E-cig Fast Growing Industry says Wells Fargo

This electronic-cigarette space is on fire - According to a Wells Fargo analysis of the e-cigarette market, it has found that it is a $300 million industry.  The CEO of Logic, one of the largest companies in the space, Eli Alelov is available for interview on e-cigs and the tremendous growth of the industry.

Logic e-cigarette has grown over 600 percent between 2011 and 2012, to 8 figures in annual revenue– and is a much safer alternative than classic, deadly tobacco.

There is a 2009 FDA study on e-cigs which is very outdated – and according to Alelov, the government hasn’t spent enough time researching the effects of electronic cigarettes. 

Alelov says the government should encourage Americans to try this new alternative rather than regular tobacco.  They can also save on taxes – and any store can tell you e-cigs are flying off the shelves.

When a person takes a drag of an e-cigarette, a battery-powered metal coil inside heats a cartridge, vaporizing liquid nicotine within. The smoker exhales odorless water vapor.

The experience is intended to simulate the smoking of a regular cigarette, and e-cigarettes also do not produce the kind of noxious smell that tobacco does. 



Smoking kills 400,000 Americans a year. 

 source:
E-cig Fast Growing Industry says Wells Fargo - Company CEO Available For Interview... - 

Alcohol said to have big role in cancer deaths

  

A study released Thursday by the American Journal of Public Health found:
Total deaths: Alcohol use accounts for 3.5 percent of all U.S. cancer deaths, or between 18,000 and 21,000 deaths a year.

Lost years: About 18 years of potential life are lost per cancer death. That means a person who died at age 60 from alcohol-related cancer would have otherwise probably lived to 78.

Number of drinks: The majority of alcohol-related cancer deaths occurred among those who drank more than three alcoholic beverages a day, but about 30 percent occurred in those who drank less than 1.5 drinks a day.

Even moderate alcohol use may substantially raise the risk of dying from cancer, according to a study released Thursday offering the first comprehensive update of alcohol-related cancer deaths in decades. 



"Alcohol has been known to be related to causing cancer for a long period of time. 

We talk about cancer prevention, screenings and tests. This is one of those things that seems to be missing in plain sight." 


In 2009, 18,000 to 21,000 people in the United States died of alcohol-related cancers, from cancer of the liver to breast cancer and other types, the researchers said. 

That's more than the number of people in the United States who die every year of melanoma (9,000 in 2009) or ovarian cancer (14,000 in 2009).

How alcohol contributes to cancer is not fully understood, the study notes. 

Previous research has shown alcohol appears to work in different ways to increase cancer risk, such as affecting estrogen levels in women and acting as a solvent to help tobacco chemicals get into the digestive tract. 

The study, published in the American Journal of Public Health, is the first major analysis of alcohol-attributable cancer deaths in more than 30 years. 



Researchers said the lack of recent research on the subject may contribute to a lack of public awareness of cancer risks.


"People are well aware of other risks, like the impact of tobacco on cancer, and are not as aware alcohol plays quite a bit of a role," said Thomas Greenfield, one of the study's authors and scientific director of Public Health Institute's Alcohol Research Group in Emeryville.


Researchers examined seven types of cancers known to be linked to alcohol use: cancers of the mouth and pharynx, larynx, esophagus, liver, colon, rectum and female breast. 


To link the cancer to alcohol use, they relied on surveys of more than 220,000 adults, 2009 U.S. mortality data, and sales data on alcohol consumption. 

Breast cancer accounted for the most common alcohol-related cancer deaths among women, with alcohol contributing to 15 percent of all breast cancer deaths. 


Among men, cancers of the mouth, pharynx, larynx and esophagus accounted for the most alcohol-linked cancer deaths. 

The study drew some criticism.   

The study failed to take into account several important factors, such as the pattern of drinking rather than just the amount of alcohol consumed. He said consuming small, consistent amounts of alcohol is much healthier than occasional binge drinking. 

"They're mixing alcohol abuse, which leads to all of these cancers as they've clearly shown, with the casual drinker, where the risk is very small," said co-director of the International Scientific Forum on Alcohol Research and  professor of medicine and public health at Boston University School of Medicine,  Dr. Curtis Ellison,
 

"Advice needs to be individualized," Klatsky said. "The advice one would give to 60-year-old man who has no problem with alcohol but is at high risk of heart disease due to family history is quite different than the advice we give to a 25-year-old woman whose mother died of breast cancer." 

The study's authors acknowledged alcohol can have health benefits but said alcohol causes 10 times as many deaths as it prevents. 

There's no known safe level of drinking, they said. 

"The safest level for cancer prevention is that people don't expose themselves to any potential risk," said Nelson of the National Cancer Institute. 

"The bottom line means for people who choose to drink, their cancer risk will be lower if they drink lower amounts." 

