Red meat cancer link explained --and additional research still needed

San Diego Union Tribune had a front page article by Bradley Fikes that explains new research concerning the link between red meat and cancer:  Red meat cancer link explained | UTSanDiego.com. I also found UCSD article.

The UC San Diego study was led by: Dr Ajit Varki, and was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and this link is to the abstract of the report:

http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2014/12/25/1417508112.abstract.  The incidence of cancer increases due to the presence of a compound called Neu5Gc (also called "

N-Glycolylneuraminic acid" that is present in red meat.  The research appears to have been performed very carefully with the necessary proper discipline, however after publishing, there still could be peer review findings that could indicate errors in the research tests or reported results.

It seems that this research might be a major breakthrough, and it can help dispel the many dietary myths and recommendations that have built up concerning the eating of red meat.  For example, the concern that has been reported for many years about eating grilled meats as worse than "stewed" meats. It also seems to explain why vegetarians who avoid dairy products can reduce the probability of getting cancer.  Certain dairy products and cheeses  (goat cheeses?) have the Neu5Gc compound.  Fish are OK, except for fish eggs!  Who knew?

The report also says that possibly eating red meat while we are young is OK, but as we get older, the bad effects of eating it has a higher probability of leading to cancer.  I can see how this might make sense from a biological and an anthropological standpoint.

The good news is that now that we are gaining an understanding of the cause, we may be able to develop types of animals who produce little or no Neu5Gc in their bodies, or develop "antidote" foods or food supplements which could neutralize the Neu5Gc compound in the meat, or in our digestive tract.

I think there are other studies that will probably be performed to help us design good diets.   If a person has an ounce or so per week, is that just as bad as eating a couple of pounds per week?  Are those of us who have eaten red meat all of our lives "doomed?"  --or is there "salvation" in becoming a vegetarian now?  Below are some studies that I believe NIH and the livestock industry may want to fund and start working on ASAP:

• What is the dose sensitivity of the body to Neu5GC?  
• How much red meat would cause all cells of our body to contain Neu5Gc? 
• If we stop eating red meat, will the residual Neu5Gc in our body's cells gradually diminish?  How fast does it go away?
• How far down does the amount of Neu5Gc in our body have to go before the cancer risk becomes negligible from this cause, of course
• The testing techniques for measuring the amount of Neu5Gc in foods and in animal cells (human cells) appears to be complex and expensive using chromatograms.  Are there possible techniques that are quicker and easier to perform that provide adequate measurement for clinical use? 
• The research seemed to test only the amount in animal's liver. The research indicated it may be higher in liver, prostate, and several other locations. What is the typical distribution of Neu5Gc in human organs? Is it evenly distributed in all organs? Or does it concentrate in certain ones?
• Can the amount in a person's body be estimated by taking a biopsy, a blood sample, urine sample, or saliva?
• Are there chemicals, drugs, food supplements, cooking methods, or other techniques that reduce the amount of Neu5GC in the food, or that is absorbed into our body?
• Are there chemicals, drugs, food supplements that will help our body eliminate Neu5Gc from our body?
• Are there parts of red meat animals that have more, or less amounts of the Neu5Gc? For example is there more in fat, organ meat, broth?
• Is there some way of reducing the amount of Neu5GC in red meat animals (feed, exercise, breeding, or other types of care?  
• How long after stopping eating of red meat does it take for our body to be free of  Neu5GC?
• If we eat small amounts of red meat or red meat byproducts, (gelatin, broth, flavoring in french fries for example) will we be exposed to Neu5GC?  Will our body then have as much as if we ate a lot of red meat? Or do we have to go completely "vegan" to avoid even accidental ingestion of residual amounts.
• What is the "age curve" vs probability of getting cancer from having Neu5GC in our bodies? The research was done using mice and autopsy at 85 weeks near end of life. If they had eaten red meat while young but none after middle age, would that reduce the probability of cancer a lot? Or only a little bit?

