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We already know that clinical trials are rife with fraud. Most of the clinical trials used by pharmaceutical companies to win FDA approval of their drugs, for example, are funded by pharmaceutical companies. And it is a verifiable fact that most clinical trials tend to find results that favor the financial interests of whatever organization paid for them. So what’s to stop Big Pharma from scheming up the perfect placebo that would harm patients just enough to make their own drugs look good by comparison?

It now appears that all those thousands of clinical trials conducted over the last few decades comparing pharmaceuticals to placebo pills must now be completely thrown out as utterly non-scientific. And why? Because the placebos used in the studies weren’t really placebos at all, rendering the studies scientifically invalid. This is the conclusion from researchers at the University of California who published their findings in the October issue of the Annals of Internal Medicine. They reviewed 167 placebo-controlled trials published in peer-reviewed medical journals in 2008 and 2009 and found that 92 percent of those trials never even described the ingredients of their placebo pills.

Why is this important? Because placebo pills are supposed to be inert. But nothing is inert, it turns out. Even so-called “sugar pills” contain sugar, obviously. And sugar isn’t inert. If you’re running a clinical trial on diabetics, testing the effectiveness of a diabetes drug versus a placebo then obviously your clinical trial is going to make the diabetes drug look better than placebo if you use sugar pills as your placebo.

Some placebo pills use olive oil which may actually improve heart health. Other placebo pills use partially-hydrogenated oils which harm heart health. Yet only 8 percent of clinical trials bothered to list the placebo ingredients at all!

It turns out there are absolutely no FDA rules regarding the choice or composition of placebos used in clinical trials. Technically, a clinical trial director could use eye of newt or lizard’s legs as placebo and would not even be required to mention such nefarious details in the trial results ala Shakespeare. That would cause trouble, trouble, boil and bubble!

Placebos are usually provided by the very same company funding the clinical trial! Do you detect any room for fraud in this equation? How drug companies can fake clinical trials with selected placebo pills

Placebo performance strongly influences whether drugs are approved by the FDA, by the way. As the key piece of information on its regulatory approval decisions, the FDA wants to know whether a drug works better than placebo. That’s the primary requirement! If they work even 5% better than placebo, they are said to be “efficacious” (meaning they “work”). This is true even if the placebo was selected and used specifically to make the drug look good by comparison. You see, if there are no regulations or rules regarding placebo, then none of the placebo-controlled clinical trials are scientifically valid.

Be well

Dr Sundardas

Toxic Water

The Associated Press (US) has done a study, and they’re reporting today that all kinds of chemicals are found in your tap water, and this time we’re not talking about lead, mercury, pesticides, synthetic hormones, or anything like that. Today we’re talking about pharmaceuticals in your water.

Sounds pretty crazy doesn’t it? But it’s true. Pharmaceuticals are now found in 24 major metropolitan cities. I mean the water supplying those cities is contaminated with pharmaceuticals. Not just one or two either, but six different pharmaceuticals so far – that’s what has been found – including anti-depressant medications, anti-seizure medications, anti-inflammatory medications, painkillers, even caffeine. Yes, there is caffeine in the water. You don’t even need to drink coffee in the morning anymore!

Get up; slam some tap water, and you have your chemicals for the day! Well, that’s just an exaggeration of course. They’re not found in large amounts in the water, and we’re going to talk about that over the next few minutes – talk to you about the dangers of these chemicals found in the public water supply and reveal what you can do to protect yourself from these chemicals. All that’s coming right up.

Now this might be kind of a scary talk, actually. If you know where your water comes from you may not want to drink it anymore. In fact, I think anyone drinking out of the tap is probably not well informed yet. We’re going to help you get informed here in the next few minutes.

Here is how the water really works. Many cities take their water from the rivers. Now, this is where you get your water, and they just treat it. So whatever actually comes downstream to those cities is put into their municipal water supplies. Now many consumers have the misconception that these cities actually remove all the dangerous chemicals and substances from the water before they put it into the pipes that go into your kitchen and your bathroom and your home.

That’s not true. They don’t remove everything. Sure, they remove the dirt, the sand, and the leaves but they don’t even remove microorganisms and bacteria. No, that’s not their job. They don’t remove them. They just kill them.

