Public DomainThere's been a lot of
discussion about the challenges faced by businesses large and small
in managing health care costs, especially as those costs escalate
and as employers' options are increasingly limited by the
strictures imposed by Obamacare. An even clearer picture of the
dilemma small firms face is offered by a peek inside their internal
deliberations, including the trade-offs that companies have to
offer their employees in order to keep them reasonably content, as
well as control costs and comply with the law. The following memo
was sent to employees of Capterra, a Virginia-based firm that
serves as a marketplace for business software, by Michael Ortner,
the company's president. Capterra has just 23 employees, so it's
subject to fewer restrictions than larger employers (especially
those with more than 50 employees) but has fewer resources and less
bargaining power than larger companies, too.
Ortner is no stranger to political debate, having
written on health care issues for public consumption, and this
memo includes some (informed) policy discussion. But the memo also
outlines the hard choices the company has to make as it decides
what (and whether) to offer employees in the way of health
coverage. With permission, I've included the whole memo including
political discussion, with one name excised, so you get everything
in context.
Are toys, pacifiers and even shampoo driving the epidemic of childhood obesity?
Researchers from the Children's Environmental Health Center
at The Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York have found an association
between a class of chemical substances known as "phthalates" and
obesity in young children.
Phthalates are man-made chemicals that disrupt your endocrine system
because they mimic the body's natural hormones. They are commonly used
in building materials like plastic flooring and wall coverings, food
processing materials and medical devices. They are also found in many
personal-care products such as shampoos, nail polish, deodorants,
fragrances, hair gels, mousses, hairsprays, and hand and body lotions. Children's toys and some pacifiers are known to contain phthalates which help soften the plastics used in the manufacturing.
(NaturalNews) Gun control may be a hot topic, but what about water
control? Recent comments from Nestle CEO Peter Brabeck imply that the
world's water will soon come under the control of corporations like his.
Brabeck makes the astonishing claim that water is not a human right,
but should be managed by business people and governing bodies. He wants
water controlled, privatized, and delegated in a way that sustains the
planet. View the astonishing interview here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7iGj4GpAbTM
Last week, multiple news articles reported 44% of American parents
refusing Gardasil or Cervarix for their children. Between 2008 and 2010,
the percentage of parents concerned about the safety of these two
vaccines nearly quadrupled. As of 2010, only 32% of eligible girls were
vaccinated against HPV. What is wrong with this picture?
Excerpts from national news sources, March 18-22, 2013:
USA Today
The percentage of parents who say they won’t have their teen daughters
vaccinated against the human papillomavirus increases, even though
physicians increasingly recommend the vaccinations. Concerns about
safety and side effects for the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine have
increased among parents: 16% cited these fears as the main reason they
did not have their daughters vaccinated in 2010, up from 5% in 2008…
Medpage Today
Parents increasingly say they are worried about the safety of the human
papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine and don’t intend to vaccinate their teen
daughters… But there is no similar pattern for two other vaccines aimed
at adolescents…
CNN Health
Concerns of mothers and fathers about the safety of the HPV vaccine
grew each year, from 4.5% in 2008 to 16.4% in 2010… The number of
parents who said they would not vaccinate their children for HPV
increased from 38.9% in 2008 to 43.9% in 2010. The main concern was
safety.
CBS News One of the main reasons parents said they didn’t want their children vaccinated against HPV was because of safety concerns.
Bloomberg
The number of girls who received either injection (Gardasil or
Cervarix) rose to about one-third in 2010 from 16 percent in 2008…
FiercePharma
A growing share of U.S. parents say they won’t vaccinate their
daughters… And that leaves Merck’s Gardasil and GSK’s Cervarix with a
shrinking market.
The New York Times …suggesting, the need for interventions beyond clinical recommendations like possibly ‘state and federally designed social marketing campaigns’…
Without brushing aside the need to address safety concerns, the
increasing rates of HPV vaccine refusal suggest that widespread
vaccination will require more than marketing campaigns. Medical professionals need to look for ways to tell a better story to parents and teens about HPV, vaccination and cancer. (emphasis added)
Taxpayer funded social marketing campaigns? Look for ways to ‘tell a
better story’ to parents? Who are these people kidding? What happened
to investigative journalism? What happened to fact-finding? What
happened to fair and balanced journalism?
