January 28th, 2011 by Berci in Quackery Exposed, Research
Tags: Berci, DNA, Dr. Bertalan Mesko, Electromagnetic Signal, HIV, Homeopathy, Human Immunodeficiency Virus, Infectious Disease, Luc Montagnier, Medical Quackery, Nanostructures, Nobel Prize, Radio Waves, Science and Medicine, Science Roll, Scientific Theory, Teleporting, Viral Infections, Virology, Water Molecules
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Luc Montagnier received the 2008 Nobel Prize for his discovery of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), but now he’s come up with a more-than-strange theory. He thinks DNA can teleport from one tube to another via electromagnetic signals. Is this the so-called “Nobel disease?”
French virologist Luc Montagnier stunned his colleagues at a prestigious international conference when he presented a new method for detecting viral infections that bore close parallels to the basic tenets of homeopathy.
Although fellow Nobel prize winners — who view homeopathy as quackery — were left openly shaking their heads, Montagnier’s comments were rapidly embraced by homeopaths eager for greater credibility.
Montagnier told the conference last week that solutions containing the DNA of pathogenic bacteria and viruses, including HIV, “could emit low frequency radio waves” that induced surrounding water molecules to become arranged into “nanostructures.” These water molecules, he said, could also emit radio waves.
He suggested water could retain such properties even after the original solutions were massively diluted, to the point where the original DNA had effectively vanished. In this way, he suggested, water could retain the “memory” of substances with which it had been in contact — and doctors could use the emissions to detect disease.
*This blog post was originally published at ScienceRoll*
January 28th, 2011 by Paul Auerbach, M.D. in Health Tips, Research
Tags: Acetazolamide, Acute Mountain Sickness, AMS, Athlete's Health, Climbing, Decadron, Dexamethasone, Diamox, Dr. Jeremy Windsor, Drug Complications, Drug Safety, Drug Side Effects, Drug-Induced Health Problems, Gastroenterology, healthline, High Altitude, Himalayan Rescue Association, Medicine for the Outdoors, Mountaineering, Mt. Everest, Outdoor Safety, Outdoors and Health, Steroids, Wilderness & Environmental Medicine
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This is a guest post by Dr. Jeremy Windsor.
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Steroids and Acute Mountain Sickness
In recent years, many attempts have been made to identify safe and effective medications to prevent acute mountain sickness (AMS). Acetazolamide (Diamox), currently the “drug of choice” for this purpose, is not perfect and occasionally causes objectionable side effects. Dexamethasone (Decadron), a powerful steroid medication, has become increasingly popular for prevention and treatment in certain circles. While there is ample evidence to suggest that dexamethasone is effective, a recent case report highlights that this drug is not without risk.
In the latest issue of the journal Wilderness & Environmental Medicine [WEM 21(4):345-348, 2010] in an article entitled “Complications of steroid use on Mt. Everest,” Bishnu Subedi and colleagues working for the Himalayan Rescue Association (HRA) described the case of a 27 year-old man who was prescribed a course of three drugs, including dexamethasone, intended to support him during his attempt to climb Mt. Everest. After more than three weeks of taking the medications, the mountaineer noticed the appearance of a rash and decided to stop taking them. Rather than wait for the rash to subside, he chose to continue his acclimatization program and ascend to Camp 3 at 7010m altitude. The patient arrived exhausted and confused; onlookers quickly recognized that something was seriously wrong and so a rescue party was organized to help him back to safety. Read more »
This post, Drug Safety In Preventing Acute Mountain Sickness, was originally published on
Healthine.com by Paul Auerbach, M.D..
January 28th, 2011 by DrCharles in Health Tips, Research
Tags: Anger, Anxiety, Archives of Internal Medicine, Cardiology, Cardiovascular Disease Risk, Cardiovascular Health, CBT, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Depression, Emotional Health, Emotional Well-Being, Family Medicine, General Medicine, Heart Attack Deaths, Heart Attack Risk, Heart Disease, Heart Health, High-Stress Life, Hostility, How Stress Affects Health, Live Longer, Longevity, Managing Stress, Mental Health, Primary Care, Psychiatry and Psychology, Psychosocial Stressors, Stress, Stress Control, Stress Reduction, The Examining Room of Dr. Charles
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“This job is killing me” is not a statement of jest. It is a desperate plea of outright sincerity.
Stress, anxiety, depression — all have been associated with an increased risk of cardiovascular disease and mortality. But can interventions to help people cope with stress positively affect longevity and decrease risk of dying? The results of a new study in the Archives of Internal Medicine would imply the answer is an encouraging “yes.”
