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June 28, 2011  In This Issue... - Kick Start Your Morning Without Feeling Nervous or Jittery -- Rain Forest Herb Gives You Lasting Energy Throughout the Day
- Germ Fest in Your Faucet
- The 10 Biggest and Deadliest Heart Myths
- Is That a Food Allergy -- Or a Different Problem?
- Two Books that Changed My Life
Kick Start Your Morning Without Feeling Nervous or Jittery -- Rain Forest Herb Gives You Lasting Energy Throughout the Day Dr. Sears brings together two powerful nutrients to create one powerful new formula. Adding just a spoonful of Better Than Coffee to your favorite drink gives you: - Mental clarity and alertness that lasts the whole day.
- Stronger memory and power of recall.
- Better physical coordination and a more stable gait.
In the fall of 2006, Dr. Sears trekked through the Amazon jungles of Peru and was introduced to a powerful rain forest herb. According to tribal folklore, the Indians of the Amazon River Basin have been using it to prevent fatigue and increase physical endurance since before recorded history. By combining this potent herb with a powerful brain booster, Dr. Sears’ Better Than Coffee ramps up your mental energy and accelerates your thinking. Get the safe and natural ingredients that keep your memory sharp and give you the power of instant recall... right HERE.
Faucets That Can Turn on Trouble Life is funny... for instance, just when you think you’ve seen the introduction of a nifty technological advance, like automatic water faucets to reduce wasted water, along comes a glitch. I’m sure you’ve seen these futuristic faucets in airports, shopping malls and big office buildings. In theory, they’re quite brilliant. You don’t need to touch a thing. Just place your hands under the faucet and warm water comes out. This means no more leaving the water running while you scrub... and no germs from other people who’ve touched the faucet. But, it turns out there’s a catch. The faucets are made up of a complex array of parts. These provide a perfect breeding ground for germs to flourish. For most of us, this is not a huge issue. If we have healthy immune systems, whatever germs may be lurking inside these faucets are not likely to set us back. On the other hand, because of the faucets’ sparkling reputation for being germfree, hospitals, nursing homes and other health facilities have been installing them to help reduce the threat of infection. And in that case, there is indeed a problem. Like many other hospitals, Johns Hopkins had installed automatic faucets in a number of its patient rooms. Some public health experts, however, suspected that these fancy faucets might harbor bacteria in a way that manual faucets don’t, and a recent study at Johns Hopkins Hospital confirmed their suspicions. The faucets are "germ farms." To talk more about what attracts bacteria to automatic faucets, I contacted Emily Sydnor, MD, the lead researcher in the study that went so far as to persuade Johns Hopkins to stop using automatic faucets in patient rooms altogether. She confirmed that inside automatic faucets are multiple filters and valves made of rubber and plastic. Most manual faucets are constructed primarily of metal. Many of these traditional faucets contain copper components -- copper has certain antibacterial properties. Dr. Sydnor said that she and fellow researchers took apart four automatic faucets and cultured the internal components. "We certainly found that the cultured samples grew bacteria -- indicating that the bacteria was present in the components," she said. Traditional manual faucets offer far less surface area for bacteria and viruses -- which are not killed by water treatment in the public water supply -- to colonize. Also, the water-saving feature of automatic faucets might contribute to the problem -- reduced water flow means less force as well as less water sweeping out bacteria with each use. THE WORST POSSIBLE PLACE The big concern at hospitals is Legionella, the bacterium that causes Legionnaires’ disease, a lung infection. Healthy people usually recover from Legionnaire’s disease after being treated with antibiotics. It’s far more serious in hospitals, where it can contribute to pneumonia in chronically ill or immune-compromised patients, including those who are undergoing chemotherapy, are taking antirejection drugs after a transplant or have diseases such as HIV/AIDs. Bacteria are normally present in the water supply throughout the country -- that is the reason some hospitals, including Johns Hopkins, treat water from public utilities with chlorine dioxide and other chemicals. Johns Hopkins found, however, that the water treatment did not kill all the Legionella in the more complicated automatic faucets. They are simply too hard to disinfect. That was more than enough to persuade the hospital to replace existing automatic faucets with manual ones and to cancel plans for automatic faucets in patient rooms in the new Hopkins hospital wing scheduled to open in 2012. The hospital still will have automatic faucets in the public bathrooms. Though Dr. Sydnor wouldn’t speculate on the subject, it’s almost certain that other hospitals will follow Johns Hopkins’ lead. That’s because Johns Hopkins -- often named the country’s best hospital by US News & World Report -- is considered a trendsetter in the health-care industry. The next step will be for researchers to work with manufacturers to see if they can redesign the automatic faucets more effectively. What we need is a solution that saves water -- and lives as well. As for me, I must admit that I’ve been fascinated with the faucets when I encounter them in malls and airports, but I will be waiting another beat, and keeping my eye on Johns Hopkins, before doing any redesigning at home. Source(s):
Emily Sydnor, MD, a fellow in infectious diseases at Johns Hopkins Medicine in Baltimore.
