The Health Plus Letter
November 14, 2006, Vol. 4, No. 25
By Larry Trivieri, Jr. – founder & publisher,
http://www.1healthyworld.com
If you prefer to read this issue online, you can read it, along with all other back issues, at http://www.1healthyworld.com/ezine.
Table Of Contents
New This Issue
Quote of the Day
Fast Fact
Radiation Therapy Causes Bone Loss by Ralph Moss, PhD (With commentary by Dr. Garry Gordon)
FDA Attacks Small Nutrition Companies by Byron J. Richards, CNN
Recommendations
Medical F/r/e/edom
New This Issue
Welcome to another issue of The Health Plus Letter. This week I’m turning things over to three health experts I greatly respect—noted cancer researcher Dr. Ralph Moss and my good friend Dr. Garry Gordon, who shares his comments on Dr. Moss’s report that even a single dose of radiation therapy can cause significant bone loss, and nutrition health expert and investigative journalist Bryon Richards, who does an excellent job of pointing out the FDA’s hypocrisy when it comes to regulating supplements. Please be sure to read both articles, as they are important.
As always, please continue to send me your comments and suggestions. And 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
“For Americans in general, history is most notable for teaching no useful lessons. Thanks to a haphazard educational system and a media that reflects the fantasies of whatever governing clique happens to control opinion through publicity, we often behave like new-minted amnesiacs, with no sense of a national past.”
-- Gore Vidal
Fast Fact
Ancient Egyptians believed that upon death they would be asked two ques.tions and their answers would determine whether they could continue their journey in the afterlife. The first question was, "Did you bring joy?" The second was, "Did you find joy?"
Source: Leo Buscaglia
Unabashed Plug
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Radiation Causes Bone Loss by Ralph Moss, PhD
The scientific world has been shaken by a report from Clemson Univer.sity that a single therapeutic dose of radiation can cause appreciable bone loss. Senior author Ted Bateman, PhD, a professor of bioengineering, and his South Carolina colleagues showed that when mice were given a dose of just two Gy (two gray, a radiation dosage formerly designated as 200 rads), between 29 and 39 percent of their interior bone mass was destroyed.
It did not particularly matter which kind of radiation the mice were exposed to. Gamma rays, protons, high-speed carbon and iron nuclei all had a similar and markedly destructive effect. Dr. Bateman and his colleagues reached these figures by creating 3D computer scans of the spongy interior of the bones and then calculating how much bone mass these irradiated mice had lost compared to a control group.
"We were surprised at how large the difference in bone mass was," Dr. Bateman told the weekly magazine, New Scientist (Barry 2006).
Two Gy of radiation is similar to a single therapeutic dose of radiation given to human cancer patients, while a full course of therapeutic radiation typically delivers as much as 70 or even 80 Gy. It had previously been known that patients receiving therapeutic radiation suffered some bone loss and were put at a greater risk of fractures. But until n/o/w it was unknown that just a single dose of radiation could trigger such severe bone loss. This news is doubly disturbing since chemotherapy (often n/o/w given with radiation as part of a one-two punch) can also independently cause bone loss. The cumulative effects of radiation and chemotherapy delivered to the same patient may therefore be significantly more damaging.
The Clemson scientists demonstrated what they called "profound changes in trabecular architecture." (The term "trabecular" describes the microscopic bony latticework that characterizes the interior of skeletal bones. The trabecular pattern of bony tissue is what gives bones their structural strength.)
Significant losses in bone volume were observed for the four types of radiation that were studied: gamma (volume down 29 percent), proton (down 35 percent), carbon (down 39 percent), and iron (down 34 percent). Several measurements of bone health, including trabecular connectivity, density,thickness, spacing, and number were also adversely affected.
"These data have clear implications for clinical radiotherapy," the Clemson scientists said, "in that bone loss in an animal model has been demonstrated at low doses" (ibid.)
Dr. Bateman agreed, however, that making a direct extrapolation of these findings to humans could be difficult. The bones of the mice in the experiment were still growing, making them more susceptible to radiation damage. (This is also the case in you/ng human patients.) Although the Clemson findings have caused a stir particularly in space research circles, NASA's chief radiation health officer, Dr. Frank Cucinotta, pointed out that the gamma ray dose in these mouse experiments was 40 times greater than space station astronauts would experience over a period of months, and 2 to 4 times what astronauts on a Mars mission would encounter. However, astronauts are also exposed to high-energy and iron nuclei in addition to gamma radiation.
