Heart disease gene altered by eating raw fruits and veggies.

Raw fruits and veggies can alter heart disease gene:
 by Kathleen Blanchard RN on 2011-10-12

Dr. Dean Ornish, a pioneer in heart disease treatment, said “Your genes are not your fate”. Now researchers, supporting what Dr. Ornish has been teaching for years, say one of the strongest genes for heart disease can be altered by eating a diet rich in raw fruits and vegetables.

Raw fruits and vegetables can weaken heart disease gene

Researchers at McMaster and McGill universities conducted one of the largest gene studies to date showing how eating your fruits and vegetables can weaken the 9p21 gene, which is linked to high risk for heart disease.

For this study, the researchers analyzed the effect of diet on heart disease in over 27,000 people that included European, South Asian, Chinese, and Latin American and Arab ethnicities.

The finding suggests a diet rich in green, yellow and orange vegetables and berries can lower heart disease risk for people with the 9p21 genotype to the same level as those without the high risk gene.

The gene is linked to double the risk of having an early heart attack and a 74 increase in the chances of abdominal aortic aneurysm, compared to people without the gene, Jamie Engert, joint principal investigator of the study and researcher in cardiovascular diseases at the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre (RI-MUHC) and associate member in the Department of Human Genetics at McGill University said though researchers know the gene puts people at risk for cardiovascular disease, 

..."it was a surprise to find that a healthy diet could significantly weaken its effect."

More than five servings of fruits and vegetables a day could keep heart disease at bay Sonia Anand, joint principal investigator of the study, and a researcher at the Population Health Research Institute and a professor of medicine and epidemiology at the Michael G. DeGroote School of Medicine at McMaster University said, “Our results support the public health recommendation to consume more than five servings of fruits or vegetables as a way to promote good health.”

Anand says people who eat plenty of fruits and vegetables remained at low risk for heart disease even though they had the high risk gene.

The study shows genes really are not our fate. Lifestyle changes can alter the way genes are expressed. Anand says the study means family history of disease can be modified.

“Despite not being able to change our genetics, if we are able to modify the effect or expression of our genes. That's exciting."

Dr. Ron Do, who conducted the research, said more studies are needed to understand how fruits and vegetables interact with the heart disease gene.

For people with a strong family history of heart disease, eating a prudent, versus a typical Western diet, can lower the chances of heart disease. For the study, a prudent diet consisted of raw fruits and vegetables, low fat dairy, nuts and other heart healthy foods, which was shown to weaken the 9p21 gene that is a strong predictor of who will have an early heart attack.



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Medicare covers lifestyle approach to healthcare - Heber Springs, AR - The Sun-Times

Medicare covers lifestyle approach to healthcare - Heber Springs, AR - The Sun-Times:

"When we think of advances in medicine, we usually have in mind something high-tech; It may be a new drug, a new laser, or a surgical intervention. We have a hard time believing that what Dr. Dean Ornish advocates can have a powerful effect. Simple choices we make each day—what we eat, how we respond to stress, whether or not we smoke, how much we exercise and the quality of our relationships can make a powerful difference in our health, our well-being, and our survival, according to Ornish."

It was in 1977, in his first year of medical school, when Ornish wanted to launch a study looking at the effects of yoga and a vegetarian diet on patients with heart disease. The supervising physician made fun of him. Sixteen years later, he met with a director of Medicare, a chain-smoking, 280-pound man to see whether his approach to treating heart disease could be covered under the program. He was told, “If we do this, anyone with a crystal and a pyramid will want us to pay for what they do.”

Finally, on January 1, 2011, Ornish’s Medical Research Institute in Sausalito, CA, along with the similar Pritikin program, are being covered by Medicare part B. It has taken 34 years for medicine to accept the simple fact that what we do, our diet, exercise, management of stress—how we live is the major factor affecting health; and that changing it is much less expensive than the high tech methods which have held their attention for so long.

Ornish, in conjunction with insurance companies, proved that by directing patients in lifestyle changes instead of heart surgery, they could save $30,000 per patient, not to mention the miseries associated with surgeries.

In a talk he gave at the Mayo Clinic, Center for Innovation entitled “Thinking Differently about Healthcare”, Ornish said by teaching and encouraging heart patients to eat a healthy diet, exercise, learn to manage stress, and have healthy relationships, patients would not have to take drugs for life—saving 20 billion dollars on Lipitor alone. He said heart disease is 90 percent preventable. He said our genes can predispose us to a disease but our genes are not our fate. You may listen to Dean Ornish’s entire message delivered at Mayo at http://centerforinnovation.mayo.edu/transform/2010/dean-ornish.html. I encourage you to do so.

