Health Reading

Low birth weight, depression, of mother, of child, brain lateralization

2011-12-07T09:30:00.000-08:00

Low birth weight (LBW) of a baby is often associated with depression. But depression of who? The pregnant mother or the child when he/she grows up? The answer is, Both.

Mother's depression associated with LBW of the baby:
http://psychcentral.com/news/2010/10/08/depression-linked-to-risk-for-low-birth-weight-baby/19277.html

LBW associated with depression when the baby grows up:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17339522
Interestingly, this research shows that only girls, not boys, are affected. However, there's conflicting research in this respect, which is the next article.

LBW not associated with depression when the baby grows up:
http://aje.oxfordjournals.org/content/167/2/164.abstract
Even more interesting is that this same-year (2007) research was conducted by researchers at the same university, University of Southampton. (I don't know whether and how this group communicates with the other.)

Another aspect of LBW relevant to mental health is its connection to lateralization of brain function ("division of labor", so to speak, of the two brain hemispheres). And again, the Southampton scientists pioneered this research:
http://www.soton.ac.uk/mediacentre/news/2011/feb/11_18.shtml
which is published in a 2011 issue of Public Library of Science.
In short, LBW is associated with more right brain activity. According to Wikipedea, the right brain is responsible for pragmatic and contextual language capability, and the prosodic aspect (speech), but not grammar or vocabulary of it, and (not shown in the table on the page) depression.

What is the B.E.S.T. Chiropractic Method?

2011-11-15T14:28:00.000-08:00

The following is a guest blog by "Allison Brooks". If you have any question, please send it directly to naturallie23 at gmail dot com.

What is the B.E.S.T. Chiropractic Method?
How the Bio Energetic Synchronization Technique works

Chiropractic therapy is thought to be easy identified, and when most talk about this therapy the first thought is “bone cracking”; but this should not be the case. There are over 20 different types of chiropractic techniques that are used to identify and correct glitches in neuromusculoskeletal functioning. There are many hands-on manipulations and muscle mobilizing movements used to correct issues, and one of these is called the Bio Energetic Synchronization Technique (B.E.S.T.).

B.E.S.T. is a great mixture of energy healing and chiropractic manipulation and was developed in the mid-1970s by chiropractor, Dr. Milton Ted Morter, Jr. It is practiced all over the world, especially in cultures that focus on mind/body healing because it balances the systems and energies of the body. B.E.S.T does not focus on physical correction like the other forms of chiropractics, but instead uses gentle pressures to resynchronize misaligned energy fields. The Bio Energetic Synchronization Technique can be used in a physical or emotional way.

Physical B.E.S.T. utilizes light pressures and stimulating pressure points to address certain imbalances. It is a non-invasive way to counter the stress and discomfort patterns surfacing from certain ailments or chronic conditions. Normally during a session, the practitioners apply pressures to troublesome muscles, spine, skull, and other noted points to remove the pain and restore healthy bodily patterns. Many patients claim to feel immediately relieved of painful symptoms after a B.E.S.T. session.

Emotional B.E.S.T. is another way patients can rid the body of stress and muscular pain. Since the brain controls every function of the body, negative or painful thoughts can actually affect how the body functions. When emotional thoughts like worry, fear, or jealously begin to override the memory, the interference of patterns becomes the body’s status quo. This interference can hinder the natural healing capabilities of the body. Emotional B.E.S.T. identifies what the emotional interference is and resets it, so that the body can focus on current situations and not the past. This in turns, promote healing and overall wellness.

Most practitioners suggest patients to take B.E.S.T. sessions when undergoing stressful conventional therapies or incorporate them with their daily wellness programs. Since the Bio Energetic Synchronization Technique focuses on managing pain and stress levels it is the cure-all for many symptoms. Many patients suffering from an unfavorable prognosis either for a chronic condition or an aggressive cancer, like non-hodgkin’s lymphoma or mesothelioma, swear by this chiropractic technique. Doctors recognize the capabilities of B.E.S.T. and other chiropractic techniques, and recommend them to cancer patients to relieve the symptoms of chemotherapy and/or radiation.

Trainability of body parts

2011-11-01T18:31:00.000-07:00

For a long time I've had the notion that some parts, or organs, of the human body can be trained to function better, be stronger and more disease-resistant, while the others cannot. The heart and the lung can be trained by aerobic exercises, or made stronger by eating dark chocolate, or drinking a small amount of red wine. Muscles of course can be trained to be stronger, and by the same exercise for muscles, bones can be made denser, less prone to fracture in old age. Even the brain has plasticity, so that cognitive ability can be improved with seemingly monotonous drills such as learning to play the piano, or logical thinking such as playing crossword puzzles, or learning a foreign language.

On the other hand, most organs of the body cannot be trained. You can't directly train your stomach to have better digestive power, unless you improve your health in general, which indirectly improves the function of the stomach. (Chickens eat pebbles to help digest, which may be the way they directly train their stomachs. But humans are not chicks.) The liver cannot be trained. Can you drink a modest amount of wine every day to improve the function of the liver, in the same way immunization works? As far as I know, even a tiny amount of alcohol is harmful to the liver, although the little harm may be outweighed by the benefit to the heart and blood vessels.

Surprisingly, whether an organ is trainable is or will be identified unambiguously, a clear yes or a clear no. But there's more to it. An old Chinese doctor on TV claimed benefit of moving eyeballs. I always thought eyes belong in the untrainable category. But he says his good eyesight is due to his daily eye exercise, including rotating eyeballs counter-clockwise dozens of times, and then clockwise (with eyes closed), followed by kneading a few acupuncture points around the eyes. Unfortunately, like almost any TCM doctor, he has not done any controlled test, which is the gold standard in modern medical science. While I still believe an organ is either trainable or not, as time goes by, more organs may move from the untrainable to the trainable. Brains used to be thought to be fixed and rigid around age of 10 or younger. But discoveries in neuroplasticity throw doubt on it. Eyes may move to the trainable group in the future, and we're expected to prolong the onset of near- or far-sightedness, macular degeneration, glaucoma, etc.

I have yet to find published materials discussing this classification of human organs. Unless it turns out that all organs are trainable (or all untrainable), I believe this classification will prove to be a useful concept in health science.

Magnetic field inversely correlated with dream bizarreness

2011-09-24T10:57:00.000-07:00

Sweet dreams are made of geomagnetic activity, published on April 1, 2009, doesn't sound like an April Fool's Day joke. The academic article associated with that mass media report is An association between geomagnetic activity and dream bizarreness, in the July 2009 issue of Medical Hypotheses[note].

So, this guy, a psychologist by profession, recorded his 2387 dreams and personally rated the bizarreness (how weird or unrealistic) each dream was, and correlated with the local geomagnetic index in Perth, Australia, where he lived. It turned out that the stronger the magnetic field, the less (not more!) bizarre his dream.

I'm curious about his finding and would like to expand on this research, by Internet search and book reading only though. It was documented before that if you take pills of melatonin, the hormone your pineal gland would naturally secrete during deep sleep, you'll have a very vivid dream or nightmare (see e.g. p.302 Dr. Rosenfeld's Guide to Alternative Medicine). If we consider a positive correlation between vividness with bizarreness, and combine the two correlations, we may conclude that magnetic field strength is inversely associated with the amount of melatonin. That is, the stronger the magnetic field, the less melatonin produced, and the less bizarre (or more realistic) the dream is. Since melatonin induces sleep (often used to fight jet lag as well as insomnia), it follows that the magnetic field disturbs sleep, and a vivid, bizarre dream is connected with the deeper sleep than a realistic dream or no dream at all.

The correlation I added as a hypothesis here, that magnetic field is inversely associated with endogenously secreted melatonin, can be easily tested, not involving any subjective measurement. I hope to see a study published by a researcher some day.

_____________
[note] While some researchers might reject articles in Medical Hypotheses as unworthy, they won't reject the fact that great discoveries in history often germinated from meer hypotheses, and the hypotheses in this journal definitely contain some science element to make further, well-controlled, research easier.

Tibetan medicine: first impression

2011-09-17T10:26:00.000-07:00

CCTV's Chinese Medicine program is excellent. This time it's about the amazing Tibetan Medicine (TM). I'm no stranger to Traditional Chinese Medicine's diagnostics (checking toungue, pulse, etc), acupuncture and moxibustion, herbs, ... TM has most of it, but some are modified. A TM doctor makes an extraordinarily long and detailed analysis on the patient's urine, checking its smell repeatedly, stirring it occasionally. Moxibustion looks more violent than TCM; the skin will get burned, which is taken care of separately. High altitude living causes elevated hemoglobin level, and an effective treatment is bleeding, of the "bad" blood as they call it. Making the precious "seventy-component pearl pellet" involves mercury, and toxicity control is crucial.

Overall, TM has similarity to TCM, only more brutal, primeval, archaic. In spite of the effectiveness, smelling each patient's sample will have the problem of desensitizing the doctor's nose, limiting his accuracy in diagnosing the patients that come later in the day. Bleeding is, according to a Han-looking Tibetan doctor, the only way to cure hyperhemoglobinemia. I'm sure TM has certain authority on this disease but I wonder if it's really the only treatment. The most appalling scene to me is the use of a large quantity of mercury in preparing the pearl pellets. As far as I know, mercury is proved to have absolutely zero benefit and a great deal of harm to our bodies. I seriously doubt that the current science and technology has not had a replacement for it in the preparation process. Mercury's uniqueness lies in the fact that it's metallic and stays in liquid form at room temperature. If that's the property being made use of, gallium, if memory serves me right, does the same, with much lower toxicity. If I live in Tibet, I'll definitely refuse to take this traditionally highly cherished "sacred" medicine.

I believe TM and TCM will learn from each other more than ever, thanks to the Internet and much improved transportation between Tibet and the rest of China. Diagnostics by the smell of urine may be an important contribution to TCM, as well as the bleeding as treatment of hyperhemoglobinemia. One of the most urgent changes to TM, as far as what's shown in this program so far, should be complete removal of mercury in the pearl pellets, a commonly prescribed medication. Sadly, no mention of this change is made by anyone interviewed.

