Oh really?

I know many doctors are sceptical of alternative medicine and its benefits, but according to one story from the States it is really only safe to try it when the patient is dead. A Chinese woman of 19 underwent cranial surgery at an American hospital, but she died two weeks later. She was declared dead, but was kept on a ventilator to allow her parents to get to the hospital and see her. On arrival, the father asked that she be given a Traditional Chinese Medicine concoction, which he said was routinely used in his society for patients in a coma.

The doctors had several conversations with the father, but couldn’t see how the herb could help a patient who was, to all intents and purposes, dead. Perplexed, they called in the hospital’s ethics committee to ask whether they could administer the substance while the patient remained on a ventilator.

After much deliberation, the committee sanctioned the use of the herb as it offered “psychological benefits to the family and the absence of risk to the patient (since she was dead).” As a life-long believer in combining the best of medical knowledge with the vast experience of treatment from the many traditional (ie alternative) systems of medicine, I can only hope this was not typical of most medical staff’s beliefs. I know doctors and nurses in the UK who allow homoeopathy, aromatherapy and even acupuncture for pain relief in childbirth in some hospitals – let’s hope that attitude spreads.

Yet more benefits of green tea

As I have now trailed so many benefits of this ‘wonder’ tea, I am amazed the supermarket shelves haven’t been stripped bare, and yet here is another one. You know that it is packed with powerful antioxidants with lots of great health bonuses, but recently scientists discovered that green tea increased the effectiveness of certain antibiotics by as much as 99.99%…even when pitted against antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria.

This was a 12-month study at Alexandria University in Egypt and the results show that green tea boosted the performance of several antibiotics used in the treatment of 28 different disease-causing bacteria — including several strains of Staphylococcus. For example, 20 percent of previously drug-resistant bacteria were killed when green tea was combined with cephalosporin. This is good news because Cephalosporin is a widely used antibiotic – however many strains of bacteria have developed immunity against it.

Green tea was also shown to effectively support the antibiotics tetracycline, cefuroxime and it helped prevent the production of beta-lactamases-substances produced by bacteria allowing them to develop resistance to antibiotics.

So if you combine drinking green tea when on antibiotics you will help them be more effective and if you are drinking it regularly anyway then hopefully you won’t need the antibiotics at all, or in such quantity.

Risk of baby bottles – FDA keeps quiet

Information from the USA claims that plastics used in baby bottle feeders which contain the chemical bisphenol A (BPA) may cancer and diabetes. This is obviously a major concern but what is even more worrying is that America’s health regulator – The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) – has been suspected of sitting on the data and may be subpoenaed to release records about the safety of the bottles and infant formula liners.

The FDA has claimed the products are safe, but critics claim this is based on just two studies, which were both funded by the American Plastics Council – and you may be forgiven for thinking they would say that wouldn’t they? Only one of the studies was ever published and peer reviewed and many independent studies into BPA have linked the chemical to cancer, diabetes and obesity. Bart Stupak, a member of the Committee on Energy and Commerce that is considering the subpoena, said: “While many scientists have raised concerns about the safety of bisphenol A, the FDA seems to have relied only upon science paid for by the plastics industry’s lobbying group.”

A rosy outlook for arthritis pain

As a child I used to go off into the hedgerows gathering rosehips every autumn, and taking them to school as part of a massive country wide drive. We used to be paid the vast sum of a penny a bag and they were turned into rosehip syrup which after the war was a vital source of vitamin C. Rosehips are having a bit of a revival and a study review has concluded that they could be more effective than painkillers at easing the pain of arthritis sufferers. Apparently when made into a powder, the wild variety of rosehip, Rosa canina, was almost three times more effective than standard paracetamol at reducing pain in patients than paracetamol. It was also almost 40 per cent more effective than another common therapy, the drug glucosamine.

You should find it in supplement form in good health stores or there is an organic form available online at: www.little-green-nursery.co.uk.

Keep the grapes for yourself

Ever wondered why most of us take grapes to people in hospital and end up eating them ourselves at the bedside? My personal idea is that all hospital visiting is stressful and so we unconsciously try to reduce that stress by distracting ourselves. Stress can impact heart disease, so imagine my surprise to find I have scientific backing for this idea – perhaps not the exact circumstances,but the latest research findings from Spain show that antioxidant-rich red grapes are high in fibre and may reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease more effectively than other fibre sources such as oat or psyllium.

