by Sayer Ji, founder of GreenMedInfo.com
[previously published in the Well Being Journal and Mercola.com]
In episode #11 (season 2) of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, a woman poisons her husband with the chemical sodium selenite. Strange as it may sound, this exotic murder weapon, and it’s close cousin, sodium selenate, are listed as “nutrients” on the labels of most mass-marketed vitamins. Even though both sodium selenite and selenate are classified as dangerous and toxic to the environment by regulatory bodies such as the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the European Union, they are the primary forms of this mineral - selenium - sold on the mass market today. In fact, most mass-market vitamins contain chemicals that the EPA does not allow in our public drinking water at levels above 50 parts per billion per liter. According to the EPA’s Maximum Contaminant Level (MCL) standards, the highest allowable level of selenium in public drinking water is 50 parts per billion (equivalent to 50 micrograms, dry weight). To get a sense of how small an allowable limit this is, 50 parts per billion is equivalent to a tablespoon of water in an Olympic-size swimming pool.
How can vitamin manufacturers advertise something as being a “nutrient” when the EPA—out of concern for our health—has barred it from our drinking water at all but exceedingly minute levels? Have sodium selenite/selenate really been shown to be toxic? A brief perusal of toxicology reports from the Hazardous Substances Databank (toxnet.nlm.nih.gov) and PUBMED (pubmed.gov) shows that both forms can be carcinogenic and genotoxic and may contribute to reproductive and developmental problems in animals and humans. The question is not whether these minerals have toxicity, but rather at what level they overwhelm our capacity for their detoxification and/or biotransformation into non-toxic metabolites?
A word should be said here about the differences that exist between inorganic minerals and biologically active ones:
The selenium that is found in foods like brazil nuts, mustard seeds, and fresh produce grown in selenium-rich soil is infinitely different from the biologically inert forms being put in some multivitamins. In fact, sodium selenite/selenate can cause cancer, whereas the selenium found within food, or laboratory chelated forms like selenomethionine, have all been shown to prevent and combat cancer.
The basic principle that explains this difference is that when you isolate a nutrient or vitamin out of the food complex within which it is naturally found, and where it is inseparably bound to thousands of known and unknown food factors (e.g., enzymes, protein chaperones, glyconutrients, etc.) it is no longer as beneficial to life. This is especially true in the case of vertebrate mammals who are equipped to get their minerals from the plants they ingest or through the biotransformation of inorganic minerals to organic ones by microflora in their gastrointestinal tracts.
The primary reason that sodium selenite/selenate are preferred by some vitamin manufacturers over safer, more beneficial forms like chelated or yeast-grown selenium is because it is more profitable to use raw materials of lower quality.
“You get what you pay for” is a saying that almost always rings true for dietary supplements. Buying industrial waste products, or chemicals that are considered hazardous waste, and repackaging them as “dietary supplements” can be extremely profitable.
Indeed, this is not the first time in American history that such a hoax has been perpetrated on the public. The FDA-approved use of fluoride in our drinking water and the use of radioactive cobalt-60 culled from nuclear reactors for the IRRADIATION of conventional food illustrates how industrial waste products with known toxicity are eventually converted into commodities or technologies “beneficial to health.” Whereas initially these substances have very high disposal costs for the industries that excrete them into our environment, the liability is converted — through the right combination of lobbying, miseducation and “checkbook science” –- back into a commodity, with the environment and consumer suffering health and financial losses as a result.
