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August 2, 2011  In This Issue... - The Hushed-Up Truth About DMSO
- Muffin Cure for Milk Allergies? It Might Work
- Exciting New Club Just for Diabetics!
- Worst Practices: Doctors Tell the Truth About What They Shouldn’t Do
- Mancation
The Hushed-Up Truth About DMSO And the new pain breakthrough that’s 12 ways more powerful. Twenty years ago, 60 Minutes showcased this "pain miracle" to 70 million viewers, and The New York Times hailed it in a lead editorial. Then it virtually disappeared from the halls of healthcare. WHY? See inside for the shocking truth, and the new breakthrough that...
Muffin Cure for Milk Allergies? It Might Work Consider this -- eating cookies, muffins or other baked goods may help children who are allergic to milk gain some tolerance for it. New research suggests this might be so -- a study has demonstrated that some children with milk allergies can be helped to "outgrow" the problem by eating baked goods that contain milk. How simple and helpful that would be! Here’s the story: Researchers at Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York City had noticed that some milk-allergic children were able to consume cooked milk, such as in baked goods, without any noticeable physical reaction, though others could not tolerate anything at all containing milk protein. This was intriguing, since the standard food allergy approach is strict avoidance of the offending food. More Milk, Please The researchers wondered if baked foods might open a door to a gradual introduction of milk. It was theoretically possible, because cooking alters milk proteins in a way that makes them less likely to set off an allergic reaction in the body. It’s also known that when milk proteins bind with other ingredients in baked products, they’re less available to provoke allergic reactions in the digestive tract. Researchers theorized that eating baked milk on a regular basis might modulate how the immune system reacts to milk proteins in a way that, over time, leads to tolerance. The study: The team designed a six-year study of children, all between the ages of two and 17, with known milk allergies. At the beginning of the study, each child was given a food test (oral challenge) with baked foods containing milk, such as a muffin and a waffle. If a child reacted to either, he or she continued strict avoidance of milk. If a child tolerated both a muffin and a waffle without any symptoms or sign of an allergic reaction, he was subsequently fed unheated milk -- those who had no symptoms after ingesting unheated milk were considered no longer milk-allergic and were discharged from the study. Children who tolerated the muffin and the waffle but reacted to regular milk were advised to add baked products made with milk to their diets at home while continuing strict avoidance of uncooked milk. Then, at intervals ranging from six to 54 months, the children proceeded through a sequence of milk challenges by consuming milk that was increasingly less heated... to pizza with cheese... and finally to drinking a glass of regular cold milk. At the end of the study, 60% of this group was able to drink regular milk with no visible short-term reaction. Researchers observed that this was a higher rate of children outgrowing milk allergiew than seemed to be the case anecdotally among other children with similar levels of milk allergy. Children who had baked milk were growing well and had no worsening of any allergy-related diseases such as asthma or eczema. Don’t Try It at Home Study coauthor Anna Nowak-Węgrzyn, MD, associate professor of pediatrics, allergy and immunology at Mount Sinai Medical Center, told me that the research team was excited about the fact that these results demonstrate that milk allergy management can be individualized. "Many children who must avoid regular milk may enjoy baked products containing milk with some frequency and speed up their milk-allergy suppression using this method," she said. She noted, however, that this approach requires medical management -- if you know a child who might benefit, she suggested discussing this study with his or her allergist, because this strategy may not be appropriate for everyone. Source(s):
Anna Nowak-Węgrzyn, MD, associate professor of pediatrics, division of allergy and immunology, clinician and clinical researcher, Jaffe Food Allergy Institute, The Mount Sinai Medical Center, New York City.
