The Health Plus Letter
February 12, 2009 Vol. 7, No. 4
By Larry Trivieri, Jr. – founder & publisher
http://www.1healthyworld.com
Table Of Contents
New This Issue
Quote of the Day
Fast Fact
Donate Blood: The Life You Save May Be Your Own
Is The Obama Stimulus Plan Bad For Your Health?
Paying Addicts To Reform-Total Stupidity! by C. Norman Shealy, MD, PhD
Recommendation
Medical Freedom
Contact Information
New This Issue
Welcome to another issue of The Health Plus Letter. This week I’m reprinting an article I wrote last fall about how and why donating blood is good for you. I’m doing so because of what I continue to discover about its health benefits.
At the risk of being accused of being political, which is not my intention, I’m also alerting you to provisions buried within the about-to-be-passed stimulus bill that could have serious negative consequences to your health, and sharing a recent article by Dr. Norm Shealy railing against the stupidity of two recent medical studies while sharing his ideas what to do about it.
As always, please spread the word about The Health Plus Letter by passing it along to your friends and inviting them to subscribe.
Quote Of The Day
“The terrifying truth about emotion is this, that unless it gushes and flows freely, it will choke the very soul that creates it. There never was a human that existed in this world that did not yearn to overflow with natural emotion.”
-- Joshua Loth Liebman
Fast Fact
The surface area of your lungs is approximately the same size as a tenniscourt.
Unabashed Plug
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Donate Blood: The Life You Save May Be Your Own
Here’s one of the most important steps you can take to dramatically reduce your risk of heart attack and other types of heart disease: Donate blood!
That’s the advice that can be drawn by two noteworthy studies published in 1998. Yet, today - ten years later - most doctors still fail to tell their patients about the studies’ findings.
The two studies I am referring to were published in the American Journal of Epidemiology and Clinical Hemorheology and Microcirculation, respectively. Both of these publications are prestigious medical journals, yet the studies’ findings continue to be almost entirely ignored. Here’s what the studies found:
The first study, published in the American Journal of Epidemiology, involved 2,862 men between the ages of 42 and 60. In conducting their research, the study authors took into consideration and adjusted for the men’s ages and all other predictive risk factors for heart disease. Each of the men was followed over an average period of nine years. At the end of the study it was conclusively shown that the men who donated blood on a regular basis reduced their risk of sudden heart attack (also known as acute mycocardial infarction) by a whopping 88 percent!
The second study, published in Clinical Hemorheology and Microcirculation, explained why regular blood donation reduces heart attack risk. This second study involved 12 men and 18 women, each of whom donated one unit of blood every four days for a total of four donation sessions. The study showed that people who regularly donate blood reduce their blood viscosity by as much as 32 percent.
Blood Viscosity And Why It Can Be Bad For Your Heart
Blood viscosity is simply another name for blood thickness. The above studies, as well as other research, have definitively shown that the thicker a person’s blood is, the more likely it is that he or she is at risk for a heart attack or some other type of heart disease.
The reason for this becomes obvious if you consider what happens when you turn over a bottle of ketchup. If the ketchup is thick, it only comes out after you put pressure on the ketchup bottle, such as shaking or squeezing it. But if the ketchup is thin, it comes out easily, without the need for pressure to make it flow.
Your blood acts in much the same way. If your blood is thin, it flows easily through your body’s arteries. Therefore, little pressure needs to be applied by the pumping of your heart to keep your blood flowing. But when your blood becomes too thick, its flow becomes sluggish. This, in turn, means that your heart needs to pump harder to create more pressure to keep your blood flowing.
And the increased effort by your heart is not the only problem!
As your blood thickens, its increased thickness, as well as the increased pressure needed to keep it flowing, results in greater levels of friction as it moves through your arteries. This friction causes more problems because sandpaper-like effects on the inner lining of the arteries (known as the endothelium). Continued friction caused by the pressure needed to make thick blood flow erodes the endothelium. To counteract this erosion, your arteries will form calluses on the affected areas of the endothelium, in much the same way that your skin forms calluses to protect itself from repeated abrasion.
