Heart damage from adverse effects of cancer drugs goes under-reported

The under-reporting of the possible side effects of heart damage from cancer drugs puts patients at an increased risk for heart failure, according to two researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine.
Read article at medicalxpress.com

Woman's Hour: Joanna Blythman has converted Jane Garvey to whole milk.

Joanna Blythman has converted Jane Garvey to whole milk. Well done, Joanna! This Woman's Hour item today may have persuaded some listeners at home, not just Jane, to change from semi-skimmed to whole milk. Like Jane, they may have swallowed the Government's line that whole milk is high in fat and that that fat is not good for us. Joanna explained that whole milk is not at all high in fat, and that in any case, the fat in milk contains the fat-soluble vitamins, one of which is vitamin D, the vitamin that research increasingly finds most people to be short of, so whole milk is better for us than semi-skimmed or skimmed milk. Jane and her family are now luxuriating in whole milk, rather than the nutritionally inferior semi-skimmed. Maybe you would like to consider swapping too?

Multi-drug-resistant strains of infectious diseases: Viv and Caz have always done their bit

Viv and Caz have always done their bit to help microbes to develop drug resistance.

Every sniffle or sneeze or whatever, Viv would have son James to the doctor to exhibit him and to obtain a remedy. The doctor pointedly remarked to her once about James's having been reared on antibiotics (or did he specify penicillin? I don't remember; it was a long time ago.) His sarcasm did not deter the indefatigable Viv, the caring mother.

And Caz can never waste a cold by allowing it to go unreported. A few months ago she rang me to say she was so ill with a cold and cough she was going to have to stay in bed for a few days. When, a few days later, she was feeling well enough to get up again I was shocked to learn later that instead of resting for a few days more and giving herself a chance to get properly better, she had immediately dragged herself off to the doctor's 'to get a prescription for antibiotics'! - This is a woman who knows that antibiotics do not work for viral infections, which most colds are, and has, like the rest of us, heard many times about the growing and very serious problem of drug-resistant strains of microbes! She just doesn't ever seem to relate that knowledge to her own particular case...

Why do so many people feel they have to go to the doctor if they or their child is ill? For millions of years our ancestors survived without doctors and without antibiotics. Surely most illnesses are self-limiting? Surely taking an active infection along to a waiting room of other patients and to the doctor in his/her surgery is exposing other people to needless risk of infection?

Conflicts of Interest on Stilts - or is it on Steroids?

Conflicts of Interest on Stilts - or is it Steroids? - Read George Monbiot's Guardian article. "Democracy itself is being undermined by publicly funded agencies crawling with conflicts of interest and devoid of scrutiny" I urge you to read the whole of this excellent article about how undue power is increasingly being accorded to Big Pharma and other industrial giants, while ordinary voters and other taxpayers go unrepresented on these quangos.

And here is some of what Dr Rath has to say about this: "At the time of writing, the Board of Britain’s Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) contains retired senior executives from drug companies AstraZeneca and Merck Sharp & Dohme. Similarly, its Executive Board contains a former employee of Glaxo, DuPont and DuPont Pharmaceuticals who is currently an employee of Bristol-Myers Squibb; a former employee of Glaxo Wellcome and GlaxoSmithKline; and a former employee of SmithKline Beecham. Continuing this pattern, the council members on the country’s Medical Research Council (MRC) include representatives of Sanofi Pasteur and Pfizer, whilst its Global Health Group and Translational Research Group both have members from GlaxoSmithKline."

Obesity: New Vulnerable Group

I see that there's a new Vulnerable Group reared its head - or swished its little tails! - There are some genetically modified mice that are very vulnerable to becoming obese because of a mutation in a particular gene, reported here. Well I don't think we need to trouble ourselves about that particular vulnerability, though one feels sympathy for the mice having their genes damaged, apparently in the cause of providing some information for the drug industry to avail itself of in its never-ending trawl for profitable products to unload on innocent citizens. Unless we allow drug researchers or their mates who work in genetic engineering to interfere with our genes we are unlikely to suffer this genetic problem ourselves, or - perish the thought! - any of us is tricked into eating any of these GM mice and something untoward happens... (Memo: best to avoid eating GM foods, whether animal or vegetable, and best to avoid eating animals that have been fed GM crops. Since no one knows what could happen, the precautionary principle should be applied.)

The Vulnerable Groups in whom I am most interested are those who are vulnerable to becoming obese because of salt sensitivity or sodium retention. The groups of people vulnerable to salt are babies and children, people who take or who have taken certain prescribed steroids, including prednisone and prednisolone, or certain other prescribed drugs, women who take or have taken HRT or other oestrogen-containing drugs such as some contraceptive medications, people who take or have taken amitriptyline or other tricyclic antidepressants or some other psychotropic/psychoactive drugs, pregnant mothers, PMT sufferers and people who ate salt as children. These groups need to minimise their salt intake. They will lose weight easily if they eat less salt and salty food.

How can eating salt and salty food when you are on certain medications cause weight gain?

Table salt is a chemical compound. Its chemical name is sodium chloride. It is present in the bloodstream in solution as sodium ions and chloride ions. It is the sodium ions that are involved in the fluid retention that causes weight gain. This webpage tells you more about sodium in food.

Amitriptyline does not contain salt. But amitriptyline weakens the walls of the blood vessels so that extra sodium ions and the water associated with them can distend the blood vessels so that they hold a greater blood volume than before. - The blood has been diluted a bit with the sodium ions and water. This is an example of fluid retention and an example of one of the many medications that cause it by weakening the walls of the blood vessels.