I think it will take many years for more definitive research to be done.  I also suspect that the red meat industry will try dis-information campaigns similar to what the tobacco and anti-global warming group did.  That type of modest campaign will spread doubt about the research, and slow down spending on research about this process,   It will also take a long time to see the effect of this research on the recommendations of nutrionists.  There are some, however,who are already expressing concern about red meat -- but generally they are already vegetarians who are in the "told you so" mode.  See this Dr. Mirkin website as example.

It is also interesting to learn the archeological history of Neu5Gc in humans and other animals.  See this article on phys.org website.  Human ancestors used to make their own Neu5Gc, but between 2 and 3 million years ago, they lost that capability.

STUDY: RED WINE CHEMICAL ACTIVATES RESPONSE | UTSanDiego.com

I've been following the studies on the benefits of  red wine and resveratrol for several years.  There were several well designed studies done that demonstrated that taking resveratrol, a compound found in red wine, blueberries, raspberries and chocolate, mice and rats would have longer lifespans.  Recent research was done by Paul Schimmel and Matthew Sajish at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI).  This article in today's San Diego Union Tribune by Bradley Fikes summarizes the research and explains that we now have a better understanding of the actual mechanism behind how resveratrol works in the body--and the mechanisms of the cell's DNA.

STUDY: RED WINE CHEMICAL ACTIVATES RESPONSE | UTSanDiego.com

From the studies done several years ago with mice, it appeared that if humans wanted to get health benefits from resveratrol, they would need to take huge amounts of the stuff to be comparable to the amounts that were fed to mice.  However, according to these latest studies, apparently only a very small amount of the resveratrol is needed to trigger the good effects of the chemical.

So maybe a glass of red wine with dinner each night is the key to the success of the  "Mediterranean diet." and the answer to the "French Paradox" too!

Police in This City Have Shot More than 90 Dogs Since 2011

It is interesting to see that police departments also have an "unequal" performance when it comes to shooting dogs.  See this article in "The Blaze" written by Elizabeth Kreft:  Police in This City Have Shot More than 90 Dogs Since 2011 | Video | TheBlaze.com.  In some cities, the rate of dog shootings is very low, in other cities, the rates are very high.  That could be due to differences in police training, or could be differences in the area's pet preferences.  For example, are there more pit bulls in buffalo as a percentage of population than New York, where more people have little yorkies, or miniature poodles?  It is very difficult to determine the source of the problem from the few statistics that are maintained and provided.

It is not surprising that so many of the dog-shooting situations seem to involve police actions for drug-enforcement.  If police departments didn't have to enforce the bans on "recreational" drugs, they would have very little to do.  Much of their activity, even during routine traffic stops, involves searching for illegal drugs or use of alcohol (DUI). The war on drugs has forced illegal drug dealers to handle large amounts of money, and caused them to carry weapons and keep attack dogs for protection.  That, in turn, requires the police to also be more heavily armed, and forces them to be more alert and aggressive when approaching suspects.  A fierce, barking dog increases the confusion level during the confrontation and actually increases the chances of making a more serious mistake (like shooting a human suspect).

It is also interesting that apparently it is easier to get statistics from the police departments concerning the number of dogs shot than it is to get similar numbers for how many HUMANS that the police have shot.  I think that every time any police, FBI, Homeland Security, Coast Guard employee fires a weapon in the line of duty (other than training), the purpose of the shooting should be recorded and reported in a Federal, public-accessible database.  That information is essential for proper management of our law-enforcement resources.  Do we need better training?  Better or different types of weapons?  Changes in procedures?

