Cola companies under pressure worldwide

The UK has led the way for a group of consumer organisations from 20 different countries to issue a public call for soft drink giants Coca-Cola and Pepsi to stop marketing directly to children. With 24% of the US population now defined as obese, this is clearly a problem and sugared, carbonated drinks add sweet fuel to the fire.

Letters pointing out the dangers of products containing high amounts of sugar or caffeine to children under the age of 16 have been sent out worldwide to the drinks giants and their subsidiaries. The products being targeted include not just colas but also sweetened juices, sports drinks and teas and they want them also removed from being offered or sold in schools.

In addition, they want the companies to prominently label the front of all such products with the number of calories per serving, and to limit their sponsorship of sports and health programmes.

New regulations in the UK have banned the advertising of junk food on television to children under the age of 16, and there is agreement on a voluntary pledge by major food companies to stop advertising those foods to children under the age of 12. Ten companies have signed up to this so far,including Coke and Pepsi,in an effort to avoid being faced with potentially stricter compulsory regulations.

The groups involved in issuing the new set of demands say that Coke and Pepsi’s marketing efforts contribute to increasing obesity levels, especially in children. The Mexican group, El Poder del Consumidor, are particularly concerned that many of the drink company ads are misleading. For instance, in Mexico a campaign was run for a Coca Cola-sponsored nutrition campaign that promoted drinking Coca-Cola as a good way to rehydrate after exercise.

How natural is your shampoo?

Over the last few years shampoos have strived to impress us with the naturalness of their ingredients. If you believe the ads they are all hand-harvested in the Amazonian rainforests and you are getting an amazing variety of herbs, flowers and probably a pounding waterfall or at least a fast flowing river to go along with it. What they don’t tell you is that you are also getting in there an amazing cocktail of chemicals – the word ‘natural’ is one of the most misleading in advertising.

It is estimated by the consumer watchdog group Proof that around 93 per cent of all shampoos currently on the market contain chemicals that are linked to cancer or other health problems. So just becasue your favourite brand contains herbs or is organic doesn’t necessarily mean it is innocent of chemicals. As ever, read the label and try to avoid the following ingredients:

- lauryl sulphates: are the most potentially carcinogenic compounds found in many personal care products

- PEG (polyethylene glycol): this is what gives you that nice foam that makes you think your shampoo is doing a good job. These ‘foaming agents’ often contain the carcinogens dioxane and ethylene oxide, which have been linked to leukaemia, and brain, uterine and breast cancers

- Propylene glycol: you find this chemical in your anti-freeze and in a shampoo it rapidly penetrates the skin. It’s been associated with liver and kidney damage, and central nervous system problems.

It is especially important to be vigilant when buying products for babies and children as a high concentration of lauryl sulphates has been found in a shampoo that’s specially marketed to children, and labelled as being ‘extra gentle’.

Simply Nature have a good PEG-free shampoo you can find on their website at www.simply-nature.co.uk or get your reading glasses out for that very small print on the bottles in the supermarket or your local chemist!

St John’s Wort – Does it work?

Get ready – this is the rant! As someone who has been writing about health for 20 years, I thought I had become anaesthetised to the ‘false information’ syndrome that seems to accompany most natural medicines. Linus Pauling is a fine example. He was one of the first scientists to work in the fields of quantum chemistry, molecular biology and orthomolecular medicine, was awarded two Nobel Prizes in different fields which you would have thought was enough qualification for anyone. However, his research into the benefits of vitamin C on health were systematically rubbished for years, and now a natural supplement that has been proven to help thousands cope with depression is getting similarly clobbered.

In the best Parliamentary tradition, I have to declare an ‘interest’ in the subject as I have been subject to depression since childhood and have tried virtually every form of treatment, both chemical and natural, over the years. St John’s Wort works for many people – but not for everyone, so I am never surprised to read research that shows it hasn’t been effective within certain parameters.

What I am surprised, and horrified, to discover is that the latest round of ‘St John’ bashing has come from a group of medical men who concluded “that the St.John’s Wort herb is useless in treating ADHD in children”.

That it is true I don’t doubt, because what they didn’t disclose at the time was that all the children used in the study were given inactive forms of the herb, where the active ingredients had been oxidized and rendered useless. Even the Journal of American Medicine admitted that:

“The product used in this trial was tested for hypericin and hyperforin content at the end of the trial and contained only 0.13% hypericin and 0.14% hyperforin.”

