Small Changes Lead to Big Changes in Preventing Diabetes

Tim and Paul Daly, identical twins. One has diabetes, one does not.

Here's an inspirational story about beating diabetes. Tim and Paul Daly are identical twins who were inseparable up through young adulthood - they even joined the Army together. Later they took different paths, and while Tim kept playing basketball every week with friends on Tuesday night, his brother didn't do any exercise at all.

In 1996 Paul was diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes. His identical twin Tim was pre-diabetic. Then...

Tim volunteered to take part in a huge national research study aimed at determining exactly what it takes to prevent or delay the onset of Type 2 diabetes.

Like him, all of the 3,234 volunteers in the study were at high risk of developing the disease. The volunteers were broken down into three groups.

Tim was randomly assigned to the "lifestyle intervention" group. He received intensive counseling from a dietitian and motivational coach who helped him develop a plan to eat less and exercise more.

A second group of participants took a diabetes medicine called Metformin twice a day. These volunteers received information about diet and exercise, but they didn't get motivational counseling. A third group received placebo pills instead of Metformin.

Researchers wanted to know which intervention would work best to prevent diabetes and all of the complications that can develop as a result: loss of vision, kidney failure, amputations and a substantial increase in risk of heart disease and stroke.

As it turns out, the study found lifestyle changes to be twice as affective as the medicine.

Twice as effective!! Keep that in mind when you read the possible side effects of Metformin:

Metformin may cause side effects. Tell your doctor if any of these symptoms are severe, do not go away, go away and come back, or do not begin for some time after you begin taking metformin:

• diarrhea
  
• bloating
  
• stomach pain
  
• gas
  
• constipation
  
• unpleasant metallic taste in mouth
  
• heartburn
  
• headache
  
• sneezing
  
• cough
  
• runny nose
  
• flushing of the skin
  
• nail changes
  
• muscle pain

Some side effects can be serious. The following symptoms are uncommon, but if you experience any of them or those listed in the IMPORTANT WARNING section, call your doctor immediately:

• chest pain
  
• rash

Some female laboratory animals given high doses of metformin developed non-cancerous polyps (abnormal growths of tissue) in the uterus (womb). It is not known if metformin increases the risk of polyps in humans. Talk to your doctor about the risks of taking this medication.

Metformin may cause other side effects. Call your doctor if you have any unusual problems while taking this medication.

Just more evidence that exercise is good for nearly everything. The audio version of this story, available for free on the NPR website, has more detail than the printed version.

Preventing Diabetes: Small Changes Have Big Payoff by Allison Aubrey
Diabetes Prevention Program Study Repository
Medline Plus: Metformin

Using the TCM Pharmacopeia to Make Western-style Drugs

This 2007 article from Chemistry World reminds me why I'm glad to be doing Traditional Chinese Medicine. The key difference between TCM and Western medicine is not in the implements or the ingredients, but in the diagnostic view.

At least 1.1 billion adults and 10 per cent of children around the world are now overweight or obese, according to the International Obesity Task Force. As more people become heavier, they become vulnerable to type 2 diabetes, a potentially fatal condition. Hotamisligil's investigations have uncovered the key pathway that leads to diabetes.

Obesity makes unusual demands on fat cells - they become stressed. When a person piles on the pounds, a cellular organelle called the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) is forced to work harder than usual to process the surplus fat. To cope with the extra workload, the ER normally counts on a built-in pack of chemical chaperones that help process fats and proteins.

But if the ER still feels the strain, it starts faltering, igniting a chain reaction that eventually shuts down insulin pathways and precipitates diabetes. The Harvard team hopes to prevent ER stress by supplying cells with extra chaperones. They tried supplying the ER with tauro ursodeoxycholic acid (TUDCA) and another small molecular drug PBA (4-phenyl butyric acid) as potential chaperones in two sets of obese mice.

The results were pretty spectacular: the compounds alleviated ER stress, and after one week of treatment, glucose levels in both sets of obese mice returned to normal. There was a benign effect on the liver too, reducing the presence of fatty deposits that often lead to cirrhosis.

Seriously?? If you want to reduce the strain on the endoplasmic reticulum, wouldn't losing weight via exercise and dietary regulation be a much better option than taking TUDCA and PBA? As an emergency treatment for someone with advanced type 2 diabetes, this could be very useful. But taking black bear bile and then continuing to lead a sedentary lifestyle and eat excessive amounts of sugar and fatty foods is not a prescription for health.

Personally I hate taking any kind of medicine - I don't like getting acupuncture, I don't like taking bitter herbs, and I don't like eating bland food. I do love to move, and that's my usual medicine - lots and lots of exercise. So I don't understand why people could be content with taking powerful drugs every day for the rest of their lives. To me, it defies comprehension, but I have met people like that - "yeah, I'm sick, I have such-and-such condition, but the doctor gave me a prescription, so now I'm taking Tulupa (hexomethacripulate 600mg)" - and that's the end of the story. Really? So, how long will you be taking that for? "I don't know, the doctor didn't say." EEEEERRRRRRRGGGHHHHHHH!!!! It's just odd to to me. I don't get it. Why do you want to poison yourself like that? Medicine is not benign. There are always side effects - get out your magnifying glass and read the package insert. Chinese herbs tend to have much milder side effects, which is why when I'm sick that's my first option.

Take a look at the whole article here.

[Note: there is no such drug as Tulupa. As far as I know.]

To Prevent Osteoporosis: Exercise, Exercise, Exercise

Think Wang Pei Kun has a bone density problem? Please.

What is osteoporosis? According to the Merck Manual:

Osteoporosis is a progressive metabolic bone disease that decreases bone density (bone mass per unit volume), with deterioration of bone structure. Skeletal weakness leads to fractures with minor or inapparent trauma, particularly in the thoracic and lumbar spine, wrist and hip.

You've heard of the little old lady who falls down and breaks her hip? She's got osteoporosis. Fortunately there are a number of things that the little old lady can do to increase bone density and prevent fractures without the need for poisonous pharmaceutical drugs such as Fosamax, which can actually cause mandibular osteonecrosis. "Mandibular osteonecrosis" is a fancy way of saying that it kills your jaw bone. Let's not play Abel to Fosamax's Cain, okay? (Ironically, Fosamax is a product of the Merck pharmaceutical company)

Important to note is that osteoporosis is what the Merck Manual calls a "metabolic" disease. This means it is not caused by any external bacteria or virus. You can't catch osteoporosis from anyone. Your own body can create the condition of osteoporosis, and it can also therefore reverse that condition.