Their only job is to sanitize the water so that what you get is drinkable. It will not kill you, but it’s not clean. They use chlorine for that usually. They dump chlorine chemicals into the water; chlorine kills the microorganisms, and then you end up drinking chlorine and dead bacteria at the tap.

Public water treatment systems rely on chlorine to kill harmful bacteria. Until recently, concerns about drinking water focused on eliminating pathogens. Chlorination of drinking water was a major factor in the reduction in the mortality rates associated with waterborne pathogens. The use of chlorine was believed to be safe until recent years, when halogenated organic compounds, such as chloroform, were identified in chlorinated drinking water supplies. Recent surveys show that these compounds are common in water supplies throughout the North America. These concerns about cancer risks associated with chemical contamination from chlorination by-products have resulted in numerous epidemiological studies. These studies generally support the notion that by-products of chlorination are associated with increased risk of cancer and other health problems. These risks arise from both drinking and bathing in chlorinated water.

Figures for the U.S. shows that in the 1880,the death  rate from typhoid was about 90 per 100,000 Americans.  Thanks largely to chlorinated water, the death rate today is only  about 0.1 per 100,000.   Recent research done in the 1950’s, has enabled scientists to establish a link between chlorine and arteriosclerosis’s in chicken.  It was also suggested that this was because of chlorine’s ability to destroy Vitamin E. Vitamin E promotes heart muscle function, strengthens capillary walls and dilates blood vessels. It thereby reduces blood pressure and the risk of heart disease. Vitamin E functioning as an anti-oxidant also protects against cancer.

In a 1988 survey, scientists at Oak Ridge National Laboratory found that drinking chlorinated water increased  the risks of high blood cholesterol.  The survey which covered 1,520 residents of 46 towns in Wisconsin, found that both men and women who d rank chlorinated water had higher levels of LDL, the “bad” cholesterol.

In 1989,researchers at the EPA’s Health Effects Research Lab (HERL) reported that mice showed “abnormalities” in fat metabolism when they were given chlorinated water and a typical, modern high-fat diet.  The mice too, had higher levels of “bad” cholesterol.

While links between chlorinated water and cancer are harder to establish, it is known that chlorine reacts with organic matter in water to form compounds called  trihalomethanes THMS) which are cancer-causing. Chloroform which one of the THMs was once used as an anaesthetic. It has since been banned by the US Food and Drugs Administration in 1976 because of its carcinogenic properties.   Recently, HERL scientists found that chlorine reacts  with organic compounds in water to form two other cancer-  causing agents: MX and DCS.  These substances both contribute to cell mutation and tumour growth.

So what can you do? Drink clean filtered water that gets rid of all the chemicals like chlorine.

Be well

Dr Sundardas

The human intestine maintains within its inner cavity a complex, crowded environment of food remnants and microbial organisms (called “the intestinal flora”) from which the body derives nourishment and against which the body must be protected. The relationship between the human host and her army of microbes is described by the Greek word, symbiosis, which means “living together”. When symbiosis benefits both parties, it is called mutualism. When symbiosis becomes harmful, it is called dysbiosis.

The first line of protection against dysbiosis and intestinal toxicity is strict control of intestinal permeability, the ability of the gut to allow some substances to pass through its walls while denying access to others. The healthy gut selectively absorbs nutrients and seals out those components of the normal internal milieu which are most likely to cause harm, except for a small sampling which it uses to educate and strengthen its mechanisms of immunity and detoxification.

Bacteria form the largest segment of the intestinal flora. The number of bacteria in the large bowel (about a hundred trillion) exceeds the number of cells in the human body. Intestinal bacteria perform some useful functions, so that our relationship with them is normally one of mutual benefit. They synthesize half a dozen vitamins, supplementing those which are obtained from food. They convert dietary fibre–that part of food which humans cannot digest–into small fatty acids which nourish the cells of the large intestine. They degrade dietary toxins like methyl mercury making them less harmful to the body. They crowd out pathogenic bacteria like Salmonella, decreasing the risk of food poisoning. They stimulate the development of a vigorous immune response. Four-fifths of the body’s immune system is located in the lining of the small intestine.