That constitutes a sub-clinical dose, barely containing any usable St. John’s Wort at all. It is in fact barely one-tenth of one percent of the active chemical constituents in the herb, and any decent supplement typically contain up to five percent hyperforin, or thirty-five times the amount of active ingredient used in this trial. JAMA felt obliged to point out:

“Hyperforin is a very unstable constituent that quickly oxidizes and then becomes inactive, which is likely what happened to the product used in this clinical trial.”

In other words, they admitted that it was an inactive, ineffective, form that had been used.

Even more worrying is the fact that there were only 54 children used in the results of the trial, with 27 receiving a placebo and 27 receiving St. John’s Wort. This is a very small sample size to justify any declaration that it doesn’t work, especially given the fact that it has been safely and effectively used by tens of millions of people around the world in just the last decade or so.

Incredibly, more than 40 percent of the children used in the study had previously also used psychiatric medications, and we already know that such drugs actually cause behavioural disorders, shown by the fact that so many children commit violent acts against themselves and others after taking psychiatric medications.

This trial was set up to fail on so many levels; for example, six children who displayed a large response to the placebo were supposed to have been dropped from the study to isolate the herb’s effects from placebo effects. However, they were ‘accidentally’ randomized and their results put into the final conclusion, which had the effect of distorting the final results in favour of placebo responders, and reducing the numbers who responded positively to the St John’sWort.

Another example of the study’s bias is that young boys are far more susceptible to the kinds of behaviours that are labelled as “ADHD,” compared to young girls, and yet in this study, the placebo group consisted of only about 50% boys while the herb treatment group consisted of nearly 75% boys. In other words, the placebo group was predisposed to a positive outcome simply due to its composition of girls vs. boys, while the herb treatment group was predisposed to a less-than-favourable response.

To say nothing of the sheer cynicism of this research, and trying not to boil over at them using young children to test something for a serious condition that they absolutely had guaranteed in advance would not work, they then sent numerous press releases out that warned parents not to use the herb. Some of the headlines included:

St. John’s Wort Doesn’t Work for ADHD Washington Post

St. John’s wort no better than placebo for ADHD, Bastyr study finds Seattle Times St. John’s wort doesn’t help ADHD, study finds Reuters That would certainly put most parents off, but it is not really so surprising when you know that one of the study’s authors, Dr. Joseph Biederman, secretly took $1.6 million from drug companies while conducting psychotropic drug experiments on children, and is currently on the payroll of several drug pharmacies selling ADHD medications – a fact he did not disclose when publishing the study in the Journal of the American Medical Association. So he was not likely to want to find that St John’s Wort, or any other natural alternatives, had any effect on treating a condition cheaply and without recourse to drugs. The whole point of the study of course was to make natural medicines look bad. I had thought after Linus Pauling’s hard battle to get his views accredited that it might have got a bit easier – but clearly the agenda is still a commercial, rather than a medical one.

In case you were wondering, St. John’s Wort has been clinically proven to be even more effective than antidepressant drugs for treating mild to moderate depression. That is a much better track record than all the SSRI drugs ever invented, whether it works for ADHD I don’t know, but I would want to see much better research before it is so cavalierly dismissed.

Testosterone – yes or no?

Just as oestrogen production declines in women as they reach menopause, so does testosterone production slows down in men as they too approach middle age. Women have physical symptoms to show them that their oestrogen levels are declining, but men generally do not have such markers.

The idea of a ‘male menopause’ is a popular one – the clinical term is “andropause – but there’s little evidence to back it up. However, the makers of popular ‘libido’ supplements have not let that get in the way of a potential market and there are a number of herbal products on sale that are aimed at men. It is true that some men do report sexual dysfunction or lack of desire, fatigue and weakness as they age, but most of these physical complaints are more often the influence of lifestyle factors such as diet, stress and inactivity.

The next step up from the freely available sexual dysfunction  is to take additional testosterone which may promise more energy, strength and virility – but rarely deliver. In fact, it can positively be dangerous. Although most healthy middle-aged men taking this hormone may experience a placebo effect at best, they do run an increased risk of prostate problems at worst.

Taking additional testosterone should only be undertaken if you have thoroughly discussed it with your doctor and they feel it would be appropriate for you.

