For Healthy Eyes, Think Greens by Jean Baker, MS, RD It may take more than carrots to keep your eyes healthy, according to two recent articles in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.*1 Information gathered from two large studies suggests that a diet rich in substances called lutein and zeaxanthin (plant pigments that give dark green and yellow vegetables their characteristic colors) may reduce your risk for developing cataracts. Harvard researchers reported that women among the 77,000 participants in the Nurses’ Health Study with the highest intake of foods rich in lutein and zeaxanthin (especially spinach, broccoli, and kale) were 22% less likely to develop cataracts when compared with women with the lowest intake levels. Comparable results were found in men participating in a similar study. Lutein and zeaxanthin are carotenoids, like the beta-carotene found in carrots and the lycopene*2 found in tomatoes. Carotenoids may act as antioxidants*3 in the eye and protect cells from sunlight damage (and mycotoxin damage). Risk for cataracts increases with age. Approximately 55%-85%*4 of people over age 75 have cataracts, so the idea that specific nutrients can slow the progression of age-related eye problems is an attractive prospect. But don’t look for lutein and zeaxanthin supplements in the grocery store just yet, say scientists familiar with cataract-related research. While some studies have shown that people who eat plenty of dark green and yellow vegetables may be less likely to develop cataracts compared to people who eat a less varied diet, science has yet to verify what particular nutrients in these foods make them essential to eye health.*5 In the meantime, you can maximize the health benefits of plant foods by choosing a diet that includes a variety of dark-colored fruits and vegetables. Note 1: Chasan-Taber L, Willett W,
Seddon J, et al. “A prospective study of carotenoid and vitamin A intakes and risk of
cataract extraction in US women.” American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, October
1999, Volume 70, pp 509-16 and Brown L, Rimm E, Seddon J, et al. “A
prospective study of carotenoid intake and risk of cataracts in US men.” American
Journal of Clinical Nutrition, October 1999, Volume 70, pp 517-24. Note 2: Lycopene is a carotenoid that is responsible for the
red color in fruits and vegetables such as tomatoes, beets, and carrots. Lycopene
is also an anti-mycotoxin (but don’t go buy a Lycopene pill). Note 3: They are antioxidants, which also means they are
antifungal. Note 4: That is way too large a range in percentages to have been
done in any official study. Oh, somewhere between 5 to 9 out of every 10 people … I
think they could be a little more accurate if this is anything more than a guess or a
scare tactic. Note 5: Now, what does that sentence really mean? …science has yet to verify what particular nutrients in these foods they can extract, put into a pill, patent, and charge you a small fortune to buy their new miracle medication. Just eat your veggies and ignore the medical researchers. Money,
Science, and Conflicts of Interest Discover magazine, April 2005 (reprinted without permission) For more than a year, the National Institute of Health (NIH) has wrestled with two thorny issues: lack of public access to federally-funded research and drug company payments to staff scientists. In February, both issues were resolved (at least to the government’s satisfaction). Open Access: Traditionally,
academic journals hold all rights to scientific papers they publish. But with subscription
prices of some journals reaching into the thousands (AAAS
only cost me $120/year, back when I could afford that luxury)
and individual articles (single reprints) often selling for $25, critics have argued that access is prohibitive for
libraries and researchers as well as civilians (you and me). After months of fending off
complaints that publishers were profiting unduly from tax-funded research, the NIH reached
a compromise. The agency will now require that scientists voluntarily post all
federally-funded research on the internet’s free-access web site, www.pubmed.com ,within 12 months, not the six months originally proposed. Publishers say
they can live with the compromise. “This is a reasonable outcome,” said John
Regazzi, spokesman for Reed Elsevier, one of the world’s largest publishers of
scientific journals. (So, we can have access to the data
obtained through our tax dollars, but not until private parties have profited from it for
one full year.) Ethics Rules: Following four congressional hearings, NIH director Elias Zerhuni announced regulations prohibiting all NIH staff scientists from accepting outside income from biotech or pharmaceutical companies. The new rules follow newspaper reports, especially in the Los Angeles Times, that staff doctors and researchers had been receiving as much as $500,000 a year in outside income from consulting and speaking fees. Some critics, like Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), praised the decision for returning public confidence to government research. But some scientists, such as Thomas Stossel of Harvard Medical School, spoke out against it, saying stringent conflict-of-interest rules will cause talented staff scientists to quit and will hinder collaboration between government and private-sector scientists. (In all the private-sector jobs I have had in the past, a conflict of interest got you fired. Period. It seems the bottom line is that it really is not about finding the answers to life’s questions, but greed; it’s all about money! Sorry, but I still have no confidence in government-funded research.) You might have seen a common word in both of the above articles:
