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April 26, 2011  In This Issue... - How Blood Sugar Drugs Make Diabetes Worse
- Carotid Artery Stenting
- Reverse 20 Years of Memory Loss and Get Smarter in 60 Minutes!
- Putting Pain Under a Spell
- A Good Cry
How Blood Sugar Drugs Make Diabetes Worse Did you know that lowering your blood sugar with drugs can be deadlier and more dangerous than not taking the drugs at all? This research study proves it. Diabetes drugs actually make Type 2 diabetes worse FASTER... and will eventually cause your pancreas to stop producing insulin! Let The 30 Day Diabetes Cure help you return to a normal, drug-free life. Dr. Stefan Ripich’s patient-proven program represents a real cure for Type 2 and prediabetes. Now you can forget about finger-sticking, blood sugar monitoring, and all those sickening, fattening diabetes drugs. Discover the real cure for Type 2 here...
Carotid Artery Stenting Even people who don’t know a whole lot about health probably realize that having plaque in the arteries around your heart increases the risk of having a heart attack... but not so many think about the fact that having plaque in the carotid arteries, the ones in your neck that carry blood to your brain, increases your risk of having a stroke. In fact, for most people with severe narrowing of these arteries, the first hint that any problem exists is a stroke -- if they’re lucky, it’s just a mini one known as a transient ischemic attack (TIA), but not always. Of course, if you are found to have carotid narrowing, there will be precise guidelines to help your doctors keep you safe and get you as healthy as possible, right? Unfortunately, no. I uttered an audible "humph" recently when I read new guidelines, issued jointly by the American Heart Association, American Stroke Association and the American College of Cardiology, on how patients with carotid artery blockage ought to be treated. The guidelines seem to present counterintuitive advice... and it turns out that the issue is not exactly black and white. What’s All the Fuss? There was a bit of a flurry in the media when these two esteemed organizations released guidelines reporting that the two existing procedures for treating carotid artery blockages are "equally effective" and are both good choices. This flew in the face of what most people would tend to believe since one procedure, endarterectomy (surgical removal of the plaque), involves general anesthesia, cutting and all the usual risks of such surgery, while the other -- stenting (propping open the artery with wire mesh) -- does not. Adding further to the confusion is the fact that other research had demonstrated that patients who receive stents have a much greater risk for stroke or death in the days following the procedure than those who have the surgery. What to make of all this? I called one of the study authors, Deepak L. Bhatt, MD, MPH, director of the Integrated Interventional Cardiovascular Program at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and the VA Boston Healthcare System, for clarification. Understanding the Procedures To understand the risks associated with the procedures, Dr. Bhatt said, it helps to be a bit more familiar with the way they work... Endarterectomy. The patient is placed under anesthesia... the neck and artery are cut open... the problematic carotid artery is clamped (a shunt is sometimes used to divert blood flow around the area of the neck being operated on)... and the plaque is removed. The artery and the neck are then stitched back together and blood flow is restored. The risks: Along with the usual risks of surgery (infection, bleeding, etc.), this surgical procedure also carries a heightened risk for heart attack, Dr. Bhatt said. "Not surprisingly, patients who have blockages in their neck arteries often have blockages in their heart arteries, and because of the additional strain of anesthesia are at higher risk for heart attack during the surgical procedure." There is also a slight risk that the procedure will cause damage to the cranial nerves that run through the neck -- nerves that control activities such as speaking and swallowing. Stenting. Though it certainly carries its own risks, stenting is thought to be much less invasive than endarterectomy. A surgeon threads a catheter through an artery in the groin and up to the carotid blockage. Once it’s there, a small balloon at the end of the catheter is inflated, causing a wire mesh stent to be pressed into the walls of the artery to prop it open. Along with the catheter, a filter is inserted to catch any debris dislodged by the procedure and is then withdrawn. The risks: While stenting doesn’t involve cutting and stitching as endarterectomy does, it happens to carry a higher risk that plaque or a blood clot will break off and go to the brain -- causing a stroke. The greatest risk is during the procedure or shortly afterward. This is why the risks between the two procedures overall are statistically similar, Dr. Bhatt explained. Running the Numbers So, while on the surface it may seem that stenting is a safer procedure to perform, it turns out that there is actually a 65% greater risk of major stroke in the 30 days following stenting than for endartectomy patients in that same period of time. However, said Dr. Bhatt, to understand what this means in practical terms, it is important to realize that stenting also carries a 55% lower risk for heart attack and 85% lower risk for cranial nerve injury. The percent differences sound huge, so what are the real risks? The Carotid Revascularization Endarterectomy vs. Stenting Trial (CREST) completed last year found that 2.3% of endarterectomy patients had heart attacks, compared with 1.1% of stenting patients (advantage stenting)... while 4.1% of stenting patients had strokes, compared with 2.3% of endarterectomy patients (advantage endarterectomy). What To Do? If it happens that you have a ministroke or some other test reveals that you have carotid artery narrowing, your doctor will next seek to determine whether the arteries are more than 50% blocked. Aspirin and cholesterol-lowering are considered the standard treatments if the blockage is less than 50%. If it turns out that you need more aggressive therapy -- meaning an endarterectomy or stenting -- talk to your doctor about the overall risk factors involved, and your own medical profile, e.g. your weight, medications you may be on and history of heart attack. You’ll be increasing the chances for a decision that’s both the safest and the most carefully tailored to you. Source(s):
Deepak L. Bhatt, MD, FACC, FAHA, chief of cardiology, VA Boston Healthcare System, director, Integrated Interventional Cardiovascular Program, Brigham and Women’s Hospital and the VA Boston Healthcare System, and associate professor of medicine, Harvard Medical School, Boston.
