk/shop/details.asp?product=330
DRUG ALERT: Now the entire NSAID family gets a warning
America's drug 'watchdog', the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), had a
nice Christmas present for the pharmaceuticals. On Christmas Eve it told
all doctors in the USA to treat with extreme caution the entire family of
NSAIDs (non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs), such as aspirin, and which
embraces the more recent version, the COX-2 agents.
While nobody was especially surprised about the COX-2 warning after their
association with serious heart problems, few expected a blanket warning
about the entire NSAID family, one of the most lucrative to the
pharmaceutical industry.
The FDA has been very slow to act over the COX-2 drugs, which even the
manufacturers were admitting represented a danger to health as far back as
last September. Possibly sensitive to public concerns about its role as
watchdog, the FDA moved with speed in issuing a warning about the entire
NSAID range, so catching everyone out, including the pharmaceutical
companies.
Just days before the Christmas holidays the agency received the results from
a clinical trial that suggested long-term use of naproxen, an NSAID, could
cause heart problems.
This follows on from concerns about the COX-2 drugs Celebrex (celecoxib) and
Bextra (valdecoxib), which have been linked to an increased risk of heart
attack and stroke.
While the warning went out to doctors, the FDA is also concerned about
consumers who regularly buy an NSAID, such as aspirin, for long-term use.
Use them 'in strict accordance with the label directions', the FDA states,
and never take them for more than 10 days at a time.
(Source: FDA website).
CHRISTMAS QUIZ: The answers, and the winners
Finally, we turn to the results of our Christmas quiz. We weren't exactly
inundated (well, it was Christmas, and you were set 10 tough questions,
after all), but we've been able to find five winners.
First off, here are the questions once again, this time with the answers
printed afterwards:
1. The NSAIDs are a family of painkillers that can cause gastric problems.
But what does the acronym 'NSAID' stand for?
Answer: Nonsteroidal, anti-inflammatory drug
2. Staying with acronyms, and painkillers, the NSAID gave way to the COX-2
drugs, which were thought to be safer. They weren't, of course. What does
COX-2 stand for?
Answer: cyclo-oxygenase
3. Your friend has been told he's had a myocardial infarction. What would
we say he's had?
Answer: Heart attack
4. Staying with myocardial infarctions (and why not), can you name three of
the more common symptoms?
Answer: Vice-like grip around chest; pains down left side, arm, neck or
upper abdomen. Indigestion. Ashen, clammy, short of breath, faint. Rapid
heart beat. Faint pulse, low blood pressure, high temperature, irregular
heart beat.
5. Where would you find your coccyx?
Answer: Vertebrae
6. Russian playwright Anton Chekhov had a degree in medicine. True or
false?
Answer: True
7. It's a white, bitter crystal-like alkaloid. It is made from cinchona
bark, and it's used in antimalaria drugs. What is it?
Answer: Quinine
8. You'll have to visit the What Doctors Don't Tell You website for this
one (http://www.wddty.co.uk). A woman who had been diagnosed with MS says
our research 'saved her life'. But what did we discover was the real cause
of her problem?
Answer: Dianette birth control pill
9. What is apnea?
Answer: loss of regular, automatic breath pattern
10. If someone suffers from meconium plug syndrome, how old would the
patient be?
Answer: Newborn
The following submitted the correct answers and were picked from our
electronic hat. Each will receive a signed copy of the new version of Lynne
McTaggart's book, What Doctors Don't Tell You: Rosemary Jarvis, Peter
Edwards, Miriam Blatt, Ken Seymour, and David Wooldridge. Well done to the
winners, and thanks to everyone that participated. We will contact each of
the winners by e-mail.
Listen to Lynne
On the radio: Hear Lynne McTaggart on Passion the innovative DAB Digital
Radio Station focusing on your health and your environment -
http://www.wddty.co.uk/passion_main.asp
On demand: Select and listen to any of Lynne's archived broadcasts on
Passion, there's a new one each week -
http://www.wddty.co.uk/passion_archive.asp
View missed/lost e-News broadcasts:
View our e-News broadcast archives, follow this link -
http://www.wddty.co.uk/archive.asp
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- Next message: J: "Re: Leukemia: Vitamin A is better, and safer, than chemo"
- Previous message: madiba: "Re: Cancer Monthly, a Unique Resource Woven from Tragedy"
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- Reply: J: "Re: Leukemia: Vitamin A is better, and safer, than chemo"
- Reply: Salisha: "Re: Leukemia: Vitamin A is better, and safer, than chemo"
- Reply: Jerry: "Re: Leukemia: Vitamin A is better, and safer, than chemo"
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