Calluses formed along the endothelium cause arteries to narrow. This makes it even more difficult for blood to flow properly, forcing the heart to work even harder and apply even more pressure. The end result is a vicious cycle of thick blood, increased pressure, erosion of the endothelium, formation of calluses, and further narrowing of the arteries.
As if that is not bad enough, this vicious cycle increases your risk of heart attack because it also causes the arteries to become inflamed. Chronic inflammation is one of the most serious risk factors for heart disease, as well as many other disease conditions.
The reason inflammation occurs as a result of the vicious cycle described above is because inflammation is the mechanism your body uses to help repair damage to itself. In this case, the damage is to areas of the arterial lining. But since the damage is ongoing, due to the nature of the cycle I described above, inflammation becomes chronic, setting up a host of other problems. These include the migration of toxic debris, known as plaque, into the damaged areas of the endothelium, causing them to thicken, thereby further narrowing the arteries and restricting blood flow.
As this toxic plaque continues to buildup, there is an increased risk that some of it can become dislodged from the arterial lining. There is also a risk of even greater erosion of the endothelium. Should either of these events occur they, can cause dangerous blood clotting, which in turn can trigger a heart attack or stroke.
All because of blood that was too thick to flow easily and naturally to begin with!
The Heart-Protecting Benefits of Blood Donation
By donating blood on a regular basis, you can prevent your blood from becoming too thick. That’s because when you donate blood, your blood that remains in your body goes through a process known as hemodilution, which simply means that your blood becomes diluted or thinner. Interestingly, this same process also occurs when women menstruate, which may explain why pre-menopausal women have traditionally had lower rates of heart disease than men in their same age group. Some health experts, such as Dr. Garry Gordon, a leading integrative physician, speculate that the blood-healthy benefits of menstruation may also play a role in the fact that women also tend to live longer than men do.
There is also another important benefit that occurs when blood is donated – the formation of new red blood cells. (The fancy name for this process is known as erythropoiesis.) New red blood cells are important for a number of reasons. First, compared to older red blood cells, they are far less rigid (30 percent less rigid than older red blood cells). In addition, new red blood cells are far less likely to clump together (a process known as aggregation). In fact, research has shown that new red blood cells aggregate 80 percent less frequently than older red blood cells do.
These two reasons mean that the more new red blood cells there are in your blood, the better able your blood will be to circulate easily. This, in turn, means that your blood will be far less likely to damage the lining of your arteries and that you are at a much lower risk of developing dangerous plaque buildup and plaque rupture.
As the above makes clear, by donating blood you will not only be helping others, but also yourself. The key point to remember, however, is that you need to donate blood on a regular basis to gain the benefits I’ve described. Occasional donations of blood will not provide the same degree of benefits.
To find out how and where you can donate blood in your area, contact the local chapter of the Red Cross.
Sources:
J. Solonen, et al. Donation of blood is associated with reduced risk of myocardial infarction. American Journal of Epidemiology, 148 (1998) 445-451.
X. Cliville, et al. Hemorheological, coagulative and fibrinolytic changes during autologous blood donation. Clinical Hemorheology and Microcirculation, 18 (1998) 265-272.
A.V. Muravyov, et al. The microrheological behavior of young and old red blood cells in athletes. Clinical Hemorheology and Microcirculation, 26 (2002) 183-188.
Unabashed Plug
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Is The Obama Stimulus Plan Bad For Your Health?
After weeks of political wrangling, it appears that the economic stimulus plan President Obama has called for is about to reach his desk to be enacted into law. Whatever your opinion about the plan (and I will try to avoid making this a political discussion), there is one element that is buried inside the proposed legislation that you probably don’t know about. I wasn’t either, until I read an article earlier this week that appeared on Bloomberg News. (You can read the article here: http://tinyurl.com/c44ah5.)