New born baby's weight related to later IQ and mood

2011-08-09T20:23:00.000-07:00

The Influence of Birth Size on Intelligence in Healthy Children, 2009, Pediatrics:

"After controlling for multiple confounders for every 1-cm increment in birth length, 1 kg in birth weight, or 1 cm in head circumference, there was a corresponding increase in IQ of 0.49 points (P for trend < .001), 2.19 points (P for trend = .007) and .62 points (P for trend = .003), respectively."

Evidence for Developmental Programming of Cerebral Laterality in Humans, 2011, Public Library of Science:

"Risk of depression and enhanced stress responsivity, with their consequent risks for ill health including cardiovascular disease, is increased in people who were small at birth."

(Science Daily report about the latter article)

You don't have to eat fresh fruits or vegetables

2011-07-21T11:57:00.000-07:00

Common advice is that you must eat fresh fruits and vegetables. I've long wondered why fresh, other than they seem to taste better and look better. Do they offer more nutrients? Belgian scientists' 2007 research shows that nutritional value varies with time of storage, but not necessarily always going down. See Figures 2 and 3 of the article for six kinds of fruits or vegetables. The only one that almost constantly loses antioxidants may be bananas. The take-home message is that you don't have to eat fresh, as long as they're not rotten.

Toxicity of herbs

2011-07-20T13:01:00.000-07:00

It's not uncommon to hear people say herbs or Chinese herbs have no side effects, or even, are not toxic. The Chinese article 中药使用者安全意识待提高 (Chinese herb users need better awareness of safety) is excellent for technically inclined laymen (the type of people capable of reading an encyclopedia of a specific field of science). Better informed herb users may say mineral types of Chinese medicine could be toxic but herbs are generally OK. The said article dismisses that too. Toxicity may be inherent to the medicine itself, or express it when combined with others, or it has negligible toxicity alone, but happens to be used with another that has the same specific toxicity, so the end result adds up.

One good way to avoid toxicity, or at least minimize it, is to take less. If you can take the medicine by means other than orally, seriously consider it. I once concocted my wrist pain "soup". I looked up all individual herbs I used and knew that 细辛 (Manchurian Wildginger) is toxic. Since it's used on the skin, not taken orally, and with below limit amount, I consider it completely safe.

We're all used to looking up chemical, biological, physiological properties of meterials, chemicals, or medicines on Wikipedia, which, unfortunately, sometimes fails to document toxicity, as in the case of Ginkgo. It *is* documented at Baidu Baike in Chinese. If you only read English, more reading is needed. One of Dr. Weil's articles talks about its high-dose side effects.

Tilapia may harm more than help

2011-05-23T07:13:00.000-07:00

Dr. Weil's short note warns against eating farm-raised tilapia. It's said that tilapia contains little Omega-3 but a lot of Omega-6, which our bodies already have too much of to strike a balance with Omega-3. He recommends salmon, especially the wild Alaskan type. His comment corroborates with Wikipedia which probably cited this 2008 arcitle. That aritlce says (my bold text), "This analysis revealed that trout and Atlantic salmon contained relatively high concentrations of n-3 PUFA, low n-6:n-3 ratios, and favorable saturated fatty acid plus monounsaturated fatty acid to PUFA ratios. In contrast, tilapia (the fastest growing and most widely farmed fish) and catfish have..."

Frequent shoppers are healthier

2011-04-14T10:44:00.000-07:00

An interesting article published in the April 2011 issue of J Epidemiol Community Health, Frequent shopping by men and women increases survival in the older Taiwanese population, is not too surprising. I didn't see the full article (not published yet?). But I think the reason frequent shoppers are healthier may be that they walk and use brains a lot, contributing to improvement of physical and mental health. What's a little surprising is the finding that "Highly frequent shopping may favour men more than women". Is it because shopping frequency varies much more among men than among women?

Sun UV to trigger Vitamin D and skin cancer: intensity matters?

2011-04-08T11:50:00.000-07:00

I've never read a report about this but I have had this suspicion for a long time. On the one hand, we need to expose our skin to the sunlight, preferably on a daily basis, in order to let the body synthesize enough vitamin D. On the other, we don't want so much exposure as to cause skin cancer. All reports or articles I know simply advise moderation in exposure time. But I have a hypothesis that intensity, or rather, local intensity multipled by time of exposure, matters more. Suppose the UV light coming to your skin is x lux's in intensity and it lasts y seconds. The chance of you getting skin cancer on that spot is proportional to x*y. If this hypothesis is true, then we have a good strategy to achieve both goals at the same time, getting enough UV and avoiding skin cancer: alternate the part of your body exposed to the sun, and never let the sun light come to one small part of the skin for an extended period of time. That's exactly what I did after lunch today. I went to the back yard, facing the sun, topless (in mabu or horse stand position, practicing basic punches, but that's irrelevant). Then turned the bare back to the sun (practicing splits, again, irrelevant). Total time was about 10 minutes, split in two halves. I think it's good enough for an April sun in south Texas on a good sunny day.

Western and Chinese medicine studying acupuncture: Difference

2011-03-13T19:42:00.000-07:00

For a long time, I've noticed one big difference betweeen traditional Chinese medicine and wester medical science in studying acupuncture: the latter almost always fails to specify the acupuncture points. People with basic knowledge of acupuncture, in fact, both acupuncture and moxibustion (AM), know that different acupuncture points serve different purposes, much like different drugs treat different diseases. Since western science publications list herb names when they're used in the research, and names of the AM points are already internationalized, I don't see why the names are not generally listed in equally scrutinized research papers.

Effect of Light at Sleep on Health

2011-02-10T20:44:00.001-08:00

I'm interested in two issues related to light at sleep: lower limit in intensity of light not affecting child's growth, and effect on risk of cancer. I didn't find an article directly discussing the relationship of light to secretion of growth hormone (GH). But since GH and melatonin secretions are related ("Melatonin stimulates growth hormone secretion through pathways other than the growth hormone-releasing hormone"), and the effect of light intensity on melatonin is regularly studied, we can focus on the latter. This letter, by Steven Lockley, a Harvard Medical School doctor, shows the change of melatonin suppression in relation to light intensity (see Fig 1(B)). You can see when the light intensity reaches 50 lux, the level of melatonin quickly starts to be suppressed until about 200 lux.[note] In plain English, if you need a better night sleep, and growth for the child, the light should be kept below 50 lux. According to Wikipedia, 50 lux is about the light intensity you get at your "Family living room". So I believe unless there's direct light shining on your eyelids, as those from your night lights or street lights, you should have a piece of mind. If you must have some light, such as that on your digital clock, make sure it's red, which is at almost the exact opposite of blue in visible light spectrum. Again according to Wikipedia, the blue light has the most detrimental effect on melatonin secretion. Now you know why those clocks are red.

Light at sleep is also known to increase the risk of cancer, the most studied type of which may be breast cancer. See Dr. Weil's short note, and this 2005 article.
______________
[note] Other researchers did similar experiments, e.g., J.M. Zeitzer et al. in Am. J. Physiology in 2005. See its Fig 1(B). Their melatonin suppression onset started earlier at about 10 lux. But they had fewer data points.

Fat at buttock and thigh is good?

2010-12-03T20:21:00.000-08:00

University of Oxford researcher's June 2010 article Gluteofemoral body fat as a determinant of metabolic health is generally cited by popular health science articles as saying it's a good thing to have gluteofemoral fat, or fat at buttocks and thighs. I wonder if it's a misreading. It seems to me the article is saying if you must have excessive fat, you would rather have it at gluteofemoral position, because it's a good place to store it. If we could find two identical people except for the fact that one is generally lean in the whole body and the other has a great amount of gluteofemoral fat, should we say the latter is more likely to be healthy?

Many Scented Cleaning Products Contain Toxic Chemicals

2010-11-25T06:57:00.000-08:00

Dr. Weil's report on a recent medical research:
http://www.drweil.com/drw/u/WBL02222/Many-Scented-Cleaning-Products-Contain-Toxic-Chemicals.html
"They detected 133 chemicals in 25 popular products they analyzed, including laundry detergents, fabric softeners, dryer sheets, soaps, hand sanitizers, lotions, deodorants, shampoos and air fresheners...All the products emitted at least one chemical classified as toxic or hazardous,... and 11 of them emitted at least one chemical considered a probable carcinogen"
Dr. Weil's "Natural Household Cleaning Products" at
http://www.drweil.com/drw/u/ART00580/natural-household-cleaning-products.html
is useful.

The original research article is titled Fragranced consumer products: Chemicals emitted, ingredients unlisted, whose abstract says "For 'green' products, emissions of these compounds were not significantly different from the other products."

Moles linked with slower aging

2010-11-08T15:10:00.000-08:00

The report Moles linked with slower aging prompted me to find the original article. It's in the July 2007 edition of Cancer Epidemiology Biomarkers & Prevention, "Nevus Size and Number Are Associated with Telomere Length and Represent Potential Markers of a Decreased Senescence In vivo". "Nevus" includes moles and other types of birthmarks. "Telomere" is the free-moving end of a chromosome; the longer the "telomere", the better, e.g. slower aging and possibly (not confirmed) lower risk of cancer. "Senescence" means aging. The study only includes white women. But we hope the link between more and bigger moles on your body and slower aging, also exists for people that are not white and female, and I wish the researchers had commented whether cosmetically removing the moles affects the mole count.

Is "枇杷花蜜" syrup or honey?

2010-10-19T14:46:00.000-07:00

I bought a bottle of "枇杷花蜜" in China town. Back home I saw "syrup" under the big Chinese label. The following is my email to New York State Department of Health and an abstract of their reply (with written permission).

Dear Sir/Madame,

A New York-based food company, S & M (U.S.A) ENTERPRISE CORP.,

http://www.wangpage.com/nyc/ypage_merch_detail.php?merch=1982

makes Grow Notes brand syrup with a Chinese name "枇杷花蜜" (pronounced "pipa huami"). I believe there's a mismatch between the two names. The Chinese name is literally "loquat honey". If the product is indeed honey, they may be missing out on some customers who only know English. If the product is syrup, they're misleading customers to buying something that they thought would be more healthful and valuable. The label has a big bright title of "枇杷花蜜" with a small dark "Syrup" under it.