We really do need to call a "truce" on the war on drugs that has gone on for far too long.  When prohibition ended, it allows a reduction in the costs for FBI and police, and eliminated a huge amount of graft and corruption in those departments.  Yes, the effect was that we had more alcoholics on the road, and more families destroyed by alcoholism.  It was not a simple decision.  De-escalating the drug war is a good first step.  By decriminalizing marijuana in some states, we might be able to see if that reduces the amount of drug-related crime in those states?  Or will it lead to more crime and will more people switch to more dangerous forms of "illegal" recreational drugs?  For 50 years, the police and right-wingers have said that marijuana was a "gateway" drug that leads people to harder drugs -- this will be an opportunity for the country to see if that was true.

 

New therapies give hope to Alzheimer’s patients | UTSanDiego.com

Article in today's Union Tribune about Alzheimer's disease, and some promising drug trials to cure or slow the progress of early Alzheimer's disease.



New therapies give hope to Alzheimer’s patients | UTSanDiego.com

I just saw this article on Scientific American.
I think we are starting to realize more and more the complexity of the organisms that live in our gut.  This article is almost counterintuitive concerning the artificial sweetteners.

Here is a link to it:  http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/sugar-substitutes-linked-to-obesity/

Here is the text of the article:

Sugar Substitutes Linked to Obesity

Artificial sweeteners seem to change the microbiomes of our guts

Sep 17, 2014 |By Alison Abbott and Nature magazine

This is the first work to suggest that sweeteners might be exacerbating metabolic disease. 
Credit: Joel Penner via flickr

The artificial sweeteners that are widely seen as a way to combat obesity and diabetes could, in part, be contributing to the global epidemic of these conditions.

Sugar substitutes such as saccharin might aggravate these metabolic disorders by acting on bacteria in the human gut, according to a study published by Nature this week (J. Suez et al. Naturehttp://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nature13793; 2014). Smaller studies have previously purported to show an association between the use of artificial sweeteners and the occurrence of metabolic disorders. This is the first work to suggest that sweeteners might be exacerbating metabolic disease, and that this might happen through the gut microbiome, the diverse community of bacteria in the human intestines. “It’s counter-intuitive — no one expected it because it never occurred to them to look,” says Martin Blaser, a microbiologist at New York University.

The findings could cause a headache for the food industry. According to BCC Research, a market-research company in Wellesley, Massachusetts, the market for artificial sweeteners is booming. And regulatory agencies, which track the safety of food additives, including artificial sweeteners, have not flagged such a link to metabolic disorders. In response to the latest findings, Stephen Pagani, a spokesman for the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) in Parma, Italy, says that, as with all new data, the agency “will decide in due course whether they should be brought to the attention of panel experts for review”.

A team led by Eran Elinav of the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel, fed mice various sweeteners — saccharin, sucralose and aspartame — and found that after 11 weeks, the animals displayed glucose intolerance, a marker of propensity for metabolic disorders.

To simulate the real-world situation of people with varying risks of these diseases, the team fed some mice a normal diet, and some a high-fat diet, and spiked their water either with glucose alone, or with glucose and one of the sweeteners, saccharin. The mice fed saccharin developed a marked glucose intolerance compared to those fed only glucose. But when the animals were given antibiotics to kill their gut bacteria, glucose intolerance was prevented. And when the researchers transplanted faeces from the glucose-intolerant saccharin-fed mice into the guts of mice bred to have sterile intestines, those mice also became glucose intolerant, indicating that saccharin was causing the microbiome to become unhealthy.

Elinav’s team also used data from an on­going clinical nutrition study that has recruited nearly 400 people in Israel. The researchers noted a correlation between clinical signs of metabolic disorder — such as increasing weight or decreasing efficiency of glucose metabolism — and consumption of artificial sweeteners.

But “this is a bit chicken-and-egg”, says Elinav. “If you are putting on weight, you are more likely to turn to diet food. It doesn’t necessarily mean the diet food caused you to put on weight.”

So his team recruited seven lean and healthy volunteers, who did not normally use artificial sweeteners, for a small prospective study. The recruits consumed the maximum acceptable daily dose of artificial sweeteners for a week. Four became glucose intolerant, and their gut microbiomes shifted towards a balance already known to be associated with susceptibility to metabolic diseases, but the other three seemed to be resistant to saccharin’s effects. “This underlines the importance of personalized nutrition — not everyone is the same,” says Elinav.

