Widely Used Agricultural Pesticide Causes Sex Change

There is something strange in the water indeed!!

In my previous life as a scientific researcher, I spent hours and hours conducting studies on atrazine and it's effects on the endocrine system. Last year the EPA approved of its continued use despite results from various laboratories throughout the country arguing that more stringent regulation may be necessary. This past Monday, the prestigious journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America published an article from my former laboratory called: "Atrazine induces complete feminization and chemical castration in male African clawed frogs (Xenopus laevis)"

From the title of the paper you can probably guess what they were able to find.

Male frogs not only showed signs of demasculinization, but actually became fully female and had the ability to lay viable eggs. Essentially, they had a chemical sex change through environmental exposure! If that isn't crazy enough, the levels at which these frogs were exposed to atrazine are thousands of times below the level currently allowable in drinking water.

Read the abstract from PNAS.

Here are some quotable quotes from around the news world:

About 75% of stream water samples and 40% of groundwater samples contain atrazine, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. The Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental advocacy group, detected atrazine in 90% of tap water samples from 139 water systems. Inexpensive faucet-top water filters can remove the chemical" - USA Today, March 1, 2010

Atrazine can be transported more than 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) from the point of application via rainfall and, as a result, contaminates otherwise pristine habitats - AFP, March 1, 2010

Approximately 80 million pounds (36,287 tonnes) are applied annually in the United States alone, and atrazine is the most common pesticide contaminant of ground and surface water.

The negative impacts on wild amphibians is especially concerning given that the dose examined here (2.5 ppb) is in the range that animals experience year-round in areas where atrazine is used as well within levels found in rainfall, in which levels can exceed 100 ppb in the Midwestern United States - Reuters, March 2, 2010

Atrazine was banned in the European Union (EU) in 2004 because of its persistent groundwater contamination. In the United States, however, atrazine is one of the most widely used herbicides, with 76 million pounds of it applied each year, in spite of the restriction that used to be imposed. It is probably the most commonly used herbicide in the world, and is used in about 80 countries worldwide. Its endocrine disruptor effects, possible carcinogenic effect, and epidemiological connection to low sperm levels in men has led several researchers to call for banning it in the US. - Wikipedia

Men with higher levels of three commonly used farming pesticides—alachlor, atrazine, and diazinon—in their bodies were much more likely to have a low sperm count than men who showed low levels of the pesticides. - National Geographic, April 2005

Eating GMO Corn Proven To Be Hazardous To Your Health

A new study published in the International Journal of Biological Sciences showed that three different varieties of genetically modified corn from Monsanto are toxic to the liver and kidneys.

The difference between their study and the ones conducted by Monsanto? Monsanto manipulated the results of their experiment by using statistical analyses that would favor the safety of their product, as opposed to utilizing all tools available to them to fully analyze the data to determine whether or not there were signs of toxicity.

Another difference? Any sign of toxicity should have elicited a need to continue collecting data past the 90 days Monsanto had designated for the length of their study, since 90 days is no where near long enough to determine long-term effects and chronic illness. The authors of this recently published paper, on the other hand, are extending their experiment for up to two years in light of their results.

Makes me wanna smash things.

The thing that gets me is that these products have been deemed safe for human consumption based on the powerful truth that is science. However, the research itself is up for sale, whereby some laboratories have been paid to produce specific data and, conversely, paid to stop experiments when the data conflicts with what the agropharma companies want to see. It makes me angry.

Anyway, I'm done with my ranting. Just don't eat any GMO foods if you can help it, ok?

Women's Voices Makes Plants Grow Faster

Photo of Havy Hoag from Berkeley, CA with her home gardened tomato plant.

A fun little study they did in the UK showed that tomato plants listening to a woman's voice grew at least an inch taller than one's listening to a man's. As a matter of fact, some men's voices caused the plants to stunt in growth compared to ones left to grow in silence. Ha!

Thanks to Yo Sanner Jessica Smith for the article!

Green tea catechins linked to weight loss

More news about green tea! It's good for weight loss too.

See the full study here.