Harvard. It is one of the most prestigious schools in this country. Or so they would have
us believe. I, personally, think they are creating greedy egotistical maniacs, especially
at the Harvard Medical School. Note this article: Lobotomy
by Any Other Name by Peter R. Breggin, M.D., reprinted without permission On August 4, 2003 the Los Angeles Times published a story by Benedict Carey on the “New Psychosurgery” being conducted at medical centers at Harvard University and Brown. The syndicated report was republished around the country as recently as October 2003. The potential patients were identified as individuals suffering from intractable depression and obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD). The psychosurgeons*6 are attempting to recover from one of the more serious blows dealt to their aspirations in the past two decades. In June 2002 a landmark malpractice suit was brought against another national medical center where a surgeon was performing very similar psychosurgery (Zimmerman v. Cleveland Clinic). The victim of the combined capsulotomy and cingulotomy*6 (another word for lobotomy) was a 58-year-old woman. After the surgery, she was rendered mute and robotic. Two doctors from the Harvard project testified on behalf of the surgeon and I testified as a psychiatric expert on behalf of the patient. After hearing both sides of the controversy, the jury awarded $7.5 million to the injured patient and the psychosurgery project at the Cleveland Clinic was shut down. Note 6: Psychosurgery
is a term for surgeries of the brain or autonomic nervous system involving the severance
of neural pathways to effect a change in behavior, usually to treat or alleviate severe
mental illness. The procedures typically considered psychosurgery are now almost
universally shunned as inappropriate, due in part to the emergence of less-invasive
methods of treatment such as psychiatric medication. Although the term psychosurgery might
imply a broad class of treatments, in reality, it is confined to variations on two themes:
Psychosurgery
should not be confused with neurosurgery, though they may seem similar; neurosurgery is
surgery intended to treat or alleviate neurological disorders, which may or may not
manifest mental illnesses as symptoms. Psychosurgery should also not be confused with the
practice of psychic surgery—surgery purportedly performed by paranormal means. The surgery is not new and the story made the same discredited claims that have been offered for lobotomy since the 1940s. (for a really scary story on ice pick lobotomies, go to: http://www.radgeek.com/gt/2002/08/20/brain_mutilation ). The two forms of psychosurgery that are being promoted – cingulotomy and capsulotomy – are the same techniques used in combination in the Cleveland Clinic malpractice case. Cingulotomy was first performed in 1948 and capsulotomy in 1949 during the first great wave of lobotomy. These surgical interventions interrupt and destroy large bundles of nerve connections in the brain (white matter). These nerve connections include pathways to and from the frontal lobes. As a result, innumerable brains cells (neurons in gray matter) die throughout various portions of the brain. Much of the cell death occurs in the adjacent frontal lobes of the brain – the seat of all higher human functions. This is the scientific definition of lobotomy. The inevitable result is widespread damage to the high mental functions, including judgment, insight, future planning, social awareness, and creativity. Exactly this kind of psychosurgery fell out of favor decades ago because it causes severe damage to the mental and emotional processes. In the early 1970s, a second wave of psychosurgery began with cingulotomy as the most common operation. I worked as a psychiatric consultant with the U. S. Congress to form the psychosurgery commission which ultimately declared all psychosurgical operations experimental and unfit for routine clinical use. In a trial in which I testified as an expert in 1973 in Michigan (Kaimowitz v. Department of Mental Health), a three-judge panel declared the same psychosurgery too damaging to the brain, mind, and personality to be permitted in state facilities. This precedent-setting case has never been challenged in the courts. Most psychosurgery projects around the country, including cingulotomy and capsulotomy, were stopped. Harvard and Brown are the only two that have been identified as remaining in North America. I have personally evaluated five cingulotomy psychosurgery cases performed at Harvard. These individuals lost memory and reasoning functions, were flatted emotionally, and became unable to relate in a caring manner to other people. Four became legally incompetent. There is no mystery about how the surgery “works.” It produces intellectual and emotional blunting. The doctors rate this apathetic state as an improvement. Patients who submit to this surgery are never told how damaging it will be to their most basic human processes. The psychosurgery performed at Harvard and Brown is the same old lobotomy that was rejected by science, medicine, and the public decades ago. Damaging the brain is not a solution to human psychological suffering. Now excuse me, folks, but since when do we allow doctors to
deliberately make their patients brain dead? Since when do we allow doctors to murder
patients and get away with it? We always have. Harvard and Brown medical schools
might be the only places in this country where lobotomies are still being legally
performed (they just got government permission to continue doing this ridiculous practice,
see http://neuro-www.mgh.harvard.edu/research/jenike.html), but every doctor you’ve ever been to has prescribed something