Admittedly, Ornish’s vegetarian, high complex carbohydrate, very low fat diet is controversial. There are others who advocate lifestyle changes that include animal protein and healthy fats. A one-diet-fits-all may not be the best approach. What they all have in common is they eliminate the processed junk food that is what most Americans eat. You can do that yourself without the help of Medicare.

Included in the Ornish program, and sometimes neglected in others, is attention to meditation, relaxation, and developing close and satisfying relationships. Ornish has written several books, including Reversing Heart Disease and Love and Survival: The Scientific Basis for the Healing Power of Intimacy. They are all available at discounts on amazon.com.

One of the many websites about Preventive Medicine Research Institute, discusses what motivates people to change their lifestyle. Talking about “prevention” or “risk-factor reduction” or living longer is either scary or boring to most people. It doesn’t work well. Ornish writes, “Sometimes, people say, ‘I don’t care if I die early – I want to enjoy my life.’ Well, so do I. That’s the false choice – is it fun for me or is it good for me? Why not both? It’s fun for you and good for you to look good, feel good, have more energy, think more clearly, need less sleep, taste better, smell better, and perform better athletically–and sexually.”

He says, “When you eat a healthy diet, quit smoking, exercise, meditate (they use yoga), and have more love in your life, then your brain receives more blood and oxygen, so you think more clearly, have more energy, need less sleep. Your brain can grow so many new brain neurons in only three months that your brain can get measurably bigger! Your face gets more blood flow, so your skin glows more and wrinkles less. Your heart gets more blood flow, so you have more stamina and can even begin to reverse heart disease.”

How often do I hear someone say, “I have been bad” when they have eaten unhealthy food. Eating bad food does not make you a bad person. Ornish says, “The language of behavioral modification often has a moralistic quality to it that turns off a lot of people (like ‘cheating’ on a diet). It’s a small step from thinking of some foods as ‘bad’ to seeing yourself as a ‘bad person;’ at that point, might as well finish the pint of ice cream.”

Have you heard about Medicare coverage of Ornish’s clinic on television? I have not and we may not. Its goal is actual healing, instead of patching up with surgery and a lifetime of drugs. Considering who supports TV with ads, I doubt it will be widely publicized. However, as a friend once said, “You can’t hide the truth forever.”



Copyright 2011 The Sun-Times. Some rights reserved

The Dietary Supplement Scam Continues | NationofChange

The Dietary Supplement Scam Continues | NationofChange:
Now we learn that most of those oils, minerals, exotic fruit extracts and herbs don't help us any more than would a sugar pill, and some actually do harm. Furthermore, all those Earth-themed bottles have little to do with hippies offering cures from nature. They are part of a nearly $30-billion-a-year U.S. industry. Behind it stands an unusually unpleasant team of lobbyists tasked with ensuring that we're never sure what's actually in those pills, threatening politicians who call for their regulation and paying off those who stop said regulation. Makes me want to occupy something.

In addition to possibly doing harm in high doses, the poorly regulated supplements pose two other dangers, Marion Nestle, a food and nutrition specialist at New York University, told me. They may contain impurities from the manufacturing process. And they may not have the active ingredient on the label. A person who eats "reasonably well," she added, doesn't need any dietary pill unless a test shows a deficiency.




Copyright Creators.com

China Targets GE Turbines With $15.5B War Chest - Bloomberg

China Targets GE Turbines With $15.5B War Chest - Bloomberg

China has taken on General Electric Co. (GE) and Western peers that control the $70 billion wind-turbine market, striving to repeat its 2010 coup when the Asian nation sold more than half the world’s solar panels for the first time.

Armed with at least $15.5 billion in state-backed credit, China’s biggest windmill makers Sinovel Wind Group Co. and Xinjiang Goldwind Science & Technology Co. won their first major foreign orders in the past year. They plan to set up plants abroad, including China’s first in the U.S., easing entry into markets for delivering machines that can weigh 750 tons each.

Sinovel and Goldwind may counter the quality concerns of customers and overtake Denmark’s Vestas Wind Systems A/S as the biggest supplier by 2015, a Bloomberg New Energy Finance survey forecast. That can erode sales and margins for suppliers such as GE and Vestas that already face cutbacks in European subsidies and a 22 percent plunge in turbine prices from their 2008 peak.

“The Chinese dragon is coming,” said Jose Antunes Sobrinho, chief executive officer of Brazil’s Desenvix SA, a wind developer that ordered 23 Sinovel turbines in September.