Bacteria are dangerous tenants, however, so that dysbiosis is a common problem. As powerful chemical factories, bacteria not only make vitamins and destroy toxins, but also destroy vitamins and make toxins. Bacterial enzymes can inactivate human digestive enzymes and convert human bile or components of food into chemicals which promote the development of cancer. Some by-products of bacterial enzyme activity, like ammonia, hinder normal brain function. When absorbed into the body, they must be removed by the liver. People whose livers fail this task, because of conditions like cirrhosis, develop progressive neurologic dysfunction resulting in coma and death. For them, the administration of antibiotics which slow the production of nerve toxins by intestinal bacteria can be life saving.

The immune reactions provoked by normal intestinal bacteria may be harmful rather than helpful. Inflammatory diseases of the bowel, including ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s disease (ileitis), and several types of arthritis have been linked to aberrant immune responses provoked by intestinal bacteria. Two types of aberrancy have been described. First, intestinal bacteria contain proteins which look to the immune system very much like human proteins; they confuse the immune system and may fool the body into attacking itself. Second, fragments of dead bacteria may leak into the wall of the intestine or into the blood stream due to a breakdown in the mechanisms which regulate intestinal permeability. Circulating through the body, bacterial debris is deposited in tissues such as joints, provoking an attack on those tissues by an immune system trying to remove the foreign material.

Unlike bacteria, parasites appear to serve no useful function. The part of the immune system which they stimulate does not strengthen the organism to resist serious infection; instead it contributes to allergic reactions, so that parasitic infection increases allergic tendencies.

Our digestive system is perhaps the most significant system in terms of its importance to us. It is simply not possible to live and continue growing if we cannot digest and assimilate the food we take in. It has also been labelled the “brain” of the body. In Oriental Medicine, the abdominal area which houses the Hara for the Japanese and the Tan Tien for the Chinese is the reservoir of life force and vitality. It is also our early warning system. When we are feeling a little under the weather, we often feel queasy when we think of food. When we are feeling nervous and agitated, we say we have butterflies in our stomach.

Most literature on detoxification refers to liver enzymes, as the liver is the site of the majority of detoxification activity for both endogenous and exogenous compounds. However, the first contact the body makes with the majority of xenobiotics is the gastrointestinal tract. Over the course of a lifetime, the gastrointestinal tract processes more than 25 tons of food, which represents the largest load of antigens and xenobiotics confronting the human body. Furthermore, since most drugs are consumed orally, the gastrointestinal tract is also the first contact with many drugs. It is not surprising, then, that the gastrointestinal tract has developed a complex set of physical and biochemical systems to manage this load of exogenous compounds.

Several factors influence how much of a chemical ends up in the system, requiring detoxification by the liver. The gastrointestinal tract initially provides a physical barrier to exogenous components. As previously discussed, the gastrointestinal tract is the second major site in the body for detoxification. Detoxification enzymes such as Cyp3A4 and the antiporter activities have been found in high concentrations at the tip of villi in the intestine. Adequate first pass metabolism of xenobiotics by the gastrointestinal tract requires integrity of the gut mucosa. Compromised barrier function of the mucosa will easily allow xenobiotics to transit into the circulation without opportunity for detoxification. Therefore, support for healthy gut mucosa is instrumental in decreasing toxic load.

In the last 20 years of practice, I have found all allergies and complex chronic disease have their origins in some kind of gut dysfunction. Keep your gut healthy. For the last twenty years I have been helping people have healthier “guts”.

http://www.naturaltherapies.com/detox.htm

Be well
Dr Sundardas

Diabetes management is something that many must deal with on a day to day basis. About 16 million Americans suffer from diabetes mellitus, a chronic disease in which the pancreas produces too little or no insulin, impairing the body’s ability to turn sugar into usable energy.

In recent years, the Food and Drug Administration has approved a fast-acting form of human insulin and several new oral diabetes drugs, including the most recent, Rezulin (troglitazone), the first of a new class of drugs called insulin sensitizers. This drug is designed to help Type II diabetics make better use of the insulin produced by their bodies and could help as many as 1 million Type II diabetics reduce or eliminate their need for insulin injections.

