Even with my novels I can't seem to avoid health advocacy.

I've been a bit quiet over the past week as the publication date for my second Avon historical romance is coming up, which mean that I have to put a lot of effort into writing blog posts for various romance blogs in the hope that doing so will motivate readers to buy my book.

You can read a good interview with me wearing my novelist hat--and comment to win a free copy of my first novel, Lord Lightning--HERE.

But even when I do something as inconsequential as writing a passionate tale of love and redemption, fate seems to have decreed that it's my job to help people with challenging health issues. Because no sooner was my latest book, Star Crossed Seduction, accepted by my publisher, than I learned that it would be included in a campaign meant to raise awareness of ovarian cancer.

The campaign is called "Kiss and Teal"--referring to the teal blue ribbons used by the Ovarian Cancer National Alliance for its fund raising efforts. The reason for Avon's participation is personal--one of Avon's top editors and one of its biggest bestselling authors both lost their mothers to ovarian cancer recently and together they came up with the idea of using the fact that millions of women buy romance novels to make women more aware of the warning signs of ovarian cancer and of the organization that can help them find the best treatment and clinical trials.

Avon will be donating a portion of the proceeds from every book sold that has the "Kiss and Teal" medallion on the cover, including Star Crossed Seduction, to the Ovarian Cancer National Alliance. Our publicist is also arranging media appearances for us authors--most of whom are far more successful and famous than I am--and gave us an orientation with someone from the Alliance who taught us a lot about this deadly disease. This will make it possible for us to tell a larger audience about the warning signs of this cancer that is the fifth most common cancer killer of women.

My college roommate died of a form of cancer closely related to ovarian cancer at the much-too-young age of 28. Her death was one of the first events that made me aware of the dangers of pharmaceutical drugs, because she was a DES daughter. Her mother had been prescribed a hormone pill that was supposed to avoid pregnancy complications. Instead, it caused terrible damage to the children of those who took it, including fatal cancers like those that killed my roommate and reproductive tract anomalies. It is still causing significant problems in surviving DES daughters--they have a greater risk of ovarian cancer--and in the grandchildren of the women who took it.

Every woman should read about the warning symptoms of ovarian cancer which you'll find HERE. If you are a DES daughter, it is even more important that you do this.

This early experience with a drug whose negative impacts took decades to emerge should have made doctors think about the long term impact of drugs they prescribe. DES was prescribed in the late 1940s. But obviously, it hasn't. Hormones were new and exciting in the 1940s in the same way that drugs that block receptors and turn off gene expression are in this decade.

Which is why, as long term readers of this blog know, I continue to worry about the long term impact of prescribing DPP-4 inhibitors like Januvia and Onglyza that turn off a gene the body uses to fight ovarian cancer, melanoma, prostate cancer and lung cancer. (Details HERE and HERE).

Just this week, a friend of the blog sent me a study, published back in February in the journal, Gasteroenterology, and completely ignored by the health media, which found a much higher incidence of pancreatic and thyroid cancers among people taking Januvia and Byetta. You can read it HERE.

Though there are issues with the methodology used--which the authors are very frank in describing--there is no question that, as we learned from the artificial hormone DES years ago, drugs that use novel mechanisms that mess with hormones (like GLP-1) and supress gene expression(as does Januvia, Onglyza, etc.) may very well cause cancer--and they will do it after a much longer time period has passed than the brief two or three years over which which drug acceptance studies last. (After a drug is approved there is no significant tracking of its subsequent connection with cancers, and the database that attempts to collect this data is, as the Gastroenterology study discusses, quite limited and flawed.)

The lesson is clear. Drugs have short term benefits that may be much easier to see than the long term disturbances they make in our body that might kill us. Messing with systems we don't really understand--like the human body--is going to produce unexpected results.

So here's a bit of ovarian cancer awareness for those of you with diabetes--and you don't have to buy my novel to benefit from it, though of course I hope you will. Anyone with a family history of ovarian cancer should stay away from any drug that inhibits DPP-4. It will take 20 years for it to become clear what the impact of turning off this tumor suppressing gene really is.

But it is often hard to know if you have a family history of ovarian cancer, due to the huge burden of shame and silence that kept women of earlier generations from telling anyone that they suffered from this kind of cancer. So if you have had female relatives who died of any mysterious cancers, you should be particularly careful about what drugs you take, and it is essential that you NOT take any of the DPP-4 inhibitors that make it easier for a preexisting ovarian cancer to spread.

Metformin, fortunately, seems to have a protective effect against cancer, which is why I, a melanoma survivor, take it even when my blood sugars are in very good control.

 

Why My Mother Refused To Eat Hospital Food

My mother was in the hospital this week for surgery. Thankfully, she came home today. However, I wanted to write to you about the diet she was placed on while in the hospital.