Has no one considered the possibility that the 43.9% of parents refusing this particular vaccine might have some valid concerns?
Last night, in the middle of the night under cover of darkness (when evil reigns) the US House of Representatives, under Democratic rule, passed the most comprehensive, expensive, and most intrusive piece of legislation in the history of this republic. From paying for abortions, to putting people in jail for five years for refusing to buy healthcare insurance, this bill is based on the lies, corruption, and downright malfeasance and abuse of power! The real cost of healthcare in America is a scandal, that you will not easily find except for this story on The Plain Truth. Do yourself favor, and try to search for healthcare cost of homosexual diseases. It will be hard to find the information that I will provide you from any Google search! That's because the politically correct homosexually led Congress is lying about the true cost of health insurance.
Lies, lies, and damn lies! That is what your elected leaders are feeding you! Are you aware that 34% of the American population is obese. You probably are, because the news is filled with the cost of obesity on the American health care system. Yet are you aware that obese Americans consume 9% of the health care cost of this nation? 34% of the population, cost our health care system just 9% of its health care dollars spent!.
As demand for local and raw goods continue to rise, more people are
asking - where do I find local organic? Where do I find raw milk and
join a herd share? Where are the farmers markets, co-ops and stands?
Search engines are actually terrible at locating these underground hubs,
which makes it so frustrating to try and opt out of corporate chains,
save money, and build your family's health. If you've ever gotten a
bunch of 'Yelp' listings for weight loss pills while searching, you know
what I'm talking about. I've helped a few people find a local CSA
(Community Supported Agriculture) but I found it by accident. So where
are they all hiding?
As it turns out, many of the farmers and markets you're looking for have
teamed up with certain websites to be mapped. Use this easy list to
find yours today. They won't all be on the same map, but you will be
sure to find markets and family farms in your area that were previously
invisible.
The U.S. health care system is a giant money making scam that is
designed to drain as much money as possible out of all of us before we
die. In the United States today, the health care industry is completely
dominated by government bureaucrats, health insurance companies and
pharmaceutical corporations. The pharmaceutical corporations spend
billions of dollars to convince all of us to become dependent on their
legal drugs, the health insurance companies make billions of dollars by
providing as little health care as possible, and they both spend
millions of dollars to make sure that our politicians in Washington D.C.
keep the gravy train rolling.
Meanwhile, large numbers of doctors are going broke and patients are not
getting the care that they need. At this point, our health care system
is a complete and total disaster. Health care costs continue to go up
rapidly, the level of care that we are receiving continues to go down,
and every move that our politicians make just seems to make all of our
health care problems even worse.
In America today, a single trip to the emergency room can easily cost
you $100,000, and if you happen to get cancer you could end up with
medical bills in excess of a million dollars. Even if you do have
health insurance, there are usually limits on your coverage, and the
truth is that just a single major illness is often enough to push most
American families into bankruptcy. At the same time, hospital
administrators, pharmaceutical corporations and health insurance company
executives are absolutely swimming in huge mountains of cash.
Unfortunately, this gigantic money making scam has become so large that
it threatens to collapse both the U.S. health care system and the entire
U.S. economy.
The following are 50 signs that the U.S. health care system is a massive money making scam that is about to collapse...
FDA aims to sterilize our food through the Food Safety Modernization Act
After two years of delay, the Food Safety Modernization Act is finally
about to go into effect. The FDA is moving forward with rules that are
supposed to make food in the United States the safest in the world.
Hailed as the most sweeping overhaul of farm and food policy since the
Great Depression, some fear the law will actually make our food supply
less safe by regulating small, organic farmers out of business and
leaving it in the hands of a few mega farmers and processors.
“So what exactly is the government going to do to make our food safer?” I
was wondering the other day. While I hoped for the labeling of GMOs and
the removal and the word “natural” from products that aren’t natural, I
knew the FDA would come up with an idea like putting port-a-potties
with sinks in the middle of farm fields. And sure enough, that’s exactly
what they did. With that, they also want food heated at higher
temperatures to kill any bacteria that may be present, good or bad, and a
host of other ill-conceived ideas that will prevent us from accessing
nutrient-dense foods.