It has to be red grapes however, not any other colour as a trial conducted by researchers in Madrid reported that cholesterol levels fell by nine per cent, LDL (“bad”) cholesterol by a similar amount and blood pressure was reduced by about 5 per cent. The researchers said: “Grape antioxidant dietary fibre contains relatively large amounts of proanthocyanidins (condensed tannins), which are partially bioavailable in the small intestine, but a major part reach the colon, where they may provide a high antioxidant status.” This was only a small trial of 34 subjects, but might be worth you keeping that fruit bowl filled up with a large bunch if you have any concerns about family blood pressure.

Progesterone For Head Injuries?

I am very familiar with this natural hormone being used to treat osteoporosis and alleviate menopause symptoms, but Guomin Xiao, M.D., of Zhejiang University, has been doing a trial on treating head injury patients with injections of progesterone.

What was found was that less-severely brain-injured patients had almost a 50 per cent better chance of survival and better function after six months of treatment. Progesterone appeared to have little or no other effect during the acute phase but the main effect was seen during the recovery period after the patient had been discharged.

Although interesting, this was only a small study of 153 patients and further research is needed. However, certainly one of the benefits of progesterone as I have seen it used is to help alleviate depression, so it makes sense to see it extended to other brain function issues. Other medical research has previously found that the hormone aids in neuronal development and protects brain function in animal experiments.

Please Note: Natural progesterone is not available in the UK without a prescription as it is regulated as a natural medicine, although it is perfectly legal to buy it outside the UK and import it for your own use. Anyone wanting further information on how to obtain natural progesterone can contact us.

Juice benefits for Alzheimer’s

A recently concluded study which investigated Alzheimer’s disease in older Japanese populations living in Japan, Hawaii and Seattle, has found that people who drank fruit and vegetable juices more than three times a week had a 76 percent lower risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease than those who drank juice less than once per week.

This ten-year study was based on the fact that there is a very low incidence rate of Alzheimer’s disease in the Japanese population in their native country, but when Japanese people in the USA were studied they were found to have almost the same incidence rates as Americans have. Obviously this indicates that environmental factors like diet and lifestyle are important contributors to disease risk, but that the benefit of drinking juice was most apparent in those people who carry the genetic marker linked to late-onset Alzheimer’s disease — the most common form of the disease, which typically occurs after the age of 65.

Further research is being done on exactly what types of juice that would bring most benefit but from a natural healing viewpoint the most likely would seem to be pomegranate, cherry, red grape juice, red wine and fresh juiced vegetables. The researchers say that their findings are not yet conclusive so cannot be guaranteed to prevent Alzheimer’s but common sense would indicate that freshly juiced fruit and vegetables have all their essential minerals, vitamins and enzymes and would certainly improve overall health generally if not Alzheimer’s specifically.

A delicate topic for a delicate area

Assuming that you are like the majority of us, you get into the shower or bath and go to it with the soap or shower gel over your entire body. What you may not know is that many natural practitioners advise against using soap in the genital area because it can cause you problems. Soap should not be used to clean these ‘no-go areas’; the vaginal opening, the tip of the penis, and the anal sphincter. Why not? Because regularly applying soap to these areas can cause the mucosal lining to become dry and unhealthy and that in turn can lead to a number of uncomfortable health conditions. The two most common ones are chronic inflammation and a greater tendency to experience infections.

So please keep the soap away from those delicate openings and use it sparingly on the rest of your body. Nature has already rather cleverly designed your skin so that it is lined with sebaceous glands that secrete an oily substance called sebum, which is what keeps your skin waterproof and resistant to infection by undesirable microorganisms. It’s sebum that prevents soap from drying out skin to a point where significant health challenges can arise, but the mucosal linings of the genital and anal area don’t secrete sebum so they don’t offer the same offer the same protection against the drying effects of soap. So am I suggesting you don’t wash those areas at all? Certainly not, but just stick to using warm or hot water – the continental use of a bidet has a lot to recommend it. You may never have experienced any problems with using soap, but if someone is particularly sensitive to infection or inflammation then it is advice worth passing on.