Since she had bowel surgery, she was put on clear liquids immediately after the surgery. When the clear liquid tray was brought up to my mother she said, "I would rather starve than eat that mess."

There were five items given to my mother (see the picture on the right). Chicken broth from bouillon, diet sorbet, decaffeinated coffee, diet jello, and something labelled fruit ice. The ingredients from the bouillon cubes included partially hydrogenated soybean oil, sugar, hydrolyzed corn pectin,and silicon dioxide. There were a few other ingredients that I could not pronounce--I would assume they are not good things to ingest. In fact, I have been telling my patients for years to read food labels and only purchase items where you can prounounce all the ingredients.

One other thing; she could have as much diet soda as she desired.

As for the fruit ice, diet jello, and diet sorbet, I did not see any healthy ingredients in them. The diet sorbet and jello contained aspartame. Asparatme is a very toxic substance and should be avoided.

You would think that a post-surgery patient, in the hospital, would be given healthy food to help heal the body. You can see what they gave my mother to eat was far from healthy. In fact, I would say what they tried to feed my mother would inhibit healing. The amount of refined sugar in these substances is bound to inhibit healing as studies have shown refined sugar actually disrupts the normal functioning of the white blood cells for a few hours. There was nothing nutritious in any of the items they served her.

What did we do? I was tempted to call the dietician to her room, but I felt that would not go well. Instead, I brought my mother healthier chicken broth made from an organically-fed chicken. I had her drink a lot of water and avoid the 'food' that was served to her.

My mother commented, "How do they expect you to heal with drinking unhealthy food?" It is truly amazing to me that patients do get better eating food like this.

I am sure patients would heal better if served healthy food in the hospital. It makes sense; provide the body with the proper nutrients and it will take care of itself.

Healthy Whole Grains, Just as Healthy as Pepsi--One Reader Reports

As readers of this blog know, there's nothing I like better than data, and there's no data I like better than the blood sugar meter test results that tell an individual what foods they can eat without raising their blood sugar over the level that causes complications (which is roughly 140 mg/dl or 7.7 mmol/L).

So I was intrigued when a Richard Smith, a friend of the blog, sent me the following report on his personal study as to how what dietitians like to call "healthy whole grains" affected his blood sugar, using as a control a 12 ounce glass of regular Pepsi.

Richard gave me permission to share his data, so here it is:

The New Pepsi Challenge results (Pepsi vs. whole grains)

 

Food	Net carbs	BG before eating	BG at 1 hour	BG at 90 minutes	BG at 2 hours
12oz Pepsi	42g	89	156	127	101
Oatmeal and milk	40g	113	163	N/A	92
Whole wheat bread	48g	93	141	142	107
Whole wheat toast & milk	36g	103	173	143	94

Testing was done with a NovaMax meter over a two day period.

He adds: It is no surprise that meals with whole grain starches have about the same effect on my blood sugar as drinking a 12oz Pepsi.

=======
This was his brilliant counter-argument to the advice of ADA-associated nutritionist, Hope Warshaw, whose recommendations have been getting more attention on the interwebs than they deserve.

But rather than rage against the so called professionals who give toxic advice, I'd just like to remind everyone reading that your blood sugar meter is the most powerful diabetes-correction tool you own. Test your blood sugar after you eat a food you've been told is healthy to find out if it really is "diabetes friendly" for you.

There is solid research that points out that heart disease gets going when blood sugars rise over 155 mg/dl (8.6 mmol/L) one hour after meals. (Details HERE.)

Obviously the "healthy whole grains" beloved by doctors, nutritionists, and the American Diabetes Association failed to pass the "diabetes friendly" test for this experimenter.

So consider no food healthy unless your own one hour post-meal numbers after eating eating them in a meal comes in under 155 mg/dl (8.6 mmol/L) and, ideally, under the 140 mg/dl (7.7 mmol/L) level that, maintained over time, usually results in an A1c in the 5% range.

 

Why You Should Not Use Pesticides and Herbicides

In the Detroit Free Press today (7.10.11) the front page headline reads, “New lawn chemical chief suspect in mysterious deaths of trees.” The article describes how millions of dollars of Norway Spruce and white pines are dying this summer. The culprit is thought to be a new lawn chemical known as Imprelis. This chemical is manufactured by DuPont.

Imprelis was promoted by DuPont to control weeds such as dandelions. The article quotes a landscaper as saying that he thought he was doing the right thing by switching herbicides to Imprelis.

Doing the right thing? Sorry, I am not buying that one. We are polluting our environment by using herbicides and pesticides in order to have a green lawn. Pesticides and herbicides are bound to cause harm to humans and other animals as many of these chemicals are known as persistent organic pollutants. That means they are not easily broken down in the environment and their toxic effects can persist for a long period of time.