Written by New York State’s former Lt. Governor, Betsy McCaughey, it reveals that the proposed legislation contains health provisions that have not been publicized. And the legislation itself states that these provisions will affect “every individual in the United States.” So, what are these provisions?
The first provision is one that President Obama has spoken of openly, and which he is strongly in favor of, namely the creation of a national system of electronic medical records, all of which can be easily tracked and easily transferred. One the surface, this seems innocent enough, and even beneficial, since, as President Obama has stated, it will eliminate costly and inefficient paperwork that today requires multiple copies. Electronic medical records also have the potential for minimizing the risks for duplication of medical tests and medical errors, both of which have a high economic, as well as human, cost. And, as President Obama has also said, the creation of this system will create new jobs because someone, after all, needs to develop and implement it.
All of these potential benefits seem all well in good (although they of themselves have the potential to bring an even further “Big Brother” element to our nation’s health care than what already exists), so I’m not going to argue against them.
But that’s not all the legislation calls for. If the legislation is implemented as currently written, it will result in our nation’s health care being monitored by a national health czar, known as the “National Coordinator of Health Information Technology.” (The department of Health Information Technology has already been created under the last Bush Administration, a fact I was not aware of until recently.) As McCaughey points out, said czar will be charged with monitoring treatments to ensure that doctors practice medicine in accordance to “what the federal government deems appropriate and cost effective.”
In other words, it puts the final and ultimate decisions about what does and does not constitute good medicine in the hands of a federal bureaucracy and out of the hands of where it belongs – doctors and other health care practitioners!
And that’s not all it does. By forcing the health care profession to abide by federal guidelines for the practice of medicine, this legislation will further foster a system of “cookie cutter” medicine that is both often ineffective and dangerous!
As any skilled practitioner of medicine knows, this “one size fits all” approach to medicine is anathema to true healing. Each individual patient is unique, and therefore his or her medical needs are unique as well. One-size fits all, cookie cutter medicine is already the dominant health care approach of far too many conventional and alternative physicians today, and we already know how poor the outcomes of such an approach to medicine are. I believe that the edicts handed down by federal government via the National Coordinator of Health Information Technology (an Orwellian title if ever there was one, by the way), will make this situation even worse.
And that’s not all I object to in the proposed legislation. But before I get into it, I want to mention another fact that McCaughey’s article reveals. She writes, “These provisions in the stimulus bill are virtually identical to what Daschle prescribed in his 2008 book, Critical: What We Can Do About the Health-Care Crisis. According to Daschle, doctors have to give up autonomy and ‘learn to operate less like solo practitioners.’”
The Daschle she is referring to, of course, is former Congressman Tom Daschle, who had to decline his nomination to become secretary of the department of Health and Human Services after the uproar over his income tax delinquencies and lobbyist paydays. Daschle was an early and instrumental supporter of Obama’s run for president, and until his tax issues were revealed, he seemed to be a shoo-in for inclusion to Obama’s cabinet. After finding out more about his book, I’m glad he didn’t get the job.
Even so, the measures he calls for in his book are precisely what the health care provisions now call for.
Daschle wants, and the stimulus package will create, a system of health care that makes all of our doctors and hospitals “meaningful users.” But what does “meaningful users” mean?
The definition of “meaningful users” isn’t provided in the legislation, and that fact of itself should be alarming, given how undefined terms can later be defined to mean something most reasonable people would not assent to (such as the definition now used by the FDA to define the word “drug”—according to the FDA, any substance that is claimed to treat a health care condition automatically becomes a drug; by this reasoning, if I tell you that vitamin C is effective for preventing and reversing heart disease—which it is—my doing so makes vitamin C a drug, not a vitamin, and if I happen to be a manufacturer or retailer of vitamin C that makes that information available, the FDA can find me or do far worse).