The 10 Biggest and Deadliest Heart Myths The number of heart attacks has increased by 27 percent over the past 20 years, in spite of all the supposed advances of modern medicine. What's going on here? Could we be mistaken about some things? Perhaps we're under some major misconceptions about heart disease. Like... Myth #1 -- Heart disease and heart attacks are an inevitable part of aging. Myth #2 -- Cholesterol is the main cause of heart disease and heart attacks. Myth #3 -- Blood pressure drugs help you avoid heart problems and live longer. Myth #4 -- Aggressive, "type A" behavior increases your risk of a heart attack. Myth #5 -- Low-fat, low cholesterol diets are good for you and your heart. Learn more...
Is That a Food Allergy -- Or a Different Problem? An astonishing number of people now have food allergies -- not. A number of recent studies have found that most people who believe they have food allergies actually don’t -- one small study puts that figure as high as 90%! This state of affairs led the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health, to release new guidelines to provide a uniform strategy for diagnosing and managing food allergies. I spoke with Matthew Fenton, PhD, chief of the asthma and allergy branch of NIAID, to find out more... What’s Your Real Problem? The new guidelines, which you can see on The Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology Web site at www.JACIOnline.org/article/S0091-6749(10)01566-6/fulltext, define a food allergy as "an adverse health effect arising from a specific immune response that occurs reproducibly on exposure to a given food." Or, in easier-to-digest language, most food allergies result from a mistaken response by the immune system, which identifies something you eat as a threat and then creates antibodies to attack it and fight it off. These antibodies usually are what create the allergy symptoms. But, Dr. Fenton told me, what many (if not most) people call food "allergies" are actually more accurately described as "intolerances," especially in the case of lactose, food dyes and chemicals such as MSG. (You may recall that we recently covered a similar phenomenon as it relates to fructose in the March 7, 2011, issue of Daily Health News.) What’s the difference? Intolerances are not caused by the immune system, and they tend to be complex reactions (for instance, causing stomach upset and/or headaches) that worsen as you eat more and more of the food. Allergies, on the other hand, cause symptoms such as redness, itching, tightness in the throat, shortness of breath or anaphylactic shock. Both are troublesome, but it’s important to identify whether your reaction is an allergy or intolerance because the two have different consequences -- allergies are dangerous while intolerances are merely terribly unpleasant. And they require different treatments. What It All Means If you suspect that you have a food allergy -- or if you now suspect that you don’t have a food allergy, but rather an intolerance -- discuss your concern with your doctor. A detailed medical history and perhaps a skin prick test and/or blood antibody test will help distinguish between intolerance and allergy. Important! Tests are done on extracts, which are purified, as opposed to foods, which often contain multiple ingredients. Therefore, a negative result to a test using an extract is not really definitive. It is important to be aware that in the real world, foods may contain other ingredients that you may or may not know they contain. Meanwhile, a positive result does not necessarily confirm an allergy. It means that you have a sensitization to a food that could be either an allergy or an intolerance. The True Test For these reasons, Dr. Fenton suggests that people who believe they have food allergies should get confirmation by having a tightly controlled oral challenge performed by an allergist in a setting where he/she has access to medications and equipment to treat severe reactions. You will be instructed to avoid the suspected food for a certain length of time (usually an hour or two) before your appointment. Then, while you are in the doctor’s office, you will consume gradually increasing amounts of the food. Your doctor will monitor your reaction to determine whether you have an allergy or intolerance and, of course, will be able to provide appropriate treatment if your reaction veers into dangerous territory. Since there are no FDA-approved treatments for food allergy at present, you will then have to avoid the food that you are allergic to. It’s good news to learn that foods you are intolerant of -- but not allergic to -- aren’t truly dangerous to your health but, of course, an intolerance produces unpleasant symptoms itself, so it makes sense to follow the very same advice -- eat something else. Source(s):
Matthew J. Fenton, PhD, division of allergy, immunology and transplantation, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda.
Two Books that Changed My Life At a recent gathering of businesswomen, someone asked the question, "What advice that you know now do you wish you could have given yourself when you were younger?" That was a particularly interesting question for me, because the advice I came to is exactly what I recently shared with my two oldest daughters (ages 22 and 20). Surprisingly, these powerful lessons came from two novels not generally known for their educational value: Click here to read more...
Be well, 
Carole Jackson
Bottom Line's Daily Health News
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