The number one thing that you can do to increase bone density and decrease the risk of osteoporosis is EXERCISE. Numerous studies have confirmed that even gentle exercise such as taijiquan can increase bone density. If you're not crazy about taiji, try yoga, or weightlifting, or jogging or even walking. Here's a sample of the literature on bone density and exercise:

• Tai Chi May Help Maintain Bone Mineral Density in Postmenopausal Women
  
• Bone density sharply enhanced by weight training, even in the elderly
  
• The American Society of Bone and Mineral Research says: "Research helped us to understand the need for weight-bearing exercise to build and maintain bone in order to reduce fracture risk. Falling can be reduced by strength-building exercise that increases balance and flexibility." Unfortunately they contradict themselves in the very same document (PDF) when they say "Research identified and demonstrated a variety of drugs that can reduce bone loss and fractures and even build new bone. Thirty years ago there was no treatment for osteoporosis." If weight-bearing exercise increases bone density, isn't that a treatment for osteoporosis? Unless I have been sorely misled, exercise wasn't invented less than thirty years ago.

According to Chen and Chen's formula book, there are four formulas one can use to treat osteoporosis. Obviously your options are not limited to these four formulas (独活寄生汤 Du Huo Ji Sheng Tang, anyone?) but it's a good starting point.

Kidney Yin Deficiency: 左归丸 Zuo Gui Wan
Kidney Yang Deficiency: 右归丸 You Gui Wan
Kidney Jing Deficiency: 龟鹿二仙胶 Gui Lu Er Xian Jiao
Spleen Qi Deficiency: 参苓白术散 Shen Ling Bai Zhu San

Fat Turtle Herb Company can fill all these formulas to your exact specifications in different formats: raw herbs, pre-cooked vacuum packs, granule and capsule.

p.s. The occasion for this post was a NY Times article on osteoporosis which ignores even their own archives. As my nephew Joey would say, with his hands on his head: Ai yai yai yai yai!

Ban on Popular Pain Killers

A federal advisory panel to the FDA is advising a ban on Vicodin and Percocet, two of the most widely used pain killers in the world. The vote made yesterday stems from concerns that use of the drugs cause irreparable liver damage. The combination of a narcotic with acetominophen, or Tylenol, is the problem. Since people in chronic pain end up having to take higher and higher doses of these drugs over time in order to get the same results, they put themselves at risk of overdose and liver failure.

In 2005, American consumers bought 28 billion doses of products containing [acetominophen].While the medicine is effective in treating headaches and reducing fevers, even recommended doses can cause liver damage in some people. And more than 400 people die and 42,000 are hospitalized every year in the United States from overdoses.

The panel conducted 11 votes in total, including one that suggesting a ban on all combination products that includes acetominophen. The panel voted against that ban, saying that consumers saw the products as valuable. My question is, isn't it their job to ensure that the products are safe? Consumer trends should not dictate whether or not a drug would be allowed on the market, considering that popular products usually become popular due to factors such as marketing and advertising, as opposed to safety and efficacy.

Acupuncture has been shown to be effective in the treatment of pain and has little to no side effects. It is generally affordable and can be administered in virtually any setting. Next time you throw out your back, try acupuncture!

"I Don't Believe In Acupuncture"

Beach Community Acupuncture has a good piece today on people who think you have to "believe in acupuncture" for it to work. In my opinion, you do have to believe in acupuncture for it to work, just as you have to believe in any other medical treatment for it to work. In the dominant scientific-technological paradigm of the 21st century, most of us are brought up with a specific set of unquestionable beliefs. In fact, to question some of these beliefs is considered completely unexplainable and therefore "crazy."

For instance, everyone "knows" that when taking antibiotics, you have to take the full course, or utter mayhem will ensue.

Everyone "knows" that slipped disks, pinched nerves, muscle strains and other physical abnormalities are the cause of back pain, not an associated symptom (except this guy, I guess).

Everyone "knows" that HIV causes AIDS, and everyone "knows" that AIDS came to the U.S. accidentally from a guy who was bitten by a monkey in Africa.

For treatment to be successful, patients must accept acupuncturists into their established belief system. That's why all TCM schools in the U.S. require their student interns to wear white coats and take blood pressure readings - we wear a costume to create the association in a patient's mind to the established image of a doctor with the power and authority to heal their sickness. That image is incredibly powerful.

Your self has a natural tendency towards health. The body, mind and spirit are incredible organic systems that work in harmony with the inner and outer world. Medical systems are designed to remind you of that, to nudge you back towards health when you forget your own power. What have you forgotten?

Plants are Important

An archaeologist and a botanist have teamed up to study artwork from the Mayan Classical period, dating from 250 BCE to 900 CE.

You might wonder, what is a botanist doing studying ancient art? Turns out the Mayans created lots of ceramic pieces depicting various plants of the rain forest, many with such accuracy that the genus and species of the plants can be determined. The scientists are trying to identify which plants were of importance to the people, in "hopes [that] the research will unveil secrets known to the Maya that have become lost in time."

What kind of secrets are they looking for? The archaeologist Charles Zadir says:

The Maya have lived and used rainforest plants to heal themselves for thousands of years. We are just beginning to understand some of their secrets.

That's great! Plants are awesome! It's wonderful that there are people out there advocating for the preservation of the rain forest and for research into the importance of plants in our lives.

But wait... keep reading:

This research has already been of interest to pharmaceutical companies that are looking to extract alkaloids from plants that were important to the ancient Maya.

Aw, man! Just when you thought that you could escape the clutches of greed, the truth comes out. In the researchers' defense, they probably had to provide some lucrative justification for the work that they're doing, otherwise they wouldn't get funding. But, it just irks me that there always has to be some kind of monetary motive.

Swine Flu, Concerned Parents, Western Medicine and Chinese Medicine

Yesterday I got an email from my dad. I've been sick for the past few weeks, but what with finals and the end of school, I only got serious about treating it last Friday, when I went to see Dr. Yuhong Chen at the Yosan clinic (scroll down to read her bio). I had two acupuncture treatments and she wrote a kick-ass herbal formula, and five days later I'm back to 100%.

My main symptom was sore throat, persisting for three weeks, plus fatigue, and at various points during that four weeks I had body aches, slight fever, night sweats, thick sticky green phlegm streaked with blood, thin white phlegm, and probably something else too. It sounds bad when I write it all out, but it didn't bother me too much. All those symptoms didn't occur at the same time, and when they did occur they only lasted a day or so. The only thing that persisted was the sore throat.

In a phone conversation last weekend, my dad suggested that I go get a throat culture and, if it turned out to be strep throat, take antibiotics. I told him that I was fairly sure it wasn't strep, and even if it was, I'd rather take Chinese medicine. Like many Americans, I don't have health insurance, and my last trip to the ER cost me nearly $1000.