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Worst Practices: Doctors Tell the Truth About What They Shouldn’t Do Want to know what doctors really think about the way other doctors practice medicine? I sure do! insider information is always valuable, so I was intrigued to learn what physicians have to say about medical tests and procedures prescribed by their peers that are seen as unnecessary... not particularly meaningful... or even "bad medicine," as they say in doctor parlance. The National Physicians Alliance (NPA), an organization that seeks to improve US health care, recently asked its 20,000-plus members, all doctors, to identify cost-saving, efficiency-improving practices in family, internal and pediatric medicine. The results -- published in the May 23, 2011 online edition of Archives of Internal Medicine -- may surprise you because they include many tests and procedures that are routinely prescribed. It turns out that all too often, doctors keep doing things the way they’ve always been done even when new research or guidelines establish that there is a better way to treat a particular problem. Why? According to Stephen Smith, MD, professor emeritus at Brown University, who headed the NPA study, it can be hard to get doctors to change their habits even when new information casts doubt on their effectiveness. For some, it’s hard to break old habits... for others, it’s the belief -- often mistaken -- that it’s what the patients want... for still others, it may be a lack of awareness or knowledge... and, for a few, it may be that there is a financial incentive, not to mention the fear of liability if they should miss something. And as patients, we aren’t blameless, either -- we sometimes pressure our physicians to give us tests or drugs that we think (but don’t really know) make sense. Dr. Smith and I went over the practices that irk physicians the most and that came up most often... Early imaging for low-back pain. Back pain ranks fifth among reasons why people visit the doctor -- and all too many of those folks end up getting an MRI scan despite evidence showing that it’s not usually helpful. It’s not that MRIs are dangerous -- unlike X-rays and CT scans (which use radiation), they’re not potentially harmful, but, ouch, they’re pricey. An MRI typically costs about $3,000, Dr. Smith said. Most lower back pain improves on its own within about six weeks. If it lasts longer or if nerve damage is suspected -- for instance, if there is numbness in the groin or problems controlling urinary or bowel function -- that’s when a doctor should consider an MRI. Unnecessary antibiotics. According to Dr. Smith, even doctors admit that too many among their ranks still prescribe antibiotics to patients with colds -- a practice they all know doesn’t help. Colds are viral, and antibiotics work only against bacteria. They should be prescribed only when a person is sick for a week or longer (as a general rule) or if there are certain specific reasons to suspect a virulent bacterial infection, such as Group A streptococcus, which can lead to strep throat. Annual cardiac screening for patients with low risk and no symptoms. Too many doctors prescribe yearly electrocardiograms for adult patients with no signs, symptoms or particular risk factors for heart disease. Dr. Smith said it might make sense to order a onetime ECG at around age 40 to serve as a baseline if needed for future comparison... or more often if the patient has a job that stresses the heart particularly (pro athlete, firefighter) or where public safety is an issue (airline pilots, train conductors, bus drivers). "But there’s no need to keep repeating it year after year," Dr. Smith said, noting that even subtle changes in ECGs typically take years to turn into dangerous heart problems. Pap smears on women younger than 21 or who have had a hysterectomy for any reason other than cancer. Dr. Smith said that it is common for young women to exhibit abnormalities of cell appearance that then tend to disappear within a few years on their own... and it is very rare for a woman so young to develop precancerous changes rather than transient inflammatory changes. Also, research has demonstrated that Pap smears are simply unnecessary for women who have undergone hysterectomies for benign disease. Of course, women who have a family history of cancer should discuss with their doctors whether they should continue Pap smears. Bone-density tests on women under age 65 and men under age 70. There’s no evidence that bone-density tests prior to these ages provide meaningful information unless there are other signs of trouble -- such as a personal or family history of fracture, small build, low body weight, prolonged use of corticosteroids or calcium deficiency, smoking, alcoholism or other factors, Dr. Smith said. And what information is gained from bone density tests frequently is interpreted too negatively -- with the result that doctors often put patients on a lifelong path of bone medication that can have serious adverse side effects. Exceptions to the NPA’s age guidelines: Men under 70 who have particular bone risk factors, such as loss of height, change in posture, sudden unexplained back pain or a nontraumatic fracture. Blood and urine tests for healthy adults without symptoms of