As always thank you for being part of the GreenMedInfo.com project, and for your help in spreading the word about the vast body of clinical evidence in existence today indicating the actual or potential therapeutic value of natural substances in disease prevention and treatment. If you received this email in error, or you do not want to receive future mailings, please unsubscribe here. If you are new to this mailing, and would like to continue to receive monthly updates please subscribe here.
Ten Thousand studies have been indexed!
After close to two years of continual work, the GreenMedInfo database now contains over 10,000 carefully selected and indexed article citations from the national treasure known as Medline. There are over 1400 Ailments and 1100 Substances indexed. If you do not see the information you need, or would like for a topic to be expanded, please contact me and I will fast-track it. Or, just drop a line on our Facebook fan page, and your wish will be done.
What’s next for GreenMedInfo…….
#1: Refine and Improve
One potential drawback of the database as it exists today is that it is composed entirely of clinical/biomedical information written in technical language that can be alienating to those who do not have a medical or scientific background. Although I have provided a summary line at the top of each article which condenses the gist of each study, I recognize the need to make the information more intelligible and useable to the layperson. In the near future I will be creating a set of categories, such as "top 10 herbs," "top 50 studies on vitamin therapy," "25 studies for cold and flu," etc, to make things easier.
I am also working closely with my web developer to provide new ways for users to customize their search options. For instance, in the future you will be able to display only those articles which are Human Studies, versus, Animal Studies. As always your suggestions are welcome, and I will continue to find new ways to feature the information that has the most relevance to you. Also, for those who are not already aware, the articles in the database are indexed along a number of axes: by Substance, by Ailment, by Pharmacological Action, and there is also a Therapeutic Action taxonomy which covers alternative modalities from Acupuncture to Chewing Gum.
#2: Expand the "Problem Substances" database
Ever since I started GreenMedInfo.com I have been wanting to create a database which would focus on toxic substances and/or unhealthy practices in the mainstream. The goal in the future is to create a separate website called ToxicMainstream.com. In the meantime I am developing a database that is accessible on GreenMedInfo.com which focuses on presenting research from Medline on the toxic substances and/or actions in the mainstream. These new taxonomies can be viewed here as Problem Substances and Problem Actions/States.
This new database includes drugs, food additives, preservatives, inorganic/synthetic vitamins, and "non-therapeutic" actions, e.g. vaccination, food irradiation My focus is on bringing to the health consumer information that is not adequately represented in the mass media, or through conventional medical practice, and which demonstrates that synthetic/unnatural substances and/or interventions have adverse health effects and/or risks.
Here are a few examples:
1) ASPIRIN: This supposed "life-saver," has actually been associated with increased mortality, increased hemorrhagic stroke, and other adverse side effects. Although in some people this blood thinner may be better than taking nothing, Pycnogenol has been shown
to have superior efficacy due to the fact that it does not increase bleeding time. View the Pycnogenol/Aspirin study here
2) BETA-BLOCKERS: Beta-Blockers are hypertension medications which have been shown to increase the risk of type 2 diabetes, and
which have been shown to increase the risk of cardiac mortality, of all things. Again, in some situations these drugs may provide
life-saving blood-pressure lowering effects. But should they be consider appropriate for long-term management of high blood pressure? Absolutely not if their use, versus diuretic monotherapy for instance, results in higher mortality!
3) Metformin: Oral anti-diabetic drugs are considered standard treatment for type 2 diabetes, and yet their use has been associated
with increased mortality, especially when used in combination with glyburide.
3) Parabens: This very common body care and food preservative has been found to accumulate in breast tissue, and probably contribute to the development ofcertain types of breast cancer. The research is clear enough. If you find it in something you are applying to your skin, or consuming, trash it.
4) Vaccination: Every year billions of dollars go towards convincing the public that vaccination is perfectly safe and effective, despite insurmountable contradictions: the fact that vaccines are so dangerous they are uninsurable, the 1500% increase in the rate of autism in the past 20 years, and the fact that we survived for millions of years without vaccines. GreenMedinfo has collated studies that run directly counter to the pro-vaccine propaganda that flows ceaselessly from the CDC and the WHO. For instance, in this Cochrane Database Review of over 51 studies involving 294,159 children, influenza vaccines could not be shown to be effective in children under 2, nor could they be shown to be safe. How then does the CDC justify recommending annual influenza vaccines to all children over six months of age? My hope is that the information I accumulate in these two new taxonomies Problem Substances and Problem Actions/States will empower those who do not wish to go the conventional route to know there is legitimate research to support their decisions.
#3: Proming Awareness of the website.
The database is useless if it is not being used. If you have a blog or website, and you can link to it, great! This is a non-profit project, so paid advertising is not an option. The best way you can contribute is to share it with those who would benefit from the information. Thanks in advance for helping get the word out!
INTRODUCING MY NEW PROJECT
www.BanToxicVitaminIngredients.com…….