Could you tell me where I should address this email? Thank you.

Their reply:

In NYS, the term “honey” is reserved, by law, to mean “the nectar of flowers that has been transformed by, and is the natural product of the honey-bee, taken from the honeycomb and marketed in a liquid, candied or granulated condition.” (NYS Agriculture and Markets Law §205).

Unless the item meets this definition, they would not be able to label it, in the English translation, as honey. If it contains added sugars/ other ingredients, it would need to be labeled as syrup, in English ...

My email again:

Thanks very much to you both. I don't have the knowledge and obviously no scientific instrument to tell whether this particular product is syrup or honey. I'll personally avoid it for now.

Cancer: disease after industrialization

2010-10-19T06:18:00.000-07:00

If you search on Google using these keywords

"nature reviews cancer" cancer industrialized

(quotation marks as is), you'll find many reports on the research by Dr. Michael Zimmerman et al. of Manchester University. According to their study of Egyptian mummies, cancer is mainly a disease after industrialization due to pollution and unhealthy diet. If that's true, it explains why Traditional Chinese Medicine never made allusion to a disease similar to what modern medical science calls cancer. And search for a cure of cancer in TCM is probably bound to be a futile effort. Nevertheless, TCM is remarkably successful in improving the patient's general health after cancer treatment, as well as in keeping you fit as a healthy person.

Optimal heart rate when you exercise

2010-10-15T09:39:00.000-07:00

Too low, your exercise is not intensive enough to stimulate your heart or tone up other parts of your body. Too high, that's not good to your heart either. According to the study published in a July 2010 issue of Circulation, on average, women's peak heart rate in exercise is 206 - (0.88 x age). Dr. Weil's recount of the study is more readable to non-medical-professionals. He also noted that the formula "that works for men is 220 minus age".

Herb Classification

2010-09-30T06:07:00.000-07:00

In memorizing herb names and their functionalities, I find it easier to first classify or group, sometimes kind of arbitrarily, each herb into one single category. So I know the single major use of one herb before I memorize its other uses later when I have time. The following two links have fairly good classification of them.

單味藥 (single herb medicine): www.cmuh.org.tw/HTML/dept/1p10/china_pharm_first.htm
成方藥 (mixed herb medicine): www.cmuh.org.tw/HTML/dept/1p10/china_pharm_second.htm

As of this writing, their web pages still have problems displaying two symbols that mean something to them; both are shown as a question mark. According to their email to me, one is 飲片 and the other 濃縮藥.

Which sports have the highest exercise values?

2010-08-14T21:32:00.000-07:00

The following is an English translation of my old note made almost 30 years ago of an article in Zhongguo Qingnian Bao (China Youth Newspaper), March 22, 1981, issue#3689. The article is titled "Which sports have the highest exercise values?". It has no information on what methods they used to create this table and what medical science research was behind the numbers. But for what it's worth, it looks interesting, and seems to be consistent with our common sense.

	jogging	bicycle	swim- ming	skating	hand- ball	basket- ball	tennis	gymnas -tics	walking	softball
heart/lung endurance	21	19	21	18	19	19	16	10	13	6
muscle endurance	20	18	20	17	18	17	16	13	14	8
muscle strength	17	16	14	15	15	15	14	16	11	7
flexibility	9	9	16	13	16	13	14	19	7	9
balance	17	18	12	20	17	16	16	15	8	7
weight control	21	20	15	17	19	19	16	12	13	7
muscle building	14	15	14	17	11	13	13	18	11	5
digestion	13	12	13	11	13	10	12	11	11	8
sleep	16	15	16	15	12	12	11	12	14	7
sum	148	142	140	140	140	134	128	126	102	64

The word "gymnastics" is actually "柔软体操" in Chinese, or "flexibility gymnastics" literally, and "walking" is "散步" or "slow walking", not vigorous walking as in modern day health advice. Needless to say, the sports in the table are to be treated as sports, not leisurely activities. For instance, swimming does not mean you immerse your body in the pool for a whole afternoon and swing your arms once every few minutes, and biking is not slowly cycling around a beautiful lake in a family outing. Have you heard of people say they gained weight by "swimming"? Now you know why.

My first herb concoction

2010-06-28T14:26:00.000-07:00

5 钱 (about 25 grams) of the following each:

丁香 (Syzygium aromaticum)
红花 (Safflower)
玉桂 (Cinnamon)
细辛 (Manchurian Wildginger)
川芎 (Rhizoma Chuanxiong)

bought from a local herb store. It only cost about $3 in total. I don't know the best way to use it. But I figure the easiest is as follows: take each a little and put them in a bowl; add a little water; heat it in microwave for a minute. Use a small piece of paper towel to dab at the liquid and apply it to wherever I feel joint pain, such as my wrist. Wrap around the wrist, and place the wrist in the bowl without touching the very hot water. Cover the wrist and bowl so as to keep the steam inside.

The above are from a prescription on a newspaper that (if I remember right) is supposed to treat women's mentrual cramps. But looking up the herbs in my "中药大辞典" I know they all serve to 舒筋活血 (help blood circulation). I don't remember the amount of each I should use and don't care how to best use it. So I take each just a little and only for 外用 (external use). Since 细辛 is toxic, this is even more important.

Scimitar syndrome patients birth month and surface water pesticide usage

2010-05-28T14:01:00.000-07:00

Scimitar syndrome is a rare congenital heart disease. Recently I read of the following research and thought of some possible connection between this disease and surface water pesticide usage in the US.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/03/090330130235.htm
Month Of Conception Linked To Birth Defects In United States

"the researchers found a strong association between the increased number of birth defects in children of women whose last menstrual period occurred in April, May, June or July and elevated levels of nitrates, atrazine and other pesticides in surface water during the same months."

For those that need more academic details, read
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2667895/

So I thought it would be very interesting to see what month a Scimitar syndrome patient was born in. To that end, I set up a poll at Yahoo Scimitar syndrome group (health.groups.yahoo.com/group/scimitarsupport/surveys?id=2263924).

As of today there're 13 data points. (One person told me the child was prematurely born so the actual number of valid points is 12.) The data are as follows

Month - Count of Patients - Percentage
January - 1 - 7%
February - 3 - 23%
March - 1 - 7%
April - 1 - 7%
May - 2 - 15%
June - 0 - 0%
July - 1 - 7%
August - 2 - 15%
September - 0 - 0%
October - 0 - 0%
November - 2 - 15%
December - 0 - 0

I wish I had more data points. But it looks like there's a trend: more scimitar syndrome patients are born early in a year. Let's say it's February. That means the mother's conception time is May. That fits well with the US surface water high pollution period in a year.

Oil for mouth ulcer

2010-05-17T13:20:00.000-07:00

Mouth ulcer, or canker sore according to Wikipedia, has no easy cure. But not mentioned in any article I know of is that you can simply apply any edible oil to the ulcer to greatly ease the pain, and in fact expedite recovery, rather like putting a bandaid on wound. I think the way this works is oil covers the ulcer to prevent water (mostly saliva) to get to the spot. Since you would move your tongue onto the ulcer accidentally or intentionally during the day, covering the ulcer with oil at night before you sleep is the best.

According to Dr. Weil, if the ulcer is a cold sore, you may also want to avoid chocolate, beer, grain cereals, nuts, etc.

All tunas are bad

2010-04-29T07:38:00.000-07:00

http://rsbl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/early/2010/04/13/rsbl.2010.0156.full

Too much mercury. If you must eat tuna, maybe yellowfin tunas are less dangerous to eat, because they're caught younger so they have accumulated less mercury in their bodies. But then do you eat more of them to satisfy your appetite? If you do, the same amount of harm is done. Just avoid tunas.

New "golden" ratios for facial beauty

2010-04-06T11:46:00.000-07:00

January 2010 issue of "Vision Research" has an interesting paper:
New "golden" ratios for facial beauty. If you look at these faces:

don't you think the two in the black frames look better? That's because, as the researchers find out, given a specific person, i.e. not comparing one person with another, there is something you can do to beautify yourself. Specifically, when the vertical distance between the line connecting two pupils and your mouth is 36% ("length ratio") of the distance between the lower edge of the frontal hair and the chin, the face looks the most attractive. Similarly, a most attractive image is achieved when the distance between the pupils is 46% ("width ratio") of the face width (measured between inner edges of ears). Since both widths can be controlled with hairs, these findings should be exciting news for people seeking natural beauty.

Note: You can see the faces better by enlarging the image. Right click, copy, and paste into a local application such as Outlook or Word. In Firefox, you can simply right click and pick View Image.

Doctors may have given you too much X-ray

2010-03-12T06:06:00.000-08:00

I've known this for years. Your doctor may have ordered too many X-ray's or CT scans on your body, increasing the risk of cancer, particularly leukemia, thyroid, and breast cancers. Children are at significantly higher risk, because (as a medical professional friend told me) their bone marrows are still developing. Next time when you visit your doctor, refuse or question the decision to take X-ray. Read Dr. Weil's latest article at
http://www.drweil.com/drw/u/QAA400702/Too-Many-CT-Scans.html

"doctors order all these scans not for medical reasons but to protect themselves from the ever-present threat of malpractice litigation... the owners of for-profit health care centers must use them [X-ray or CT scanners] a lot to recoup their investment."

Unfortunately, there's nothing you can do once the genes are already damaged by the X-rays.

CT's are much stronger X-rays, in case you don't know. For the dosage and their risk, see "Table: Average Radiation Doses Associated With Common Imaging Studies" at

http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/523000_3

(It needs an account, which is free.)