Reverse 20 Years of Memory Loss and Get Smarter in 60 Minutes! "I used to have a great memory," All my life I’ve worked with numbers." As a former bookkeeper, Dr. Ray Sahelian’s patient was especially concerned. "Now I can’t remember simple phone numbers... IT’S SO FRUSTRATING!" Other doctors might have shrugged and said, "Sorry, you’re getting old... " But Dr. Ray Sahelian reversed her frightening decline almost immediately. Her memory picked up dramatically. Suddenly, she was focused all day. And all it took was the easy-to-follow nutrient program... Learn more...
Putting Pain Under a Spell We’ve all seen images of those strange old stage acts where Svengali-like hypnotists pulled reluctant folks up onto the stage and induced them to dance like chickens. But of course we know better now -- contrary to its old reputation as mere hocus-pocus, hypnosis is a genuine medical therapy that has been proven to help people stop smoking... lose weight... reduce anxiety... and now, I am happy to tell you, ease the awful pain and discomfort of one of the most intractable conditions, irritable bowel syndrome (IBS). I’d already read that Peter Whorwell, MD, PhD, a professor of medicine and gastroenterology at the University of Manchester Medical School in Britain, had been working with exactly this challenge. But could it really be true that his success rate was hitting close to the 70% mark? That’s a very big number for such a stubborn disease... and knowing friends and coworkers who had suffered with the miseries of IBS, I called Dr. Whorwell after I read about his work. He confirmed this phenomenal success rate and said he’d be happy to fill me in on his work. It’s Miserable In case you don’t know anyone with IBS, the first thing to understand is that you actually probably do know someone with it -- it’s just not something that most people like to talk about. IBS is a chronic illness of the gut that torments one in six people in the US with some combination of bloating, constipation, diarrhea and abdominal pain that can all range from mild to very severe. Pharmaceutical companies have spent lots of money trying to come up with drugs for IBS and have yet to develop anything very effective... and what drugs there are tend to have alarming side effects, severe constipation being just one. Dr. Whorwell told me that not only was hypnotherapy helping patients with their IBS -- it was also helping them to stay off the drugs. How Hypnotherapy Works Hypnotherapy uses processes that bring about deep relaxation and an altered state of consciousness, sometimes referred to as a trance. But that word shouldn’t put you off -- a person in this deeply focused state is simply unusually responsive to an idea or image -- in other words, highly suggestible, but this does not mean that the hypnotist is in charge of the patient’s mind or free will. To the contrary, hypnosis can help patients master their own states of awareness and, in so doing, help impact their bodies’ reactions and their psychological reactions as well. According to Dr. Whorwell, once patients are in that relaxed state, he is able to talk with them about how the gut and mind are connected, and how mental distress -- such as anxiety -- may cause discomfort in the abdomen. Then he can work with them so that they can visualize what is happening within their bodies. "We give them suggestions on how they can relax and soothe their guts." Voluntary relaxation by a patient diminishes his/her reactions to gut disturbance and discomfort. It might be imagining a river rushing over sharp-edged rapids, then shifting the vision to the river in a rerouted state, gliding smoothly by those rocks, skimming over the painful places. Patients build on what their imaginations provide, and through a process of repetition, they can start to take control of what’s happening to them. IBS THERAPY: WHO IS HELPED? AND HOW MUCH? Listening to Dr. Whorwell, it was easy to see why he says that a vivid imagination is helpful. Dr. Whorwell and his team have developed screening tests that check whether a potential patient for hypnotherapy has the imagination to be a good candidate -- for example, there is something called the Manchester Color Wheel, which was developed to give a graphic means of assessing healthy versus anxious or depressed people. When asked which colors they liked best or were most drawn to, healthy people tend to choose clear, pure, light colors (identified as a positive) and depressed or anxious people choose dark, muted neutral shades (identified as a negative). Interestingly, many depressed people associated their mood with gray rather than black. Dr. Whorwell’s team has found that patients who selected the positive color -- regardless of what the color was -- as the one that most closely matched their mood over the past few months were most likely to be open to hypnotic suggestion. WHAT IT ALL MEANS Hypnotherapy for IBS requires both time and money, and yet the results are impressive. For example, the center in Britain that conducted the studies mentioned worked with 250 patients, each of whom had suffered IBS symptoms for at least two years. The patients received 12 one-hour sessions at weekly intervals. In some cases, results lasted more than five years, and although those who were more suggestible responded better, the patients who were not as good hypnotic subjects, saw results as well. Dr. Whorwell stressed that it’s important to find a reputable hypnotherapist who understands the gut-directed approach to hypnotherapy. To find a certified hypnotherapist, call and ask if he/she offers this specific kind of hypnotherapy, and visit the Web sites of these nationally recognized organizations: The American Society of Clinical Hypnosis ( www.asch.net)... the Society for Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis ( www.sceh.us, click on "Referrals" under "Resources")... and the American Association of Professional Hypnotherapists ( www.aaph.org). Source(s):
Peter Whorwell, BSc, MB, BS, MD, PhD, FRCP, professor of medicine and gastroenterology, The University of Manchester, Manchester Medical School, UK.
A Good Cry I just finished reading The Book Thief, a beautifully written (remarkably beautiful) book by Markus Zusak about the experiences of a German girl growing up in Hitler's Germany. I cried numerous times throughout the book-- real tears, not a mere lump in my throat or moist eyes with no drips -- but increasingly so as the book drew to a close and the ultimate fate of the characters that I had come to love was being revealed. Read more...
Be well, 
Carole Jackson
Bottom Line's Daily Health News
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