Green Tea vs. Breast Cancer

Regular consumption of green tea may reduce a woman’s risk of breast cancer by about 12 per cent, according to a new study from the US and China.

See the full study here.

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.

Efficacy of Scalp E-Stim Acupuncture

A study published last week in PNAS described the use of non-invasive electrical stimulation to improve motor skills. The research was conducted in hopes of finding a treatment that would help stroke victims during rehabilitation. The experiment involved placing electrodes over the primary motor cortex that stimulated the volunteer test subjects for 5 days. Those that were electrically stimulated were able to perform a set of tasks better than those who were given the sham treatment, and follow-up three months later showed that they also retained the ability to perform those skills better than their untreated counterparts.

The primary motor cortex is indicated by the green area below:




Now, take a look at this drawing that represents the lines used for scalp acupuncture:



Notice how the green highlighting on the map of the brain corresponds to the motor area used in scalp acupuncture? That, of course, is not a coincidence as this particular mapping used in scalp acupuncture was developed in modern times. The Chinese have used scalp acupuncture since 1971 to successfully treat diseases such as stroke rehabilitation, severe head injuries, intracranial inflammation, extra-pyramidal diseases, Meniere's and others.

The needling technique utilized in scalp acupuncture is to rotate the needle at a rate of 200 times a minute, for five minutes, and it is generally believed that the stronger the stimulation the better. The manipulation should be repeated 2-3 times during the course of a 20 minute treatment. Using electrical stimulation on the acupuncture needles allows for continuous stimulation administered at any desired frequency, with the potential for multiple needles being stimulated simultaneously.

Scalp e-stim acupuncture is a safe and effective way to treat a multitude of syndromes that involve damage to the brain. The new research conducted at Johns Hopkins supports the efficacy of electrical stimulation as a treatment modality in stroke rehabilitation.

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.

Garlic Lowers Blood Glucose

Garlic is one of those super foods that you know intuitively must be potent due to its distinguishable pungency and pentrating taste. Turns out scientific studies have proven that it has strong antibacterial properties, making it an effective treatment for colds and skin infections. It is also an anti-oxidant that has been used for managing high cholesterol levels.

A recent study published in Metallomics shows that garlic has the potential to be used in the treatment of diabetes. Researchers found that ingesting substituents found in garlic lowers blood sugar for both Type 1 and Type 2 diabetics. If proven to be effective, this would be a breakthrough for Type 1 diabetic patients, reliant on injectable insulin, who can potentially take a garlic pill instead of a shot.

Read the article here.

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.”

Meet The Herbs: Xi Yang Shen

Chinese: 西洋參
Pin Yin: Xi Yang Shen
Pharmaceutical: Panacis quinquefolii Radix
English: American ginseng root
Vietnamese: Hoa Kỳ Sâm

Categorized by Bensky et al as a yin tonifying herb, Xi Yang Shen is like Ren Shen's heat clearing cousin. It's cold and bitter, slightly sweet, and enters the Heart, Kidney, and Lung channels. Some modern studies conducted in China comparing the constituents of Xi Yang Shen and Ren Shen have concluded that they are equivalent in effectiveness. This makes the herb useful when you want to tonify qi without the warmth of Ren Shen.

Because of this, Xi Yang Shen is an excellent herb to use in the treatment of diabetes. The symptoms of excessive thirst and hunger are indicative of heat in the Lungs and Stomach. The cold nature of the herb can cool the fire, while it generates fluids to replenish the yin burned up by heat and lost through excessive urination. Individuals with diabetes require tonification, due to the nature of chronic illness burning up qi and yin.

There have been several studies conducted to test the efficacy of Xi Yang Shen in the treatment of diabetes. One recent study showed that this herb increases production of insulin and reduces the death of pancreatic beta cells (which make and release insulin). It was also shown to benefit immunity, mitochondrial function (cellular energy production), and improve blood sugar levels taken after eating.

The best way to cook this herb is by double boiling it for several hours - here's a good explanation of the process on this retail website (just to let you know, you can buy a ginseng cooker for less at your local Asian market). The longer it cooks, the more potent the tea will be.