If you received the last GreenMedInfo.com newsletter, you may remember that I wrote an article entitled "Is Your Multivitamin Toxic?" which was published in the current issue of one of my favorite publications, the Well Being Journal. (You can view it on my website sayerji.com) The gist of the article is that the chemical/drug companies are creating "vitamins" which are nutritional non-entities, or far worse, actually toxic to human health.
I am working on a new project which intends to pressure the mass market vitamin industry to reform. Manufacturers like Centrum (Wyeth) and One-A-Day (Bayer) are largely responsible for misinforming the public, and taking advantage of the gullibility of the media and conventionally trained health professionals. Centrum, for instance, sells 1,000,000 bottles a day, despite the fact that the ingredients are in large part toxic to the body.
Case in point: Aspartame, Hydrogenated Oil, Artificial Coloring Agents, Tin (Stannous Chloride), and dozens of other potentially dangerous substances are being used in mass market vitamins, some of which are aggressively marketed to children. MEDLINE studies demonstrating the potential or actual toxicity of these substances are now available to view on the BanToxicVitaminIngredients.com DATABASE. This will be a rapidily evolving project, so feel free to stay up to date by following it on Twitter or Facebook.
Related Article: Here is a very good article on the topic of Titanium Dioxide in Vitamins by the Health Ranger Mike Adams.
Follow up from last month……
Last month
Last month’s newsletter featured topic was "Manufacturing Osteoporosis," where we focused on the growing body of research indicating that
high bone density dramatically increases the risk of breast cancer in women (up to 300% increase!), and that taking calcium supplements can result in ectopic calcifications and weaker bones.
I am very passionate about this topic and I did not hold back when I spoke at For Goodness Sake Organic Marketplace & Cafe in Bonita Springs, FL, this month. To watch the 1 hour long presentation, click the image below….
Featured Article:
Red Yeast Rice: Not Just a Statin Alternative
For those who have been advised to lower their cholesterol, but are concerned about the serious side effects associated with taking statin drugs (e.g. liver damage, myopathy, cancer, stroke, dementia, etc.), clinically proven natural alternatives are available. The Chinese condiment Red Yeast Rice, for example, was judged by the Physician’s Desk Reference On Nutritional Supplements* to “significantly reduce total cholesterol, LDL-cholesterol and total triglyceride concentrations, compared to a placebo.”* Red Yeast Rice demonstrates its superiority to statins by not only lowering triglycerides, but also significantly increasing the beneficial HDL cholesterol – something statins are not very effective at doing.
Considering the fact that the PDR is the authoritative text in the medical field on supplements, and it is written by doctors for doctors, it is disappointing that few health care practitioners are recommending Red Yeast Rice to manage hypercholesterolemia in their patients. After all, Red Yeast Rice contains the same cholesterol lowering HMG-CoA reductase inhibitors known as monaclins found as the active ingredient in the drug known as lovastatin (trade name: Mevacor). And yet, even at doses six times lower, Red Yeast Rice out performed the pharmaceutical isolated lovastatin, showing a wider range of benefits and incomparably higher safety margin**
Despite these findings and in defiance of both common sense and the rights of consumers to control their health, both the FDA and the manufacturer of lovastatin lobbied the courts to outlaw the sale of Red Yeast Rice, arguing that its efficacy qualified it as a drug, requiring FDA and medical regulation. In 1999, the Federal District Court in Utah ruled against the FDA, stating that Red Yeast Rice was not a drug but a dietary supplement. More recently the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on July 24, 2000 that Red Yeast Rice is subject to the regulation of the U.S. FDA. At present the future of Red Yeast Rice is uncertain, but what all this legal debate reveals is the rather profound collusion that exists between the private interests, the medical establishment and the FDA. We need to be asking ourselves, our health care providers and legislaters the following question: if something works great and is safer than expensive drugs, why should it be kept from the public?
The Lower the Cholesterol The Higher The Profits
If you watch prime time television these days – even just on occasion – it is nearly impossible to miss the barrage of commercials trying to get you, and the rest of adult America, to sign up for the newest cholesterol lowering medication on the market. These advertisements would have us believe that if we care about our health, and those we love, we should keep our cholesterol low with drugs. The problem is that statins, like many of the drugs being marketed so aggressively to the public these days have dangerous, even fatal side effects.
No longer the exception, side effects and fatalities from drugs have hit astronomical levels. According to the one of the most respected and widely read medical journals in the world – The Journal of American Medicine (JAMA) – approximately 108,000 Americans die each year from the "non-error negative side effects of drugs," i.e. correctly prescribed drugs! Throughout the entirety of our involvement in Vietnam, 53,000 Americans died. People flooded the streets in protest. The entire nation stood divided. History is still reeling from the sense of horror and disgust the senseless violence of the war brought before popular consciousness. And yet if the the JAMA statistics are accurate, annual fatalities from prescribed medication today are occurring at a rate 14 times higher than those occurring during the Vietnam war. What may be even more disturbing than the statistics themselves, is the fact that there is little, if any open and meaningful discussion occurring about them. When it comes to lowering cholesterol, plenty of sound research exists that calls into question the very concept of high cholesterol causing cardiovascular disease. Low cholesterol levels, in fact, have been shown to increase the risk of stroke and cancer.