Then the swine flu media panic got out of control over the weekend, and I had the email exchange reproduced below with my dad. I guess I was a little defensive about Chinese medicine - after all, I just spent four years studying this completely different, completely effective system of medicine, and now my dad wants me to take antibiotics and Tamiflu? Sheesh.

But I think it's instructive about the way a lot of people feel about Chinese medicine - that's it's good for mild symptoms, but if it's "something serious," then you absolutely have to "go see a doctor," which means an M.D. The fact is, Chinese medicine can treat everything. Let me say that again: Chinese medicine can treat everything.

And now, without further ado...

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
11:54 AM (22 hours ago)
(My Dad)
to me

Hey Jonah,

Not sure if your symptoms fit this profile, but if they’re in the ballpark I would urge you to go to a clinic or even a hospital ER somewhere to get a test. This has public health implications – the only way the CDC can track what’s happening is by monitoring test results – but more important the health networks are well stocked with anti-virals (tamiflu and another one whose name I forget) that so far have been effective if the result turns out positive. So no need to panic, but also no reason not to be proactive. From the news reports it looks as if this could get serious down the line. As you have probably been reading, the group most at risk from this outbreak are healthy young adults in the 20-40 age range.

Love,

Dad



From: Lisa
Sent: Sunday, April 26, 2009 7:29 PM
Subject: IMPORTANT UPDATE! Swine Influenza Outbreak.
Importance: High

Fellow Employees:

The World Health Organization (WHO) and Center for Disease Control (CDC) have confirmed an outbreak of the Swine Influenza A/H1N1 (swine flu) in Mexico with now twenty (20) confirmed cases in the United States. Swine Influenza is a respiratory disease found in pigs caused by type A influenza that regularly causes outbreaks of influenza among pigs. CDC has determined that this swine influenza A (H1N1) virus is contagious and is spreading from human to human. However, at this time, it not known how easily the virus spreads between people.

The symptoms of swine flu in people are similar to the symptoms of regular human flu and include fever, cough, sore throat, body aches, headache, chills and fatigue. Some people have reported diarrhea and vomiting associated with swine flu. In the past, severe illness (pneumonia and respiratory failure) and deaths have been reported with swine flu infection in people. Like seasonal flu, swine flu may cause a worsening of underlying chronic medical conditions.

Spread of this swine influenza A (H1N1) virus is thought to be happening in the same way that seasonal flu spreads. Flu viruses are spread mainly from person to person through coughing or sneezing of people with influenza. Sometimes people may become infected by touching something with flu viruses on it and then touching their mouth or nose.

Your health and the health of your family is greatly important. Please take some general precautions during this time.

Since influenza is thought to spread mainly person-to-person through coughing or sneezing of infected people, there are many things you can to do preventing getting and spreading influenza:

Everyday actions:

· Cover coughs and sneezes with tissues or by coughing into the inside of the elbow. Throw the tissue in the trash after you use it.

· Wash your hands often with soap and water for 20 seconds, especially after you cough or sneeze. Alcohol-based hands cleaners are also effective.

· Avoid touching your eyes, nose or mouth. Germs spread that way.

Try to avoid close contact with sick people.

· Limit close contact (within 6 feet) with others when possible.

· Stay away from places where there are large groups of people.

· If you get sick, CDC recommends that you stay home from work and limit contact with others to keep from infecting them.

All offices remain open at this time. However, we would like to recommend that business travel to/from Mexico be delayed/re-scheduled. In lieu of travel, please consider conducting conference calls and/or video conferences.

The following link is the CDC’s Q&A which provides the detail regarding when to contact your health care provider, especially for children or someone with pre-existing health issues. http://www.cdc.gov/swineflu/swineflu_you.htm

We will continue to send you updates on any important information as it becomes available. Please contact your HRBP or the Benefits Team if you have any other questions or concerns.

Regards,

Lisa
Vice President, Human Resources

--------------------------------------------------
1:23 PM (21 hours ago)
Jonah Ewell
to (My Dad)

Hey Dad,

I appreciate your concern! But I'm getting much better. Chinese medicine is much much more effective for any kind of influenza than drugs. When SARS broke out in China, they used herbal medicine. If Chinese medicine were in wider use in the Americas, swine flu would be much easier to contain. Obviously, to treat the root of the problem you need to stop having factory farming and crowding huge amounts of pigs together, which concentrates effluvia (aka pigshit!) and breeds disease. Until that happens, Chinese medicine, handwashing, and rest are the best way to recover from a flu.

I'm currently taking a Chinese herbal prescription which consists of 15 herbs. Some of the key herbs, such as 茵陳蒿 Yin Chen Hao (a type of artemisiae) and 山豆根 Shan Dou Gen (a type of sophora root) have been proven in laboratory testing to have broad-spectrum antiviral and antibacterial actions. No need to worry, Chinese medicine is on the case!

love,
Jonah
------------------------------------------------

1:53 PM (20 hours ago)
(My Dad)
to me

OK, sounds good. But do you know whether you have the particular virus that’s in the news?

Love,

Dad

---------------------------------------------------------

2:35 PM (19 hours ago)
Jonah Ewell
to (My Dad)

In the framework of Chinese medicine, it's unimportant what exact microbe or virus is causing you problems. Western science and medicine is reductionist, always looking for that ONE THING that they can point to and say is the cause of illness. When you find the exact bacteria or virus, all you have to do is kill it, or remove it, or block it, or any of the other things Western medicine does. This is a relatively recent development, hinging on the invention of advanced microscopes. Thanks to these instruments, we have made incredible advances in being able to look at and detect these small microbes and viruses, which has helped the world deal with serious health problems. However, as we are seeing, looking for the one microbe and trying to eliminate it is a textbook case of missing the forest for the trees.

What causes disease? Why do some people get sick and others don't? If the swine flu was really so contagious, why haven't more people become sick and died? According to what I've heard on the radio and read in the newspapers, less than 10% of people with swine flu have died. Over 90% recover. Think of fruit in a basket. If you leave it for awhile, you might find that one piece of fruit has mold on it. Another piece of fruit, sitting right next to it and even touching it, cheek-by-jowl, is unaffected. Why is that?

Louis Pasteur, the father of modern bacteria studies (the process of pasteurization was named for him) was said to have renounced bacteria-based medicine on his deathbed, saying "Terrain is everything." Terrain means our bodies, our immune system, our environment. If you have a strong immune system (what the Chinese call 卫气 wei qi, or defensive qi) without underlying deficiencies, and live in harmony with your environment, you will not become sick.