While it is treatable, diabetes is still a killer. Thus, diabetes management is extremely important. The fourth leading cause of death in America, diabetes claims an estimated 178,000 lives each year. So the treatment is aimed at holding the disease in check, reversing it where possible, and preventing complications.

Philip Cryer, M.D., a professor at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and president of the American Diabetes Association, believes that most people simply don’t understand the magnitude of the diabetes problem. “Diabetes is an increasingly common, potentially devastating, treatable yet incurable, lifelong disease. It’s the leading cause of blindness in working-age adults, the most common cause of kidney failure leading to dialysis or transplants, and is a leading cause of amputation,” he says. “The most recent estimate we have of diabetes’ cost [in terms of] direct medical care is $90 billion dollars annually–more than heart disease, cancer, or AIDS.”

At the heart of diabetes control are dietary management and drug treatment. The increasing emphasis on the importance of a healthy diet, the availability of glucose monitoring devices that can help diabetics keep a close watch over blood sugar levels, and the wide range of drug treatments enable most diabetics to live a near-normal life.
Managing the diet is easier now because of food labeling regulations that went into effect in 1994 (see “The New Food Label: Coping with Diabetes” in the November 1994 FDA Consumer).According to the Corn Refiners Association, high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) is no worse for you than any other dietary carbohydrate. Many health experts, however, disagree, warning consumers that HFCS is strongly correlated with diabetes and obesity.

According to NaturalNews, these quotes tell you how bad the problems is:

Roughly $40 billion in federal subsidies are going to pay corn growers, so that corn syrup is able to replace cane sugar. corn syrup has been singled out by many health experts as one of the chief culprits of rising obesity, because corn syrup does not turn off appetite. Since the advent of corn syrup, consumption of all sweeteners has soared, as have people’s weights. According to a 2004 study reported in the American journal of Clinical Nutrition, the rise of Type-2 diabetes since 1980 has closely paralleled the increased use of sweeteners, particularly corn syrup.
There is a Cure for Diabetes: The Tree of Life 21-Day+ Program by Gabriel Cousens

Since the fructose in corn syrup does neither stimulate insulin secretion nor reduce the hunger hormone ghrelin, you will continue to feel hungry while the body converts the fructose into fat. The resulting obesity increases the risk of diabetes and other diseases. Since you obviously cannot expect to receive much help from those who only know how to treat the effects of illness and not its causes, you may need to take your health into you own hands.
Timeless Secrets of Health & Rejuvenation: Unleash The Natural Healing Power That Lies Dormant Within You by Andreas Moritz

More than half of the carbohydrates being consumed are in the form of sugars (sucrose, corn syrup, etc.) being added to foods as sweetening agents. High consumption of refined sugars is linked to many chronic diseases, including obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and cancer. Generally, the term “dietary fiber” refers to the components of plant cell wall and non-nutritive residues. Originally, the definition was restricted to substances that are not digestible by the endogenous secretions of the human digestive tract.
Textbook of Natural Medicine 2nd Edition Volume 1 by Michael T. Murray, ND

The following are tips to prevent or manage diabetes (Type 2);

1) If you have a history of diabetes in your family, recognize you will have a higher tendency to do so. Very often diabetes is a disease of denial.

2) Watch your weight. DO not let it exceed more than 5% of your optimum body weight when you wer at your healthiest. Studies have shown that every 5% increase to correlate to a 200% risk of mature onset diabetes. (Weight gain and the Risk of Developong Insulin Resistance Syndrome . Everson SA, et al. Diabetes Care 1998;21(10):1637-43)

3) Exercise regularly and lifelong. Studies have shown, it helps to protect against diabetes.(The Protective Effect of Good Physical Fitness when young on the Risk of Impaired Glucose Tolerance when Old)Takemura Y, et al. Prev Med 1999;28(1):14-9 )

4) Watch your carbohydrates really carefully if you are at high risk. Use complex carbohydrates.
(Heterogeneity in associations between macronutrient intake and lipoprotein profile in individuals with type 2 diabetes) Mayer-Davis EJ;Levin S;Marshall JA, Diabetes care Oct 1999 22(10) p1632-9)

5) Follow the blood type diet. The lectins in food which are antagonistic to your blood cells can lead to pancreatic damage.

Be well
Dr Sundardas