for you that is bad for your health. And you smile, and you pay them, and you take the
pills, and the next time you sneeze, you go back for more. Grow up! Take responsibility
for your own life and let’s get these butchers out of our lives and out of business! Bronchial
Politics: How and Why “Asthmaphobia” was Created Doug A. Kaufmann The following text is copied from the book The Fungus Link: An Introduction to Fungal Disease,
copyright © 2000, by Doug A. Kaufmann, with permission of the author. Why did two of the most established magazines in the United States, Life and Newsweek, devote their entire cover page to asthma in May of 1997? Could this be a public relations move on the part of the American Lung Association (ALA)? And just who are these folks that dedicate their lives to the well being of American lungs? Charities are often the public relations entities for the medical communities that they represent. According to the book Unhealthy Charities, you’d be surprised at who these “charities” are charitable to. About 13 years ago, one of my employees lost her father to cancer. My worst nightmare came true. I received a letter from her requesting that in lieu of flowers, I make a “charitable contribution” to the American Cancer Society (ACS). Call it what you may, to this day I feel that my donation made a Porsche payment for a “cancer expert” affiliated with ACS. Why is the grieving and bereavement process made socially acceptable in America only if a donation is made to a charity? I, for one, will never ever donate another dime to a medical charity. Less than five percent (5%) of the funds raise by the ALA for “urgent need” research actually goes to any research at all! The other 95% apparently covers costs, including payroll. According to the above referenced book, the ALA is a marketing wing for the respiratory organizations, purportedly including doctors, who treat lung problems. So why all the PR on asthma? They’re just doing their job. The more frightened parents they recruit into one of these hospitals, the more awareness is generated. Then it’s just a matter of educating the parents on the wonderful job that the hospitals did to save their children’s lives. Seemingly, a donation to the very charity that saved their child’s life and then educated them on the complexity of breathing would be fitting. It’s all marketing, kids! So why should charitable money be invested in trying to figure out what causes respiratory diseases? Because medical institutions only make money when we’re in them! It is my opinion that in their effort to keep us ignorant, they are making a few sloppy mistakes. The Newsweek article on asthma, for example, stated that “with the rise in vaccines and antibiotics, people in developed countries have experienced fewer serious childhood infections than ever before.” Yet a survey published in The Journal of the American Medical Association reported that children receiving the pertussis vaccine were six times more likely to develop asthma than those not receiving the vaccine. And one only needs to review medical mycology to know that antibiotics can actually cause asthma. If it were true that our medical breakthroughs (i.e., antibiotics and vaccines), had reduced the number of asthma occurrences in America (certainly a “developed country”), how might you explain the fact that asthma rates have dramatically increased in every age group since 1982? I believe that what irritates me most is the fact that the medical associations, via their promotional and purportedly “non-profit” associations, seem to be preying on children. That is apparently their “target market.” The mentality seems to be, “It’s done with cigarettes, why not with asthma?” Each of the magazines mentioned above has small, helpless children on the cover. Have you been watching the news or reading the newspapers lately? It seems that we have yet another medical epidemic on our hands. This one is called diabetes. It is now called the “hidden killer,” because many of us have it and don’t know it. And if we don’t get to a doctor, we may die! Well, I predict that if this ad campaign for asthma doesn’t increase hospital revenues enough, very soon asthma and other respiratory diseases (will get the same scare tactic treatment as diabetes is now and) will be billed as “toxic time bombs” ticking away in our children. And all of this is done in such a way as to make you feel that their concern is genuine. Indeed, I’ve long felt that most medical people have very high integrity, and remember: they are not to blame. But I am concerned about the integrity of those who have found that the secret to making money in medicine is through confusion and deception… scare tactics, if you will. Simply put, there are many to whom you are worth considerably more sick than when you are well. Your job is to use your head when consuming medical products and services. I would never allow any one diagnosis to dictate my next move with my children. First, I’d see a medical doctor, followed by a health food store owner, followed by a chiropractor, followed by a nurse, and lastly a good (the “good” part is sometimes the most difficult) nutritional expert. I would never be fooled into believing that credentials, in lieu of experience, “made” the health care provider. Every day thousands of children are prescribed medicines for asthma by people with wonderful credentials; but I have known health food store owners who have amassed far safer and more logical treatment plans than chiefs of medical departments. Next, I’d take all of the knowledge that each person provided and I’d find someone I trust to help me with my decision. Knowing all of this should allow you, and your child, to breathe easier – and without a bill for $17,000. |