Urgent! Help Us Stop a Disastrous Anti-supplement Amendment

Dear friend:

Senator Dick Durbin is once again attempting to get rid of your supplements, and it may happen today, unless you act NOW.

There is an FDA bill before the Senate that is relatively uncontroversial, but it’s considered a “must-pass” bill. Sen. Durbin is planning to offer a last-minute amendment to that bill, slipping it in under the radar and piggy-backing it on a bill that will go through without debate. This amendment will destroy DSHEA—the law that protects your supplements from unnecessary government intrusion and regulation.

The amendment says, among other things, that supplement companies must register their products with the FDAwithin 30 days, or they will be considered “misbranded” and companies will be subject to outrageous financial penalties, possibly even jail time. To avoid this, many companies will simply remove their supplements from the shelves until they are able to comply with the new requirement.

That’s right. Thirty days after this law goes into effect, many supplements will disappear.

There are several other dirty tricks this amendment will do. We need you to contact your senators IMMEDIATELY and tell them to vote NO on the Durbin dietary supplement amendment.

We can’t express how dangerous this amendment is, or how urgent it is that you take action NOW.

CLICK HERE TO TAKE ACTION!

The Alliance for Natural Health USA
6931 Arlington Road, Suite 304
Bethesda, MD 20814 
www.anh-usa.org

Michael A. Smith, MD - Does Black Tea Beat Green Tea for Heart Health?

The popularity of green tea is well-deserved and completely understandable given the numerous health benefits it offers. Not a day goes by without some new clinical research demonstrating its benefits and solidifying its top position in the supplement industry. But emerging cardiovascular research is about to turn green tea black.

This is no surprise to tea enthusiasts. They have long known that all teas are loaded with antioxidants, the age-fighting nutrients all over mainstream media today. So it’s not unexpected that black tea is starting to form its own reputation within the industry as a disease-fighter.

Black Tea Improves Heart Health

A study recently published in Preventive Medicine showed that nine grams a day of black tea antioxidants was associated with a 36% drop in triglycerides and a significant 17% decrease in the ratio of bad LDL cholesterol to good HDL cholesterol — an important marker of heart health.¹

The research was conducted on 87 subjects, between the ages of 25 and 60. They either consumed three cups of black tea a day or the same volume of hot water for 12 weeks. Simply put: The results are impressive.

Read More:

http://blog.lef.org/2012/05/black-tea-green-heart-health.html

Robert Preidt - One-Third of U.S. Homeless Population Is Obese: Study

One-third of homeless people in the United States are obese, about the same rate as the general population, a new study finds.

It might seem that hunger and lack of food would put homeless people at risk for weighing too little, according to the researchers at Harvard Medical School in Boston and the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom.

But, the high rate of obesity among homeless people may be due to their reliance on cheap foods that contain high levels of fat and sugar. Another possible explanation could be physiological -- chronic food shortages cause the body to adapt by storing fat reserves.

Other factors may include little physical activity, sleep deprivation and stress.

The researchers examined the body-mass index (a measure of body fat based on height and weight) in more than 5,600 homeless men and women in Boston and found that 32 percent were obese, just less than 6 percent were morbidly obese and just less than 2 percent were underweight.

Read More:

http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/news/fullstory_125352.html

Jack Adam Weber - GMO Alert: Startling New Research

Time for a little GMO update and heckling of our nemesis, Monsanto and friends. New research demonstrates what most of us have suspected for years: GMOs and the poisons used on them are bad for everything on the planet. For ethical reasons, as well as the obstruction of research by Monsanto, little comprehensive GMO research has been done on humans. But finally, we are beginning to see more hard evidence showing the dangerous effects of the GMO industry.

A little over a year ago, the journal Reproductive Toxicology published the results of a study done In Quebec, Canada. It showed that Bt toxin, the pesticide now routinely genetically engineered into GE corn and cotton, was found in the blood of pregnant women and in their fetuses, as well as in non-pregnant women. This same study also discovered that glyphosate, the active ingredient in RoundUp, was found in the blood of non-pregnant women. This is not good news.