Chinese medicine has, over the course of 2000-3000 years of recorded history, developed a number of powerful diagnostic systems that, properly applied, can cure nearly everything. Modern medicine has a place, and it adds to the world's knowledge. But it doesn't replace Chinese medicine.

Chinese medicine looks at the totality of a person and treats the person, not the disease. The herbal formula I'm taking was written exactly for me, taking into account all my body systems, my constitution and my presenting symptoms. This is what good medicine is. Simply telling millions of people, young, old, tall, short, skinny, fat, to go dose themselves with Tamiflu is ridiculous.

If you have an epidemic situation, in Chinese medicine it falls under the general classification of 温病 wen bing, or warm disease. There are many subcategories within it, but one of note is called 杂气 za qi, or miscellaneous qi. This is a type of qi that arises under special circumstances and is outside the realm of the ordinary system of Chinese medicine, which holds that there are six types of exogenous pathogens. This seventh type of qi was discussed by 吴有性 Dr. Wu Youxing in his work the 温疫论 Wen Yi Lun in 1642 A.D., many centuries after the main classics of Chinese medicine were written but two centuries before Dr. Pasteur made his discoveries in the area of germ theory.

In other words... don't worry!

love,
Jonah

--------------------------------------------------

6:05 PM (16 hours ago)
(My Dad)
to me

In principle I can see your point, but the 1918 flu pandemic killed millions of people in a single year before it ran its course, and the treatments that have been developed since then to combat viruses of this type are pretty specific and pretty effective once the agent has been identified. Not sure of the details, but I think that anti-virals are different from antibiotics, which are less specific and also ineffective against viruses. Also, according to the NYT article on it yesterday, what makes this particular virus so deadly is not so much what it does directly as the immune reaction that it triggers, literally drowning the patient as the body tries to activate its natural defenses to meet a perceived but not well understood threat. Viruses (which are basically small free-floating pieces of genetic code) are tricky, and developing an effective anti-viral agent on the molecular level seems mostly to be a matter of strategy. So maybe the most appropriate medical text for this kind of threat would be the Sunzi…

Anyway, my 2 cents for what it’s worth.

Love,

Dad

-------------------------------------------------------

10:03 PM (12 hours ago)
Jonah Ewell
to (My Dad)

Sunzi is used as a medical text, but antiviral medications are a far cry from the wisdom of Sunzi. One of Sunzi's basic tenets is to follow the laws of Heaven and Earth. In medical terms, that means the exterior and the interior, the environment and the body. Viruses are highly adaptable, which is why getting a flu shot is such a crap shoot. They have to guess which flu strain is going to go around, and a lot of times they get it wrong, so all these old folks are immunized against something which poses no threat, and they have no defense against the flu strain that actually does come around.

They would be far, far better off to do the basics: light exercise daily, eat foods in accordance with the seasons, and have a stable emotional life. Add handwashing, proper clothing for the weather, and there's your natural flu vaccine. It's easy to tune out because it's so basic. The basics are hard! Huaching Ni says that having a normal life is actually quite difficult, and that few people ever achieve it. Instead of focusing on the basics, everyone's looking for the magic pill or injection which is going to allow them to continue with their bad habits.

The CDC is doing their job by telling people to wash their hands (http://www.cdc.gov/swineflu/), but that doesn't get picked up by the media. Everyone's looking for a vaccine or treatment. As the Neijing says, treating an illness after it has started is like digging a well when you get thirsty, or forging weapons after the battle has begun.

There is an "attacking school" or "detoxification school" of Chinese medicine that concentrates on using harsh, bitter, cold herbs to drive pathogens from the body (攻邪学派 Gong Xie Xue Pai). It's one of the four famous schools of medical thought from the Jin-Yuan period. Most modern western medicine can be thought of as an extreme example of the attacking school. Antibiotics, antivirals, chemotherapy, radiation, are all very effective if used correctly (big if) but they absolutely destroy your body and leave it open to further attack. This mode of thought is just one of many overlapping theories that are used concurrently in Chinese medicine, and certainly not a dominant one.

love,
Jonah

-----------------------------------------------------
10:34 PM (11 hours ago)
Jonah Ewell
to (My Dad)

You're correct in that strategy is important, but if the only time you apply strategy is in a quest to find the best anti-viral medication, that's a misapplication of strategy. Everyone is looking through the microscope, which is fine, but if the virus is underneath a microscope that means it's not in a human body. At the same time as you bend over the microscope, you also have to step back and look at what's going on in a real live sick person, and then step back again to look at where that person lives, the state of the environment in which he or she lives, and all the people around them, sick or not. The strength of Chinese medicine is that we deal with living systems in their natural environments.

Modern machinery is great - who wouldn't want an MRI machine to peer inside the body? - but it doesn't replace the basics of the four examinations - palpation, listening/smelling, observation, and questioning. When you add blood tests, X-rays and scopes to that, you have a some very powerful diagnostic tools. If you rely too much on the machines and lab reports, as many modern doctors tend to do, you can very easily be misled. Western medicine, until very recently, made good use of palpation, physical exam, and the verbal investigation to form a complete diagnosis. Nowadays, it's just testing. Some of my patients in the clinic get sent for test after test after test. Some of these tests are very invasive, and at the end of it the doctors say, "we can't find anything wrong. It must be psychological." Well, they're looking in the wrong place, with the wrong tools, and the wrong mindset.

RealAge Sells Your Information To Drug Companies

The popular website RealAge sells your information to drug companies so they can market to you better. That long "questionnaire" you take is not private - if you become a RealAge member, as many people do, drug cartels such as Pfizer, Novartis and GlaxoSmithKline will have highly detailed information on which drugs to market to you. As the New York Times article says:

While few people would fill out a detailed questionnaire about their health and hand it over to a drug company looking for suggestions for new medications, that is essentially what RealAge is doing.

Oprah's TV doctor is a spokesman. There's a RealAge Facebook app. You'll see their ads all over the internet.

If you get emails from RealAge, understand that they may actually be coming from a drug company.

RealAge acts as the middleman between the drug companies and its members: it sends the e-mail messages from its own address and does not release members’ names or e-mail addresses to drug companies. That is because pharmaceutical advertisers are among “the most heavily regulated industries in the world, and they don’t necessarily want those e-mail addresses — they like that we’re a proxy for their messages,” Mr. Mikulak said.

Don't put your health in someone else's hands! Taking the test is fine, but don't take health advice from those who have a vested interest in making you a permanent patient.

Big Pharma Chases Skirts

Today I'd like to point you towards an excellent column in the Huffington Post on how pharmaceutical companies pay close attention to women when marketing a new prescription drug.