He does not yet propose a mechanism for the effect of artificial sweeteners on the micro­biome. But, says Blaser, understanding how these compounds work on some species in the gut might “inspire us in developing new therapeutic approaches to metabolic disease”.

Yolanda Sanz, a nutritionist and vice-chair of the EFSA’s panel on dietetic products, nutrition and allergies, says that it is too soon to draw firm conclusions. Metabolic disorders have many causes, she points out, and the study is very small.

This article is reproduced with permission and was first published on September 17, 2014.

Justices rule on contraception coverage | UTSanDiego.com

It appears that the right-wingers on the US Supreme Court, in the interest of "freedom of religion" decided to jam their religion down everyone else's throat.

Justices rule on contraception coverage | UTSanDiego.com:  Here is a link to the actual decision: http://www.scribd.com/doc/231968582/Burwell-v-Hobby-Lobby


So now employees who work for right-wing companies will no longer be able to get coverage for birth control.  Of course men will still be able to get drugs to help them with impotency such as viagra.  All of this is to support the right-wing desire for members of their religion to have more babies. The one thing the world doesn't need is MORE babies.  Catholics want more babies, Mormons want more babies, Muslims want more babies, Hasidic Jews want more babies.  They all want more children to help spread their "only true" religions.  We need incentives to people to reduce the number of children --particularly in the US.  One child born in the US consumes many times the world's scarce resources than a child born in almost any other country.

One thing that the Obama administration could do is make it easier to obtain birth control pills.  It no longer makes sense for women to have to go to a doctor to obtain prescriptions for birth control pills unless they have medical symptoms that could contribute to problems (high blood pressure, for example).  The FDA should authorize pharmacies to be able to issue birth control pills based upon a few simple procedures.  For example,

The patient would fill out a form on a terminal at the pharmacy and answer a series of questions about their health.  Based upon the answers to the questions, the terminal would request the patient to have blood pressure taken, temperature taken, provide a blood sample (finger prick), or a urine sample.  When the pharmacy receives acceptable response back from those tests, the prescription would be issued.  If the patient has vital signs that are in "marginal category" the software may require repeated blood pressure, or fluid samples in order to obtain refills of the prescription.  If answers to questions or lab tests are in "abnormal" category, the patient would be referred, of course, to a physician.

There are many other drugs in that category.  It never made sense to me to require prescriptions for toenail fungus treatments for example.  I believe that by using technology and allowing pharmacies to work directly with patients to manage a little of their own healthcare we could dramatically reduce the cost of healthcare in the US.

Who really pays for health care? It might surprise you!

I found this article by Jay Hancock very interesting.

Who really pays for health care? It might surprise you | Cincinnati.com | cincinnati.com

The article was published in a lot of City newspapers.  The facts he mentions didn't surprise me, because I think I understood most of them conceptually.  However it did confirm my beliefs.



It is clear that the Government & Employers have been paying for most of our medical care for years, so Obamacare really didn't make much change, except for forcing people who weren't paying their fair share to start paying also.



The real problem is the actual cost of the medical care is so much higher in the US than any other country in the world.  We need to figure out ways to reduce that cost without affecting the quality of health care. As an engineer, I like to break the cost down to its basic elements and then see what can be done to "value engineer" each component.  All of those little components where we have waste, fraud or abuse in our system adds up to huge numbers in the overall system.



Some of the big cost components are:

1. Fraud --We have heard estimates of huge amounts of fraud in medical claims.  These include insurance fraud of many different types.

2. Conflicts of Interest -- Medical providers, whether doctors, drug companies, or hospitals all have a profit motive to sell more of their product or service whether it is needed or in the best interest of the patient.