Research has found medical problems such as non-Hodgkin Lymphoma, leukemia, cancer of the brain and prostate, birth defects, fetal death and neurodevelopmental disorders associated with pesticide use.

All for a green lawn? No way. Not at my house. I would not want to expose my children or my dog to toxic chemicals. I don’t use pesticides and herbicides and I strongly encourage you to avoid these products. Pesticides and herbicides are much more than weed controllers; they are toxins to humans and other animals alike.

Jimmy Moore Podcast Interview with Jenny Ruhl July 7th,

I just found out that Jimmy Moore is posting the conversation we had last month tomorrow on his Living La Vida Low Carb show. You'll find the podcast here:

http://www.thelivinlowcarbshow.com/shownotes/

If you have any questions after you hear it, feel free to post them here.

Airport X-Ray Scanners Part 2: You Decide Who Is The Idiot

I dropped my daughter off at the Detroit airport this morning as she was on her way to a wilderness camping adventure. I want to come back as my daughter. However, reincarnation is not the purpose of this blog post.

I wrote a recent post to you about saying “no” to airport X-ray scanners. I told Jessi about these scanners and I advised her to tell the TSA agent that she did not want to be irradiated. Actually, I told her to tell the agent that she did not want to go into the X-ray scanner machine.
This morning, I forgot to remind Jessi about the X-ray scanner. About 30 minutes later I received a text from her. It said, “When I went through security, I told the agent that I did not want to go through the scanner. He asked ‘why?’ I told him my doctor told me not to go through the X-ray machine. He said, ‘Your doctor is an idiot’.”

I assume that the TSA agent was referring to me as the ‘idiot’. Well, as the idiot involved in the story, I have a differing opinion.
There is no known safe dose of ionizing radiation. None. These scanners use ionizing radiation. The amount of radiation used by these machines is unknown since the data is being hidden by the TSA. In fact, these scanners have not been properly tested to ascertain if they are indeed safe. In fact, there are no plans (that I have seen) to properly test these machines.

There is no doubt that pregnant women and children are more vulnerable to ionizing radiation. I think everybody should avoid these X-ray machines, but pregnant women and children should be exempted from being irradiated.
Just because you are thinking about the consequences of exposing your body to unnecessary ionizing radiation does not make you an idiot. An idiot is one who blindly follows orders from TSA agents who have little understanding about what they are exposing the public to.

Coronary CT Scans: Dangerous and Best Avoided

I am asked by many patients if they should get a coronary CT scan to evaluate the status of their coronary arteries. Coronary CT scans are a noninvasive way to visualize calcification in the coronary arteries. The only other way to visualize atherosclerotic changes in the coronary arteries is through an angiogram where a catheter from the groin is thread to the coronary arteries.

It must be better to do a coronary CT scan--versus an angiogram-- since it is non-invasive—right? The answer to this question is easy; coronary CT scans should be avoided.

As a population, we undergo too many CT scans. CT scans expose the body to a huge amount of radiation. A coronary CT scan can supply 100x the radiation of a chest X-ray. There are estimates that over two percent of all cancers in the U.S. are the result of too many X-ray procedures with CT scans being the leading radiologic cause of harmful medical radiation.
You would expect an effective medical screening test would lead to early diagnosis in order to improve the outcome of the disease—correct? In the case of heart disease, coronary CT scans should be able to safely diagnose atherosclerosis before a problem develops. Furthermore, the treatment plan should result in a lowered cardiac event rate (i.e., less heart attacks and death).

Researchers studied a group of 1,000 patients who underwent a coronary CT scan. In the 1,000 patients who had the coronary CT scan, 215 had a positive test indicating that they had advanced atherosclerosis. Compared to the group who did not test positive, the positive CT-scanned group were prescribed statins at a 700% higher rate. Furthermore, as compared to the negatively screened group, the positive CT-scanned patients also had four times as many secondary cardiac tests (including angiograms) as well as bypass surgeries at a 10x higher rate.

Since the positive CT-scanned group received the various medical interventions, you would hope that they would have a better long-term outcome. However, the opposite occurred. The researchers found that there was no difference (at 18 months) in cardiovascular events (e.g., heart attacks, cardiac deaths, and angina requiring hospitalization) between the two groups.

What can we conclude here? Coronary CT scans did not result in less cardiac adverse events but did result in more medication usage, surgery and testing. And, don’t forget, the positive coronary CT scans resulted in a lot of money being spent on therapies that did not change the outcome. Finally, all the patients who underwent the coronary CT scans were exposed to a large amount of damaging radiation.

There is no place for coronary CT scans. They are used as a diagnostic modality only. Coronary CT scans expose patients to excess amounts of ionizing radiation and they have not been shown to improve the cardiac event rate. They are not worth the risk.

Arch. of Int. Med. Online. May 23, 2011.