The battle for raw milk and food freedom is well under way. Demand is
rising, and that has mega pasteurized-milk producers running scared to
government officials, looking for protection in the name of public
safety.
They aim to limit our access to this highly nutritious food so they
don’t have to compete with it. Currently, the so-called “white gold”
can’t be sold across state lines, leaving many with little to no options
for obtaining this whole and complete food, which has been nourishing
people for centuries.
Up until 1987 raw milk producers could ship raw milk to any state in the
good ole’ US of A. But in the last couple of decades, access to
nutrient-dense foods such as these is becoming more and more scarce
because of pressure from food and pharmaceutical industry giants who
view them as a threat. These special interest groups lobby government
officials who, in turn, legislate or regulate small farmers out of
business, thus eliminating their competition.
I've explored and written on food politics for years, using articles and
direct links back to my sources to show evidence that the Big
Agra-Big-Food-Big Pharma-Big Government complex is a pernicious
corporatocracy with various satellites in place to conduct its dirty
work of politicking, plundering, deceptive marketing, and purposefully
miseducating the masses. I long ago declared that the food
corporatocracy's nutritional-food satellites such as the two ADAs
(American Dietetic Association and the American Diabetes Association),
the USDA, and the FDA are criminal organizations. The American Dietetic
Association recently changed its name to the Academy of Nutrition and
Dietetics (AND).
Against this backdrop, we must ask: what is
the role of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics (AND)—the nation’s
largest association of nutrition professionals—in preventing or at least
stemming the tide of diet-related health problems? What responsibility
does this influential group of registered dietitians bear to be a
leading advocate for policy changes to make eating healthfully more
accessible? Does forming partnerships with the food industry compromise
such a group’s credibility? And what does the food industry gain from
such partnerships?
Why does it
matter? As this report will show, the food industry’s deep infiltration
of the nation’s top nutrition organization raises serious questions not
only about that profession’s credibility, but also about its policy
positions.
In a recent interview with the London Telegraph, Bill Gates has
now claimed that his Foundation’s massive push for vaccination is not
just an exercise in philanthropy but that it is, in fact, “God’s work.”
Gates, who, according to the Telegraph, is worth an estimated $65
billion, is now dedicating his life to the “eradication of
poliomyelitis,” or, at least he is dedicating himself to the vaccination
program allegedly aimed at achieving these ends.
“My wife and I had a long dialogue about how we were going to take the
wealth that we’re lucky enough to have and give it back in a way that’s
most impactful to the world,” he says. “Both of us worked at Microsoft
and saw that if you take innovation and smart people, the ability to
measure what’s working, that you can pull together some pretty dramatic
things.
“We’re focused on the help of the poorest in the world, which really
drives you into vaccination. You can actually take a disease and get rid
of it altogether, like we are doing with polio.”
Diagram depicting antibiotic resistance through alteration of the antibiotic's target site, modeled after MRSA's resistance to penicillin. Beta-lactam antibiotics permanently inactivate PBP enzymes, which are essential for bacterial life, by permanently binding to their active sites. MRSA, however, expresses a PBP that will not allow the antibiotic into its active site. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
A new strain of MRSA has been found in British milk, indicating that
the superbug is spreading through the livestock population and poses a
growing threat to human health.
The new strain, MRSA ST398, has been identified in seven samples of bulk milk from five different farms in England.
The
discovery, from tests on 1,500 samples, indicates that
antibiotic-resistant organisms are gaining an increasing hold in the
dairy industry.
The disclosure comes amid growing concern over the
use of modern antibiotics on British farms, driven by price pressure
imposed by the big supermarket chains. Intensive farming with thousands
of animals raised in cramped conditions means infections spread faster
and the need for antibiotics is consequently greater.
Three
classes of antibiotics rated as “critically important to human medicine”
by the World Health Organisation – cephalosporins, fluoroquinolones and
macrolides – have increased in use in the animal population by
eightfold in the last decade.
A bombshell investigative video just released by Infowars.com has exposed what can only be called false and misleading advertising
by Whole Foods. It all began when InfoWars reporters Aaron Dykes and
Melissa Melton visited Whole Foods last week to try to find out what
customers thought about Whole Foods stores selling so many unlabeled genetically modified foods. That fact was recently admitted by Whole Foods in its own blog post.