Bone Death: A Long History
It has been known for quite some time that radiation could cause "serious and permanent injuries" to growing bones as well as localized but incapacitating diseases (Fajardo 2001: 365). In fact, the real surprise in the latest study was that relatively small doses caused such a significant amount of damage.
The basic concept of 'bone death' was probably known to the ancient Greek physician, Hippocrates. Necrosis of the bone (i.e., osteonecrosis) was fully described as early as 1794. In 1903, just a few years after the 1895 discovery of X-rays, the German surgeon Georg Clemens Perthes (1869-1927) exposed one wing of a day-old chicken to X-rays. Just 12 days later he noted that growth of the irradiated wing was retarded and that the feathers were abnormally formed. In 1905, two French scientists, Joseph Recamier and Louis Mathieu Tribondeau (1872-1918), described similar growth retardation in kittens.
In the intervening decades, various tumors, especially sarcomas, were found with increased frequency in patients who had undergone irradiation. James Ewing, MD (1866-1943), the celebrated American pathologist (after whom the bone tumor called 'Ewing's sarcoma' is named), was extremely interested in the reactions of bones to radiation. He was impressed by the ability of radiation to shrink the size of bone tumors and, along with surgery and Coley's toxins (a fever-causing, mixed bacterial vaccine), to effect prolonged remissions in some cases (Ewing 1940:370). He described three patients who had been irradiated for bone cancers and whose irradiated bones then became brittle and easily fractured. Ewing also observed thickening in the outer layer (known as the cortical plate) of bone at the expense of the marrow cavity and noted the increased susceptibility of irradiated bones to infection (Fajardo 2001).
The most famous instance of radiation damaging bones, however, occurred in the first decades of the 20th century. Industrial engineers learned that by adding a small amount of radium to a zinc sulfide solution (at a ratio of 1:30,000) they could create a luminescent paint that glowed in the dark. This seemed to be a harmless product. Around the time of World War I, approximately 2,000 you/ng women in New Jersey were employed painting the dials of clocks and watches with luminous paint. In order to create fine brush tips for this detailed work they would frequently lick the tip of the brushes. Over the years, these women either ingested radium itself or breathed in radon gas in sufficient quantities to cause serious medical problems for many of them. A New York dentist, Theodore Blum, DDS, was the first to observe an unusual number of jaw-bone injuries in these unfortunate dial painters, a condition he called 'radium jaw.'
The medical examiner of Essex County, NJ, at the time, Harrison Marland, MD, then became alarmed and launched a thorough investigation. He found severe anemia in most of these women. At autopsy, many of these women had necrosis of the bones, especially the mandible (lower jaw). Marland also recounted how the damaged bone marrow, excised osteosarcomas (cancers) of their bones, or even organs removed at autopsy literally glowed in the dark (Fajardo 2001: 366). These women were so radioactive that, even after death, their bodily organs would fog photographic film!
The most incred.ible part of this saga is that despite the fact that the danger of luminous paint was well established in the 1920s, it was not until nearly 20 years later - in the run-up to World War II - that action was finally taken to bar the use of radium in watch dial paint (Caufield 1989). It was a most shameful episode in public health, but it did make the general public aware that radiation could seriously damage bones and organs.
What is the Tolerance Dose?
Medical dictionaries define a 'tolerance dose' as the largest quantity of a substance or treatment that an organism can endure without exhibiting unfavorable or injurious effects. The tolerance dose of radiation to the bones has traditionally been set quite a bit higher than is implied by the recent Clemson article. There are many variables, but generally speaking when the dose is from 70 to 80 Gy the incidence of osteoradionecrosis (bone death caused by radiation) is in the range of 14-22 percent. It is 4 percent when the dose is under 70 Gy. The tolerance dose for the adult human femur (thigh bone) is said to be 38 to 43 Gy.
In the 1950s, Michael Bonfiglio, MD, of the Univer.sity of Iowa, found a 1.2 to 1.9 percent increase in the incidence of fractures of the femur after pelvic irradiation for cancer (Fajardo 2001:373). Among patients who still have their teeth, the bone necrosis rate caused by radiation is 24 percent. Among those lacking teeth the rate is less - 14 percent. In studies involving patients who still had teeth, this bony necrosis developed on average 10 months after completion of radiation therapy. In those without teeth, it occurred on average 22 months later.
As noted above, if the bone is growing (as in the Clemson experiment) the tissues are ultra-sensitive to radiation. Clinical observations suggest a tolerance range of 15-30 Gy for growing bones.
