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LINKS: use the BACK button to return here to the top! Many U.S. Women Unaware of Birth Defect RisksHow bad does it get out there?Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine found
that many American women of childbearing age are taking prescription
drugs that can cause birth defects, but only about half are receiving
contraceptive counseling from their doctors or other health care providers,
a new study finds. "Unfortunately, many women are filling prescriptions that can increase the risk of birth defects remain at risk of pregnancy," Schwarz said, which continues on the same judgmental tone. What is it with this woman? Some kind of down on her fellow sex? It seems almost as if the researchers are keen to somehow fix the blame on patients and to gloss over the fact that a doctor irresponsibly prescribed such a drug in every single case. The person who wrote the script committed the act, not the person who innocently filled it! It’s no defense to say that the woman wasn’t pregnant to start with, or was using a contraceptive and therefore SHOULD NOT have become pregnant. In good medicine there is a concept called “a woman of child-bearing age” and it is the doctor’s duty to consider her possibly pregnant at any and all times. To do less is to invite trouble and, more to the point, flies in the face of common sense which says that she is a brilliant fecundity machine. In the ominous words used by Jeff Goldblum’s character in the movie Jurassic Park: “Nature will find a way [to reproduce…]” If the doctor doesn’t provide adequate counseling about birth control, he or she too can be said to have “caused” the pregnancy. Incidentally, most drugs that damage the fetus often do so before the woman is even aware she is pregnant. By the eight week fingers and toes are all present and the chance of real deformity is passed. By the 10th week, the brain is expanding at the rate of about 250,000 more neurons per minute. It’s it a marvel!
Here’s a joke! (surely?)It’s a tip on how patients can “Help Prevent Medical Errors”. To reduce your risk of being killed or injured by wrong medications, follow these suggestions from the American Academy of Family Physicians:
This is just about as crazy as it gets out there. Since when was the patient responsible for seeing the doctor did his or her job properly? Any competent doctor should include all these points in a consultation and on no account offer any treatment, without having the answers to point 1- 3 on hand! As to the handwriting: who can possibly improve another person’s handwriting. How can a patient be expected to say to their own doctor “Better write legibly, Bud”? It is a notorious fact from a recent survey that doctors only spend an average of 18 seconds before they reach for their prescription and pad and start doling out medicine. If doctors are in such a hurry to get their patients out of the office, then clearly a hasty scribble is all they are capable of. Can’t be late for the golf, just for the sake of making the formula readable, surely? Neither is it realistic that a patient could be in the position of saying “Excuse me Doctor, you’ve written 400 milligrams here, shouldn’t that read micrograms and you’ve put stat when surely you mean q.i.d?” As for making sure you are informed about potential side effects, my experience is quite clearly that doctors don’t really know the side effects of drugs they are prescribing. Moreover, since the fashion here in the US is to prescribe an average of 8 meds to patients in middle age or beyond, how can ANYONE—even a world-class pharmacist—possibly know the complex interactions and potential adverse effects of such mixtures? But my point is the same: how can a patient be expected to take responsibility for being told information they are not party to? How can you know what you don’t know or have not been told? It defies elementary logic. I suppose the next step is doctors will be suing patients for negligence who fail to keep their doctor in line, as described in this helpful tip? Or maybe it will be grounds to annul a malpraxis suit, if the patient did not properly and responsibly deal with his or her “clinical responsibilities”, along these lines? Maybe that’s what the Academy of Family Physicians is hoping anyway! Just a reminder, there are still a few copies of the magical book "To
Fly Without Wings" available, at:
Do you believe in fairies?Cancer Survival in US Increasing for Many Cancer Types As reported in the August 1st issue of the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Dr. Brenner and colleagues at the German Cancer Researcher Center, Heidelberg examined data on more than 1.4 million US patients who had a first diagnosis of 24 common forms of malignant invasive cancer between 1998 and 2003. The researchers explain that they calculated relative survival rather than absolute survival. Relative survival is "the ratio of absolute survival of cancer patients divided by the expected survival of a group of persons of the corresponding sex, age and race in the general population." For 14 of the cancer types, there was a significant improvement in 5-year relative survival. This was strongest for non-Hodgkin's lymphoma followed by kidney cancer and leukemia. There was also significant improvement in colorectal cancer and malignancies