Unfortunately, inorganic forms of selenium are not the only problem with mass-market vitamins. Take the multivitamin Centrum, for instance, whose manufacturer Wyeth is one of the most powerful pharmaceutical companies in the world. This vitamin contains the following chemicals:
Chemical: Amount Found in Centrum/ EPA Maximum Allowed Limit in 1 Liter of Drinking Water
1) Sodium selenite : 55 mcg/ 50 mcg
2) Nickelous sulfate: 5 mcg/ 100 mcg
3) Stannous chloride (tin): 10 mcg/ 4 mcg
4) Ferrous fumarate (iron): 18 mg/ .3 mg
5) Manganese sulfate: 2.3 mg/ .05 mg
6) Cupric sulfate: .5 mg/ 1.3 mg
In the left hand column above you will see the quantities of inorganic minerals found within each dose of Centrum. In the right hand column are the maximum quantity allowed by the EPA in one liter of drinking water. In the case of stannous chloride (tin), ferrous fumarate (iron) and manganese sulfate there are significantly higher doses in Centrum than are considered safe for human consumption in a liter of water. Although the others listed are at levels well under the EPA’s allowable limit, it is simply amazing that they are found in a product for human consumption at any quantity given their known toxicity.
So, if these chemicals are toxic, how can they be marketed as beneficial to our health?
As of today no law forbids the use of these substances in dietary supplements, despite laboratory research demonstrating their toxicity in animals, and epidemiological and occupational data demonstrating their actual or potential toxicity in humans. This is due to the widespread acceptance in the U.S. of a chemical and drug industry-friendly “weight of evidence” standard for toxicological risk assessment. Rather than using the “precautionary principle,” which dictates that a substance that is suspected of being harmful should be duly regulated in order to minimize the public’s exposure, the “weight of evidence” paradigm requires that a panel of government appointed experts must evaluate all available toxicological data, and must come up with a consensus that the evidence, unequivocally, demonstrates the substance in question poses a serious health risk. Until such an assessment can be made, a number of substances with obvious toxicity are “innocent until proven guilty” and can be portrayed by irresponsible and/or uneducated manufacturers as being beneficial to human health. It is sad and ironic that at a time when smaller dietary supplement manufacturers are being accused of being “unregulated” and having poor quality standards (even when they are incurring great costs by using vastly superior ingredients) that massive pharmaceutical companies, who have every resource at their disposal, are allowed to market toxic chemicals to consumers under the banner of USP (United States Pharmacopeia) or “pharmaceutical grade” quality, and get away with it.
Ultimately, we need to use common sense in our purchasing decisions and realize that sometimes companies will intentionally mislead the public—with the complicity of regulatory bodies like the FDA—and will advertise a product that has no health benefits; or worse, may actually detract from our health. The fact that Centrum may or may not be “the #1 doctor multivitamin brand” is irrelevant, considering that one does not ordinarily go to a doctor to seek wise counsel on nutrition. It is simply not their specialty.
The irony is that billions of dollars in health care cost —and the suffering these costs represent— could be saved every year if Americans took the simple step of taking a good multivitamin every day. It is advisable to look for product manufacturers that use high quality ingredients, including those from whole foods, as they are easier for our bodies to absorb and to utilize and therefore contribute more significantly to filling the voids in our diet.
Monday, September 26, 2011
Friday, September 23, 2011
Sub-Arachnoid Hemorrhage (SAH)
by J. Michael Pece
I am recovering from a sub-arachnoid hemorrhage. What is a sub-arachnoid hemorrhage you ask? Its when a blood vessel underneath the skull and the membrane and the brain ruptures. Thus leading to bleeding in the brain . Bleeding in the brain can destroy brain tissue causing a variety of problems for the patient.
Mine occurred August 4, 20011. I was walking around my front yard, near an ditch, in the early morning when suddenly I fell unconscious and hit my head, apparently on a rock. I do not remember the incident. It was during a heat wave, here where we live, and the temperature was around 110 degrees. I lay unconscious for about three hours in the blazing sun, until a neighbor, who lives about 1/4 mile away noticed our dogs were loose and in his workshop. Since we never let our dogs loose, he immediately came over to see why they were loose. He found the front door opened and a man separated from our yard by a 10 foot fence screaming for him to help me. He then found me lying on the top of the ditch unconscious and bleeding from the back of the head.
My neighbor called 911 and soon the EMT's and the fire truck were on the scene attending me. Thank God for neighbors.