For your convenience, this is the interesting part of that article,

Table: Average Radiation Doses Associated With Common Imaging Studies

Diagnostic Examination, Effective Dose (mSv)
X-rays
Chest (PA film), 0.02
Head, 0.07
Cervical spine, 0.3
Thoracic spine, 1.4
Lumbar spine 1.8
Abdomen, 0.53
Pelvis/hip, 0.83
Limbs/joints, 0.06
Upper GI, 3.6
Lower GI, 6.4
Screening mammogram, 0.13
CT
Head, 2.0
Abdomen, 10.0
Chest, 20-40
Pulmonary angiography, 20-40
PET - CT, 25

Other interesting readings:
http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/523000_4
http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/523000_10

Bitter Melon (苦瓜) Extract Inhibits Breast Cancer Cell Proliferation

2010-03-04T07:08:00.000-08:00

February 23, 2010, in Cancer Research (a journal of the American Association of Cancer Research)

News on Dr. Weil: http://www.drweil.com/drw/u/WBL02184/HRT-and-Heart-Disease-The-Risk-is-Real.html#1

Abstract of the research article: http://cancerres.aacrjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/70/5/1925
Full text: http://cancerres.aacrjournals.org/cgi/content/full/70/5/1925

This humble bitter melon (bitter gourd, 苦瓜, ku3 gua1) very popular in China is rarely found in grocery stores in the US. It's gratifying to see the medicinal effect scientifically tested and proved, not just for breast cancer prevention, but for diabetes control and AIDS. Since bitter melons are grown in the southern part of China, I wonder if more Chinese women in the north than the south are diagnozed with breast cancer.

Non-Stick Pans and Thyroid Disease

2010-01-28T12:05:00.000-08:00

Association Between Serum Perfluoroctanoic Acid (PFOA) and Thyroid Disease in the NHANES Study

http://ehp03.niehs.nih.gov/article/fetchArticle.action?articleURI=info%3Adoi%2F10.1289%2Fehp.0901584

Higher concentrations of serum PFOA and PFOS (perfluoroctane sulphonate) are associated with current thyroid disease in the US general adult population.

Other interesting points from the publication (click "Download: PDF"):

Individuals with more education had higher PFOA levels...Similar differences were
found in PFOS concentrations.

people reporting having Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) may be less likely to be in the highest PFOA concentration quartile

Production of PFOS was halted in 2002 in the USA by its principal producer, due largely to concerns over bioaccumulation and toxicity. Since then, voluntary industry reductions in production and usage of other perfluorinated compounds, such as the US EPA initiated PFOA Stewardship Programme (US EPA 2006) have contributed to a decreasing trend in human exposure for all perfluorinated compounds (with the notable exception of perfluorononanoic acid, PFNA)

Modest associations between PFOA and thyroid hormones (negative for free T4 and positive for T3) were reported in 506 PFOA production workers across three production facilities (Olsen and Zobel 2007). There were no associations between TSH or T4 and PFOA and the free hormone levels were within the normal reference range.

The Younger You Look, the Longer You'll Live

2009-12-24T15:41:00.000-08:00

http://www.drweil.com/drw/u/WBL02174/Womens-Heart-Attacks-Just-Like-Mens.html#2

"The only biological explanation ... was that the individuals who looked younger also tended to have longer telomeres (repeating DNA sequences at the ends of chromosomes) that are linked to aging." Telomeres are the main research subject for the 2009 Nobel Medical Science medalists.

The Dec 14 2009 article in BMJ is at
http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/339/dec11_2/b5262
which concludes "Perceived age—which is widely used by clinicians as a general indication of a patient’s health—is a robust biomarker of ageing that predicts survival among those aged ≥70 and correlates with important functional and molecular ageing phenotypes."

Are Plastic Containers Unhealthy?

2009-11-19T06:57:00.000-08:00

Dr. Weil's Q&A at
http://www.drweil.com/drw/ecs/forums/thread.html?docid=THR52089&page=1
advised that "polycarbonate plastic containers may not be safe for storage and transport of food and beverages. Better choices are polypropylene (#5 pp), high-density polyethylene (#2 hdpe), and low-density polyethylene (#4 LDPE)." The answer particularly highlights the risk of insulin resistance i.e. risk of type-2 diabetes associated with using the unsafe plastic bottles. It prompted me to check a government site for more info. And here it is:
http://www.ct.gov/dph/lib/dph/environmental_health/eoha/pdf/plastics_primer0714.pdf
Indeed, only the bottles labeled with #2, #4, or #5 recycling number seem to be relatively safe, if you have to use plastic instead of glass or ceramic containers.

More Chocolate, Less Stress

2009-11-19T06:51:00.000-08:00

http://www.drweil.com/drw/u/WBL02167/Pollution-and-Migraine.html#1

"The researchers reported that eating the chocolate appeared to reduce levels of stress hormones in these volunteers. "

Original article at
http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/pr900607v
Journal of Proteome Research, October 7, 2009
"The study provides strong evidence that a daily consumption of 40 g of dark chocolate during a period of 2 weeks is sufficient to modify the metabolism of free living and healthy human subjects, as per variation of both host and gut microbial metabolism."

阿胶 to Cure Arrhythmia and Bradycardia

2009-11-09T04:59:00.000-08:00

Not all arrhythmia is created equal. But my 80-year-old father had it cured, at least for a month now, by 阿胶 (E1 jiao1), Donkey-Hide Gelatin. He had arrhythmia and bradycardia (very low heart beat, 40 per minute in his case) about a year ago after he practiced Taichi sword for too long with other old men and women in the morning, as they would do every day. Since then, the doctor told him to exercise for a shorter time each day, in addition to advising him to stay in hospital with a possible price tag of a few thousand RMB. There just happened to be another old man living in the same community that had exactly the same symptoms, and was successfully treated with 阿胶, taken with 西洋参 (Xi1 Yang2 Shen1) American Ginseng. So my mother did exactly the same for my father. It's been a month now. The result is amazing!

阿胶 is to bu3 xue3 (replenish blood, literally), and 西洋参 to bu3 qi4 (replenish qi). But the concept of xue3 in TCM is not to be confused with just blood; it includes all kinds of fluid plus nutrient. 阿胶 is also often used with 当归, (Dang1 Gui1, Chinese Angelica Root), another strong agent to bu3 xue3, particularly for women. But keep in mind that 阿胶 is warm in nature. My mother also took the "concoction" she made and got ichy, so she had to stop.

西洋参 is a strong bu3 qi4 medicine, like 人参 (Ren2 Shen1, Chinese ginseng), except that 西洋参 is cool in nature whereas 人参 is warm.

Standard Boring Disclaimer: In case you're not used to reading about alternative medicine, let me warn that always consult your doctor before you try anything.

Vocabulary of Medicine

2009-09-18T18:21:00.000-07:00

A doctor posted a blog Reflections on the Vocabulary of Medicine. I've always wondered how much time a medical science student has to spend memorizing all those long and eccentric words while studying medical science per se at the same time. Could it be 20% or 1/3 or more of his study time he has to dedicate to this tangentially relevant skill or knowledge? I bet no other division of science has so many words you must learn by heart to be proficient in doing your job. I have a Ph.D in Chemistry. Although tens of thousands of chemical compound names sound mind-boggling, they're way much easier than you would think, because names of chemicals have strict rules in nomenclature. It's true that lots of medical terms are methodically structured. But too many are not. This is even a bigger problem for non-English speakers because they have to learn English as a regular language. Speaking of this, I wonder why medical terms in English started with these weird origins, Greek, Latin, etc. Why can't they use the same words as plumber Joe's words, heart, not cardia, infection, not -itis, etc. Afraid of ambiguity? Combine a few common words in a strict order and then give a clear definition. Instead of, say, "pulmonary hypertension", why not "lung high blood pressure"? There's no loss of precision in semantics. In fact, that's exactly how the medical terms in Chinese are like, and Chinese doctors are not complaining about ambiguity of technical terms because they use plumber Joe's words as building blocks.

Nanotechnology and cancer risk

2009-08-21T17:35:00.000-07:00

My neighbor is a pharmacist, and likes to research various topics of medical science and latest findings. When it comes to cosmetics, she told me that nanotechnology works because the superfine particles can easily get into the skin and remove dark spots, among other things. On the other hand, there may be risk in cancer for the same reason that the particles are too small to be fought against by the body. I searched on Google for "nanotechnology cancer" (without quotes). 99% of the links are about how the technology is used as a tool to diagnose or treat cancer. But one article is an exception:

http://articles.latimes.com/2008/may/21/science/sci-nano21
Nanotechnology cancer risk found

It was written in May 2008 for ordinary readers with no pointers to professional publications.

A reader in a newsgroup posting asked: "Should this be verified, will we take a lesson from asbestos and start regulating/limiting production and use of these types of tubes?" There's no response.

I'll keep an eye on this topic. There must be scientific research on it. I just didn't find it online.

Drink alcohol to lower dementia risk

2009-07-24T14:06:00.000-07:00

http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/706325

Moderate Alcohol Consumption May Lower Dementia Risk in Cognitively Normal Elderly

"Moderate alcohol consumption may lower dementia risk in cognitively normal older subjects, but any level of alcohol consumption in individuals with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) appears to be detrimental."

Pay attention to the "but" part. If there's already sign of cognitive impairment, drinking alcohol is even worse than not doing it.