Until recently, the Quebec study has been one of the few pieces of sound scientific evidence demonstrating the absorption of Bt-toxin into human blood, an occurrence Monsanto reportedly claimed would not occur when they proposed their nasty little invention for approval some years ago. Are we surprised that they were proven wrong? Not at all. Does this stop them? Not in the least. So we have to. Read on.

Read More:

http://wakeup-world.com/2012/05/18/gmo-alert-startling-new-research/

FDA, Under Court Order, Nevertheless Refuses to Allow Truthful Claims Based on Good Science

You would think the FDA would obey a judge’s ruling on qualified health claims. Think again.

The FTC case described elsewhere in this issue ^[1] was especially important because the FDA was hoping to use the FTC to evade some recent court rulings that it cannot willfully and unreasonably censor all science about food and supplements. Meanwhile the FDA continues to dig in its heels on the same subject.

As you know, we have for some time been fighting for freedom of speech with the FDA. Supplement and food companies are allowed by law to makequalified health claims (QHCs) on their labels ^[2] if they are approved by the FDA. However, QHCs are rarely approved by FDA, and when they are, the FDA-approved language usually undermines the meaning. Because of their denial of two health claims (that vitamin C reduces the risk of gastric cancer, and the vitamin E reduces the risk of bladder cancer), we took FDA to court—and won ^[3].

FDA was then ordered by the court to revise those QHCs. They did, and we have just received the revised versions—and they are as bad and intentionally misleading as before! The new QHCs all have the qualifier that “FDA has concluded there is very little scientific evidence for this claim.” Example: “Vitamin C may reduce the risk of gastric cancer although the FDA has concluded that there is very little scientific evidence for this claim.”

Frankly, we find this outrageous. It is clear that the FDA, in crafting these revised QHCs, has chosen to ignore the recent precedent set in the green tea case ^[2], where the judge stated that the FDA-approved QHC “effectively negates the substance–disease relationship claim altogether….There are less burdensome ways in which the FDA could indicate in a short, succinct and accurate disclaimer that it has not approved the claim without nullifying the claim altogether.”

Read More:

http://www.anh-usa.org/fda-refuses-to-allow-truthful-claims

EU Food Agency Rejects France Ban on Monsanto's YieldGuard GM Maize

Europe's food safety agency EFSA on Monday rejected the grounds for a temporary French ban on a genetically modified strain of maize made by U.S. company Monsanto (IW 500/94).

"Based on the documentation submitted by France, there is no specific scientific evidence, in terms of risk to human and animal health or the environment," EFSA said in a scientific opinion issued on its website.

A spokesman for Europe's health commissioner John Dalli said the EU executive "will consider how to follow up on this ruling, though technically we could ask France to raise its ban" on MON 810.

"The commission will wait for the conclusions of the next environment ministers' meeting June 11 in Luxembourg and hopes for a positive outcome to its proposals for cultivation, which have been blocked for almost two years by France and others," spokesman Frederic Vincent told AFP.

Paris had asked Brussels in February to suspend the cultivation of MON 810 on the basis of new scientific evidence after France's top administrative court in November overturned a government order banning the planting of genetically modified crops from Monsanto.

The court said that in a November 2008 ban, the government had failed to prove that Monsanto crops "present a particularly elevated level of risk to either human health or the environment."

Read More:

http://www.industryweek.com/articles/eu_food_agency_rejects_france_ban_on_monsantos_yieldguard_gm_maize_27415.aspx?Page=1&SectionID=2

Denise Grady - Popular Antibiotic May Raise Risk of Sudden Death

A new study finds that a widely used antibiotic, azithromycin, may increase the likelihood of sudden death in adults, especially those who have heart disease or are at high risk for it.

The increased odds of death are small, but significant enough that the authors of the study say doctors should consider prescribing a different drug, like amoxicillin, for high-risk patients who need antibiotics. People at high risk include those with heart failure, diabetes or a previous heart attack, and those who have undergone bypass surgery or have had stents implanted. In such patients, the drug may cause abnormal heart rhythms that can be fatal. Just how the drug might disrupt heart rhythm is not known, the researchers said.