Attitude, Illness and death

I know Christmas isn’t here yet, but I want to give you lots of notice of what I think will be a challenging and fascinating series of talks in the Royal Institution Christmas science lecture series by Dr Hugh Montgomery. He is an intensive care doctor, genetics researcher and Director of the Institute for Human Health and Performance at University College London and I think a brief ‘trailer’ is in order as I think what he has to say is so important about a topic that is often avoided, certainly by many doctors.

His lecture series will address what it is about certain people that enables them to survive starvation, extreme cold, extreme heat or lack of oxygen. He suggests that genes, environment and luck all play a part but what he was not able to tackle in the lectures is the question of the will to live in medical situations because it is a controversial topic. So I would like to flag it up here for your consideration.

Personally, I have given three talks this week; on procrastination, stress management and alternative health. The common theme in all of them was how important your attitude is to your success in life, your health and your happiness. The British Medical Journal has previously reported on the fact that a positive attitude prolongs lifespan and that positive thinkers recover faster from everyday illnesses and do not suffer from them as much as do those who have a more negative orpessimistic outlook.

Belief is a powerful thing. Ask anyone working in an intensive care ward or a hospice and they will tell you about people who have survived terminal illnesses altogether, or for longer than anyone could have predicted, and also have let go and died when given seeming ‘permission’ from family or their Doctor to do so. This is something that has long been privately acknowledged, but not publicly discussed, in the medical profession; that the ‘will to live’ or desire to die can influence a patient’s survival.

Dr Montgomery has raised the issue, based on his own experience. “What I have found again and again is that dying patients hold on for a loved one to arrive – say for a son to get the visa to fly to London and see mother in hospital for one last time. My father, who was unconscious in hospital for the last couple of days of his life, died at the rare moment when we – my mother, sisters and me – were in the room at the same time.” I have heard, and experienced myself, this phenomenon and been told of many similar stories of people ‘waiting’ to go for a specificevent or person to be present – and sometimes, absent.

As I said, this is a privately acknowledged fact by many doctors but it is also a controversial one. Dr Montgomery is not suggesting that some people who succumb to fatal illnesses may just lack the will to survive because it is important not to generalise. He is also looking at this from a behavioural psychology rather than a medical viewpoint. What he is saying is that one’s mental attitude or emotional state can cause fatal illnesses or help one survive and there is plenty of data to help support that view.

Certainly, we know that stress, often emotionally related, can cause coronary disease. St John Ambulance can confirm this in terms of the number of people who have heart attacks at football matches or majorsporting events. Dr Montgomery acknowledges that more work is needed on the notion of the will to live. “But when you come across, as I often do,two patients who seem to be in a similar condition and have the same strengths and weaknesses, but one dies and one lives, I’m convinced there is a will to live and that it’s important in deciding who survives. “As I am for ever pointing out to people, if you look at life with a half-full glass attitude then your ‘bonus gift’ is to have the potential to live an extra 7.5 years longer than your half-empty glass neighbour.

Worth thinking about isn’t it?

Broccoli juice as sunscreen?

As my friends will testify, vegetables and I are not on very intimate terms and broccoli is something I avoid at all costs. But I may change my mind because of it’s newly discovered potential as a sunscreen. Apparently an extract made from broccoli boosts the body’s natural ability to defend against the sun’s ultraviolet rays that cause skin cancer. According to a study by researchers at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in the USA, an extract of broccoli sprouts contains high levels of sulforaphane and gives substantial protection. Co-leader of the study, Paul Talalay, first discovered in 1992 that broccoli is rich in a naturally occurring plant compound called sulforaphane. While all cruciferous vegetables (such as cabbage, Brussels sprouts, broccoli, cauliflower, kale, mustard, turnip, radish and watercress) contain it to a certain degree, the concentration is highest in three-day-old sprouts of the broccoli plant.

Sulforaphane has the effect of activating cells’ production of what are known as “phase 2 enzymes.” One such enzyme, glutathione S-transferase, has been shown to neutralize the DNA-damaging compounds produced by the skin produces when struck by ultraviolet radiation. It also appears to reduce inflammation, which can cause precancerous growths to transform into full-blown cancerous tumors. Only a very small (6 person) trial has been done on this but they are enthusiastic about developing a new sunscreen product as many of the commercial products contain chemicals that are themselves potentially carcinogenic. However, unless they can get broccoli juice to smell more pleasant (I may not eat many vegetables but I do juice them) it will be no competition to my preferred choice which is the all-natural organic sun range from Annemarie Borlind.

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