Women need to know that they are being studied, targeted, and manipulated by very effective advertising that has little to do with good science. The ads and the target markets are heavily researched by internal marketing departments, branding experts and advertising companies.

In order to effectively drive sales with the important female demographic, companies first identify which issues in life women are most concerned and/or insecure about. They then develop their entire marketing campaign around those issues rather than the specific science of the drug. Big bucks go into finding the emotional hot button for any given pill or medical problem. The majority of ads feature sexy, smiling, happy people -- walking by the lake, rolling around with their children, or on a fun/hot date. We all want a little piece of that, don't we? Pharma knows how to play off of women's deepest insecurities and our biggest dreams...and it works.

The author worked in the pharmaceutical industry for 10 years, so she knows what she's talking about. It's an excellent wake-up call for anyone, female or male, who has been brainwashed into thinking that health comes from a pill.

Medicine In The News

While reading the New York Times yesterday, I couldn't help but notice the increasing number of articles about health care. Could it be that all this talk of health care reform is forcing people to look at what needs to be reformed? The ideas of conflict-of-interest and professional integrity have always come up in regards to medical care versus the medical industry. I feel that the growing discontent with the current mainstream medical system has finally reached a point of some kind of public vigilante justice, bent on shaming the perpetrators into following the rules of medical ethics and propriety.

Two articles in particular had stood out: Prosecutors Plan Crackdown on Doctors Who Accept Kickbacks, and Harvard Medical School in Ethics Quandary. Interestingly enough, both of these articles did not make their appearance in the Health section of the Times, but rather in the Money & Policy section and Business section respectively.

The first article describes how federal prosecutors are going to start enforcing laws that make it illegal for medical doctors to accept gifts from industry. They have already been going after the pharmaceutical companies that engage in such practices, but have found that even increasing fines is not enough of a deterrent, as some of them already set aside money for fines that they know they'll need to pay for breaking these laws. Now, they're going after the medical doctors.

[...] federal health officials are forcing a growing number of drug and device makers to post publicly all payments made to doctors who serve as consultants or speakers.

That means that information about the companies that illegally market their goods as well as the doctors who they bribe will be made completely public and searchable.

The second article discusses industry influence on education. The problem that a lot of medical schools face is that a good proportion of their funding comes from private companies, and a lot of star faculty act as consultants for companies to increase the marketability of their products. But what kind of education would future doctors be getting if their instructors were all on the payroll of big pharmaceutical companies? Some would argue that it wouldn't affect their jobs as teachers, but I suspect there must be a huge bias with the dissemination of information.

Harvard medical students, as part of the American Medical Student Association, have worked to make it a requirement that all professors and lecturers disclose their industry ties in class. They are the first and only medical school to do that, which is appropriate in this age of reform because they are ranked one of the lowest in terms of transparency and control of industry money.

Here is where I would normally tie this blog post to Chinese medicine somehow... for today, I think it would be sufficient to simply say that I hope all this reform of the health care system in its final incarnation will include low-cost, low-risk, highly effective therapies - such as Chinese medicine - into the grand plan of taking care of each other.

Book Review: Keeping Your Child Healthy With Chinese Medicine

My sister had a baby last year, the first one in our lot to do so, and for the last year I have been pre-occupied with pediatrics. As we've noted in some of our past posts, Chinese medicine is very effective at treating most childhood illnesses with little to no side effects. Since we are focused on the physiology and not just the disease, we can help the little ones recover from their diseases at the same time as correct the physiological imbalance that brought on the symptoms in the first place.

I understand that when a child is sick, however, that a parent would want to do everything they can to make sure their child gets better. We are taught in the US that the only way to cure diseases is to take drugs prescribed by a medical doctor. What if we could save those medicines for when they are truly absolutely necessary, making them more effective in turn, and instead adopt a model of graduated care where parents can be consulted to treat their children naturally first and allopathically when needed.

This would require teaching consumers of medicine of all the things that Chinese medicine can successfully do for them and their kids. Being in school for the last four years, and surrounding myself with other students and doctors of the medicine by default, makes it easy to forget that we use a completely different language to describe the anatomy even though we're speaking English. People like my sister, who has little knowledge of health care let alone Chinese medicine, need information that is straightforward, easy to understand, and comprehensive. The book Keeping Your Child Healthy with Chinese Medicine: A Parent's Guide to the Care and Prevention of Common Childhood Diseases does just that.

The book starts with a nice introduction on TCM, and goes into comparing the benefits and drawbacks of both Chinese and Western allopathic medicine. Bob Flaws, the author, does a great job of describing each of the commonly encountered illnesses in pediatrics, including ones that are not in Chinese medicine textbooks from China. He explains that because our lifestyles are different from those in China, including our overuse of antibiotics, children suffer from different kinds of recurring illnesses here in the West. He also advises parents on when to trust the wisdom of Chinese medicine, and when it would be better to see a Western MD for the treatment of more severe cases.

As the title suggests, it is a parent's guide, and does not go into great detail about the actual treatment of illnesses or their protocol. It does provide readers with an understanding of how Chinese medicine would go about treating these diseases, and what to expect from a TCM physician. It has a great chapter on how to go about finding a TCM practitioner, and what kinds of questions to ask when looking for someone to treat your children.

Sexual Desire - From a Patch?

Here's how it often goes down in the field of medical research: Pfizer, Merck or GlaxoSmithKline funds a study which confirms that the public is in dire need of another pharmaceutical drug to fix some new problem with an odd name. This month it's HSDD, which stands for hypoactive sexual desire disorder (remember attention deficit disorder and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder? Those terms didn't exist 30 years ago, either).

The study was published in Value of Health - here's a link to an abstract. If you read it, you'll see that the study consisted of a telephone survey which asked post-menopausal women about their sex lives. Here's a shocker: "Given a prevalence of 6.6% to 12.5% among US women, HSDD represents an important burden on quality of life." You know what that means...

...a testosterone patch! Just slap this on your skin and chemicals will seep into your pores and your bloodstream, which will magically increase your quality of life.

At least there's a little bit of transparency on this study. This story tells us that one of the members of the research team "works for Procter & Gamble Pharmaceuticals, Inc., which also funded the research and provided consultation for the survey. Procter & Gamble makes a testosterone patch, Intrinsa, which is approved for treating HSDD in Europe. A U.S. Food and Drug Administration advisory panel voted against approving Intrinsa in December 2004, citing lack of evidence for its long-term safety."

To reiterate: Proctor & Gamble, the company which makes a product to treat "HSDD", not only funded the study but also provided "consultation." Intrinsa has not been approved by the FDA for use in America. I would not be surprised if this official scientific study, paid for by PG and carried out by people with lots of initials after their names and who are affiliated with universities, will now become part of the evidence they will present to the FDA as a reason why their product should be approved.