Returning to “meaningful users,” regardless of what definition the term ultimately receives by the federal government, the end result will very likely be that it will mean everyone who practice medicine exactly the way the federal government tells them to do. And if the doctors and hospitals fail to do as they are told, then, according to the about-to-be-signed legislation, they will be penalized.
In addition, the bill allows the Secretary of HHS to impose “more stringent measures of meaningful use over time.” Further tightening the reins over doctors and hospitals, in other words.
Here’s another telling excerpt from McCaughey’s article:
“What penalties will deter your doctor from going beyond the electronically delivered protocols when your condition is atypical or you need an experimental treatment? The vagueness is intentional. In his book, Daschle proposed an appointed body with vast powers to make the ‘tough’ decisions elected politicians won't make.
“The stimulus bill does that, and calls it the Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research (190-192). The goal, Daschle's book explained, is to slow the development and use of new medications and technologies because they are driving up costs. He praises Europeans for being more willing to accept ‘hopeless diagnoses’ and ‘forgo experimental treatments,’ and he chastises Americans for expecting too much from the health-care system.”
Given the epidemic size of our nation’s current health care problems, why would anyone want to slow the development of new medications and technologies? Aren’t ongoing innovations precisely what are required to address these problems? Apparently, not according to Daschle.
McCaughey also reveals that this new legislation will change the way Medicare is handled. Currently, Medicare pays for all treatments that are deemed safe and effective (conventional treatments, that is; there are many safe and effective non-conventional approaches that both Medicare and health insurance companies in general will not cover). But if the legislation passes, “The stimulus bill would change that and apply a cost- effectiveness standard set by the Federal Council,” McCaughey writes.
Then she adds, “The Federal Council is modeled after a U.K. board discussed in Daschle's book. This board approves or rejects treatments using a formula that divides the cost of the treatment by the number of years the patient is likely to benefit. Treatments for younger patients are more often approved than treatments for diseases that affect the elderly, such as osteoporosis.
“In 2006, a U.K. health board decreed that elderly patients with macular degeneration had to wait until they went blind in one eye before they could get a costly new drug to save the other eye. It took almost three years of public protests before the board reversed its decision.”
As McCaughey points out, this legislation will affect every aspect of our nation’s health care system, including not only how patients are treated, but also how doctors and nurses are trained. To achieve this end, “The bill allocates more funding for this bureaucracy than for the Army, Navy, Marines, and Air Force combined.”
According to McCaughey, “Hiding health legislation in a stimulus bill is intentional…A year ago, Daschle wrote that the next president should act quickly before critics mount an opposition. ‘If that means attaching a health-care plan to the federal budget, so be it,’ he said. ‘The issue is too important to be stalled by Senate protocol.”
Here’s my question to Daschle: To important to whom?
And here’s my answer: Big Pharma.
To me, this part of the stimulus bill has the pharmaceutical industry’s handwriting all over it. Only drug-based medicine can thrive under such rigid measures of medicine. And only drug-based medicine can survive the stringent cookie-cutter measures that will be imposed on doctors and hospitals after this bill passes.
If you agree with me, then contact your elected representatives and let them know that Daschle is wrong. This issue to too important not to be brought into the open and fully debated. Government bureaucrats should not be given any further power to tell doctors how to practice medicine.
(If you are interested in wading through the actual legislation I’m referring to, you can get started by visiting: http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c111:H.R.+1: Be forewarned, though; it takes a lot of slogging through to find the provisions in question.)
Paying Addicts To Reform---Total Stupidity! by C. Norman Shealy, M.D., Ph.D.
The February 12, 2009 issue of The New England Journal Of Medicine (p. 699-709) had a Special Article about a study of "Financial Incentives for Smoking Cessation." They paid $100 for completion of a smoking cessation program; $250 for cessation of smoking at 6 months; and an additional $400 for those who were not smoking at the end of 12 months. Interestingly, only 15.4% of those offered the smoking cessation program plus the money enrolled, while 5.4% of those not offered money enrolled. BIG DEAL!!! The research itself undoubtedly cost many times the amount of money paid to the few addicts who responded! At 15 or 18 months 9.4% of the "bribe" group remained off nicotine versus 3.6% of the non-bribed. MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING. What nonsense, both for the researchers and the company which put up the money!! And worth 11 pages in our supposedly most prestigious medical journal.