As you can see in the video,
some customers were shocked to discover that Whole Foods sells GMOs in
their store. The majority of Whole Foods customers, it turned out, had
no idea the company was selling GMO.
Hormones and/or hormone-mimicking chemicals are omnipresent
environmental contaminants. Already found in places as varied as our
teeth (dental sealant) to our paper products (receipts, money), our meat
to our canned foods, new research now indicates that even fresh, whole
vegetables and fruits are no longer immune to this growing biological
and chemical threat.
A newly released study has found that a variety of substances with
hormone-disrupting properties now widely contaminate commercially
available fresh vegetables and fruits, in some cases at concentrations
exceeding the recommended acceptable daily intake (ADI) for children as
recommended by the Joint FAO/WHO Expert Committee on Food Additives
(JECFA).
Published this month in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry,
researchers at the Indian River Research and Education Center,
University of Florida/IFAS, found the synthetic endocrine-disrupting
chemicals bisphenol A (BPA), nonylphenol (NP), and the natural steroidal estrogen 17-β-estradiol, in vegetables and fruits randomly sampled from local markets, using gas chromotagraphy with tandem mass spectrometry.[i]
Could Monsanto's glyphosate-based herbicide Roundup be leading to the
overgrowth of deadly bacteria in animals and humans consuming
genetically-modified food contaminated with it?
This question follows from a new study published in the journal Current Microbiology
titled, "The Effect of Glyphosate on Potential Pathogens and Beneficial
Members of Poultry Microbiota In Vitro," which found that the active
ingredient in Monsanto's Roundup herbicide,
known as glyphosate, negatively impacted the gastrointestinal bacteria
of poultry in vitro. The researchers presented evidence that highly
pathogenic bacteria resisted glyphosate, whereas beneficial bacteria
were moderately to highly susceptible to it.
Some of the beneficial species that were found to be suppressed by
glyphosate were Enterococcus faecalis, Enterococcus faecium, Bacillus
badius, Bifidobacterium adolescentis and Lactobacillus spp. The
pathogenic species which were found to resist glyphosate toxicity were
Salmonella Entritidis, Salmonella Gallinarum, Salmonella Typhimurium,
Clostridium perfringens and Clostridium botulinum.
An extraordinary new paper published
by a courageous doctor and investigative medical researcher has dug the
dirt on 30 years of secret official transcripts of meetings of UK
government vaccine committees and the supposedly independent medical
“experts” sitting on them with their drug industry connections.
If you want to get an idea of who is
responsible for your child’s condition resulting from a vaccine adverse
reaction then this is the paper to read. What you have to
ask yourself is if the people on these committees are honest and
honourable and acting in the best interests of British children, how is
it this has been going on for at least 30 years?
This is what everyone has always
known but could never prove before now. Pass this information on to
others so they can see what goes on in Government health committees
behind locked doors.
We quote here from the author’s summary and the paper:
Deliberately
concealing information from parents for the sole purpose of getting
them to comply with an “official” vaccination schedule could be
considered as a form of ethical violation or misconduct. Official
documents obtained from the UK Department of Health (DH) and the Joint
Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) reveal that the British
health authorities have been engaging in such practice for the last 30
years, apparently for the sole purpose of protecting the national
vaccination program.
Former drug company scientist Helen Ratajczak recently created a
firestorm of debate from all sides of the vaccine-autism issue when she
published her comprehensive review of autism research.
However, her 79-page review contains one detail that could easily go
unnoticed—five words that reveal one of the most shocking secrets Big
Pharma has ever kept from you.
"An additional increased spike in incidence of autism occurred in
1995 when the chicken pox vaccine was grown in human fetal tissue."
If you are struggling to recall how you could have missed this
important fact when signing your vaccine consent form, it wasn't your
error—becauseit wasn't disclosed on any consent form.
Most people are unaware that human cell cultures derived from aborted
human fetuses have been used extensively in vaccine production for
decades. And vaccine makers are happy that most of the public has
remained ignorant of this fact, as awareness of it could blow up in
their faces.
Setting aside, for the moment, unknown long-term health consequences
of DNA contamination and religious beliefs about use of aborted fetal
tissues—the ethics of nondisclosure are reprehensible. Drug
companies and vaccine policy-makers should not be allowed to decide
whether or not to share this information with you. This is information
you should have received PRIOR to making a choice about whether or not
to vaccinate.