3. Hypochondria -- We have a lot of people now who request, or insist on additional medical care based upon incomplete knowledge of their health situation, which is often influenced by marketing from drug companies

4. Ineffective treatments -- Even though there are new and improved treatments for many diseases, doctors continue to perform or prescribe treatments that are less effective or more expensive

5. Barriers to "self help" -- Patients with many symptoms could, in fact, diagnose their own medical problems with very high accuracy and prescribe their own remedies for minor problems.  However, our US system of delivering medical care is "tilted" to require everyone to go to a doctor for almost every problem.  This increases the overall medical costs, and sometimes actually delays getting the proper care.

Examples of this include:

• We go to doctors because when a doctor prescribes a medicine, it is covered by insurance, vs paying for an over-the-counter medication at a drug store.
• We go to the doctor because we find it hard to get the facts we need to help us diagnose our problem.  However, now there is a wealth of knowledge available on-line...but can we trust it?
• We go to a doctor because the medication we need for a simple problem is sold "by prescription only." It doesn't make a lot of sense why some medications are only sold by prescriptions--for example topical treatments for toenail fungus

Auto Immune Syndromes

I just read that Venus Williams is suffering from a disease called Sjogren's syndrome.  but still won the Dubai tennis tournament.  I looked upSjogren's syndrome on Wikipedia.  It is a difficult disease to diagnose and treat.  It doesn't sound like we know the cause, and there is apparently no cure.  Because one of the symptoms is fatigue, I also looked up Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, and Fibromyalgia which in some ways seems similar.  Apparently all three of these diseases are more prevalent in women, and we don't know the cause or have a cure.   There are some common symptoms among the three syndromes, but there are enough differences to allow them to be classified as separate diseases.  I wonder if there are other syndromes that are also similar.  According to Wikipedia A syndrome:  In medicine and psychology, a less specific definition of syndrome is used, which describes a collection of symptoms and findings without necessarily tying them to a single identifiable pathogenesis.  Is there a common cause for this type of syndrome?  Is it genetic?  Or is it a viral infection?  Or both:  for example a viral infection triggers an immune response which becomes self-destructive due to a genetic mutation?



From searching on the internet, it appears that each of these syndromes have their own support organizations, which consists of other patients sharing with each other.  Each also appears to have fund-raising to help with patients and research.  The research seems to be fragmented, and studying the unique properties and symptoms of each syndrome.  It doesn't appear that there is any organization, including NIH, or the equivalent in other countries, sponsoring research into the possible common cause, treatment or cure of these type of syndromes.  



I wonder if it would make sense to map the DNA of individuals with these various syndromes and see if there are common genetic markers that indicate a possible contributing cause of the syndromes.  If the FDA had continued to allow "23 and me" to collect specimens, maybe it would help. It seems to me that the world really does need an immense database of DNA to be able to identify unique differences that could contribute to causing rare syndromes such as this.  

An excerpt from Michio Kaku's "The Future of the Mind" | MSNBC

An excerpt from Michio Kaku's "The Future of the Mind" | MSNBC:



Michio Kaku was on the Daily Show in Feb 2014 concerning the brain.

An excerpt from Michio Kaku's "The Future of the Mind" | MSNBC

An excerpt from Michio Kaku's "The Future of the Mind" | MSNBC:



'via Blog this'

An excerpt from Michio Kaku's "The Future of the Mind" | MSNBC

An excerpt from Michio Kaku's "The Future of the Mind" | MSNBC:



Michio Kaku was on the Daily Show in Feb 2014 concerning the brain.

Stand against sitting disease: Expert offers ideas for moving more

It appears that we've all "gotta move" more -- maybe the increase in some of our diseases in the western world is caused by "sitting disease" --facilitated by television & computers



Stand against sitting disease: Expert offers ideas for moving more – USATODAY.com:





Also on Mayo Clinic web site:



http://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-living/nutrition-and-healthy-eating/expert-blog/sitting-disease/bgp-20056238