 

 

 

 

 

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/health/article/Alcohol-said-to-have-big-role-in-cancer-4280659.php#ixzz2LETn4Jna

 Source:
Alcohol said to have big role in cancer - SFGate

http://www.sfgate.com/health/article/Alcohol-said-to-have-big-role-in-cancer-4280659.php

Coroner Links Mom's Death to Coca-Cola 'Addiction'

A New Zealand coroner has linked the death of a 31-year-old woman to her Coca-Cola addiction.
Natasha Harris died Feb. 25, 2010 from a cardiac arrhythmia, according to a 19-page coroner's report obtained by ABCNews.com. And while Harris, a mother of eight from Invercargill, New Zealand, was known to smoke heavily and skip multiple meals, coroner David Crerar concluded that the sugar and caffeine she got by drinking more than 2.6 gallons of Coca-Cola Classic per day was "a substantial factor" in her death.

"When all of the available evidence is considered, were it not for the consumption of very large quantities of Coke by Natasha Harris, it is unlikely that she would have died when she died and how she died," Crerar wrote in his report.

Harris's partner, Christopher Hodgkinson, said Harris would get headaches and act moody without her Coke fix, according to the coroner's report. Close friends said she would "get the shakes" and other withdrawal symptoms. Her heart would race, her liver was swollen, and her rotting teeth had to be removed. But, said the report, 

"the family did not consider that Coke was harmful due to the fact of it having no warning signs."

"Natasha Harris knew, or ought to have known and recognized, the health hazard of her chosen diet and lifestyle," Crerar wrote in his report, adding that fact that Harris had her teeth extracted several years before her death "should have been treated by her, and by her family, as a warning."

Dr. Christopher Holstege, chief of medical toxicology at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, said anything can be toxic in large enough quantities.

"In toxicology, everything comes down to dose. And it sounds as though she was certainly taking an excessive dose," he said, adding that drinking two gallons of soda per day with limited amounts of food can cause a dangerous imbalance in electrolytes. "You're also not getting essential nutrients when you're only drinking Coke. You're basically getting sugar, and you're going to be deficient in vitamins, minerals and other essential nutrients."

Harris's reported Coke habit would have delivered more than 2.2 pounds of sugar daily, according to the coroner's report. She would have also ingested nearly a gram of caffeine, according to Coca-Cola's website.

"To me, it sounds like she was not a healthy woman in any way, shape or form," said Holstege.


Can too much caffeine kill you?

A spokesman for Coca-Cola expressed sympathy for Harris's family and disappointment that the coroner chose "to focus on the combination of Ms. Harris' excessive consumption of Coca-Cola, together with other health and lifestyle factors, as the probable cause of her death."

"Excessive consumption of one food or beverage - even water - to the exclusion of all others will not provide the essential nutrients an adult needs and is not recommended under New Zealand Food and Nutrition Guidelines," he said. 

"The safety of our products is paramount, and our promise is to deliver safe, quality beverages. All of our products have a place in an active, healthy lifestyle that includes a sensible, balanced diet and regular physical activity."

While the Coroner noted that the ingredients of Coke are "entirely legal" and "enjoyed by millions," he said the risks of high doses were not adequately communicated to consumers.

"The hazards to the health of the consumers of excessive quantities of sugar and caffeine contained in carbonated beverages could be more clearly emphasized," he wrote.



Source:
http://gma.yahoo.com/blogs/abc-blogs/moms-death-linked-coke-coroners-report-164723213--abc-news-health.html

 by Katie Moisse | ABC News Blogs 

Wheat Belly

A renowned cardiologist explains how eliminating wheat from our diets can prevent fat storage, shrink unsightly bulges, and reverse myriad health problems. Every day, over 200 million Americans consume food products made of wheat.

As a result, over 100 million of them experience some form of adverse health effect, ranging from minor rashes and high blood sugar to the unattractive stomach bulges that preventive cardiologist William Davis calls "wheat bellies."

According to Davis, that excess fat has nothing to do with gluttony, sloth, or too much butter: It's due to the whole grain wraps we eat for lunch. After witnessing over 2,000 patients regain their health after giving up wheat, Davis reached the disturbing conclusion that wheat is the single largest contributor to the nationwide obesity epidemic - and its elimination is key to dramatic weight loss and optimal health.

In Wheat Belly , Davis exposes the harmful effects of what is actually a product of genetic tinkering and agribusiness being sold to the American public as "wheat" - and provides readers with a user-friendly, step-by-step plan to navigate a new, wheat-free lifestyle.

Informed by cutting-edge science and nutrition, along with case studies from men and women who have experienced life-changing transformations in their health after waving goodbye to wheat, Wheat Belly is an illuminating look at what is truly making Americans sick and an action plan to clear our plates of this seemingly benign ingredient.