FRANKFORT, Ky. (AP) — A Christians-only health care ministry must
cease operations in Kentucky unless it can get regulatory approval from
the state Department of Insurance, a judge ruled Tuesday.
The ruling by Franklin County Circuit Judge Thomas Wingate means
Medi-Share, a Florida-based cost-sharing ministry, can no longer accept
money or help pay medical bills for churchgoers in Kentucky.
Medi-Share closely resembles secular insurance, but only allows
participation by people who pledge to live Christian lives that include
no smoking, drinking, using drugs or engaging in sex outside of
marriage.
A Cambridge professor has tackled the issue of spontaneous combustion – using belly pork.
Prof Brian J Ford is a research biologist and author of more than 30
books, most about cell biology and microscopy but he has turned his
attention to the mechanisms behind why people ‘explode’.
He said in an article in New Scientist: “One minute they may be relaxing in a chair, the next they erupt into a fireball.
“Jets of blue fire shoot from their bodies like flames from a
blowtorch, and within half an hour they are reduced to a pile of ash.
“Typically, the legs remain unscathed sticking out grotesquely from
the smoking cinders. Nearby objects – a pile of newspapers on the
armrest, for example – are untouched.”
The first record of spontaneous combustion dates back to 1641 when
Danish doctor and mathematician Thomas Bartholin described the death of
Polonus Vorstius – who drank wine at home in Milan, Italy, one evening
in 1470 before bursting into flames.
Since then more reports of spontaneous combustion have been filed and
linked to alcoholism – though the link was later disproved.
The most recent case was 76-year-old Michael Faherty who died on
December 22, 2010. West Galway coroner Ciaran McLoughlin recorded the
cause of death as spontaneous human combustion.
(CBS News) Modern wheat is a "perfect, chronic poison," according to
Dr. William Davis, a cardiologist who has published a book all about the
world's most popular grain.
Davis said that the wheat we eat these days isn't the wheat your
grandma had: "It's an 18-inch tall plant created by genetic research in
the '60s and '70s," he said on "CBS This Morning." "This thing has many
new features nobody told you about, such as there's a new protein in
this thing called gliadin. It's not gluten. I'm not addressing people
with gluten sensitivities and celiac disease. I'm talking about
everybody else because everybody else is susceptible to the gliadin
protein that is an opiate. This thing binds into the opiate receptors in
your brain and in most people stimulates appetite, such that we consume
440 more calories per day, 365 days per year." More>>>>>>>>>>>
Do you want to eat the wheat that Abraham, David and Jesus ate? Modern wheat is a hybrid of many different grains and grasses. Modern wheat also contains 42 chromosomes, wheras the wheat God made has only 14! It is called Einkorn wheat, and you can still buy it and use it! If you’re asking yourself whether Einkorn flour contains gluten, the
answer is “Yes, it absolutely does!”…but I have a secret to tell you.
And I should probably disclose that this is not something your “everyday
family doctor” is going to tell you. Here’s the secret: not all wheat
gluten is created equal. Einkorn has an entirely different genetic makeup than modern wheat.
Modern wheats have been hybridized through years and years and millions
and millions of $$$ in research. The goal of hybridization has been to
increase yields, fight against plant disease, pests, weather conditions,
etc. and many are starting to wonder if this long history of
hybridization is the explanation for the rising number of people with a
high intolerance to gluten. Einkorn is a German word that literally means “one
kernel”. This unique grain gets its name from the single (one) kernel
per spikelet, or husks containing kernels on the head of the grain
plant. Einkorn wheat has a very simple diploid genetic structure, with only 14 chromosomes compared with the hexaploid genetic structure in modern wheat containing 42 chromosomes. The attractiveness of the einkorn grain to dieticians and health conscious consumers is its nutritional benefits
over other types of wheat. Since wheat is such a large contributor to
our diets, eating a wheat high in nutrition can greatly contribute to
health.( read more…)
Learn more about the foods God intended you to eatHERE
Researchers found persistent users of marijuana, who started smoking it at
school, had lower IQ scores as adults.
They were also significantly more likely to have attention and memory problems
in later life, than their peers who abstained.
Furthermore, those who started as teenagers and used it heavily, but quit as
adults, did not regain their full mental powers, found academics at King’s
College London and Duke University in the US.