In conclusion, exposing bone to radiation can result in four major types of complications: necrosis (a type of cell death), fractures, severe alterations in bone growth, and radiation-induced cancers. The topic of radiation-induced cancers in particular has not received the attention it deserves. Radiation itself is called a "complete carcinogen," in that it can cause the four phases of cancer's formation: (a) initiation, (b) promotion, (c) progression and (d) metastatic activity of transformed cells. While radiation-induced tumors of bone are not common, they do occur, as the case of the radium-dial painters dramatically showed.
Luis Fajardo, MD, who recently retired as a professor of pathology at Stanford Univer.sity, California, has documented many such cases. "Irradiation from both external and internal sources is associated with an increased risk of osteosarcoma," or bone cancer, he wrote in his classic textbook, Radiation Pathology (Fajardo 2001:128). The minimum latency period for radium-caused tumors is 3.5 years with a peak time of about 8 years, although cases were documented as long as 25 years after initial exposure. Children who receive radiation for cancers (other than those of bony origin) are at particular risk if their growing bones receive large doses of radiation.
Although the danger of therapeutic radiation always seems to come as a surprise to the general public, most of the risks of radiation to the bone were recognized soon after Roentgen discovered X-rays. Yet, astonishingly, in the 21st century some patients receiving radiation are still not told about the full extent or true likelihood of the harmful side effects of radiation therapy.
This article originally appeared at http://www.cancerdecisions.com/102906.html and is copyright © 2006 by Ralph Moss, PhD. All rights reserved.
Commentary by Dr. Garry Gordon
Since we all know that I preach benefit to risk ratio, n/o/w we have another risk from standard radiation therapy: Bone Loss. Perhaps, however, the real risk is the false feeling of complacency that this nonsense induces. Patients believe with this therapy that something is being done, so that they do not have to change their diet or life style or start to detox. Thus precious time is wasted while the radiation oncologists apparently are inducing real bone loss on top of the other insults to the body like wiping out immune functioning.
I knew there was a reason for my walking away from the lucrative field of radiation oncology after my first year of radiology training at Mt Zion Hospital in San Francisco. I just did not believe that this was useful for patients, so I found another career Chelation and Nutrition and a few years later co-founded ACAM. I have never regretted my decision to walk away from nonsense therapies. If disease is, as we n/o/w realize, the interaction between environment and genes [I add stress induced by unresolved emotions and unhealthy beliefs and thoughts to this equation. – LT] , then what possible real benefit is radiation therapy for the majority of cancer patients? N.o.w we have reason to suspect even more downside than we considered.
Garry F. Gordon MD,DO,MD(H)
President, Gordon Research Institute
www.gordonresearch.com
FDA Attacks Small Nutrition Companies by Byron J. Richards, CCN
On October 19, 2006, the FDA fired off twenty-four warning letters to small nutrition companies that made claims they had natural remedies to help with diabetes. At first glance, one might think the FDA was actually doing its job. With tremendous bravado they announced to the world their trouncing of internet fraud. It is interesting how the FDA is n/o/w teaming up with Mexican and Canadian health authorities to attack American companies, part of the FDA’s illegal North American Union.
The mighty FDA muscle had not been flexed so diligently for almost a year. The last victims were cherry farmers, terrorized for quoting solid science that cherries may help people reduce inflammation and pain without any side effects. The FDA knew Vioxx posed cardiovascular risks, yet they let it on the market to kill over 50,000 Americans. We should be proud the FDA was able to defend us from healthy fresh fruit. All Americans have to do is walk down any grocery store cereal or juice aisle to see outlandish health claims for heart disease and cholesterol reduction being placed on sugar-laden junk food. It pays to be a big company; profiting by producing garbage food that helps create obesity and consequently diabetes.
The FDA is like the neighborhood bully that only picks on people that have little chance of winning or even fighting back. If they actually had to tackle a real issue they would cower in their boots and run for cover.
The FDA Protects Big Pharma from Competition
The FDA was within their rights to send warning letters. True enough, some of these small companies had stepped over the line. Had they harmed anybody? Most of the nutrients in the products being offered actually have considerable science showing they may help diabetes. What is the FDA really afraid of? People getting better? People learning what options they have to the drug racket of the sickness industry? Maybe the FDA is trying to distract the public, portraying themselves as effective while they continue to this day to allow thousands of Americans to be injured and die in the name of pro.fits for Bayer.