I was taken to the nearest hospital and immediately had a CT scan done. It showed bleeding in the brain. I was still unconscious and had no idea what was going on, I've only been told later. My wife was called by the EMT's at work and she immediately came to the Hospital ER to see me. The Emergency Department doctors tried to stop the bleeding and stabilized me, but could not. They then told my wife that I would need to go to a hospital which treated brain hemorrhages and had a Neurosurgical team on board.
An ambulance was called and I was taken to another hospital renown for their neurological department and actually was where I had gone as an outpatient for 2 1/2 years after my previous traumatic brain injury.They took and MRI and CT scan and saw the bleeding and began working to stop the bleeding. The choice was to use a coagulating drug to try and stop it or do surgery. They tried the drug first. I became conscious enough that I could tell the doctors that my head hurt tremendously.
And they began giving me morphine and when that did not work they gave me a combination of painkillers which immediately knocked me out again.my wife went home to tend to the dogs after the doctors told he they wouldn't know anything until early morning.
The next morning my wife called the hospital at 6:30 am, and was told by the nursing staff that the bleeding had been stopped by the drugs, but I was still unconscious.
I have absolutely no recollection of August 4th, 5th, 6th or 7th. On the fifth day I began to remember consciousness. On the sixth day the hospital sent me to an in-house
rehabilitation clinic. There I underwent Occupational therapy (how to dress,, brush your teeth, comb your hair, etc), Speech therapy, and physical therapy.
My main lasting effect was dizziness. I was extremely dizzy.After an brain hemorrhage after effects can be things such as dizziness, loss of speech, loss of movement, headaches, loss of memory, and loss of self. Luckily I just suffered from dizziness, loss of memory and difficulty speaking certain polysyllable words. I left rehab with a walker to help me get around and a shower chair for taking showers without falling.
This week I went to the Neurosurgeon for my 6 week follow up and he said my most recent CT scan did not show any bleeding and he felt relatively sure that the chances of a re-occurrence was as close to zero as possible provided I did not fall and hit my head again.
Today my speech is almost back to normal, my dizziness is getting better as time goes on, and I have no head aches. I was lucky.
I was lucky the first hospital was only 10 minutes away and they recognized they could not help me besides stabilizing me, and transferring me to the best Neurological Hospital in the city where we live. I was lucky a neighbor found me when he did or I would have died of exposure to the heat, I was lucky that I was transferred to the best Neurological hospital in our city, I was lucky I will have no lasting effects from this brain hemorrhage. For all of this I am thankful. Most of all I am lucky to be married to such a wonderful wife who nursed me back to health and cautioned me against doing "too much" or doing the wrong things.
Having a brain bleed is nothing to be shy about. Signs are headache, stiff neck, confusion, inability to speak, inability to walk and total confusion. If you ever have these symptoms get help at a hospital immediately. In my case having a brain hemorrhage caused by a head trauma there is a 46 - 75% chance of permanent vegetative state, or mental deficits or death. Luckily I was in that 25% that recover.
If you want to learn more about Sub-arachnoid Hemorrhage or other brain bleed strokes Google PubMed,WebMD, or Medscape and learn about this potentially deadly experience.
I am recovering from a sub-arachnoid hemorrhage. What is a sub-arachnoid hemorrhage you ask? Its when a blood vessel underneath the skull and the membrane and the brain ruptures. Thus leading to bleeding in the brain . Bleeding in the brain can destroy brain tissue causing a variety of problems for the patient.
Mine occurred August 4, 20011. I was walking around my front yard, near an ditch, in the early morning when suddenly I fell unconscious and hit my head, apparently on a rock. I do not remember the incident. It was during a heat wave, here where we live, and the temperature was around 110 degrees. I lay unconscious for about three hours in the blazing sun, until a neighbor, who lives about 1/4 mile away noticed our dogs were loose and in his workshop. Since we never let our dogs loose, he immediately came over to see why they were loose. He found the front door opened and a man separated from our yard by a 10 foot fence screaming for him to help me. He then found me lying on the top of the ditch unconscious and bleeding from the back of the head.