They looked at data from over 1,000 people from Dunedin in New Zealand, who
have been followed through their lives since being born in 1972 or 1973.
Participants were asked about cannabis usage when they were 18, 21, 26, 32 and
38. Their IQ was tested at 13 and 38. In addition, each nominated a close
friend or family member, who was asked about attention and memory problems. More>>>>>>>>>>>
All decent people, including U.S. Senate candidate Todd Akin, agree
that forcible rape is a heinous crime. Almost all would agree that
illegitimate (false) accusations of rape occur – there’s the case of the
Duke lacrosse players, for example.
All reasonable people, including Todd Akin, agree that pregnancy can
result from forcible rape – but there is scientific disagreement on how
likely it is.
A 1988 textbook, the second edition of “Human Sex and Sexuality” by
Edwin B. Steen and James H. Price, estimates a 2 percent pregnancy rate.
A 2012 textbook, “Comprehensive Gynecology,” 6th edition, gives an
estimate of between 2 percent and 5 percent and states that “in the
experience of most sexual assault centers, the chance of pregnancy
occurring is quite low.” Estimates depend on flawed methods, with
inevitable biases. An experiment to give an accurate figure is, of
course, impossible. And does the estimate really matter to the woman who
has been raped? Either she gets pregnant, or she doesn’t.
Is the risk of pregnancy lower with forcible rape, and if so, why?
Off the cuff, Todd Akin gave a layman’s restatement of the point made by
some pro-life physicians that the female body has some defense
mechanisms against pregnancy in cases of rape.
The process of fertilization, implantation and maintenance of
pregnancy is an intricate one, highly dependent on hormonal signals.
Stress is conceded to make miscarriage more likely by disrupting the
hormonal milieu. What could be more stressful than a forcible rape?
The intensity of the media outrage against Akin’s remark shows that
this is not a scientific dispute about numbers, or the definition of
“really rare.” Medical science is being replaced by political
demagoguery about the issue of rape.
Rape clearly involves a forcible penetration of a woman’s body,
without her consent, almost always by a man. It is painful and causes
harm – not just physical injury but often lifelong, serious emotional
distress: flashbacks, nightmares, anxiety, depression, difficulty
forming normal relationships and even guilt.
Starting from one extreme, some radical feminists appear to believe
that most if not all sex involving a man and a woman is a rape. The man
is always the perpetrator, and the woman, a victim. Clearly, there are
activities that are not forcible rape and do not involve the same
emotional reaction, but are still not legitimate. These would include
statutory rape, “date rape” and seduction. To suggest that a woman ‘s
dress or behavior might in some cases have contributed is, of course,
unacceptable.
At the other extreme, radical Muslims appear to believe that rape
rarely if ever occurs, and that all non-marital contact between a man
and a woman is illegitimate and the fault of the temptress. From the
fury directed at Akin, you’d think he had advocated Shariah law and
“honor” killings.
Then there’s the question of what to do if rape leads to pregnancy.
Should there be a death penalty for rape? In the U.S., few advocate
executing the rapist. Under Shariah, the rape victim might be executed,
at least if she is not pregnant. But what about the rapist’s baby?
What happens in an abortion? A woman’s body is penetrated by
instruments, usually in the hands of a man. The woman will have signed a
consent form – but all too often because she felt she had “no choice.”
The procedure is painful and bloody. Occasionally, serious physical
injury occurs, sometimes even causing death of the mother. Judging from
the million or so postings on the nonjudgmental website
afterabortion.com, long-term emotional consequences are not uncommon,
whatever official medical publications might say.
This procedure is almost always “legitimate” (legal) in the U.S. by
order of the U.S. Supreme Court. It is the most common elective surgical
procedure. We have lost as much as one-third of our younger generation
because of it. The vast majority of Americans have been touched by it in
some way. Of course it is emotional and divisive.
Politicians who claim to be pro-life are often adamant about
preserving an exception for rape or incest. This exception is a fig leaf
over the reality of what an abortion is. Coming too close to The
Question is feared to jeopardize the chance to gain political power.
Akin’s phrasing became a convenient pretext for raising a
disproportionate clamor as a diversion from the real problem. Those
politicians and commentators who are calling for Akin’s head have
signaled where their priorities lie.