The FDA justified beating up on small American companies in this way: “We will not tolerate practices that raise false hopes and bilk consumers of precious health care dollars,” said Margaret O’K. Glavin, FDA’s Associate Commissioner for Regulatory Affairs. “Diabetes requires effective treatments and aggressive management, not bogus and unproven products.”
And what are these effective treatments? A commonly used FDA-approved diabetes drug, Actos, has been found to increase edema and heart failure and have no benefit to diabetic patients. Another diabetes drug, Metformin, is known to cause B12 deficiency that will certainly increase the risk for neuropathy. Then there is the expensive new diabetes drug, Januvia, expected to have sa.les of a billion dollars. Once again, the drug only treats symptoms and does not fix the cause of the problem. When doctors put patients on insulin to control type II diabetes the typical outcome is that blood sugar is lowered by stuffing calories into fat, a medical treatment that causes fatigue and further obesity. If we took the FDA statement about “bilking consumers” at face value many common FDA-approved diabetes treatments would need to be shut down. Is it any wonder individuals are desperately looking for help?
The FDA is Guilty of Selective Enforcement
The FDA is discriminatory against small nutritional companies. This is because the FDA is avidly seeking to create a New World Order in which all supplement companies are owned or controlled by Big Pharma, and all therapeutic nutritional supplements are removed from the fr.ee market.
Conspicuously missing from the list of companies receiving a diabetes warning letter is Nutrition 21, a company whose largest shareholder in [Big Pharma company] Wyeth. Nutrition 21 filed for and the FDA approved a limited health claim that states, “One small study suggests that chromium picolinate may reduce the risk of insulin resistance, and therefore possibly may reduce the risk of type 2 diabetes. FDA concludes, however, that the existence of such a relationship between chromium picolinate and either insulin resistance or type 2 diabetes is highly uncertain.” This health claim may be used for any chromium picolinate product.
Emboldened with this limited health claim Nutrition 21 makes wild health and curative disease treatment claims about its product, going far beyond any approved claim. Examples from their website include:
Learn about Nutrition 21's chromium science--and its therapeutic role relevant to many various disease states.
Learn about Nutrition 21’s once-a-day nutritional support for people with diabetes.
Diachrome™ is a patented combination of Chromax® chromium picolinate and biotin designed especially for people with diabetes. Diachrome’s efficacy has been validated by pre-clinical and clinical studies.
Biotin is already used as a nutrition therapy in Southeast Asia for people with diabetes.
Nutrition 21, Inc. reported results from a new clinical trial that shows long-term daily supplementation with Diachrome, a proprietary combination of chromium picolinate and biotin, can significantly improve blood sugar levels in people with type 2 diabetes who had poorly controlled blood sugar levels and were taking prescription antidiabetic medications.
It doesn’t matter if these claims may be true, just as it doesn’t matter that the claims made by the twenty-four companies receiving warning letters may be true. The Nutrition 21 website clearly implies that their products are for the treatment of diabetes. And certainly the FDA is aware of their website. Their website is easily converted to Spanish, so even the Mexican health authorities could read all about it. What is going on?
A nutritional trade organization, the Council for Responsible Nutrition (CRN), has been taken over by Big Pharma. Their top priority is forcing unnecessary regulation on the supplement industry. CRN members n/o/w include Bayer, BASF, Wyeth, and other multi-national corporations. As I explain in Fight for Your Health: Exposing the FDA’s Betrayal of America, CRN, working with the FDA, is actively seeking to undermine health freedom in the United States through Big Pharma-sponsored implementation of Codex Alimentarius and the North American Union. Nutrition 21 is a CRN member. None of the other twenty-four companies attacked by the FDA are in CRN.
Shockingly, the heads of numerous network marketing companies such as Mannatech, Shaklee, Herbalife, Nu Skin International, and GNLD International, along with big health food chains like GNC, are in CRN and actively participating in this scam, selling out health freedom for their place in the New World Order. Their distributors and customers should revolt. CRN has recently sponsored a full-time outside attorney to attack supplement companies. Yes, we’ll see how many CRN companies this attorney goes after.
Big Pharma is taking over the supplement industry. The FDA warning letters are designed to reduce competition for new drugs as well as to clear out competition for Big Pharma-connected vitamin companies. Large nutrition companies are encouraging these regulatory activities under the guise of boosting public confidence, when in fact the primary goal is eliminating competitors with lower overhead.