My neighbor called 911 and soon the EMT's and the fire truck were on the scene attending me. Thank God for neighbors.
I was taken to the nearest hospital and immediately had a CT scan done. It showed bleeding in the brain. I was still unconscious and had no idea what was going on, I've only been told later. My wife was called by the EMT's at work and she immediately came to the Hospital ER to see me. The Emergency Department doctors tried to stop the bleeding and stabilized me, but could not. They then told my wife that I would need to go to a hospital which treated brain hemorrhages and had a Neurosurgical team on board.
An ambulance was called and I was taken to another hospital renown for their neurological department and actually was where I had gone as an outpatient for 2 1/2 years after my previous traumatic brain injury.They took and MRI and CT scan and saw the bleeding and began working to stop the bleeding. The choice was to use a coagulating drug to try and stop it or do surgery. They tried the drug first. I became conscious enough that I could tell the doctors that my head hurt tremendously.
And they began giving me morphine and when that did not work they gave me a combination of painkillers which immediately knocked me out again.my wife went home to tend to the dogs after the doctors told he they wouldn't know anything until early morning.
The next morning my wife called the hospital at 6:30 am, and was told by the nursing staff that the bleeding had been stopped by the drugs, but I was still unconscious.
I have absolutely no recollection of August 4th, 5th, 6th or 7th. On the fifth day I began to remember consciousness. On the sixth day the hospital sent me to an in-house
rehabilitation clinic. There I underwent Occupational therapy (how to dress,, brush your teeth, comb your hair, etc), Speech therapy, and physical therapy.
My main lasting effect was dizziness. I was extremely dizzy.After an brain hemorrhage after effects can be things such as dizziness, loss of speech, loss of movement, headaches, loss of memory, and loss of self. Luckily I just suffered from dizziness, loss of memory and difficulty speaking certain polysyllable words. I left rehab with a walker to help me get around and a shower chair for taking showers without falling.
This week I went to the Neurosurgeon for my 6 week follow up and he said my most recent CT scan did not show any bleeding and he felt relatively sure that the chances of a re-occurrence was as close to zero as possible provided I did not fall and hit my head again.
Today my speech is almost back to normal, my dizziness is getting better as time goes on, and I have no head aches. I was lucky.
I was lucky the first hospital was only 10 minutes away and they recognized they could not help me besides stabilizing me, and transferring me to the best Neurological Hospital in the city where we live. I was lucky a neighbor found me when he did or I would have died of exposure to the heat, I was lucky that I was transferred to the best Neurological hospital in our city, I was lucky I will have no lasting effects from this brain hemorrhage. For all of this I am thankful. Most of all I am lucky to be married to such a wonderful wife who nursed me back to health and cautioned me against doing "too much" or doing the wrong things.
Having a brain bleed is nothing to be shy about. Signs are headache, stiff neck, confusion, inability to speak, inability to walk and total confusion. If you ever have these symptoms get help at a hospital immediately. In my case having a brain hemorrhage caused by a head trauma there is a 46 - 75% chance of permanent vegetative state, or mental deficits or death. Luckily I was in that 25% that recover.
If you want to learn more about Sub-arachnoid Hemorrhage or other brain bleed strokes Google PubMed,WebMD, or Medscape and learn about this potentially deadly experience.
High-Fructose Corn Syrup Propaganda
By Dr. Alan R. Gaby
I received a packet of glossy brochures and a small booklet the other day from the Corn Refiners Association, along with a Dear Doctor cover letter. The purpose of the mailing was to explain to me, the doctor, that much of the negative press surrounding high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) lacks scientific merit, and that this "versatile sweetener" is pretty much the same as sucrose.
The cover letter started off comically enough: "Because you are a trusted source of information about nutrition . . . ", like nobody knows that medical doctors are considered so uninformed and so biased regarding nutrition that nearly three-quarters of patients won’t even tell their doctor what nutrients and herbs they are taking.