论吐痰

2009-06-29T05:20:00.000-07:00

"痰"字国人都认识，属常用字，常见于媒体和街头。但英文的phlegm却是非常医学的，只出现在医院或医学健康文章里。[注1] 原因很简单，吐痰的动作和吐出的痰在中国随处可见，自然增加了印象。这在其他国家，甚至台湾，都是罕见的；电影《泰坦尼克》有男女主人公吐唾沫比赛的镜头,我在韩国旅游时见到一次一男子往地上吐口水,在美国有时也见到,总的次数屈指可数,而且都不含痰,没有倒吸气、清喉咙的声音。可见吐痰真是中国的国粹，而且是中国大陆的国粹。

其实中华民族是一个爱美恶丑的民族，比如中国街头和媒体的许多赏心悦目的照片，鳞次栉比，目不暇接，超过日本，更胜欧美。痰虽是人体排泄物，但排泄物不都是让人恶心的，有些甚至是优雅的。按优雅度下降排序，大致有泪、汗、...、鼻涕、痰、二便。汗，尤其是泪，常为文人骚客咏叹,但越往后越不为人所挂齿,以至到最龌龊的只有陈独秀这种流氓才会大言不惭[注2]。本人熟读唐诗几十首，隐约记得几百首，但不记得痰字曾出现在任何文学作品中,可见其不雅。几年前的一天我在江苏同里欣赏千年民居，路过水边，见一清秀男子吟唱小调，其声柔婉，其境恬适，慨叹江南水乡之美莫过于此。他唱完了，以大约40度仰角朝小运河吐出一口痰落入水里，好像以此展示他的潇洒，给他的美锦上添花。

为什么中国人经常吐痰呢？一说中国人痰多。那为什么痰多？是猪肉吃得多吗？《本草纲目》豕条引朱丹溪（震亨）语，“盖肉性入胃便作湿热，热生痰“。 [注3] 可我在上海一外企工作一年多，没有见到或听到同事吐痰。生活在海外的华人也没有吐痰的，甚至在厕所也不。如果有些中国人确实痰多，那必定与肺有关。多年前一国内朋友来美国，体检时一位亚裔护士不讳种族歧视之嫌，说“你们中国大陆来的很多都有潜在的肺结核”。如果这是真的，而不是由于早年种牛痘所致，我们应该好心规劝吐痰的国人上医院看看。街头的标语不妨换成更有趣的，比如

“您吐痰了吗？结核医院牵挂您的健康！”
“不要随地吐痰，请把它留给您的肺病医生！”
“宽容吐痰的人吧，他们虽有痨病却还坚定地活着！”

这种宣传暨张显人性，又能鞭策屡教不改者，让我不禁想起戒烟广告词“万宝路男人需要伟哥”[注4] 打击献丑者的尊严，把他们与病夫联系起来，再自称大度无所谓的人也会被刺激的。

但刺激一定要讲策略，否则不但事倍功半，而且可能招致那些uncivilized people（未开化的人）的暴力伤害。中国禁痰网创始人王涛[注5]“身”有体会。有一次我在上海的家乐福斜坡电梯上，紧跟我前面的年轻女士剥开糖果然后把糖纸很快地扔到电梯外的货架上。我等电梯到下一层楼结束时，凑上去轻声对她说“你不应该把纸扔在货架上”，她吃了一惊马上说一句“哦，对不起！”然后我们各走各的路，这事没有他人注意到。后来我跟我的朋友说起，他说我给了别人一个比较好下的台阶。假如我当时大声吆喝“不许乱扔垃圾”，那不仅是她，连我也得承受一点尴尬的压力，何苦呢？

中国需要至少一千万王涛，才能保证一人教育一百人。但这没有大规模宣传谈何容易。新华网报导王涛时根本不给出中国禁痰网的网址（这是中国记者的通病！），即便让人知道了，又会好到哪里去呢？吐痰是多数国人的习惯，恐怕只能在与给老人让座的宣传一样深入人心的宣传后才能彻底改正；给老人或有需要的乘客让座，中国就比别的国家做得好。[注6] 假如我们到处都贴上禁止吐痰的标语，小学课堂经常性而不是一次性地讲吐痰的坏话，并敦促谈们监督他们的父母，让大人小孩都把吐痰与肮脏、恶心、有病、乡巴佬在心理上联系起来，估计不出五年，我们就可以达到目标，然后停止给小学生灌输，撕下这些让中华民族丢脸的标语了。

需要强调的是，禁痰是grassroot的基层群众性运动。虽然我们不能绝对地说吐痰者不上网、上网者不吐痰，但这个说法大致正确。因此禁痰网站这种精英策略不是办法，只可用于组织自愿者和报告工作进展。吐痰者多半没受过太多教育，言粗行陋，智商平平，最有效的、最不引起反抗的劝介可能来自他们的宝贝儿子或女儿，其次是铺天盖地的宣传，最次是网上文章，假设他们能上网的话。不要悲观，我们一定能做到，只是需要全社会的大运动。“天下无痰”岂止是王涛的理想，是中国大陆全中华民族的理想。

黄勇
2009年6月于休斯敦
欢迎转载．转载时请保留“欢迎转载”一语

_______________________
[注1] 在本人的Yahoo搜索汉字字频统计中，"痰"字在2000常用字中大约在1600位，在Google搜索字频统计中，更是上升到大约900位。英语phlegm的词频在18000位，参见Wiktionary。

[注2] 见《实庵自传》,杨光编《最后的名士》,79-80页。

[注3] 又见网上诸文,如胡延滨猪肉入药之宜与忌。

[注4] 这则把抽烟跟阳萎联系起来的广告在美国或中国都不流行，可Google搜索"The Marlboro man needs Viagra"（包括括号）。相关医学报道见２００７年２月美国卫生系统药师协会杂志Tobacco Education: Emphasizing Impotence as a Consequence of Smoking（烟草教育：强调阳萎作为吸烟的后果）。

[注5] 志愿者王涛：“天下无痰”是我的理想

[注6] 一次我在法国的地铁里，没有看到请让座的公益提示，没有人给一位刚上车的怀孕晚期的孕妇让座（不过她一直在跟她一起上车的朋友聊天）。　２００９年６月纽约甚至颁布法令杜绝这种不道德行为，参见MTA Won't Stand for Seat Hogs（大都会运输署不容忍占座的猪）。

Badminton and anti-depression

2009-03-30T18:30:00.001-07:00

While playing badminton with kids today, I came up with an idea about depression or treatment of it. If you're an artist, how would you draw a picture of a very depressed person, or as an actor, act as a poor depressed fellow? He must be drooping his head, closing or barely opening his mouth, with a sad expression. If you want to cheer him up, what would you like to see him behave? Just the opposite, raising his head, opening mouth, smiling. Well, the three elements representing the opposite of depression are naturally satisfied with some entertaining sports such as badminton and kite flying. Think about it. You must look up to play (which, incidentally, also benefits your neck), and open your mouth to relax the skin and muscle under the chin. If the mouth is open like that, it's hard to have a sad facial expression even if you want to. Needless to say, any sport for entertainment (as opposed to competition) is generally good to mental health.

In psychology, the term suggestion means "the process of inducing a thought, sensation, or action in a receptive person without using persuasion and without giving rise to reflection in the recipient". I think the upward head direction and open mouth serve as perfect psychological suggestion to move away from depression. Badminton, as well as flying kites, should be an ideal sport for those suffering from this mental ailment.

Disclaimer: This is only my hypothesis. Its efficacy or lack of can only be ascertained by good control studies.

Omega-3 or fish oil and arthritis

2009-03-12T17:36:00.000-07:00

A newsletter from Walgreens points out the benefit of fish oil to rheumatoid arthritis. I searched on Google for '"omega-3" arthritis' (double quotes included):
http://www.google.com/search?q=%22omega-3%22+arthritis
and got 1.15 million hits. There's no point in repeating the published research here. But I want to point out that I've had pain on my right wrist once in a while in the past, oh, perhaps ten years. I've never figured out the cause. The first doctor used a term tendinitis to describe it. Ever since my Mom suspected it was gout, I relayed that suspicion to subsequent doctors and they always gave me I think prednisone, an anti-inflammation drug, which seems to kill the pain fine, and I was told to avoid mushrooms, some fish, animal organs, etc. Nevertheless, wrist pain still comes and goes a few times a year. Oddly, a detailed blood test did not reveal any sign of gout (e.g. high uric acid) and eating mushrooms didn't correlate with flare-up. In fact, the year while I lived in China, mostly 2007, was actually worse when I had better discipline on diet. Now when I come to think of it, that was also the year I had not taken any fish oil. Back in the US, I started to take Omega-3 fish oil again and had much less frequent pain. I have to say this anecdotal evidence is quite consistent with the theory that fish oil goes against arthritis.

Government Push for Electronic Medical Records

2009-02-27T20:31:00.000-08:00

http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/588354

"The economic stimulus plan currently being considered by Congress allocates $20 billion to health information technology such as electronic medical records (EMRs)...mixed opinions"..."'EMR is the worst thing that has happened to me professionally in over 25 years of practice' says ..."..."'I absolutely love our EMR,' says a nephrologist"

I work at a big hospital as an IT professional. Having gone through a few projects responsible for data model design, I know exactly what a good model and hard work mean. A few years ago a gynecological cancer project was handed to me. The data analyst, representing the users, already did excellent work in gathering requirement and use cases. But to implement that correctly in my Oracle database still took a lot of thinking. For instance, there're more than a hundred input fields that are like:

* Option1
* Option2
...
* Other
If other, specify details _____________.

Programmers and DBAs always love fixed fields and hate free text because free text is hard to program and difficult to search. But users are our God's and we have no choice. The above example must be implemented as multiple fixed choices using a reference table *plus a free text field* in the data table! When there're 100 of them, you get tired quickly.

The quoted Medscape article says primary care physicians tend to hate EMR and specialists generally embrace it. The former has to face a more undetermined situation when patients first come in. No doubt there's tension between their needs and programmers' pitiful preference.

We all know the IT in healthcare is the servant for doctors and nurses. If we don't constantly remind ourselves of this role, we're not living up to tax payers' high expectations and their precious contributions to keep us employed.

Outdoor time may protect kids from nearsightedness

2009-02-23T04:51:00.000-08:00

Original research journal summary at Optometry and Vision Science:Volume 86(1)January 2009pp 2-3
Reuters' summary (Note this summary probably stretched by adding "exposure to sunlight may play a role")

Highlights
* Having myopic parents is a very minor risk factor
* So are near [distance] work, schooling, watching TV, working on computer screens
* Ethnicity plays no role
* Reasons for protection of outdoor time may be "lesser accommodative demands in outdoor environments (despite the considerable evidence that accommodation is not important), pupil constriction in the brighter light typical of outdoor environments resulting in greater depth of focus, or a direct effect of light exposure, perhaps mediated by release of a retinal transmitter such as dopamine, which is known to inhibit eye growth in certain circumstances."
* Outdoor time matters, regardless activity or inactivity; even reading outdoors is good
* "around 2 to 3 hours a day outside of school hours seems to be sufficient to markedly lower the risk of myopia"

My comments:

The sunlight comment is probably added by the Reuters summary. If sunlight exposure is not the key, then the researchers' speculation all come down to one factor: brighter white light. If that's the case, we may just need to make sure the brightness of indoor environment matches that of outdoor and indoor light covers the entire visible light spectrum. On the other hand, if sunlight is essential, then the UV component of the sunlight may be a critical factor and therefore Vitamin D may play an important role in proctecting eyesight. It's so annoying that we don't know if the summary author or the original researchers suggested the role of natural sunlight.