a problem. Often prescribed as part of the routine physical exam, these tests are not particularly helpful or important except for patients with worrisome symptoms such as fatigue or high blood pressure. Why? The likelihood of picking up kidney or liver disease is quite slim, but the odds of false-positive results that would lead to yet more unnecessary testing is fairly high. The exception: People with total cholesterol higher than 200 mg/dL and HDL of at least 40 mg/dL should be tested every one to two years or according to their doctors’ advice, while others should be tested every five years said Dr. Smith, adding, "When called for, a patient can then be treated with diet and lifestyle changes and, if necessary, medication." Brand-name statins to reduce cholesterol. "For the large majority of patients who really need statin drugs, generic varieties such as simvastatin, lovastatin and pravastatin are perfectly adequate. And they cost only a few dollars a month," Dr. Smith said. In contrast, brand-name statins (such as Lipitor, Mevacor, Pravachol) can cost more than $150 a month. Since each statin drug works slightly differently, some people may need to use a brand-name version because the generic versions are not effective for them, while others have such dangerously high levels of cholesterol that they need the "big guns." But, says Dr. Smith, this doesn’t happen very often. If your doctor engages in one of these "worst practice" behaviors, voice your concern. There are exceptions to every rule (and we’ve noted a few important ones above), but if a doctor has no particularly good reason for why he or she is advising you to do something on this list, it may be a good reason to start looking for another doctor. Source(s):
Stephen Smith, MD, MPH, project director of the National Physicians Alliance’s "Good Stewardship Working Group." Dr. Smith is a former associate dean and a current professor emeritus of family medicine at The Warren Alpert Medical School, Brown University, Providence.
Mancation I know a number of married men who go on solo vacations. I call these "mancations" because they are typically activities that no women I know ever go on. Let's see... Kurt secluded himself in a little cabin in the woods, not only physically away from other people, but also inaccessible by cell phone. Al spends two weeks each summer touring on his motorcycle, and blogs about it for friends and family. Click here to read more...
Be well, 
Carole Jackson
Bottom Line’s Daily Health News
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BottomLineSecrets.com Web Site Privacy Policy Required Disclaimer: The information provided herein should not be construed as a health-care diagnosis, treatment regimen or any other prescribed health-care advice or instruction. The information is provided with the understanding that the publisher is not engaged in the practice of medicine or any other health-care profession and does not enter into a health-care practitioner/patient relationship with its readers. The publisher does not advise or recommend to its readers treatment or action with regard to matters relating to their health or well-being other than to suggest that readers consult appropriate health-care professionals in such matters. No action should be taken based solely on the content of this publication. The information and opinions provided herein are believed to be accurate and sound at the time of publication, based on the best judgment available to the authors. However, readers who rely on information in this publication to replace the advice of health-care professionals, or who fail to consult with health-care professionals, assume all risks of such conduct. The publisher is not responsible for errors or omissions. Bottom Line’s Daily Health News is a registered trademark of Boardroom, Inc. Copyright (c) 2011 by Boardroom Inc. | 
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August 1, 2011 In This Issue... - Turn Off Your Pain with 3 "Miracle Drops"
- A Sugar-Coated Pill That Helps Fight Infection?
- Are You or Your Loved Ones Taking Any of These Highly Prescribed Medicines?
- You Could Go Deaf (After Taking ED Drugs)!
Turn Off Your Pain with 3 "Miracle Drops" Toss out your joint pills! New breakthrough formula ends your pain by stopping the hidden cause of joint destruction! Just 3 miracle drops a day loosen stiff knees and backs... relieve hip discomfort... and erase joint pain. In one trial, joint sufferers were amazed to find their pain just disappeared -- VANISHED! In other tests, subjects begged to know how they could keep taking the formula after the study was over. Some people cancelled joint surgeries -- their pain and stiffness were gone! Here’s what people who used to suffer with debilitating joint pain are now saying: - "I am no longer stiff as a rusted robot!"
- "I am staggered that 3 drops of anything per day could make such a difference... this is really magic stuff."
- "I was in terrible pain for many years," and now: "no pain at all."
- "After just one week... my entire body was more flexible and even felt lighter to move."
In as little as 2 weeks, you could feel like a new person. By turning off pain at the source, these tiny drops work better than a roomful of giant joint pills. Click here to learn more...