But, flattery is like a foot in the door, so I read on. The letter was signed by the president of the Corn Refiner’s Association and also by a cardiologist/professor with a university affiliation. The letter did not disclose the cardiologist’s conflicts of interest, but a Medline Search revealed that he has received research funding and consulting fees from PepsiCo, one of the biggest users of HFCS in the world.
The main point of the information packet was that HFCS is nutritionally the same as sucrose (table sugar). Emphasizing that point was considered so important that it was stated at least 17 times in the mailing.
As discussed below, HFCS and sucrose are not the same, which might be why so much effort was made to convince doctors otherwise. As a corollary to the main point, the packet sought to dispel the "myth" that "sugar is healthier than HFCS." The use of the word "healthier" is particularly amusing, since almost no one on the planet considers sugar to be a health food.
A more appropriate framing of the argument would have been to claim that HFCS is no more likely to give you diabetes, make you fat, raise your triglyceride and uric acid levels, cause nonalcoholic fatty liver disease, or give you stomach aches and diarrhea than sucrose is. While there is a great deal of research that contradicts such claims (as discussed, for example, in my review article on the adverse effects of dietary fructose), at least those would have been claims that could have been debated honestly.
The Corn Refiner’s Association argues that HFCS and sucrose are pretty much the same, because they both consist of about 50% fructose and 50% glucose.
In actuality, HFCS consists of 55% fructose and 42% glucose, while sucrose consists of 100% sucrose (which can be converted by intestinal enzymes to 50% fructose and 50% glucose). The difference in the relative proportions of fructose and glucose in these two sweeteners (1.31:1 versus 1:1) may not be insignificant. Fructose malabsorption is a common cause of gastrointestinal symptoms that mimic irritable bowel syndrome.
Fructose malabsorption tends to occur primarily when the fructose concentration of a meal exceeds that of glucose, because glucose enhances the intestinal absorption of fructose. HFCS, which contains fructose in excess of glucose, is more likely to cause gastrointestinal symptoms than is sucrose, which is converted to equal parts fructose and glucose.
The fact that HFCS consists mainly of two monosaccharides, while sucrose is a disaccharide, may also not be insignificant. In order to be absorbed as its constituent monosaccharides, sucrose must first be hydrolyzed by intestinal mucosal disaccharidase enzymes. Thus, the absorption of fructose from sucrose might be considerably slower than the absorption of the free fructose present in HFCS. That possibility is supported by studies in which serum fructose concentrations increased to a greater extent after feeding free fructose than after feeding the same amount of fructose in the form of sucrose.
Fructose is the most powerful reducing sugar of all of the edible sugars. Reducing sugars promote the glycosylation of tissue proteins, which is a factor both in the complications of diabetes and in the aging process.
The human body has elaborate mechanisms to prevent serum fructose concentrations from rising to any great extent, but these mechanisms can be overwhelmed by feeding large quantities of free fructose. Exposure to the large amounts of free fructose that are currently being consumed is unprecedented in human evolution, and there is no reason to believe that humans are equipped to handle this new stressor.
There are still significant gaps in our knowledge regarding the consequences of consuming large amounts of free fructose. According to my reading of the scientific literature, the effects of HFCS are somewhere between slightly worse than the effects of sucrose and seriously horrible.
Alan R. Gaby, M.D., is an internationally recognized authority on nutritional therapies. Dr. Gaby has recently completed a 30-year project, a textbook of Nutritional Medicine.
Dr. Gaby received his undergraduate degree from Yale University, his M.S. in biochemistry from Emory University, and his M.D. from the University of Maryland. He is a contributing medical editor for Alternative Medicine Review. Dr. Gaby was a professor of nutrition at Bastyr University in Washington.
I received a packet of glossy brochures and a small booklet the other day from the Corn Refiners Association, along with a Dear Doctor cover letter. The purpose of the mailing was to explain to me, the doctor, that much of the negative press surrounding high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) lacks scientific merit, and that this "versatile sweetener" is pretty much the same as sucrose.