Traditional Chinese Medicine has a lot to say about sexual desire and its relation to overall health. Sexual function is controlled by the Kidney. As you get older, Kidney function generally declines, and sexual function declines as well. In men, this can lead to impotence, premature ejaculation and lack of desire. In women there can be lack of desire, infertility and menstrual problems. Low levels of Kidney energy usually co-present with other symptoms, such as cold limbs, low back pain, knee pain, low energy, poor digestion and more.

This is the strength of TCM: integrating the patient's main complaint into a complete clinical picture. We then treat the complete picture rather than just one symptom. We call this "root and branch" treatment. If the branch is low sexual desire, the root could be in the Kidney, in which case we would focus on the Kidney. However, the root could also be due to constrained Liver energy, or low levels of qi and blood, or an accumulation of Damp Heat, all of which have different treatment strategies.

If you have low sexual energy, try these three things before you go shooting up testosterone or anything crazy like that:

1. Get up at 6 every morning and do some gentle stretching for about thirty minutes. Then go for a brisk walk outside (no treadmills).
2. Stop drinking soda, coffee and energy drinks. If you can't do without coffee, cut it down to one cup a day, or try substituting green tea.
3. Eat at regular intervals throughout the day, and keep that routine up day after day. Your body appreciates regularity - if you keep to a regular schedule of food intake, levels of blood sugar won't spike and fall as much throughout the day, giving you more energy and better, more even moods.

Some of you might be looking at those three changes and thinking it's impossible. If so, I ask you to try and shift your perspective on what's unreasonable. These three things are all completely natural ways to regulate your endocrine and nervous system, without popping pills or getting injections or surgery. Do your best to avoid taking drugs. Give yourself the best chance at a healthy life.

'Alternative' Medicine is Mainstream: Wall Street Journal Opinion

Note: This opinion piece does a great job of pointing out the huge advantages of natural health care and preventive medicine over pharmaceutical and surgery based medicine. It was written by four well-known names in the field of natural medicine in the U.S.: Deepak Chopra, Dean Ornish, Andrew Weil, and Rustum Roy. It also highlights some of the excellent research being done on natural medicine (all links were added).

In mid-February, the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences and the Bravewell Collaborative are convening a "Summit on Integrative Medicine and the Health of the Public." This is a watershed in the evolution of integrative medicine, a holistic approach to health care that uses the best of conventional and alternative therapies such as meditation, yoga, acupuncture and herbal remedies. Many of these therapies are now scientifically documented to be not only medically effective but also cost effective.

President-elect Barack Obama and former Sen. Tom Daschle (the nominee for Secretary of Health and Human Services) understand that if we want to make affordable health care available to the 45 million Americans who do not have health insurance, then we need to address the fundamental causes of health and illness, and provide incentives for healthy ways of living rather than reimbursing only drugs and surgery.

Heart disease, diabetes, prostate cancer, breast cancer and obesity account for 75% of health-care costs, and yet these are largely preventable and even reversible by changing diet and lifestyle. As Mr. Obama states in his health plan, unveiled during his campaign: "This nation is facing a true epidemic of chronic disease. An increasing number of Americans are suffering and dying needlessly from diseases such as obesity, diabetes, heart disease, asthma and HIV/AIDS, all of which can be delayed in onset if not prevented entirely."

The latest scientific studies show that our bodies have a remarkable capacity to begin healing, and much more quickly than we had once realized, if we address the lifestyle factors that often cause these chronic diseases. These studies show that integrative medicine can make a powerful difference in our health and well-being, how quickly these changes may occur, and how dynamic these mechanisms can be.

Many people tend to think of breakthroughs in medicine as a new drug, laser or high-tech surgical procedure. They often have a hard time believing that the simple choices that we make in our lifestyle -- what we eat, how we respond to stress, whether or not we smoke cigarettes, how much exercise we get, and the quality of our relationships and social support -- can be as powerful as drugs and surgery. But they often are. And in many instances, they're even more powerful.

These studies often used high-tech, state-of-the-art measures to prove the power of simple, low-tech, and low-cost interventions. Integrative medicine approaches such as plant-based diets, yoga, meditation and psychosocial support may stop or even reverse the progression of coronary heart disease, diabetes, hypertension, prostate cancer, obesity, hypercholesterolemia and other chronic conditions.

A recent study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that these approaches may even change gene expression in hundreds of genes in only a few months. Genes associated with cancer, heart disease and inflammation were downregulated or "turned off" whereas protective genes were upregulated or "turned on." A study published in The Lancet Oncology reported that these changes increase telomerase, the enzyme that lengthens telomeres, the ends of our chromosomes that control how long we live. Even drugs have not been shown to do this.

Our "health-care system" is primarily a disease-care system. Last year, $2.1 trillion was spent in the U.S. on medical care, or 16.5% of the gross national product. Of these trillions, 95 cents of every dollar was spent to treat disease after it had already occurred. At least 75% of these costs were spent on treating chronic diseases, such as heart disease and diabetes, that are preventable or even reversible.

The choices are especially clear in cardiology. In 2006, for example, according to data provided by the American Heart Association, 1.3 million coronary angioplasty procedures were performed at an average cost of $48,399 each, or more than $60 billion; and 448,000 coronary bypass operations were performed at a cost of $99,743 each, or more than $44 billion. In other words, Americans spent more than $100 billion in 2006 for these two procedures alone.

Despite these costs, a randomized controlled trial published in April 2007 in The New England Journal of Medicine found that angioplasties and stents do not prolong life or even prevent heart attacks in stable patients (i.e., 95% of those who receive them). Coronary bypass surgery prolongs life in less than 3% of patients who receive it. So, Medicare and other insurers and individuals pay billions for surgical procedures like angioplasty and bypass surgery that are usually dangerous, invasive, expensive and largely ineffective. Yet they pay very little -- if any money at all -- for integrative medicine approaches that have been proven to reverse and prevent most chronic diseases that account for at least 75% of health-care costs. The INTERHEART study, published in September 2004 in The Lancet, followed 30,000 men and women on six continents and found that changing lifestyle could prevent at least 90% of all heart disease.

That bears repeating: The disease that accounts for more premature deaths and costs Americans more than any other illness is almost completely preventable simply by changing diet and lifestyle. And the same lifestyle changes that can prevent or even reverse heart disease also help prevent or reverse many other chronic diseases as well. Chronic pain is one of the major sources of worker's compensation claims costs, yet studies show that it is often susceptible to acupuncture and Qi Gong. Herbs usually have far fewer side effects than pharmaceuticals.

