HealthBeat News

Seven Not-Surprising Health Updates From 2015

Written by Wellness Club on January 13, 2016 – 4:45 pm -

As many of you know, Nurse Mark and I read the medical news every single day. There isn’t much in the way of a “breakthrough” that we’d ever miss. We even
know about the “pseudo-breakthroughs” — those lab rat studies that are over-hyped in importance. Because of this, some of these hot-off-the-press findings you have already read about in previous HealthBeat articles. However, now that the research is being solidly reported in the conventional medical journals, some of it bears repeating.

Here are the most recent “now it’s true because conventional medicine finally recognizes it” topics that you should be aware of. Don’t be surprised if many of these items fall into the “we told you so” category. That just means we’re doing our best to keep you on the leading edge of medical news!

We Told You So About…

1.)    Statin drug dangers. First, these drugs were so important that just about everyone – including children – should be taking them. Next they reported a “small increase” in diabetes with use. Oh, and that annoying problem of myalgia (muscle pain) and myopathy (rhabdomyelosis), and “brain fog” and other cognitive impairments. But not to worry, that doesn’t happen very often, so they say.

The latest news is that the risk of diabetes increases by about 50%. Since diabetes is a serious risk factor for heart disease (the reason people take statins) AND since diabetes also increases the risk of cancer,Alzheimer’s, eye disease, atherosclerosis (narrowing and hardening of the arteries), kidney disease, and more, this is a big finding. “But don’t stop taking the drug until more is known” is the cry of Big Pharma.

2.)    Acid-Blocking drug Dangers. We’ve talked a lot about this before in HealthBeat articles. Now add another risk of long-term use to the list of dangerous side effects: kidney disease. Sometimes severe enough to ruin the kidneys and require permanent appointments at the dialysis clinic and a spot on the transplant list. Ouch!

These drugs, called PPI’s (proton pump inhibitors) were designed to be used short-term to treat ulcers. They work well for that. But “short term” means 6 weeks. If you have ongoing digestive distress and GERD, you need MORE stomach acid, not less. We’ve written about that, too.

So, if you have been using acid blockers for anything other than ulcers, especially if you use them ongoing, I recommend that you stop before you have long-term consequences and take the time to figure out the real cause and correction for your GERD, heartburn and other digestive problems. If your stomach or esophagus hurt when you eat, consider that biofeedback from your body that something needs to be fixed, not masked.

3.)    Sugar increases risk of breast cancer metastasis. I’ve mentioned this a gazillion times. In fact, ALL carbohydrates increase growth of ALL types of cancer. Conventional medicine just caught on.

Meanwhile, watch for my upcoming book “The Ketone Diet for Cancer.”

4.)    Testosterone therapy for men really is safe after all. We’ve heard for years all about the supposed dangers of testosterone therapy – mostly from politicians who have no medical training but plenty of skill in leaping to conclusions based on faulty research and fears of “anabolic steroid” use by sports figures and teenage body builders.

As a result, testosterone, a natural substance present in everyone has been treated like some scary, evil drug by the FDA and prescribing it is a nightmare for physicians. That could change, as the bogus charges against testosterone therapy are refuted by study after study.

It turns out that not only does Testosterone use NOT increase the risk of prostate cancer, and does NOT increase the risk of heart attacks as we have been told over and over in the past, Testosterone use actually reduces the risk of myocardial infarction (heart attack), stroke, and all-cause mortality, according to a large new retrospective study of Veterans Affairs (VA) patients.

Sounds like more good reasons for men to consider hormone testing and replacement if needed. BHRT (BioIdentical Hormone Replacement Therapy) is not just for women! I’ve been prescribing testosterone for some 30 years now, despite all the FDA / DEA hassles – it’s that important to men’s health.

And Here’s one that we have been following – look for a HealthBeat News article on this very soon:

•    Cell phone use increases brain cancer risk. First we were told that it didn’t. Then we were told “maybe” but the evidence is weak. Now in the medical news the evidence is no longer weak. There is a 3-fold increase in brain cancer (aggressive gliomas) that correlates with cell phone and mobile phone use when the device is held next to the head.

Personally, I try to minimize cell phone use and have increased “old school” (corded phone) use and speaker phone use whenever I can. There is some thought (and many marketing claims) that the bluetooth earpieces for cellphones may be safe due to their very low power output – we are examining the research.

And now for good news breakthroughs:

•    Coffee is healthy. For years we’ve been told it wasn’t. Now, coffee up to 5 cups per day is not only safe but is actually the biggest source of antioxidants in the US diet. The study found that people who drank three to five cups of coffee per day had about a 15 percent lower risk of premature death compared to people who didn’t drink coffee. Do-dah!

•    Eggs, (and other fats) are good for you! Every 5 years the government gives us their latest dietary advice – and, lo and behold, this year the old warnings about cholesterol (including eggs), fats, and meats being evil have been softened considerably. Not only that, they are no longer making such dire warnings about processed meats like bacon and hot dogs.

Read all about it on the government website: http://health.gov/dietaryguidelines/2015/guidelines/

Woo-Hoo! Bacon and eggs for breakfast – with coffee!

 

References:

Statins:

Reference: Henna Cederberg, Alena Stančáková, Nagendra Yaluri, Shalem Modi, Johanna Kuusisto, Markku Laakso.
Increased risk of diabetes with statin treatment is associated with impaired insulin sensitivity and insulin secretion: a 6 year follow-up study of the METSIM cohort. Diabetologia. May 2015, Volume 58, Issue 5, pp 1109-1117

Acid Blockers:

Lazarus B, Chen Y, Wilson FP, et al. Proton Pump Inhibitor Use and the Risk of Chronic Kidney Disease. JAMA Intern Med. Published online January 11, 2016.

Sugar / cancer connection:

Jiang Y, Pan Y, Rhea PR, Tan L, Gagea M, Cohen L, Fischer SM, Yang P. A Sucrose-Enriched Diet Promotes Tumorigenesis in Mammary Gland in Part through the 12-Lipoxygenase Pathway. Cancer Res. 2016 Jan 1;76(1):24-9.

Testosterone:

Rishi Sharma et al., Normalization of testosterone level is associated with reduced incidence of myocardial infarction and mortality in men. European Heart Journal, 6 August 2015. http://eurheartj.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2015/07/27/eurheartj.ehv346

Jacques Baillargeon et al., Long-term Exposure to Testosterone Therapy and the Risk of High Grade Prostate Cancer. The Journal of urology, December 2015Volume 194, Issue 6, Pages 1612–1616. http://www.jurology.com/article/S0022-5347(15)04148-8/abstract

Cell Phones:

Hardell, Lennart et al. Mobile phone and cordless phone use and the risk for glioma – Analysis of pooled case-control studies in Sweden, 1997–2003 and 2007–2009.
Pathophysiology , Volume 22 , Issue 1 , 1 – 13

Coffee:

Ming Ding, Ambika Satija, Shilpa N. Bhupathiraju,  Yang Hu, et al. Association of Coffee Consumption With Total and Cause-Specific Mortality in 3 Large Prospective Cohorts.  Circulation. 2015;132:2305-2315.

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