Constructively dealing with stress is easier said than done, but it would seem logical that if we can reduce our psychological and social stressors we might live longer and delay the inevitable wear and tear on our vessels. This study proved that one such intervention, cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) for patients who suffered a first heart attack, lowered the risk of fatal and nonfatal recurrent cardiovascular disease events by 41 percent over eight years. Nonfatal heart attacks were almost cut in half. Excitement may be dampened by the fact that all-cause mortality did not statistically differ between the intervention and control groups, but did trend towards an improvement in the eight years of follow up.
Definitely less suffering. Maybe less deaths.
The authors state that psychosocial stressors have been shown to account for an astounding 30 percent of the attributable risk of having a heart attack. Chronic stressors include low socioeconomic status, low social support, marital problems, and work distress. Emotional factors also correlated with cardiovascular disease include major depression, hostility, anger, and anxiety. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at The Examining Room of Dr. Charles*
January 26th, 2011 by Mark Crislip, M.D. in Opinion, Research
Tags: Bladder Infection, Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, Cranberry Juice, Cystitis, Dr. Mark Crislip, E. Coli, Family Medicine, Internal Medicine, Kidney Infection, Lack of Scientific Medical Evidence, Medical Myths, Non-Evidence-Based, Primary Care, Pseudoscience, Pyelonephritis, SBM, Science Based Medicine, Unproven Medical Studies, Urinary Tract Infection, UTI
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It always somewhat surprises me how some interventions never seem to die. One therapy that refuses to be put to rest, or even to be clarified, is the use of cranberry juice for urinary tract infections (UTIs). PubMed references go back to 1962, and there are over 100 references. Firm conclusions are still lacking.
There is a reasonable, but incomplete, basic science behind the use of the cranberry juice for UTIs. E. coli , the most common cause of UTIs, causes infection in the bladder by binding to the uroepithelial cells. To do this, they make fimbriae, proteinaceous fibers on the bacterial cell wall. Fimbriae are adhesins that attach to specific sugar based receptors on uroepithelial cells. Think Velcro. Being able to stick to cells is an important virulence factor for bacteria, but not a critical one — it is not the sine qua non of bladder infections.
Are all E. coli causing UTIs fimbriated? No. It is the minority of E. coli that cause UTI that have fimbria, and the presence of fimbriae may be more important for the development of pyelonephritis (kidney infection) than cystitis (bladder infection). Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Science-Based Medicine*
January 26th, 2011 by RamonaBatesMD in Better Health Network, Research
Tags: BDD, Body Dysmorphic Disorder, Body Image, Brown University, Cosmetic Surgery, HARP, Harvard/Brown Anxiety Research Project, JNMD, Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, Mental Health, Mental Illness, Plastic Surgery, Psychiatry and Psychology, Recovery Rate, Rhode Island Hospital, Science Daily, Self-Image Disorders
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The Science Daily article entitled Body dysmorphic disorder patients who loathe appearance often get better, but it could take years discusses the disorder as highlighted in the Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease (JNMD).
The JNMD article reports the results of the longest-term study so far to track people with body dysmorphic disorder (BDD). The study was conducted by researchers at Brown University and Rhode Island Hospital. The good news? The researchers “found high rates of recovery, although recovery can take more than five years.”
This is a small study with only 15 BDD patients who were followed over an eight-year span. An excerpt:
After statistical adjustments, the recovery rate for sufferers in the study over eight years was 76 percent and the recurrence rate was 14 percent. While a few sufferers recovered within two years, only about half had recovered after five years.
The subjects were a small group diagnosed with the disorder out of hundreds of people participating in the Harvard/Brown Anxiety Research Project (HARP). Study co-author Martin Keller, professor of psychiatry and human behavior and principal investigator of the HARP research program which has been ongoing for more than 20 years, said that because the BDD sufferers were identified through this broader anxiety study, rather than being recruited specifically because they had been diagnosed with BDD, they generally had more subtle cases of the disorder than people in other BDD studies. In comparing the HARP study with the prior longitudinal study of BDD, it is possible that the high recovery rate in the HARP study is due to participants having less severe BDD on average.
About body dysmorphic disorder:
— In its simplest definition, it is an obsessive preoccupation with a slight, imperceptible, or actually nonexistent anatomic irregularity to the degree that it interferes with normal adjustment within society. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Suture for a Living*