Cholesterol, after all, is something our bodies have been equipped to produce plenty of. It is essential for the production of all the steroid hormones and Vitamin D, for maintaining the fluidity of cell membranes, and for transporting and distributing throughout the body fat soluble nutrients like vitamin E, carotenoids, and coenzyme Q10. CoQ10 is a co-factor for energy production in the mitochondria of every cell of our bodies. Since heart muscle has the most mitochondria of any muscle cell in the body (5000 mitochondria per heart muscle cell versus 50 for skeletal muscle), when levels of coq10 drop, the heart is one of the first organs effected. Why then, if statin drugs are known to cause a drop in coenzyme q10, are they being used to prevent heart disease? Unfortunately, because the drug companies are making a killing – both literally and figuratively – selling these drugs, they have every reason to distort or disregard information that contradicts their "lipid hypothesis" of heart disease. The mercurial relationship between drug companies and the "experts" who decide what strategies should be used by Americans to prevent heart disease, was made public by a consumer group recently. The following excerpt from an Associated Press article dated July 17th, 2004, addresses this relationship poignantly:
"Most of the heart disease experts who urged more people to take cholesterol-lowering drugs this week have made money from the companies selling those medicines."
The article went on to say that the new guidelines these experts drafted would add 7 million more Americans to the 36 million already encouraged to take the pills to lower cholesterol. Whether or not you choose to lower your cholesterol, or investigate in greater depth the validity of doing so, be advised that safe and natural methods of doing so exist.
Moreover, unlike pharmaceutical cholesterol lowering drugs, Red Yeast Rice qua Food has numerous potential side benefits, including but not limited to:
1) Chemopreventive: Red Yeast Rice inhibits colon cancer risk. (1: J Nutr Biochem. 2008 Jul;19(7):448-58. Epub 2007 Sep 14.)
2) Reduced Cardiac and All-Cause Mortality: In 5,000 participants who had already suffered a heart attack, Red Yeast Rice reduced heart attack and death from coronary heart disease 45% relative to placebo groups. Treatment with RYR also decvreated cardiac and total mortality by 30% and 33% respectively. Furthermore, the need for coronary revasculation was reduced by 33%.
(1: Am J Cardiol. 2008 Jun 15;101(12):1689-93. Epub 2008 Apr 11.)
3) Bone Formation: Red Yeast Rice exhibits bone building effects in the rabbit model of osteoporosis. (1: Chin Med. 2008 Mar 29;3:4.)
4) Atherosclerosis: Red Yeast Rice inhibits homocysteine-induced endothelial damage (1: Res Commun Mol Pathol Pharmacol. 2006;119(1-6):67-75.).
5) Type 2 diabetes/Coronary Disease: Red Yeast Rice reduces non-fatal heart attack by 63.8%, fatal heart attack by 58.5%, sudden death from coronary heart disease by 26.9% and other coronary heart disease death by 54.4% and all-cause death 44.1% versus placebo in type 2 diabetics with coronary heart disease. (1: J Cardiovasc Pharmacol. 2007 Feb;49(2):81-4.)
6) Fatty Liver: Red Yeast Rice inhibits hepatic steatosis (fatty liver) 78% in the quail experimental model. (1: Res Commun Mol Pathol Pharmacol. 2006;119(1-6):67-75.)
9) C-Reactive Protein: Red Yeast Rice rapidly reduces C-Reactive Protein within 24 hours, e.g. 16.6%, and with increasing efficacy with duration, e.g. 24.8% within 2 weeks. (1: Clin Chim Acta. 2005 Feb;352(1-2):217-24.)
10) Fat Cell Formation: Red Yeast Rice down-regulates the expression of genes that promote fat cell formation. (1: Life Sci. 2004 Nov 12;75(26):3195-203.)
11) Antimutagenic/Antioxidant: Red Yeast Rice exhibits antioxidant and anticancer activities. (1: J Clin Biochem Nutr. 2008 Sep;43(2):118-25.)
12) Neuroprotective: Red Yeast Rice exhibits a protective effect against amyloid beta peptide induced neurotoxicity, indicating its benefit for Alzhemiers and related neurodegenerative disorders. (1: Appl Microbiol Biotechnol. 2008 Jul;79(5):829-41. Epub 2008 Apr 26).
View additional Red Yeat Rice Research on GreenMedinfo.com – 30 studies.
A group dedicating to discussing, sharing and expanding on evidence-based information on the benefits of foods, vitamins, herbs and spices in disease prevention and treatment. Our membership includes 3400 individuals.
A fanpage which gives continual live research updates from
the project, and helps me spread the word about the project.
This month the fanbase grew to well over 1,000 members.
Sayer’s research archive and blog at www.SayerJi.com
We have a group on Linked in dedicated
to Natural Medical Research
Please Help Spread the Word about Evidence-Based Natural Alternatives.