Having read that, I recollect my teenage years when my eye sight degraded at a typical alarming rate from about 10 years to 15 years of age, while I was strict in following all eye usage hygiene rules (no reading in dim areas or in supine position, etc.), perhaps except one, not stopping reading when the eyes are tired. At the same time, other kids, including one habitually reading inside the quilt with a flashlight, were fine with their eyesight. We all spent a great deal of time outdoors, probably 3 hours a day. And in the southern city Chongqing (with about the same latitude as Houston, Texas) there's no shortage of sunlight, although it's almost always cloudy in winter.

(If a summary in Chinese is needed, search for "孩子在室外度过的时间长就不容易近视" on baidu.com, or click here. But note this summary probably stretched by adding "晒太阳促使体内分泌更多多巴胺")

Americans are not eating enough fruits and vegetables

2009-02-03T12:02:00.000-08:00

http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/586492

"Fewer than 1 in 10 Americans meet their calorie-specific MyPyramid fruit or vegetable recommendations. ... The primary contributors to total fruit intake were whole fruits among adults and fruit juices among adolescents. The largest single contributor to overall fruit intake was orange juice. Potatoes dominated vegetable consumption, particularly among adolescents, in whom fried potatoes increased the median vegetable intake from 0.72 cup to 1.21 cups per day. Dark green and orange vegetables and legumes accounted for a small portion of vegetable intake,"

Italics are mine.

Calcium supplementation is as important for men as for women

2009-02-03T11:58:00.000-08:00

Calcium Supplementation in Healthy Nonosteoporotic Men

"One quarter of all hip fractures occur in men, and 30% of older men experience fragility fractures."..."The results suggest that calcium supplementation is as important for men as it is for women. Additional studies will be required to determine precise dosing regimens (calcium 600 mg daily vs. 600 mg twice daily), the role of vitamin D supplementation in men, and supplementation's effect on fracture risk."

Risky to be part of clinical trial?

2009-02-03T11:19:00.000-08:00

Black Parents May Be More Likely to Distrust Medical Research

--- BEGIN QUOTE

February 3, 2009 ... February issue of the Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine.

"Among minority groups, African Americans are frequently underrepresented in clinical research," ... African Americans' distrust of medical research has been suggested to be an important reason for their lack of participation. ... "African American parents were significantly more likely than white parents to believe that medical research involved too much risk to the participant;

--- END QUOTE

A friend of mine was a doctor when he was in China and is not working at a hospital but not as a doctor any more. Once I asked him if he would be interested in being recruited to any clinical trial. He said Definitely not! The reason? Pretty much the same as those "black parents", in believing medical research involves too much risk to the participant: What if you get seriously sick by trying those not fully tested drugs? You don't want to be a guinea pig, said my friend.

Smoking Still Takes a Heavy Toll in China

2009-01-09T17:02:00.000-08:00

The Medscape report, Smoking Still Takes a Heavy Toll in China, based an article in the January 8, 2009 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, is no surprising. Too many stupid Chinese men still believe smoking paints for them an image of maturity and masculinity, while ignoring the great health risk, and oblivious to the fact that smoking actually is linked to impotence. Smokers are costly. Indeed they're mostly using their own money, but all. For those heavily using tax payers' money to treat their smoking related diseases, they'd better die sooner to relieve the society of unnecessary financial burden and create cleaner air to others.

Some quotes of the article:

"They estimate that in 2005, 673 000 deaths were attributable to smoking in China..., the majority of which (538,200) were among men." "The prevalence of tobacco smoking has been continuously high in adult men (around 60%)." "[S]ome of those in government are beginning to understand that revenue gained from tobacco taxation is far less than the healthcare costs associated with smoking."

Cooking oil comments

2008-11-21T17:48:00.000-08:00

[Originally posted at http://bbs.anjia.com/dispbbs_4_245846_1_1.html ]
> 中国食用油的制作方法分压榨（物理）和浸出（化学）两种，浸出
> 是用一种化学物质把油弄出来，产油率比压榨方式要高，但是用浸出
> 方式里面的一种化学物质吃下去永远都会积蓄在体内，几十年也排不出去的，所以
> 现在中国得各种各样癌症的人那么多，经常食用这种浸出油一定出问题。尤其是食
> 用油是我们每天都吃的东西，一定得好好关注。
> 如果经济条件允许的条件下，最好用橄榄油是最好了。[If you can afford, it's best to use olive oil.]

Olive oil is the best, but it lacks Omega-3 fatty acid. So you either need to supplement Omega-3 by taking tablets or capsules you buy from a nutrition store, or buy olive oil fortified with Omega-3, and of course eating plenty of fish is recommended too.

Also, peanuts, peanut oil, or anything made from peanuts have a trace amount of aflatoxin, a very potent carcinogen (cancer-inducing agent). There's no peanut oil that is completely free of this toxin.

Dr Weil's "Eating Well For Optimum Health"

2008-11-13T20:41:00.000-08:00

My neighbor, a pharmacist working in the same hospital as I, lent the book to me, Dr. Andrew Weil's Eating Well For Optimum Health: The Essential Guide to Bringing Health and Pleasure Back to Eating. I'm about half through. I just checked the readers' reviews on Amazon. It's amazing; even with 135 reviews, it's still 4-star (normally when the number of reviews goes up, the rating goes down).

This is an extraordinary book on health, nutrition, and general and his "integrative" medicine. Dr. Weil is a graduate of Harvard Medical School (HMS). While excellent education doesn't automatically translate to excellent real-life experience, I generally have more trust in people attending a more competitive school than otherwise; their intelligence and ability to self-teach to keep up with new discoveries in science play a role here. That aside, Dr. Weil has extensive clinic experience and travels and/or talks to people around the world, Eskimos, Native Indians, Africans, and of course those an ordinary traveller would also have a change to talk to.

The pharmacist neighbor is a "picky" lady. Sure enough, the book she recommends is not a disappointment at all. It thoroughly examines macronitrients (fat, protein, carbohydrates including sugar) and micronutrients (vitamin, calcium, etc) in words perfectly understandable to readers with higher education not specialized in medicine. (My Ph.D is in analytical chemistry.) I believe the technical accuracy is pretty much guaranteed, based on my other readings over the years, and some memory of basic knowledge of biochemistry. The writing is clear and logical, and as a bonus, occasionally entertaining; after he reveals the "secret" why an Atkins diet follower can lose weight quickly but get no further afterwards, he "suggests" eating high-fat cheese cake, and only cheese cake, to lose weight. You sure will lose weight, because you're so fed up with cheese and stop eating. There's so much new stuff in the book to a non-professional like me. We don't lack Omega-6, but Omega-3, and so their ratio is not right; we shouldn't blame fat indiscriminately, but should know what oil is good or bad and why (olive oil is good overall but remember it lacks Omega-3, etc). I wish the book index was more extensive to help the book serve as a reference for easy lookup.

Dr. Weil unintentionally demonstrates his appreciation for the health benefit of Oriental, and of course Mediterranean, diet. With Chinese origin in my background and personal interest in traditional Chinese medicine, I feel gratified to read that, and hope my Mom and Dad and others in China live a better longer life. In case you didn't pay attention, there's not too much of variety of vegetables in a typical American grocery store compared to one in China town; in other words, Americans probably don't eat with as wide a selection as Chinese. Not that everything Chinese eat is good (some eat exotic animals and get uncurable diseases). But generally a greater variety of food is a good thing. Nevertheless, obviously unhealthful features of Chinese food should not be overlooked, deep oily stir-frying, possibly smoking of pork, etc.

The book was published in 2001. Some new findings were not incorporated. For instance, the risk of taking vitamin E supplements was not well known until recent years.[note] Readers should always have a balanced reading "portfolio" even if emphasis is placed on honest and earnest researchers like Dr. Weil.

[note] 1. Supplemental Vitamin E May Increase Heart Failure Risk
2. WHS: Women's Heath Study -- Aspirin and Vitamin E for the Primary Prevention of Cardiovascular Disease, "qualified success for aspirin in cardioprevention, but no benefit associated with the use of vitamin E."
3. Meta-analysis Results Suggest High-Dose Vitamin E Increases All-Cause Mortality

Alcohol drinking linked to breast cancer

2008-09-21T21:10:00.000-07:00

Just because it offers cardiovascular benefit doesn't mean you can ignore its adverse effect.

http://www.dor.kaiser.org/dors/news/Sept2007_alcohol_breast_cancer.shtml
Cohort 70,000 people, time span more than 20 years. Quite convincing. "women who drank between one and two alcoholic drinks per day increased their risk of breast cancer by 10 percent compared with light drinkers who drank less than one drink a day. The risk of breast cancer increased by 30 percent in women who drank more than three drinks a day."

http://my.clevelandclinic.org/be_well/wine_health_benefits_qa_bewell0808.aspx
Practical advice. "If you want to drink wine, limit your intake to four glasses or fewer per week, and be sure to take a multivitamin every day." "increased risk could be somewhat offset by ingesting the recommended daily amount of folate or folic acid (400 mcg). Both are forms of Vitamin B9. Folate occurs naturally in green, leafy vegetables, citrus fruits and dried beans, while folic acid, which is better absorbed, is synthetic and mainly found in multivitamins."

Some researches show that it's alcohol in wine or champaigne that is responsible for the positive cardiovascular effect. But now you face a dilemma, especially if you're a woman of the age for breast cancer. The above articles didn't say, but you can still eat dark chocolate, or many other good things, and exercise, for the health of heart and blood circulation.

2009-07 update:
Moderate Alcohol Intake and Cancer Incidence in Women, Journal of the National Cancer Institute

Beijing Olympics: When do sports and health go together?