Joy, pleasure and freedom are sustainable, deprivation and austerity are not. When you eat a healthier diet, quit smoking, exercise, meditate and have more love in your life, then your brain receives more blood and oxygen, so you think more clearly, have more energy, need less sleep. Your brain may grow so many new neurons that it could get measurably bigger in only a few months. Your face gets more blood flow, so your skin glows more and wrinkles less. Your heart gets more blood flow, so you have more stamina and can even begin to reverse heart disease. Your sexual organs receive more blood flow, so you may become more potent -- similar to the way that circulation-increasing drugs like Viagra work. For many people, these are choices worth making -- not just to live longer, but also to live better.

It's time to move past the debate of alternative medicine versus traditional medicine, and to focus on what works, what doesn't, for whom, and under which circumstances. It will take serious government funding to find out, but these findings may help reduce costs and increase health.

Integrative medicine approaches bring together those in red states and blue states, liberals and conservatives, Democrats and Republicans, because these are human issues. They are both medically effective and, important in our current economic climate, cost effective. These approaches emphasize both personal responsibility and the opportunity to make affordable, quality health care available to those who most need it. Mr. Obama should make them an integral part of his health plan as soon as possible.

FDA Warning on Advair: Death, Other Side Effects Possible

• Warning Given on Use of 4 Popular Asthma Drugs, but Debate Remains (New York Times)
  
• FDA Releases Warning on Use of Four Popular Asthma Drugs (eFlux)

Chinese medicine is especially effective in treating asthma in children and adults. Acupuncture, moxibustion, and Chinese herbs can all be used to treat both chronic and acute asthma.

One of the best base formulas for acute asthma, Bai Guo Ding Chuan Tang, uses Ma Huang (ephedra) as one of the ingredients. This is an example of the correct use of Ma Huang to dilate the bronchi and make breathing easier.

Unfortunately, because of the abuse of Ma Huang and other Chinese herbs by unethical supplement companies, who promoted ephedra as a weight-loss drug (with terrible consequences), we have lost the use of Ma Huang in clinical herbal practice in the United States. It is essential that the Chinese medicine community stand up in defense of our pharmacopoeia. No one knows what will be banned next because of misunderstandings and lack of knowledge about Chinese herbs. I've heard rumors that Fu Zi (aconite) and even the innocuous Chen Pi (tangerine peel) may be banned next.

Students and practitioners, I urge you to join your state and national organizations, pay your dues, and tell your Herbal Advisory Committees to defend Chinese herbs. Do it now before the FDA decides that we aren't allowed to use herbs at all. It only takes a second and costs less than you think.

• Join the California State Oriental Medicine Association
  
• Join the American Association of Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine - the AAAOM also has a political action fund you can contribute to online!

Better Than Chemotherapy

Qing Hao 青蒿 has been shown to be much more effective at killing human cancer cells than chemotherapy drugs.

According to a study conducted by researchers at the University of Washington, this medicinal herb is more specific in killing cancer cells than current pharmaceutical therapies. Current chemotherapy drugs destroy one normal cell for every five to ten cancer cells, whereas Qing Hao was shown to kill 12,000 cancer cells for every one normal cell. Development of a treatment utilizing qing hao could potentially lower the risk of undesirable side effects, allowing more of the compound to be taken safely, as well as being lower in cost to produce. A mature artemesia takes only about five months to mature from seed to harvest.

The Cost of Diabetes

• $218 billion spent in the last year by government and the public - this includes direct medical costs, from insulin and pills for controlling patients' blood sugar to amputations and hospitalizations, plus indirect costs such as lost productivity, disability, and early retirement

• $218 billion is about 10 percent of all health care spending

• estimated cost of people not yet diagnosed: $18 billion

• estimated cost of gestational diabetes: $636 million

• estimated cost of those who are considered pre-diabetic: $25 billion

• average number of diabetes medications prescribed per patient rose from 1.14 in 1994 to 1.63 in 2007

• yearly patient visits for diabetes increased from 25 million to 36 million between 1994 and 2007

• 17.9 million Americans are diagnosed with diabetes

• cost for those with Type 1 diabetes total $14.9 billion

• Type 1 diabetes, which generally begins in youth and is genetically linked, accounts for only 6 percent of those diagnosed

• cost for those with Type 2 diabetes total $159.5 billion

The information above was taken from an article published by the Associated Press today. Some notable quotes from that article:

Diabetes has not seen a decline or even a plateauing, and the death rate from diabetes continues to rise

The numbers just keep going higher and higher, and what we want to say is, 'It's time for government and businesses to focus on it'

Drugmakers such as Novo Nordisk also see diabetes as an important — and lucrative — disease.

Lowering Blood Sugar, Increasing Risk of Death?

Below is an article published in the New York Times earlier this year about a study conducted on diabetes and cardiovascular health. The results raised a lot of questions about how the current medical understanding of the disease views blood glucose levels as a primary factor when determining the patient's prognosis. Clearly, meeting some numerical requirement alone isn't the answer when it comes to health care. I've highlighted some of the interesting parts for your reading pleasure.

Diabetes Study Partially Halted After Deaths
By: Gina Kolata
Published: February 7, 2008

For decades, researchers believed that if people with diabetes lowered their blood sugar to normal levels, they would no longer be at high risk of dying from heart disease. But a major federal study of more than 10,000 middle-aged and older people with Type 2 diabetes has found that lowering blood sugar actually increased their risk of death, researchers reported Wednesday.

The researchers announced that they were abruptly halting that part of the study, whose surprising results call into question how the disease, which affects 21 million Americans, should be managed.

The study’s investigators emphasized that patients should still consult with their doctors before considering changing their medications.

Among the study participants who were randomly assigned to get their blood sugar levels to nearly normal, there were 54 more deaths than in the group whose levels were less rigidly controlled. The patients were in the study for an average of four years when investigators called a halt to the intensive blood sugar lowering and put all of them on the less intense regimen.

The results do not mean blood sugar is meaningless. Lowered blood sugar can protect against kidney disease, blindness and amputations, but the findings inject an element of uncertainty into what has been dogma — that the lower the blood sugar the better and that lowering blood sugar levels to normal saves lives.

Medical experts were stunned.

“It’s confusing and disturbing that this happened,” said Dr. James Dove, president of the American College of Cardiology. “For 50 years, we’ve talked about getting blood sugar very low. Everything in the literature would suggest this is the right thing to do,” he added.

Dr. Irl Hirsch, a diabetes researcher at the University of Washington , said the study’s results would be hard to explain to some patients who have spent years and made an enormous effort, through medication and diet, getting and keeping their blood sugar down. They will not want to relax their vigilance, he said.