Another way to extract the goodness of the herb is by making a tincture. Simply put the herb in a glass container and cover it with vodka. Keep the container out of direct light, and shake it up once a day. If the herbs expand above the level of the alcohol, just add more to keep the herbs covered. The longer the herb is extracted, the more potent the tincture will be, but definitely do it for at least two weeks.

Pre-Historic Health Spa

Stonehenge has long been thought of as a burial site, where cremated remains and bodies have been found that date as far back as 3000 BCE. But the history of the land on which it rests dates back even farther: there were post holes for large wooden poles found in that location dated back to 8000 BCE. It seems as though this point on Earth has always held a certain significance, drawing different people and cultures to it throughout time. It should be no wonder then that as time passed, the purpose of the place could have changed in significance to those who visited it.

In the most recent excavation of the site - the first one in 44 years - two archaeologists have theorized that Stonehenge could have actually been used as a place of pilgrimage for those who were sick and dying, a veritable health spa of sorts.

There are bluestones placed in the inner ring of Stonehenge that were determined to have come from Preseli Mountains in Southwest Wales, 140 miles from Stonehenge. To give you an idea of how significant that is, the larger rocks of the more recognizably Stonehenge structure came from only 20 miles north of the site. Whoever was building Stonehenge at the time made it a point to bring those big bluestones in there.

Bluestones, named for the bluish color that appears when the stones get wet or cut, are recorded as having healing properties:

The stones are great;
And magic power they have;
Men that are sick;
Fare to that stone;
And they wash that stone;
And with that water bathe away their sickness.

The archaeologists also found that natural springheads, where water comes up from the ground, had been enhanced by the erection of small walls to dam the water that came up, creating little pools they proposed the sick would be able to sit in. Some of the springheads were "adorned with pre-historic art."

Bodies buried nearby that are contemporary to the time the bluestones were in place also support their theory. The remains of the buried show injuries that were possible causes of death, suggesting that these people had come to the site in hopes of being healed.

The full article about their new findings is printed in the October issue of the Smithsonian magazine.

Tylenol Puts Children At Risk For Asthma

A study was performed in Hong Kong that showed children were at an increased risk for developing asthma and eczema by the age of 6 or 7 if they had been given paracetamol (or acetominophen, brand name Tylenol) during infancy. The study included 205,000 children in 31 countries, and determined that paracetamol use in the first year of life was associated with a 46 percent higher risk of asthma by the time the children were 6 or 7 compared to those never exposed to the drug. If the drug was given to the child at least once a year but less than once a month within the past 12 months, it increased the likelihood of developing asthma by 61 percent. If a child was given the drug once a month or more, the risk for asthma is tripled, the risk for eczema is doubled, and the child is also at high risk for developing rhinoconjunctivitis.

The pharmaceutical alternative for pain and fever, aspirin, is linked to the risk of Reye's disease, and is not recommended for babies. So despite the recent findings, the researchers claim that paracetamol is still the drug of choice for such pediatric problems, since asthma and eczema beats getting brain damage.

It's too bad there was no mention in the study by the researchers, or in the article in Reuter's, about alternatives to both of these drugs, especially because people love their herbal decoctions in Hong Kong. Chinese medicine treats a whole slew of pediatric diseases, and there are specific treatment plans especially for infantile febrile disorders. One of the most effective ways to treat fever in a baby is to massage it out with special tui na techniques along the channels (which are different in a baby than in an adult), using fast, light movements coupled with a little bit of water. There are also herbs that can be used to reduce a fever in a matter of minutes with little to no side effects in comparison to synthetic pharmaceutical drugs. Acupuncture can even be administered to vent the heat, though for babies it's more of a quick in-and-out pricking with the needles than a relaxing 30 minutes on the table.

Little bodies have a lot of things going on when they first enter the world, and a lot of biochemical changes are happening very quickly. It's kind of crazy to think about how just one exposure can put a child at such a dramatic level of risk.

Acupuncture for Post-Op Pain Relief!