A Sugar-Coated Pill That Helps Fight Infection? Have you ever been plagued by an infection that felt as if it would never go away? They’re known as recurrent infections because of their unerring ability to outsmart the medicines intended to do them in. I am reminded of a colleague who developed a painful urinary tract infection (UTI) last year. After five or six days, it appeared to have gone, but in what was to become a recurring pattern, a UTI showed up again a month later, leading to another round of antibiotics. That course of antibiotics seemed to stop the infection, until, boom, a few weeks later, yet another infection developed. It took my friend months for complete recovery. We all know about the growing problem with antibiotic-resistant bacteria, but that’s not what was going on in this case. There is now an explanation as to why these infections return again and again. And tantalizingly, there is a new study with mice that shows how a very common substance may help quickly resolve these infections the first time around. Persistent, Not Resistant The study I’m referring to was conducted by James Collins, PhD, professor of Biomedical Engineering at Boston University. He is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator and recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship (sometimes called a MacArthur "genius grant"). But before we get to those findings, a bit of bacteria background is in order. Dr. Collins explains that while doctors studying infectious diseases have focused their attention on antibiotic-resistant bacteria for a number of years, it is only in the last few that they started paying attention to another type of bacteria that they’ve tagged as persistent bacteria. Here’s the difference -- regular bacteria become resistant because they mutate genetically in response to an antibiotic, thus making it increasingly difficult to create drugs that will be successful in getting rid of them. Persistent bacteria, on the other hand, do not mutate but have a physiological ability to become dormant -- in effect to go to sleep for a period of time. Familiar infections known to be associated with persistent bacteria include strep, tuberculosis, staph and many more. When persistent bacteria are slumbering, they are invulnerable to antibiotics. This means that the medicine you take for an infection will wipe out the majority of the bacteria causing the illness, but not the few persisters, as they are called. Later, for reasons not yet understood, certain persisters activate and cause new infection -- and require another round of antibiotics. Persisters are nothing if not canny adversaries... a few will continue to remain asleep and invulnerable, ready to "wake up" later. Waking All Persisters Now, if there were some way to rouse all of the infection-causing bacteria into an active state at the same time, one course of common antibiotics would wipe out the whole bunch. The challenge, then, is to find a substance that would wake them all -- and this is where Dr. Collins’s research comes in. Dr. Collins discovered that if he added sugar to antibiotics, all persisters were activated so that they could no longer evade the antibiotics. His finding was robust indeed -- when he administered antibiotics with sugar through an IV to mice with E. coli bacteria, a common cause of UTIs, the antibiotics wiped out 99.9% of the persistent bacteria in just two hours, compared with eliminating none of the persistent bacteria in the mice whose antibiotic IV did not include sugar. A Rare Win-Win? The next step is to test the method with humans. Success, if it comes, could have important implications for treating resistant bacteria as well as persisters. It is quite possible that some cases of seemingly resistant bacteria are actually caused by persisters. Having a strategy to kill all persistent bacteria with just one round of antibiotics would dramatically reduce the usage of antibiotics, and that in turn would help slow development of resistant bacteria -- a real (and rare) win-win in our ongoing fight against bacteria. Dr. Collins says that combining sugar with an antibiotic is such a simple potential treatment that he is hopeful human studies will move ahead quickly. Many questions must be answered -- including whether there are persistent bacteria that would not be awakened by sugar... and whether sugar itself might worsen certain infections, for example, yeast infections. We’ll keep our eye on this research. Source(s):
James Collins, PhD, professor of biomedical engineering at Boston University and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator.
 Are You or Your Loved Ones Taking Any of These Highly Prescribed Medicines? Cholesterol Drugs... Heart Medications... Bronchodilators... Zantac®, Pepcid® or Tagamet® ... Antidepressants like Prozac®... Aspirin, Tylenol® or Advil®... Antihistamines... Decongestants... Corticosteroids... Antibiotics... Propecia®... Estrogen or HRT Drugs... Blood Thinners. Or any of the following best-selling natural remedies? Calcium... St. John's Wort... Glucosamine... Echinacea... Coenzyme Q10... Saponin... Vitamin B-6... Vitamins C or E... Melatonin... Vitamins A or D... Epigallocatechin Gallate... Chondroitin Sulfate... Diallyl Disulfide... Ginkgo Biloba. If so, please read on...