“It will be similar to what many women felt when they heard the news about estrogen,” Dr. Hirsch said. “Telling these patients to get their blood sugar up will be very difficult.”

Dr. Hirsch added that organizations like the American Diabetes Association would be in a quandary. Its guidelines call for blood sugar targets as close to normal as possible.

And some insurance companies pay doctors extra if their diabetic patients get their levels very low.

The low-blood-sugar hypothesis was so entrenched that when the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute and the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases proposed the study in the 1990s, they explained that it would be ethical. Even though most people assumed that lower blood sugar was better, no one had rigorously tested the idea. So the study would ask if very low blood sugar levels in people with Type 2 diabetes — the form that affects 95 percent of people with the disease — would protect against heart disease and save lives.

Some said that the study, even if ethical, would be impossible. They doubted that participants — whose average age was 62, who had had diabetes for about 10 years, who had higher than average blood sugar levels, and who also had heart disease or had other conditions, like high blood pressure and high cholesterol, that placed them at additional risk of heart disease — would ever achieve such low blood sugar levels.

Study patients were randomly assigned to one of three types of treatments: one comparing intensity of blood sugar control; another comparing intensity of cholesterol control; and the third comparing intensity of blood pressure control. The cholesterol and blood pressure parts of the study are continuing.

Dr. John Buse, the vice-chairman of the study’s steering committee and the president of medicine and science at the American Diabetes Association, described what was required to get blood sugar levels low, as measured by a protein, hemoglobin A1C, which was supposed to be at 6 percent or less.

“Many were taking four or five shots of insulin a day,” he said. “Some were using insulin pumps. Some were monitoring their blood sugar seven or eight times a day.”

They also took pills to lower their blood sugar, in addition to the pills they took for other medical conditions and to lower their blood pressure and cholesterol. They also came to a medical clinic every two months and had frequent telephone conversations with clinic staff.

Those assigned to the less stringent blood sugar control, an A1C level of 7.0 to 7.9 percent, had an easier time of it. They measured their blood sugar once or twice a day, went to the clinic every four months and took fewer drugs or lower doses.

So it was quite a surprise when the patients who had worked so hard to get their blood sugar low had a significantly higher death rate, the study investigators said.

The researchers asked whether there were any drugs or drug combinations that might have been to blame. They found none, said Dr. Denise G. Simons-Morton, a project officer for the study at the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute. Even the drug Avandia, suspected of increasing the risk of heart attacks in diabetes, did not appear to contribute to the increased death rate.

Nor was there an unusual cause of death in the intensively treated group, Dr. Simons-Morton said. Most of the deaths in both groups were from heart attacks, she added.

For now, the reasons for the higher death rate are up for speculation. Clearly, people without diabetes are different from people who have diabetes and get their blood sugar low.

It might be that patients suffered unintended consequences from taking so many drugs, which might interact in unexpected ways, said Dr. Steven E. Nissen, chairman of the department of cardiovascular medicine at the Cleveland Clinic.

Or it may be that participants reduced their blood sugar too fast, Dr. Hirsch said. Years ago, researchers discovered that lowering blood sugar very quickly in diabetes could actually worsen blood vessel disease in the eyes, he said. But reducing levels more slowly protected those blood vessels.

And there are troubling questions about what the study means for people who are younger and who do not have cardiovascular disease. Should they forgo the low blood sugar targets?

No one knows.

Other medical experts say that they will be discussing and debating the results for some time.

“It is a great study and very well run,” Dr. Dove said. “And it certainly had the right principles behind it.”

But maybe, he said, “there may be some scientific principles that don’t hold water in a diabetic population.”

Acupuncture for Migraines

Judith Warner's health blog on the New York Times website tells an interesting story about her battle with migraines. A former eight-cup-a-day coffee addict, she successfully managed her migraines with a combination of acupuncture and the antidepressant amitriptyline.

Then last month, my acupuncturist moved away. This was hard, and detrimentally affected my energy. My mother had a serious health scare, triggering one of those facing mortality moments that adversely affect everyone’s energy, too. Plus, I was given a do-or-die deadline on my three-years-overdue book on children’s mental health issues. And the economy collapsed.

Any one of these events could have been a migraine trigger. Together — combined, perhaps, with ragweed — they launched me right back to where I’d been one year ago, pre-acupuncture, in the darkest of the migrainous days, having headache after headache and popping pill after pill.

She tried another, stronger medication from her doctor. The column details her struggle with the seriously disabling side-effects of this drug. She doesn't name the drug, but many people, in the comments section, declare that they recognize the symptoms from their own life and that it must have been Topamax.

New Warning Label for Children's Cold Medicine

The pharmaceutical industry has taken the pre-emptive step of adding an extra warning label to their children's cold medicine. The label will advise parents not to use the products in children under 4 years old. The following quote from the New York Times will shed some light on how we got to this point:

Safety experts at the agency recommended a year ago that it consider banning use of over-the-counter cough and cold medicines in children under 6, and an advisory panel concurred. Manufacturers agreed at first only to warn against the products’ use in children under 2 and vowed to fight further restrictions... Despite the products’ extraordinary popularity, every study performed in recent years shows that they have no therapeutic effect beyond sedation, and a growing number of reports have concluded that they can be dangerous. The risks are as varied as hives, neurological problems and, in rare cases, even death.

Chinese medicine effectively treats all kinds of pediatric complaints, from common respiratory illnesses to skin irritations and bedwetting.

Previously on Everyday Health TCM:

• Tylenol Puts Children At Risk For Asthma
  
• Over-The-Counter Medicine Ban for Children

Over-The-Counter Medicine Ban for Children

Facts about children:

• They are dirty

• They like to stick things in their mouths

• They are little sacks of germs that get colds all the time, and pass them amongst each other because they are dirty and like to stick things in their mouths

Facts about colds:

• Most colds clear up on their own after a few days

• The best remedy for a cold is rest and fluids

Facts about over-the-counter cold medications for children:

• They were approved by the FDA only 30 years ago without any separate studies done to prove their safety or efficacy in children

• To date, there are still no studies that show the medications to be effective, even though there have been some research into the serious side effects (such as death in some cases)

• Thousands of children are sent to the emergency room every year from the administration of these drugs

• There is very little known about what the potential unknown side effects of these drugs are

• Despite the urgings of the American Academy of Pediatrics and Food and Drug Administration officials to remove these OTC cold remedies from the market, they are still being manufactured and sold across the country

• Families in the US spend over $286 million a year on these cough and cold medications for kids, of which there are over 800 different kinds on the market... That's a big market!