The cover letter started off comically enough: "Because you are a trusted source of information about nutrition . . . ", like nobody knows that medical doctors are considered so uninformed and so biased regarding nutrition that nearly three-quarters of patients won’t even tell their doctor what nutrients and herbs they are taking.
But, flattery is like a foot in the door, so I read on. The letter was signed by the president of the Corn Refiner’s Association and also by a cardiologist/professor with a university affiliation. The letter did not disclose the cardiologist’s conflicts of interest, but a Medline Search revealed that he has received research funding and consulting fees from PepsiCo, one of the biggest users of HFCS in the world.
The main point of the information packet was that HFCS is nutritionally the same as sucrose (table sugar). Emphasizing that point was considered so important that it was stated at least 17 times in the mailing.
As discussed below, HFCS and sucrose are not the same, which might be why so much effort was made to convince doctors otherwise. As a corollary to the main point, the packet sought to dispel the "myth" that "sugar is healthier than HFCS." The use of the word "healthier" is particularly amusing, since almost no one on the planet considers sugar to be a health food.
A more appropriate framing of the argument would have been to claim that HFCS is no more likely to give you diabetes, make you fat, raise your triglyceride and uric acid levels, cause nonalcoholic fatty liver disease, or give you stomach aches and diarrhea than sucrose is. While there is a great deal of research that contradicts such claims (as discussed, for example, in my review article on the adverse effects of dietary fructose), at least those would have been claims that could have been debated honestly.
The Corn Refiner’s Association argues that HFCS and sucrose are pretty much the same, because they both consist of about 50% fructose and 50% glucose.
In actuality, HFCS consists of 55% fructose and 42% glucose, while sucrose consists of 100% sucrose (which can be converted by intestinal enzymes to 50% fructose and 50% glucose). The difference in the relative proportions of fructose and glucose in these two sweeteners (1.31:1 versus 1:1) may not be insignificant. Fructose malabsorption is a common cause of gastrointestinal symptoms that mimic irritable bowel syndrome.
Fructose malabsorption tends to occur primarily when the fructose concentration of a meal exceeds that of glucose, because glucose enhances the intestinal absorption of fructose. HFCS, which contains fructose in excess of glucose, is more likely to cause gastrointestinal symptoms than is sucrose, which is converted to equal parts fructose and glucose.
The fact that HFCS consists mainly of two monosaccharides, while sucrose is a disaccharide, may also not be insignificant. In order to be absorbed as its constituent monosaccharides, sucrose must first be hydrolyzed by intestinal mucosal disaccharidase enzymes. Thus, the absorption of fructose from sucrose might be considerably slower than the absorption of the free fructose present in HFCS. That possibility is supported by studies in which serum fructose concentrations increased to a greater extent after feeding free fructose than after feeding the same amount of fructose in the form of sucrose.
Fructose is the most powerful reducing sugar of all of the edible sugars. Reducing sugars promote the glycosylation of tissue proteins, which is a factor both in the complications of diabetes and in the aging process.
The human body has elaborate mechanisms to prevent serum fructose concentrations from rising to any great extent, but these mechanisms can be overwhelmed by feeding large quantities of free fructose. Exposure to the large amounts of free fructose that are currently being consumed is unprecedented in human evolution, and there is no reason to believe that humans are equipped to handle this new stressor.
There are still significant gaps in our knowledge regarding the consequences of consuming large amounts of free fructose. According to my reading of the scientific literature, the effects of HFCS are somewhere between slightly worse than the effects of sucrose and seriously horrible.
Alan R. Gaby, M.D., is an internationally recognized authority on nutritional therapies. Dr. Gaby has recently completed a 30-year project, a textbook of Nutritional Medicine.
Dr. Gaby received his undergraduate degree from Yale University, his M.S. in biochemistry from Emory University, and his M.D. from the University of Maryland. He is a contributing medical editor for Alternative Medicine Review. Dr. Gaby was a professor of nutrition at Bastyr University in Washington.
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