The FDA is a Major Part of the Diabetes Problem
The FDA has contributed to the epidemic of diabetes in a variety of ways. They have approved massive adulteration of the food supply with thousands of toxic chemicals (such as coal-tar derived food coloring), addictive sweeteners (like aspartame and Splenda), and neurotoxic chemicals like MSG that damage appetite regulation. On top of that, the FDA and EPA allow a variety of hormone-disruptive chemicals in the food supply. They also allow the thyroid glands and brains of our citizens to be poisoned with perchlorate and fluoride. The cumulative effect of these multiple metabolic insults is creating a society that is addicted to junk food and heading for rampant obesity and diabetes.
The FDA allows the illegal off-label promotion by drug companies of the diabetes-inducing atypical antipsychotic medications on our children. Eli Lilly makes over 4 billion dollars a year poisoning children in this manner, making our kids and many adults obese and diabetic at taxpayer expense. Talk about a bilking job! The FDA is capable of bullying small nutrition companies. They are a sissy organization when it comes to standing up to Big Pharma, Big Agribusiness, and junk food producers.
One of the FDA’s crimes against humanity is condoning and approving profit-driven strategies for large corporations that either directly or indirectly cause obesity and diabetes. Look with a jaundiced eye when the FDA misdirects public attention onto the foibles of a few small companies. The FDA attack is not remotely proportionate to the real issues. The FDA cannot possibly make up to society all the damage it has caused and continues to cause. Wake up Americans, we need to fight for our health and what is right!
Copyright © 2006 by Truth In Wellness, LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Byron J. Richards, Founder/Director of Wellness Resources, is a Board-Certified Clinical Nutritionist and nationally-renowned health expert, radio personality, educator, and author.
[Note: You can find links to the various facts Richards cites in his article at http://www.newswithviews.com/Richards/byron12.htm.]
Unabashed Plug
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Recommendations
Book:
Forbidden Religion, edited by J. Douglas Kenyon. I think the title of this book should more appropriately be Forbidden Truths, as only the first of its six parts is concerned with the possible hidden history of Christianity. The other parts of the book are what I found more interesting. They range from the examinations of the roles the Knights Templar and their successors, the “fr.ee masons” may have played in Scotland’s independence from England and in discovering the Americas, to the true identity of Shakespeare and the mystical experiences of noted figures from history such as Isaac Newton, Victor Hugo, and Benvenuto Cellini, to the latest research into the paranormal. While a few of the chapters in this book struck me as improbable, I found most of them compelling reads that confirm my longstanding belief that much of the “official” story of the world is untrue or incomplete, and that behind the scenes and grander tale is at the heart of human history.
Website:
http://www.commondreams.org/views06/1113-24.htm - This link will bring you to an article about how the pharmaceutical industry is targeting the world’s poor as subjects for drug trials, many of which are poorly regulated and potentially dangerous.
Unabashed Plug
Discover and Gain Control of Your Human Energy Field. Read Dr. Valerie Hunt’s Mind Mastery Meditations: A Workbook for the “Infinite Mind,” the empowering guide created by one of the world's foremost researchers into the human energy field, energy medicine, and the relationship between consciousness and health. Each of the meditations this eBook contains is designed to give you mastery of your mind and to empower you to discover the answers to why you are the way you are, your soul's needs, your unique talents and capacities, and your self-designed destiny. By practicing and mastering these meditations, you will become able to live your life with greater ease and success, speed your self-healing, and dramatically increase your ability to manifest your deepest goals. To order this life-changing guide, visit
http://www.1healthyworld.com/ebooks/Mind-Mastery-Book-Info.cfm.
Medical F/r/e/edom
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 f/r/e/edom in England and the EU.)
Institute for Health F/r/e/edom – http://www.ForHealthF/r/e/edom.org
International Advocates for Health F/r/e/edom (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 th/e/re.
That’s all for this week.
Health and Blessings!
Larry Trivieri, Jr. (larry@1healthyworld.com)
Disclaimer: The Health Plus Letter is a weekly eZine published by Larry Trivieri, Jr. and Library of Health, LLC (dba www.1healthyworld.com) 1514 Genesee Street, Suite 52, Utica, NY 13502. It is made available without charge for info/rmation 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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Le/gal Notice: The info/rmation in this eZine may be f/r/e/ely and widely disseminated so long as full attribution is made as follows: The Health Plus Letter, November 14, 2006, Vol. 4, No. 25. Copyright © 2006 by Larry Trivieri, Jr. All rights reserved.
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