The concerns do not apply to children, because most have very little risk of heart disease, according to the lead author of the study, Wayne A. Ray, a professor of preventive medicine at Vanderbilt University. The study is being published on Thursday in The New England Journal of Medicine.

Azithromycin is used to treat bacterial infections, including bronchitis, pneumonia, sore throats and earaches. It is familiar to many people as the “Z-Pak,” to be taken for five days, and part of its appeal is its convenience; many other antibiotics must be taken for 10 days or longer. Last year, doctors wrote 55. 3 million prescriptions for azithromycin in the United States, and sales were $464.6 million, according to IMS Health, a health care information and services company. Global sales were $1.8 billion.

Read More:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/17/health/research/popular-antibiotic-may-raise-risk-of-sudden-death.html?_r=2

Cameron Salisbury - Heart Attacks Without Heart Disease

Something strange and ominous is happening to young people, especially women but also to lesser numbers of men. They are dying of sudden heart attacks (acute myocardial infarction, AMI) without the classic symptoms of heart disease, chest pain or blocked arteries. They die quickly, as though struck by lightning.

Every year since accounting began, there has been a tiny number of persons in the U.S. who died abruptly for no apparent reason. In fact, the annual list of mortality statistics issued by the U.S. National Center for Health Statistics included ‘unknown cause’ as a category, along with heart disease, cancer, stroke, and so on, until about 10 years ago. It was about that time that I called a statistician at NCHS to ask if the number dying for unknown reasons was going up. His answer was a definite and frustrated ‘Yes!’

Federal biostatisticians go to considerable lengths to determine a cause for every death on U.S. soil. People are simply not allowed to die without a good reason. And yet, despite their best efforts, there was a rising number of deaths that no one could account for.

NCHS appears to have solved the problem and now everyone who dies can be placed in an acceptable category. Since each death involves a heart that stops beating, deaths for ‘unknown’ reasons have become deaths from ‘heart attacks.’

Read More:

http://wakeup-world.com/2012/05/21/heart-attacks-without-heart-disease/

Nearly a Quarter of U.S. Teens Have Diabetes or Prediabetes

The prevalence of diabetes and prediabetes among teens is up from 9 percent in 1999-2000 to 23 percent in 2007-2008, according to a new study published in Pediatrics. Researchers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reviewed data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, a continuous database analyzing the health and nutritional status of Americans, to find that children ages 12 to 19, about 34 percent of whom are overweight or obese, are at increased risk for several cardiovascular disease risk factors such as high blood pressure, abnormal cholesterol levels, and diabetes. Prevalence of at least one cardiovascular disease risk factor was at 37, 49, and 61 percent for normal weight, overweight, and obese teens, respectively.

Read More:

http://www.pcrm.org/health/medNews/nearly-quarter-teens-have-diabetes-or-prediabetes

Growing Body Of Research Shows Massage Therapy Effective For Prevalent Health Conditions

A growing body of evidence shows massage therapy can be effective for a variety of prevalent health conditions, including the pain of osteoarthritis of the knee, inflammation after exercise, chronic low back pain and fibromyalgia. Massage is rapidly becoming recognized as an important part of health and wellness, and research compiled by the American Massage Therapy Association (AMTA) indicates some of what takes place in the body during massage therapy.

The Pain of Osteoarthritis of the Knee

Research(1) supported by the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine shows 60-minute sessions of Swedish massage once a week for those with osteoarthritis of the knee significantly reduced their pain. This study, which involved a total group of 125 subjects over an eight-week period, is the latest published research study indicating the benefits of massage therapy for those with osteoarthritis of the knee.

Inflammation After Exercise

Research(2) through the Buck Institute for Research on Aging and McMaster University in Hamilton, Ohio indicates massage therapy reduces inflammation of skeletal muscle acutely damaged through exercise. The study provides evidence for the benefits of massage therapy for those with musculoskeletal injuries and potentially for those with inflammatory disease. Specifically, evidence at the cellular level showed massage therapy may affect inflammation in a way similar to anti-inflammatory medications.

Read More:

http://www.lef.org/news/LefDailyNews.htm?NewsID=13413&Section=Aging