of the prostate and breast. In fact, 5-year relative survival for prostate
cancer came close to 100%, and that for breast cancer exceeded 90%. J Clin Oncol 2007;25:3274-3280. Dr Brenner at the German Cancer Researcher Center, Heidelberg
Vitamin C Plus Fat Might Spur CancerDon’t you have to love these orthodox guys? They are constantly trying to run down vitamin C. HOWEVER (note the capital emphasis), they seem to have come up with something significant and I decided I should share it with you. A recent study (published in a journal called Gut, Sept 2007) reported the findings on experiments connected with nitrosamine chemistry. Nitrosamines are unquestionably carcinogenic and are much implicated in causing stomach cancer. These compounds originate mainly from nitrites in preserved meats (ham, salami, sausage, hot dogs etc). Corned beef is made from nitrate which in theory is safer but in actuality converts easily to the nitrite form and that in turn converts to nitrosamine, so that’s not really a good choice either. Don’t think the risk is limited to stomach cancer. Researchers studied the relationship between the intake of certain foods and the risk of leukemia in children from birth to age 10 in Los Angeles County between 1980 and 1987. The study found that children eating more than 12 hot dogs per month have nine times the normal risk of developing childhood leukemia. A strong risk for childhood leukemia also existed for those children whose fathers' intake of hot dogs was 12 or more per month. Two independent studies found that children born to mothers who consumed hot dogs one or more times per week during pregnancy had approximately double the risk of developing brain tumors. Children who ate hot dogs one or more times per week were also at higher risk of brain cancer. Of course hot dogs are junk and not healthy but these studies seem to point to nitrites/nitrosamines as the main culprit. Good old vitamin C normally protects us from the dangerous nitrosamine factor, by converting nitrites into nitric oxide, which is excellent (nitric oxide relaxes blood vessels, reduces blood pressure and improves male erections). But what the researchers Western Infirmary in Glasgow, Scotland, found could have serious implications for us: vitamin C can actually increase the conversion of nitrites to nitrosamine 8- 140 times, whenever fat is present in the stomach. It takes about 10% fat for this to occur; in other words after a fatty meal. Unfortunately, the upper part of the stomach is highly vulnerable to cancerous changes and the danger is obvious. Take my tip: vitamin C and fatty food close together is a no-no from now on. Take your vitamin C or ascorbic acid well away from fatty meals. Remember that fat lingers in the stomach long after a meal and stomach lining cells contain some fats anyway, so the risk never goes away. Maybe the investigative team are right when they say that this interaction may explain why vitamin C supplements have not had significant success in reducing cancer risk, according to some studies. We tend to get a bit paranoid in alternative health and suspect that every negative study for vitamins is a deliberate fix. Well, here is at least one complicating factor that even Prof can agree with. Vegetarians don’t get smug! Green leafy and root vegetables, such as spinach and carrots, provide more than 85 percent of human dietary intake of nitrate, which may be converted to nitrite by the human body during digestion. Though the majority of ingested nitrate is cleared rapidly from the body via excretion, some of it is transported to the salivary glands and secreted in the mouth. There it may be reduced by existing bacteria to nitrite and carried to the stomach upon swallowing. Oh yes, and I almost forgot to mention: in 1996 the American Cancer Society pronounced solemnly that nitrites in food are not a risk for cancer! The rest of the scientific world knows better.
Video LinkHere's a link to a web page by Dr Ravinder Godse. He did (in real life) what a lot of people dream about: he became a movie director. He wrote, directed and starred in his own movie which is very funny based on his best-selling book "Dr Ravi and Mr Hyde". He's had some great reviews: “Writer-director Godse's wry approach -- reminiscent
of '70s-era Woody Allen, complete with direct-to-camera monologues --
has flashes of charm and some witty dialogue.” - Bill
O’Driscoll, Pittsburgh City Paper You can catch it here: http://www.inecom.com/products/consumer/DrRaviMrHyde/default.asp
THE GUESS WHO? QUOTE:
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