You Could Go Deaf (After Taking ED Drugs)! Remember the hilarious scene from the movie Something’s Gotta Give? Jack Nicholson, in the hospital with a suspected heart attack, refused to admit that he had taken Viagra... until the doctor began listing all the dangerous side effects. I thought about that scene when I read the research report I am about to share with you -- imagining it rewritten so that the doctor is talking away but the patient can’t hear a thing! Because it turns out that there is yet another nasty potential side effect of ED drugs like Viagra -- total hearing loss. While these drugs already carry a black-box warning stating that "sudden decrease or loss of hearing has been rarely reported," experts think the problem is serious enough to warrant further warnings from doctors. What Did the Research Say? Researchers in London just released a study that gathers information about 47 cases of sudden hearing loss associated with use of ED drugs -- and more with sildenafil (Viagra) than the others -- in North America, Europe, East Asia and Australia. If you find that number of cases underwhelming, you’ll want to know that this study left out 240 apparent cases that occurred here in the US because the researchers didn’t have sufficient detail. What’s different from the earlier warning: This study focused specifically on sudden sensorineural hearing loss (SSHL). It’s rare, but it can be devastating in that it sometimes results in permanent hearing loss. It’s thought that SSLH is sometimes caused by a head trauma or infection, but in most cases, it seems to come out of nowhere. The London researchers looked exclusively at cases of SSHL that developed within 24 hours of taking an ED drug -- two-thirds of the total. Statistically, one-third of the victims of this condition never regain their hearing. 24-Hour Connection I called otolaryngologist Eric Smouha, MD, director of otology and neurotology at The Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York City to learn more about the connection between ED drugs and SSHL. In his view, the association is inconclusive, though he did agree that the fact that all these men experienced hearing loss within 24 hours of taking the drugs was "pretty compelling." He told me that further research is required to answer some important questions, specifically ... - Which of the drug users are at greatest risk for SSHL -- regular, occasional or first-time users?
- Is there any physical condition that would put someone at higher risk?
- Why did SSHL develop most often after men (and the occasional woman) took Viagra rather than one of the other drugs?
Until these questions can be answered, Dr. Smouha urges anyone who uses or is considering using Viagra or another ED drug to check with his doctor and bring up the question of effects on hearing. And no doubt we will all be hearing much more about SSLH and ED drugs in the next few years, says Dr. Smouha. Even though the numbers of people currently known to be affected are small, this report is giving the problem a higher profile, and drug surveillance agencies around the world are going to take note. Once they start looking, who knows what they might find? Source(s):
Eric Smouha, MD, director of otology and neurotology at The Mount Sinai Medical Center, New York City. Be well,
Carole Jackson
Bottom Line's Daily Health News
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ATTN: Web Team Privacy Policy:
BottomLineSecrets.com Web Site Privacy Policy Required Disclaimer: The information provided herein should not be construed as a health-care diagnosis, treatment regimen or any other prescribed health-care advice or instruction. The information is provided with the understanding that the publisher is not engaged in the practice of medicine or any other health-care profession and does not enter into a health-care practitioner/patient relationship with its readers. The publisher does not advise or recommend to its readers treatment or action with regard to matters relating to their health or well-being other than to suggest that readers consult appropriate health-care professionals in such matters. No action should be taken based solely on the content of this publication. The information and opinions provided herein are believed to be accurate and sound at the time of publication, based on the best judgment available to the authors. However, readers who rely on information in this publication to replace the advice of health-care professionals, or who fail to consult with health-care professionals, assume all risks of such conduct. The publisher is not responsible for errors or omissions. Bottom Line's Daily Health News is a registered trademark of Boardroom, Inc. Copyright (c) 2011 by Boardroom Inc. | 
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