2008-07-26T21:00:00.000-07:00

In China, teachers and parents often associate sports with health. No doubt if you want better health, regularly doing exercise is a must. On the other hand, pushing people to limits in sports often goes in the wrong direction of a healthy life. Not everyone in China agrees with that view, or immediately realizes it. Failing to realize this danger, thousands of parents send their kids, usually one per family, to sports schools known for Spartanic training. While we cheer for the Olympics to be held in Beijing next month, anticipate extraordinary influx of visitors and money, and the boost of national pride too tightly interwoven with sports, we should never forget the boys and girls, now men and women, that failed to achieve the absolute top, and all because of over-training and inhumane treatment, failed in health, and subsequently failed financially and in personal life. Read NPR's renowned reporter Louisa Lim's heart-breaking report Many Chinese Athletes Find No Glory In Retirement. These retired athletes' miserable life is not a hot topic in China, not among many parents and teachers, and particularly not hot during the frenzied cheers for the upcoming Olympics.

All we need is a sober mind. Be cool, be healthy. Tell your friends, those dads and moms, and teachers, that sports is not health unless moderation is practiced. Beijing Olympics is just an event. National pride comes from 1 out of 1 million. While you root for the 1-millionth, remind yourself of the 999,999 that may become another "Zhao Yonghua, 31, spent much of the past decade in bed". I believe only when the whole country stops treating gold medals as national pride this fanatically will sports and health be closer in concept.

(To have a balanced view, read all four of Ms Lim's reports at China: Glory For The Nation)

Gray Hairs: Causes and Correct Treatment

2008-06-22T06:56:00.000-07:00

Words in some Webmd.com articles (highlight added by me):

http://www.webmd.com/skin-beauty/guide/abcs-premature-graying?page=2

"Premature graying has been associated with certain medical conditions such as thyroid disorders, vitiligo, vitamin B12 deficiency, and anemia. Vitiligo is an autoimmune condition in which the cells that make pigment (melanocytes) are destroyed, resulting in patches of hair and skin that become white."

http://men.webmd.com/guide/gray-anatomy

"Contrary to popular belief, having kids or a stressful job won’t turn hair gray. But oxidation, the damaging effect of unstable oxygen molecules — which have been linked to many aspects of aging — may be one of the causes of gray hair. ... the process of synthesizing melanin generates a slew of unstable oxygen molecules. When the Humboldt team exposed healthy and productive pigment-producing hair follicle cells to oxidation, the cells began to die off."

"Of course heredity plays some role, ... [and race]...
"

Both articles talk about dyeing the hair as a way to "treat" this problem. That sounds surprisingly silly! They already have strong suspicion, if not proved theory, about the cause. And yet the treatment is still so superficial. Why not recommend the gray hair guys and gals go see an endocrinologist for possible thyroid disorder, take vitamin supplement or B12 fortified cereal for B12 deficiency, (and take less bananas for possible reduced B12 absorption caused by potassium), and eat fruits such as apples strong in antioxidation? Individual causes warrant their own attention. I'm not a doctor or trained dietician. So I'll leave it to you and your doctors to make decisions. But even as a non-medical professional, I'm absolutely sure dyeing hairs is not a real solution, not to mention body's absorption of the foreign, non-natural, dye chemical molecules.

Health News Review website

2008-06-15T06:54:00.000-07:00

A friend emailed me the URL to Health News Review web site. The site posts daily reviews of medical articles or news broadcast on popular news media, magazines, web sites, or TV, and rate the articles on a few critiria. The reviews and ratings are made by medical professionals. I think it's a near perfect solution to the general public's frequent complaint that medical advice on news media is often confusing and contradicting. It does not replace directly reading research articles, which give you the original source of how the control study was done and what the raw data looks like. But it's a great site for general reading and provokes critical thinking for all of us. The topic selection is also attractive; it highlights those that catch most people's eyes, weight loss, cardiovascular problems, etc. Rare diseases are, well, rarely selected.

Why fresh fruits and vegetables?

2008-05-04T20:47:00.000-07:00

My last posting "fruit juices = increased hazard of diabetes" still bothers me. The researchers did not offer any explanation, not even a hypothesis. It reminds me of numerous health and medical science articles that recommend we eat fresh fruits and vegetables but none explain why fresh. We all know freshness means better taste and smell. But scientifically, it does not logically follow that they're healthier than not as fresh fruits and vegetables, although rotten ones, obviously, should be excluded for food poisoning.

So here's my theory, or hypothesis. Many fruits and vegetables have anti-oxidants, those that scavenge free radicals in our bodies. As a chemist, I know that if something is anti-oxidant, it must easily react with oxidant, most notably in our everyday life, oxygen. Have you ever asked yourself why a cut-open apple exposed to air for a few minutes has a layer of "rust"? If you must leave it open for a while, you can put food wrap on it tightly to avoid oxygen exposure, and the rust will not appear. Like apples, many fruits and vegetables have nutrients that chemically react with oxygen, depleting the health benefit due to decreased amount of the nutrient. If they were still on the plant, the nutrient would be continuously produced. But once harvested, time is running to gradually lose the oxygen sensitive nutrient. If you must, store them in a CO2 or nitrogen environment.

Well, here I'm assuming oxygen to be the only chemical that eats aways the good stuff. But it's likely that the nutrient may degrade anaerobically. In that case, eating fresh is the only way to make best use of the healthy plants.

Back to the "fruit juices = increased hazard of diabetes" topic. Science is making progress. But there's always a little gap to reveal the secrets of real nature. There got to be something fruit juice manufacturers are missing. Before the missing part is found, let's eat fresh fruits for the time being.

fruit juices = increased hazard of diabetes

2008-04-24T20:37:00.000-07:00

http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/572861?src=mp&spon=42&uac=46051AK

"April 11, 2008 — Consumption of green leafy vegetables and fruit was associated with a lower hazard of type 2 diabetes mellitus (DM), whereas consumption of fruit juices may be associated with an increased hazard of diabetes among women." Nobody will doubt the first part of the statement. But the second part, highlighted by me, is surprising. The study does not offer an explanation or hypothesis.

"They advise caution in replacing some beverages with fruit juices in an attempt to provide healthier options and in classifying 100% fruit juice as a serving of fruit."

Autism and vaccine?

2008-03-26T20:03:00.000-07:00

Whether children should be vaccinated is a hot topic on public forums, such as misc.health.alternative. There's a possibility that children with certain rare disease such as scimitar syndrome should not be vaccinated the same way as normal children are (Ref: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/scimitarsupport/). But it's probably hard to argue that vaccination should be banned altogether.

Now here's something even stronger against this medical practice, a case where the plaintiff claims autism was aggravated by vaccination. ("On March 6, a federal court granted compensation to a Georgia girl because she developed autism-like symptoms after receiving childhood vaccines in 2000. Officials did not say the vaccines caused autism; rather, they concluded the vaccines aggravated a preexisting condition." Source:Medcape.com) Interestingly, the Medscape poll shows that most medical professionals think the ruling is wrong, and physicians are even stronger than nurses in thinking this way, pharmacists in the middle. (Source) Looks like the more knowledge you have, the more likely you'll laugh at the connection.

More news

Health Risk of Vitamine E Supplements

2008-03-19T19:55:00.000-07:00

Supplemental Vitamin E May Increase Heart Failure Risk

WHS: Women's Heath Study -- Aspirin and Vitamin E for the Primary Prevention of Cardiovascular Disease
qualified success for aspirin in cardioprevention, but no benefit associated with the use of vitamin E.

Meta-analysis Results Suggest High-Dose Vitamin E Increases All-Cause Mortality
"At 400 IUs, which is the most common marketed dose, the risk of dying is about 10% higher than risk among people not taking the vitamin."
...
Dr.Gibbons, who served as chair of the scientific program committee at the meeting, said he has been urging his patients to stop taking vitamin E for years. Dr. Gibbons said that cardiovascular disease prevention guidelines from "vitamin E is ‘not recommended'. It doesn't get clearer than that — don't take it."

Dr. Miller said there are several theories about why vitamin E increases risk. One theory is that it increases bleeding risk, which would increase the risk of hemorrhagic stroke, while another theory suggests that at high doses vitamin E stops working like an antioxidant that mops up free radicals that attack cells that line blood vessels and instead becomes a prooxidant and actually promotes the production of free radicals.

Still another scenario suggests that high-doses of vitamin E tend to destroy other fat-soluble antioxidants, which disrupts the body's natural antioxidant protection system.

Antioxidant Vitamins May Increase Mortality

March 1, 2007 — The largest analysis of data on antioxidant vitamins ever conducted has shown that beta-carotene, vitamin A, and vitamin E probably increase mortality. Two other antioxidant substances — vitamin C and selenium — had no effect on mortality.

"Vitamin A and beta-carotene seem to have a dose-related effect, with mortality increasing as doses increase, whereas vitamin E does not appear to have a dose-related effect, with all doses associated with increased mortality."

antioxidant vitamins could actually also have prooxidant effects. "We don't know exactly how they are doing harm but rather than preventing cardiovascular disease and cancer, they actually seem to be accelerating these conditions."

Multivitamins Do Not Reduce Risk for Lung Cancer, and Vitamin E May Raise It

February 29, 2008 — The long-term use of supplemental multivitamins does not reduce the risk of developing lung cancer, and high doses of vitamin E may even raise the risk, particularly in smokers.
...
Although consuming higher amounts of fruits and vegetables can reduce the risk for lung cancer, multivitamins and supplements have generally not demonstrated a benefit in reducing this risk.

"Dressed to Kill" and Breast Cancer

2008-03-12T05:55:00.000-07:00

The book "Dressed to Kill" was published in 2005 and I was not aware of it till a few days ago. I haven't read it but read some comments and related articles about the same topic, relationship between breast cancer and wearing bras. There're a couple of comments I want to make. Briefly,

1. The relationship is unproven according to American Cancer Society's research (also this). Then how is any study scientific? One of the most compelling review of Sydney Ross Singer et al.'s book is by D. Pilipovich (Kapaau, HI United States). There may be some medical hypotheses that can't be or can't easily be studied by single- or double-blind methods. If ACS does not think this is one of them, then there should be a panel of experts that organize such a study. Singer's study may be too simplistic, not excluding too many confounding factors. But if the cohort number is large enough, it doesn't really matter, although the explanation for the observed relationship may be questionable. This reminds me of some ever-lasting debate in relational databases, such as Oracle. Should one rebuild a table's index or not? In spite of experts' caution, if you rebuild it and it improves performance and it doesn't realistically cause downtime or problem either now or in the near future, do it. By the same token, if a survey of a large number of respondents corroborates the "rumor", give the rumor credit. Even though the theory behind the rumor given by the researchers (Singer and Grismaijer here) is not sufficiently substantiated, the survey result is hard fact and cannot be dismissed unless you find flaws in the survey itself. (I haven't read the book. The theory of lymphatic flow restriction sounds plausible but I wonder why they pick the lymphatic, not for instance blood flow.)