There was a similar study reported in the past month which showed "statistically better" MINIMAL weight loss in a similarly ill conceived weight loss program. And they concluded that maybe the study should have gone longer!
Hypnotherapy, behavioral modification and a wide variety of cognitive programs are far more efficient. Even nicotine patches and gum do a better job than bribery! Admittedly both obesity and smoking are true problems of addiction. And together these two human misbehaviors are responsible for well over half of all medical expenses in this country. The "financial incentives" for food and nicotine addictions seem about as stupid as the current bankrupting bail out stimuli to pay those who have already been addicted to gambling lots of taxpayer money to keep gambling (Wall Street, greedy and unethical bankers, and people who bought homes well above their ability to pay).
Ah, popular delusions and the madness of crowds!
Interestingly, the February 4, 2009 issue of JAMA carried one of the few commonsense approaches to the obesity epidemic (p. 533-535). Those 3 pages are worth thousands of the financial bribe articles! They emphasize the failure of industrial agriculture, which has been subsidized by government to produce inferior food! The common sense solution:
Revitalize family farms
Develop local farm to community food distribution (before WW II, 90+% of all food was grown within 50 miles of consumers)
Establish community produce gardens
Create real kitchens with real food in schools! No prepackaged microwavable junk! And of course, no pop [soda]!
Increase walking and bicycle friendly possibilities in every community, linking them with the farmers markets, etc
Optimize parks and natural resources for outdoor physical activities
The authors do not mention these but:
STOP SUBSIDIES OF CONGLOMERATE, INDUSTRIAL FARMS!!!!!
Penalize the food manufacturing mafia by putting huge user fees on junk food!
Copyright © 2009 by C. Norman Shealy. All rights reserved.
For more information by and about Dr. Shealy, visit www.normshealy.com.
Unabashed Plug
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http://www.1healthyworld.com/ebooks/Mind-Mastery-Book-Info.cfm.
Recommendations
Websites
www.betterbones.com - The website of my friend (an co-author; The Acid-Alkaline Food Guide) Dr. Susan Jones, one of the world’s leading experts on acid-alkaline balance, osteoporosis, and much more. Her website is a very valuable health resource.
http://www.kiva.org - This is a wonderful site. Your small donation can literally create huge positive changes. Visit the site to find out more.
www.solari.com - Want to know what’s really going on with all the government bailout measures? Then this site is a must.
Medical Freedom
Please contact and support the following organizations dedicated to protecting our health freedoms.
Citizens for Health - http://www.citizens.org
Alliance for Natural Health – http://www.alliance-natural-health.org (The leading organization fighting to preserve health freedom in England and the EU.)
Institute for Health Freedom – http://www.ForHealthFreedom.org
International Advocates for Health Freedom (IAHF) – http://www.iahf.com
And to learn how corrupt and extensive Big Pharma’s monopoly is, visit http://www.pnc.com.au/~cafmr/online/research/index.html the website for the Campaign Against Fraudulent Medical Research. In particular, read their in-depth report The Pharmaceutical Drug Racket that you will find there.
That’s all for this week.
Health and Blessings!
Larry Trivieri, Jr.
Contact Information: Due to the inordinate amount of spam my email account receives, I no longer use it to receive emails. To contact me, please visit www.1healthyworld.com/contactus
Disclaimer: The Health Plus Letter is a weekly eZine published by Larry Trivieri, Jr. and Library of Health, LLC (dba www.1healthyworld.com) 3 Greenwood Court, Utica, NY 13501. It is made available without charge for information purposes only and is not intended as a substitute for medical care. If you are experiencing a health problem, seek prompt medical attention.
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