Wheat Belly 

"Flame Retardants" in Your Gatorade: Hazard, or Hype? | Healthy Living

By Sharecare Expert David L. Katz, MD

We have a long history of doing questionable things to vegetable oils -- and putting them in odd places in the food supply.

The best known and deservedly most notorious example to date is partial hydrogenation. Partially hydrogenated vegetable oils are formed when normally unsaturated oils are bombarded with hydrogen so that some but not all of those available bonds are "saturated" with it. The result is trans fat, which we now know to be, in essence, a slow poison, contributing to the risk of heart disease in particular. Partially hydrogenated oils became widespread in the food supply because they are inexpensive to make and act much like saturated fats, providing stability and heat tolerance. With time, we have come to learn that partially hydrogenated oils lengthen the shelf life of foods but are apt to shorten the shelf lives of people eating the food. They are still out there, but have gone from nearly ubiquitous to increasingly rare. Good riddance to them.

Is brominated vegetable oil (BVO) the new trans fat? No.

Trans fat has long been used in many products with a significant amount of oil in the mix. Exposure to trans fat has come in amounts of hundreds of milligrams, and even grams. Paracelsus, considered the father of toxicology, famously told us "the dose makes the poison." Our exposure to trans fat was, and still is, at dose levels clearly linked to bad health outcomes.

Dr. Oz: BVO and Your Health

In contrast, brominated vegetable oil is used in fruit-flavored soft drinks in amounts so tiny it often need not even be listed among the ingredients. BVO is measured in parts per million rather than grams or milligrams. Bromine is used to increase the weight of the oil so it doesn't rise to the top, and the oil then serves to keep fat-soluble citrus flavors in suspension. The result is probably an enhancement of the appearance of the drink and perhaps the taste.

BVO has been used in the making of soft drinks in the U.S. since the 1930s. It received the designation "generally recognized as safe" from the U.S. FDA in 1958, but this was revised in 1970, at which time restrictions were placed on the amount that can be used in food. The ingredient is now found in a variety of citrus-flavored beverages, including, but not limited to Gatorade, Mountain Dew, Powerade, Fanta and Fresca.

BVO is in the news because it has been "called out" as an ingredient in a flame retardant after a young girl noted it on the Gatorade ingredient list and did some investigating. It's true that BVO can be used in a flame retardant, but I'm not sure it's all that relevant. Elements that are an essential part of the human body can be mixed in some pretty toxic combinations as well. Some of what we are made of can be used to make pesticides and insecticides and other poisons, all depending on doses and what else is in the mix.

Detox Your Life

Is BVO dangerous? Possibly. Reviewing the relevant literature, I did find one case of harm linked to bromine in soft drinks, reported in 1997. A man consuming 2 to 4 liters a day of citrus-flavored soft drinks developed a neurological condition due to bromine excess. He was eventually diagnosed and treated, and he recovered.

I could find no other evidence of documented harm in people, although that of course does not rule it out. But since the ingredient has been in our beverages for nearly 100 years, we've had plenty of time to see harmful effects if they were occurring at a meaningful level. If they are occurring, they are subtle enough to fly mostly under the radar.

Since much of the focus has been on Gatorade, which is taking BVO out of its mix, I checked on the overall composition of their original "Perform" series drink. In 12 ounces, it has 80 calories, 160 milligrams of sodium and 21 grams of sugar. I really don't think we need BVO in this mix to raise concerns about it.

And that, frankly, is where I land. Animal studies suggest some possibility of harm from BVO. Bromine toxicity is known to occur in people, generally resulting from medications that contain bromine in much higher concentrations than soft drinks. So the case can be made for "why take a chance?". If we can get rid of the BVO, we might as well.

But while any harms of BVO are speculative, the public health toll of excess calories and sugar is well established. The question for the teenage girl concerned enough about ingredients to investigate BVO is: Why was she drinking a sugar-sweetened beverage in the first place? There is no BVO added to water.

I have long noted that we distort risks -- trivializing those we feel we can control (such as our sugar intake, or driving too fast, or texting while driving) and exaggerating those we feel we cannot (such as BVO). The Pulitzer-prize winning author Jared Diamond made that same point in this week's New Your Times.





Reduce Your BVO Exposure


I don't drink any of the products that contain BVO -- and wouldn't drink them if they didn't, either. If you are really drinking enough of the sugared or artificially sweetened citrus-flavored beverages in question to be at any genuine risk of harm from BVO, then my view is: You've got bigger, far better-documented things to worry about!














Source:
"Flame Retardants" in Your Gatorade: Hazard, or Hype? | Healthy Living - Yahoo! Shine

http://shine.yahoo.com/healthy-living/flame-retardants-gatorade-hazard-hype-225700621.html;_ylt=A2KLOzEQpwlRzRUATaghmolQ