2. Chinese women living in cities generally wear tighter clothing, and possibly tighter bras, and yet have less common occurrences of breast cancer than American women. Do eating more tofu, more exercise (walking and biking) and possibly less smoking explain the difference?

Other articles supporting Singer et al.'s claim:
Bras And Breast Cancer
Health After 40
Bras and Breast Cancer

Moles indicating skin cancer look different

2008-02-03T18:40:00.000-08:00

This recent article on Medscape (originally in Arch Dermatol. 2008; 144:58-64) is interesting. Moles that may suggest malignant melanomas (a dangerous form of skin cancer) have these distinct features:

A. Be asymmetric.
B. Have border irregularities.
C. Have variations in color.
D. Be large in diameter — often bigger than the size of the eraser of a pencil.

Source: www.medscape.com/viewarticle/569114?src=mp

Obesity: 99% bad, 1% good

2008-02-03T18:37:00.000-08:00

Here's what I saved in my latest reading:

**************** BEGIN QUOTE ****************
www.medscape.com/viewarticle/566506?src=mp
Obesity May Protect Against Joint Damage in Rheumatoid Arthritis

This apparent protective effect of obesity is observed only in patients positive for rheumatoid factor, however, suggesting that different autoimmune conditions affect biochemical processes in the arthritic joint.

Dr. Westhoff's group speculates that the effect of adipose tissue may be mediated by secretion of anti-inflammatory proteins.

Arthritis Rheum 2007;56:3575-3582.
**************** END QUOTE ****************

When it comes to science, we should be cautious about good vs bad judgement, including health science. Obesity is bad. Everybody knows that. But we should not cover up any finding that points to its positive side. This is by no means an excuse for fat people to stay fat, because there're too many risk factors associated with it. Instead, these studies serve as a reminder that we sometimes use when considering overall health of a person. Have you heard of smoking associated with reduced Parkinson's disease risk (Neurology 2007;68:764-768)? The same reasoning applies.

Chinese medicine and acupuncture

2007-11-30T20:55:00.000-08:00

To many Americans, traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) is almost synonymous with Chinese acupuncture. That misunderstanding is consistent with many people's views about herbs. Although it's changing, the public opinion about the effect of "grass" or "bush leaves" on healing has not caught on. I think it's partially because of the non-regulation of herbs, which are still treated as nutrition supplements and not medicine. As a result, a Chinese doctor trained in TCM in China finds it easier to become an acupuncturist in the US (after certification) and can't do the same TCM job as in China. Well, there's probably no government approved TCM profession in this country anyway; alternative medicine remains alternative. It's said that TCM students in China care more about pharmacology and kind of look down upon acupuncture. I guess they can't have that attitude here if they want to make a living with it.

I don't think acupuncture has as strong healing power as most herbs. But it is a wonderful thing, especially when it comes to improving the already healthy body. Recent hot books in China "人体使用手册" (Human Body: A User's Manual), "求医不如求己" (See a Doctor? See Yourself) and others all stress our inherent power in the human body, suggesting tapping the "dan" (gall bladder) meridian, for instance. Although I don't quite agree with the author placing the "dan" meridian in a more prominent position than others, the philosophy of taking advantage of our own healing power while the body is mostly healthy is an absolutely fabulous idea. In these cases, medicine, natural herbs included, is external and should be treated as a secondary medium.

Boxing Should Be Banned in Civilized Countries

2007-11-25T20:24:00.001-08:00

If you don't use your brain, you may think all sports are good to health. While cleaning up my old folder, I found a note I saved two years ago
Boxing Should Be Banned in Civilized Countries by George D. Lundberg, MD:

"What is wrong with boxing? In addition to a host of sociologic concerns, boxing is wrong medically, since it not only kills some participants, it inflicts objectively proven chronic brain damage in as many as 80% of fighters who have had a substantial number of fights. It is wrong morally, because the intent of the 'sport' is to harm the opponent in order to win, preferably by knockout -- brain damage by definition. These 2 objections, medical and moral, separate boxing from all other risk sports."

I'm sure boxing fans will think otherwise. But I can tell you what one of my high school friends said. He used to fight a lot in high school. Then he went to college to study medical science. While still a student, one day he came to me and said he never fought again. I asked why. He said, if I still fight, I can't help but think what the incoming blow will hit, the heart if it comes toward my upper left chest, liver if lower and shifted to the right. All these are important organs that he can't afford to lose.

Some time ago I came upon a web page where a Mom called for ban of soccer for school boys, for reason of possible violent collision. The intent of soccer is not to harm people but the health risk may be too high for small kids. I guess we should all remember what we practice sport is ultimate for, better health, and everything else is secondary. If you think the other way, you may not be up to the current civilization level yet.

Humans live long, too long? Interesting words from a Nobel prize in medicine winner

2007-11-22T10:26:00.000-08:00

As usual, I read newsletters from Medscape. One headline linked to
http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/564375?src=mp
caught my eyes, "Science and Sensibility: An Interview With Professor Rolf M. Zinkernagel, Nobel Prize Winner for Medicine 1996". Since the Medscape site needs login (account is free though), I'm copying some of the startling words as follows. I put some words in bold.

******************* BEGIN QUOTE ********************

Q: HIV, SARS, multiple Drug-resistant tuberculosis, Ebola -- the list is endless. We never had them until a few years ago. Why do we continue to grapple with all of these diseases despite our scientific prowess?

A: This is simply because the life span of human beings has far exceeded what it was intended for. The main function of human beings in evolution is procreation, which is usually completed by the 25th year of age. With our scientific prowess, we have prolonged our age, thus inviting a host of new diseases. I would add autoimmune diseases to the ones that you have mentioned. However, from an evolutionary point of view, this is perfectly fine. Most of the diseases affect man after the age of 25, by which he has procreated in any case. So it doesn't really matter if you die after then; your contribution to evolution is complete! The irrational behavior of human beings has also significantly contributed to the above-mentioned predicaments.

...

A: But there has to be some lasting solution against the menace of HIV?

Q: A virus such as HIV is too smart for us. It keeps mutating so that it can accustom itself to the human body, thus fooling our immune response. For any solution, we would have to fight this variability, this mutability of the virus, which I do not think is possible. In fact, I wonder whether it is even necessary.

Q: Are you suggesting that we should resign ourselves to the onslaught of HIV?

A: Well, it's an onslaught only as of now. Look at HIV-2. In many parts of the world, the HIV-2 virus has found a way to live symbiotically in the bodies of human beings. This is the way that it was intended to be in the first place! It continues to be transmitted but rarely causes disease. It isn't eradicated, but it's harmless. Thus, it has become an ideal vaccine in itself -- preventing reinfection by inducing a protective immune response. A few hundred years down the line, I see the HIV-1 virus adapting to the human body in a similar fashion. So we don't really need to eradicate it. By trying to eliminate it, we are actually compounding the problem!

...

Q: Just where are we messing up in our approach to infectious diseases?

A: As I have earlier mentioned, most of the chronic diseases have resulted from the prolongation of man's own life and his irrational behavior. We must understand that it is not in the nature of microorganisms to kill human beings (take HIV, for instance), because, as viruses, they wouldn't be able to survive if they killed the host. This pursuit of trying to eradicate an infection may principally be wrong. Our objective to dominate nature has led to most of the problems like, say, antibiotic resistance.

****************** END QUOTE ******************

Not everybody will appreciate Dr. Zinkernagel's insightful comments. But they're good food for thought, new to my ears and brain. There's not much practical advice to the general public but we're cautioned by him to live a healthy life, no unsafe sex, no overeating, etc. That part I didn't quote since I assume everybody knows and every reader of this blog practices.

Quit smoking? Male smokers won't like this

2007-11-17T21:57:00.000-08:00

Tobacco smokers won't listen to your talk about health risks, lung cancer, heart disease, etc. Doing math about financial cost for them due to smoking doesn't help either. What do we do to persuade them to quit? How about talk about their family members' health? The smoker's wife (or husband), and especially their kids. Kids suffer the most from secondary smoking as they do from other toxic sources. If he loves his kids, keep talking about the diseases or cancers his kids would get even by breathing the air contaminated by his disgusting breath.

There're many ways to dismiss the ostensible pride of being fashionable or sophisticated. How about impotence? If men think smoking makes them feel manly, mature, experienced, especially when they put on the expression of a little frown with eyes half closed to avoid the obnoxious smoke, tell them, "The Marlboro Man needs Viagra" and "What Viagra may give, tobacco taketh away.", as the California newspaper ads read. Thailand, Canada and Brazil have impotence warnings and pictures on cigarette labeling, although UK and US have not caught up. [note]

I don't believe the theory that many smokers are addicted. I believe few cigarette smokers are truly biologically addicted, unlike marijuana addiction. If the environment they live in changes, or there's compelling reason they must quit, they quit without agony. Instead many smokers smoke because they stupidly thought it was cool, and it was a good way to kill time.

____________________
[note] http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/550618?src=mp

How my father-in-law quit smoking

2007-11-17T21:55:00.001-08:00

Speaking of few cigarette smokers being real biological addicts, I thought it would be interesting to tell the story of my late father-in-law. He smoked cigarettes for at least 30 years in China. In the mid 90's he came to the US and stayed for about 9 months. Since none of my family here smoked and no neighbor did, he didn't either. Then he went back to China never smoking again. Unfortunately he died a few years later as a result of multiple complications. Early years of smoking may have contributed to some of his diseases. (Unrelated: he left to the Chinese readers a free book about dam hydrology partly written during his stay in the US)