By the way – it’s not just men who take testosterone, women also produce it in smaller amounts in their bodies and at menopause some women take it to increase libido and energy. However, my friend and colleague, Dr Bond and I used to run menopause seminars together and while we were watching the women seating themselves, we would look round the room and could easily identify the women who were on testosterone. They did not look ‘sexier’, but were instantly recognizable to those who knew what the signs were and it was not a particularly attractive look. Women too should only take it on their Doctor’s recommendation and always at the stated dose.

8 ways to prevent heartburn

Heartburn can be mildly unpleasant to really distressing, and although most people experience it occasionally it is when it is more frequent that you need to take action. If you are always carrying a packet of Rennies in your pocket, or some other over- the-counter medicine, then it is time start tackling the probable cause. Symptoms of heartburn include:

- Chest pain, especially while lying down at night
- Sour taste in the mouth
- Coughing, wheezing, hoarseness
- Aggravation of asthma
- Sore throat
- Regurgitation of food or liquid

If you suffer from it frequently – twice a week or more – then first visit your doctor to rule out any other issues, such as angina, which has similar symptoms. What you may be suffering from is gastroesophageal reflux disease, or GERD. This condition occurs in people whose lower oesophageal sphincter doesn’t close properly, and that means that the acid from your stomach is able to flow back into the oesophagus, which can irritate its delicate lining, and that is what causes the pain.

The condition can also be triggered, or made worse, by a number of factors, perhaps something in your diet, stress, smoking, some medications and pregnancy can all trigger or worsen symptoms.

An alternative approach is to take some responsibility for the condition yourself and try the following approaches:

1 Keep a food and beverage journal. It can help you track and avoid triggers.

2 Eat small, frequent meals, not one huge one

3 Wear loose clothing and maintain a healthy weight to prevent stomach constriction and help reduce GERD

4 Avoiding lying down after eating, a gentle stroll or doing the washing up is a much better idea

5 Practice relaxation techniques such as breathing exercises or meditation

6 Sip chamomile tea as it can help soothe inflamed tissue in the oesophagus – adding some honey could improve the taste and give you extra immune support

7 If you usually sleep on your back, or on your right, try switching to sleeping on your left side. This may help move acid away from the entrance of the oesophagus and be enough to prevent it backing up

8 Experiment with DGL (deglycyrrhizinated liquorice), this is a supplement proven to be effective against GERD – but not if you have high blood pressure as liquorice can raise it

Ovarian cancer risk from food

There is news this month of a surprising finding from the results of an eleven year study on diet and cancer occurrence in the Netherlands. This was a long-term study of nearly 63,000 women who faithfully filled in dietary questionnaires for the whole of that period and what researchers found was a link between a greatly increased risk of ovarian and endometrial cancers with certain dietary habits.

The ‘guilty party’ is Acrylamide, which is a chemical produced when starchy foods like potatoes are baked, fried or roasted, but does not occur with boiling. It was first detected in food in 2002; prior to that, acrylamide was believed to be a solely industrial chemical and a number of previous studies have implicated it as a carcinogen.

Unusually, the problem is compounded if the women had never smoked as statistically the non-smokers from the women in the study were even more susceptible. They had a 99 percent higher risk of endometrial cancer and a 122 percent higher risk of ovarian cancer among those with the highest acrylamide intake. By contrast, the smokers had a 29 percent higher risk of endometrial cancer and a 78 percent higher risk of ovarian cancer, though why this should be the case the research hasn’t yet thrown up.

While some scientists have hypothesized that the human body may detoxify acrylamide when it is ingested in food, or that human intake is too low to pose health risks, the current study suggests that even at dietary doses, acrylamide is a human carcinogen.

What can you do? As ever, balance is the answer. If it is frying, baking and roasting are the culprits then reduce the amount of times you have potatoes, or other starchy foods, done in this way. Enjoy your new potatoes steamed or boiled with some herb butter and keep the roasties and chips to an occasional treat.

Tips for prostate health

June 9-16 2008 is Men’s Health Week, and you may never think about your prostate until it forces itself on your attention by frequent trips to the loo. Being a great believer in prevention, pass on these tips to help yourself, and others. There are 7 in total, one for every day of Men’s Health Week.