If you want to get the hang of it better, I suggest you read http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/lose_weight.html and http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/obesity_and_the_salt_connection.html

The Which? survey that found appalling treatment of the elderly

was reported on BBC News yesterday. "The standards of care provided for older people in their homes in the UK has been labelled "shocking and disgraceful" by a consumer group. Which? found cases of missed visits, food left out of reach, medication not given and people being left in soiled beds during its investigation." And the rest.

It is only the most recent among torrents of similar reports with their litanies of neglect, indifference, inhumanity, etc. resulting in very great suffering for far too many elderly and vulnerable people. These people have a right to expect better of society and of the workers who are employed to care for them on its behalf. My understanding is that health workers like doctors, nurses, dentists, etc have a 'duty of care' toward the people for whom they provide care, and that this 'duty of care' is a phrase with legal standing. Do carers employed to provide care in the domestic home rather than in hospitals and care homes have a similar 'duty of care' towards their charges/clients? - If so, then it's Heaven help the vulnerable! 'cos nothing at all is ever done about the staff in the hospitals and care homes who treat elderly patients with scandalous cruelty - nothing effective, nothing significant, nothing that appropriately punishes the wrongdoers or discourages others from similar behaviour. Nothing worthy of the name of action. Nothing.

Is this the way we want old people to be treated? - Our elderly relatives? - Ourselves? - Of course it isn't. - Then why do successive Governments permit it? and by permitting it, encourage it?

Medical Research Fraud? Cancer Research Fraud?

Want to know more about Medical Research Fraud? Cancer Research Fraud? I suggest you check out this article by Dr Mercola.

I saw two nurses murder an elderly patient many years ago

I saw two nurses murder an elderly patient, many years ago when I was a patient in a TB sanatorium.

Phyllis was an old lady on the ward. She was a bit odd. She was one of the patients who was allowed to walk about a little bit. Just to go to the bathroom and toilet, and to eat her meals at the table with the other ambulatory patients. Some patients, of course, had to stay in bed all the time. Bed rest.

Phyllis had a 'thing' about elbows on the table. If anyone rested their elbows on the table at all when they were eating, she would startle the whole ward with her outraged cry of, "Elbows off the table!" I used to marvel at her vehemence about something that surely scarcely mattered.

Phyllis was a smoker. In those days most people smoked. But not, of course, on a ward in a TB hospital! Smoking was not allowed. - Nevertheless Phyllis remained a smoker. Her husband used to bring her cigarettes and Guinness when he came to visit her.

She used to drag her thin, frail body to the bathroom to smoke. - She made of it a smoke-filled den, and liberally decorated its floor with gobbets of phlegm as she coughed repeatedly. A productive cough, you might say...

Most people were pretty terrified of this fragile, loud, bad-tempered, very old lady with the coarse voice and the dirty habits. But I doubt that many would have wished her dead.

I rarely slept much in that hospital. The medication I was taking had a side-effect of severe insomnia. I just used to lie there quietly in bed most nights. There was rarely much going on. It was a medical ward: no operations, no surgery. When the two nurses appeared in the middle of the night they arrived quietly. In those days nurses didn't wear shoes designed to make a din and keep patients awake as some nurses do today. They had evidently, so it seemed to me later, decided to 'deal with' the Phyllis problem.

They removed her from her bed without putting her dressing gown or slippers on and, one on either side of her, linking their elbows in hers, they force-walked the old lady up and down the length of the long ward. Until she was dead. Then they popped her back into bed to find, officially, a little later.

Why didn't you shout, Phyllis? - Maybe you did and I've forgotten. - Maybe you tried to shout but no one heard. Maybe, rendered breathless with the unaccustomed exertion of your death march, you struggled in vain to shout. - "Elbows off!" may silently have rent the air...

Leave it out! - The salt, that is.

If you want to lose excess weight, the fastest, simplest, safest way is to leave out the salt when you are cooking, give up sprinkling salt on your meal and cut down on the ready meals/fast food/processed food/pizzas/crisps and other highly-salted products that you eat. Home cooking of fresh food allows you to control the amount of salt that goes into a dish - as well as being more nutritious anyway. - Here's some information about the amount of salt/sodium in foods.

Want help for insomnia but don't want to use sleeping pills?

Want help for insomnia but don't want to use sleeping pills? - Maybe you've seen those recent news items about the dangers of taking sleeping tablets (risk of earlier death, increased risk of developing cancer, risk of becoming habituated or addicted, risk of falls, memory loss, etc.) Well one of the ways to help with poor sleep is to take melatonin. It is safer than hypnotics, antidepressants and painkillers. - Melatonin is a natural human hormone and you do not require a doctor's prescription to obtain it. I suggest that if you decide to try melatonin you buy the 3mg capsules and take one each day about half an hour before your bedtime.

Read what Dr Mercola has to say about Bill Gates

Read what Dr Mercola has to say today about Bill Gates. "Microsoft founder, Bill Gates, aims to end world hunger by growing more genetically engineered food crops—a philanthropic plan that may be gullible at best, and destructive at worst, both to the environment and humanity" "Monsanto and other biotech companies have collaborated with the Gates Foundation via the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) to promote the use of genetically modified (GM) crops in Africa"
Do read the article! Its content and implications are mind-blowingly important.