What it means is that a calorie of protein will generate the same energy when metabolized in a living organism as a calorie of fat or carbohydrate. When talking about obesity or why we get fat, evoking the phrase “a calorie is a calorie” is almost invariably used to imply that what we eat is relatively unimportant. We get fat because we take in more calories than we expend; we get lean if we do the opposite. Anyone who tells you otherwise, by this logic, is trying to sell you something.
English: Cancer cells photographed by camera attached to microscope in time-lapse manner. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
By Dr. Mercola
According to the American Cancer Society, the odds you'll develop cancer in your lifetime are one in two, if you're a man, and one in three, if you're a woman.1 But an experimental cancer drug shown to shrink tumors by correcting metabolic oddities in cancer cells shows promise in the fight against this deadly disease. The synthetic drug DCA (dichloroacetate) DOES indeed kill cancer cells, both in the lab and in human beings. However, whether it can reverse tumor growth without harming you in other ways remains to be seen.
The first clinical trial, although small, involving patients with brain cancer (glioblastoma) was encouraging, and the results were published in Science of Translational Medicine in 20102 . However, there is still a great deal more work to be done before DCA can be pronounced a safe and effective cancer treatment.
An interesting aspect of DCA is that it's an inexpensive, non-patentable molecule, which makes it of minimal value to pharmaceutical companies that profit by patenting expensive new drugs. Therefore, clinical trials are slow to get going due to lack of funding by Big Pharma. Researchers must await sufficient money to trickle in from government sources and public donations before moving forward.
In the paragraphs below, my aim is to give you information from both sides of the story—the potential benefits as well as the possible risks.
The impetus behind most of the DCA research has been cardiologist Evangelos Michelakis of the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada. In 2007, Michelakis and his colleagues sparked a firestorm of interest when they announced rats fed DCA showed rapid tumor regression without any apparent side effects. Michelakis has been the first to say these results are preliminary and cautions cancer patients to refrain from running out and buying the drug, prior to clinical trials.
Yet, many desperate cancer patients with few remaining options are doing just that, and side effects ARE being reported.
There are currently three clinical trials involving use of DCA to treat cancer that are currently recruiting participants3. Some of these studies plan to combine DCA with other chemotherapy drugs and radiation, all known to have damaging effects in your body. However, if you have cancer and are tempted to participate, there are some things you should know in order to make an informed decision about the risk versus the benefits of this experimental treatment.
In order to understand how DCA kills cancer cells, it is necessary to understand a bit about how the cellular metabolism of cancer cells differs from that of your normal, healthy cells. Cancer cells have very different metabolic processes than normal cells, in terms of how they derive their energy.4 It's a rather complicated distinction, so please bear with me as I try to explain it in the simplest terms possible.
There are two major pathways your cells use to covert sugar into energy: glucose oxidation and glycolysis:
Glucose oxidationis the primary energy metabolism in normal cells and takes place in your mitochondria, which are the little "power plants" inside your cell; it requires the presence of oxygen, as its name suggests. This is why you breathe and your heart beats to circulate oxygen throughout your body. Glucose oxidation is sometimes referred to as cellular respiration.
Glycolysis takes place in your cell's cytoplasm. It can occur without the presence of oxygen. Glycolysis is less efficient for normal cells, but it is acancer cell'spreferredmeans of energy metabolism, and it depends on the availability of sugar.
So, when your cells are oxygen-starved they have a backup plan. They can extract energy from sugar without the presence of oxygen, by glycolysis.
Pyruvate is required for glucose oxidation. There is an enzyme (pyruvate dehydrogenase kinase, or PDK) that acts as gatekeeper to regulate the flow of pyruvate into the mitochondria. If PDK is active, it suppresses the transport of pyruvate into the mitochondria, and your cell is forced to rely on glycolysis, even if oxygen is available. If PDK is inactive, pyruvate is shuttled into the mitochondria, even if oxygen is low.
Unlike normal cells, cancer cells are masterful at deriving energy from glycolysis—they have very active PDK. The way to make a cancer cell unhappy is by suppressing PDK, forcing the cell to use glucose oxidation, instead of glycolysis. This is called the Warburg theory of cancer, or the Warburg hypothesis5. This is where DCA comes in.
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