The condition known as BPH (Benign prostatic hyperplasia) is a non-cancerous enlargement of the prostate gland, common in men in the Western world aged 50 and over. While the actual cause is not completely understood, experts believe it is closely linked to hormone levels and they of course are influenced by diet and lifestyle. To reduce the risk of BPH, try these:

1 Eat a diet low in saturated and trans-fats, focusing instead on the much healthier monounsaturated and omega-3 fats

2 Japanese women suffer few menopause symptoms, believed to be due to their diet being high in soy products. Now it seems that Asian men have a lower risk of BPH which some researchers believe is related to their high intake of soy foods – so add in some soy milk or yoghurt to your diet

3 Avoid symptom triggers such as caffeine and alcohol, because they increase your need to urinate and can also irritate the bladder.

4 The pressure from constipation may make the symptoms of BPH worse so avoid constipation by increasing the amount of fibre in your diet.

5 Have regular health and prostate check-ups from your late forties onwards

6 Try saw palmetto (Serenoa repens) or male supplements for prostate which contain it. Often recommended for men who have prostate problems, saw palmetto does not shrink the size of the prostate, but it often helps promote healthy function and decreases symptoms. The best form to use is an extract standardized to 85-95% total fatty acids. Use 160 mg twice daily

7 Make herbs and nutrients such as green tea extract, stinging nettle root, ginger, rosemary, zinc, lycopene, and selenium part of your regular diet as they have all have been shown to help maintain and promote normal prostate health

Salad days

One good thing about hot weather is that it encourages us to eat more healthily. Even if you are not a fan of what my father persistently referred to as ‘rabbit food’, once the temperature rises it is an option that many people look on more favourably. If it’s not one of your personal favourites, could you learn to at least look on it with kindliness as eating just one salad a day really is amazingly good for you.

A study conducted by the UCLA School of Public Health and Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center has just revealed that those who eat salads and raw vegetables have considerably higher levels of vitamins C, E, B6, and folic acid — key nutrients in promoting a healthy immune system and reducing the risk of obesity, heart disease and other chronic illnesses.

Just one salad a day goes a long way to meeting the Government’s recommended daily allowance of vitamins and minerals – and that RDA is well below what any nutritionist would recommend so maybe two salads a day? In the USA, less than 50% of the population meets the daily recommendation for vegetables, and I suspect the Brits are not too far behind them. What is particularly deficient in the average diet are the vital water-soluble vitamins C and B complex which need to be ingested daily as the body does not store them. The raw vegetables in salads provide a good source of these vitamins, plus you get fibre for better digestion and antioxidants for boosting immunity.

Interestingly, clinical trials have shown that adding salad dressing increases the absorption of certain nutrients which require oil to be fully metabolised – these include A, D, E and K. Choose olive oil or omega 3 and 6 oils from flax seed or a similar source for the most benefit.

Home help for athletes foot

This common fungal infection thrives in warm, damp environments, such as the locker rooms, health clubs, public showers, and indoor swimming pools. If you have any of the following symptoms, it is important to check with your doctor first because your symptoms may be caused by another condition and you want to rule out that possibility before treating the condition yourself:

** Itching, burning, or stinging between the toes or on soles of the feet.

** Scales, cracks, cuts, peeling skin or blisters between the toes or on soles of the feet.

** Skin dryness on the sides or bottom of the foot

If the infection spreads to under the toenails, causing thick, crumbly, discoloured, or separated toenails, it is called onchomycosis and it can be very difficult to treat.

The best home help for Athlete’s Foot is Tea Tree Oil, not least because it is the most commonly used home remedy because of its antiseptic qualities and ability to kill many bacteria and fungi. Tea tree oil has a long history of traditional use in Australia – where it originates from – as a remedy for skin infections and it was also used by the British Army to help deal with Trench Foot in the First World War.

Prevention

Once you have treated the condition, here’s how to avoid repeat infection:

- Keep your feet thoroughly dry, especially between your toes

- Wear only cotton socks and change them daily

- Moisture and heat cause the athlete’s foot fungus to thrive, so where you can, avoid tight, closed-toe shoes and wear loose fitting shoes or sandals

- Never go barefoot in public places like showers at the gym or theswimming pool, wear flip-flops or jelly sandals

- Use a foot powder to keep feet dry

- Wash socks in the hot water setting of the washing machine to kill off any bacteria.

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.

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