The deal, South America’s first contract with a Chinese supplier, “is going to be a stepping stone for them” to showcase machines that are about 10 percent cheaper than those sold by competitors in Brazil such as GE and Germany’s Siemens AG (SIE), he said by telephone on Oct. 3.

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The 'Terrible 10': The Worst Aspects Of America's Food Scene

The 'Terrible 10': The Worst Aspects Of America's Food Scene:

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Public health expert: American Indians cannot be ignored in discussions of ethnic health disparities | syracuse.com

Public health expert: American Indians cannot be ignored in discussions of ethnic health disparities | syracuse.com: "
Even though alcoholism, diabetes and other diseases kill American Indians at much higher rates than other minority groups, the disparity is often ignored because American Indians account for less than 2 percent of the population, Bird said."


This article was so well-written, it was impossible to edit.  Instead I left many links back to the author to be sure he is credited with the writing of the article.

Public health expert: American Indians cannot be ignored in discussions of ethnic health disparities | syracuse.com:


Public health expert: American Indians cannot be ignored in discussions of ethnic health disparities
Published: Wednesday, October 12, 2011, 4:10 PM Updated: Wednesday, October 12, 2011, 4:40 PM
By James T. Mulder / The Post-Standard

"Michael E. Bird has spent much of his career in public health shining a light on health problems that devastated his family and many other American Indians.

Bird, the first Native American to serve as the president of the American Public Health Association, visited Syracuse University today to give a talk about American Indian health disparities. The free lecture, open to the public, is at 6 p.m. in Room 001 of the Life Sciences Building."

Even though alcoholism, diabetes and other diseases kill American Indians at much higher rates than other minority groups, the disparity is often ignored because American Indians account for less than 2 percent of the population, Bird said.

Bird said he’s battled with the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other groups to include American Indians along with blacks and Hispanics in discussions of and research into ethnic health disparities.

“Any discussion about populations that have been marginalized has to be about all of us or none of us,” Bird said.

Bird, 59, is a Santo Domingo-San Juan Pueblo Indian from Albuquerque, New Mexico. He has master’s degrees in social work and public health, and worked for many years for the Indian Health Service, an arm of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The American Public Health Association, the world’s oldest organization of public health officials, elected him president in 2001. He’s now working as a consultant to Kewa Pueblo tribal officials in New Mexico, helping them develop a tribally owned and directed health center.

He and other delegates of the American Public Health Association have been invited to the White House later this month.

Bird jokingly said a fitting title to his life story would be: “From the outhouse to the White House.”

Bird grew up in a poor family. His mother had a seventh grade education and was 17 when she gave birth to him. His father was an alcoholic who died of cirrhosis. That family dysfunction steered him to a career in social work, then public health.

“I wouldn’t be who I am today if it were not for that experience,” Bird said. “I understand what it’s like to have that hurt and pain, but I’ve learned not to be overwhelmed by it, to control it and direct it.”

American Indians and Alaska Natives die at higher rates than other American from tuberculosis (500 percent higher), alcoholism (514 percent higher), diabetes (177 percent higher), car accidents and other unintentional injuries (140 percent higher), homicide (92 percent higher) and suicide (82 percent higher), according to the federal government.

Bird said the disparities are the consequences of Native American being removed from their ancestral lands, racism, poverty and other factors.

Despite the statistics, Bird said he sees encouraging signs.

Many tribes like his own are taking control of their health centers to improve services. The Urban Indian Health Institute is doing research to focus more attention on the health needs of American Indians who live in urban communities, he said.

Bird said he was encouraged when the United Nations adopted the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People in 2007 which affirmed the equality of the world’s more than 300 million indigenous people.

“It’s not legally binding, but it provides visibility to issues faced by indigenous populations all over the world who share the same socioeconomic deficits of high morbidity, high mortality and high incarceration,” he said.

Even though he considers tobacco use a major health problem, Bird sees cigarette sales as a necessary evil for the Onondaga Nation  and many other Indian reservations.

If the United States had kept its promises to Indian people to provide adequate health services, education and many other benefits in exchange for their lands, reservations would not need to sell cigarettes or operate casinos, he said.

“It’s sort of like being in the middle of a lake and there’s a storm coming,” Bird said. “If those are the only oars you have, you are going to use them.”



Related topics: Syracuse University Michael E. Bird

 Submitted photo

Michael E. Bird, a national expert on Native American public health, visited Syracuse University Wednesday.

Disparity

Even though alcoholism, diabetes and other diseases kill American Indians at much higher rates than other minority groups, the disparity is often ignored because American Indians account for less than 2 percent of the population, Bird said.

Imagine

A wise man changes his mind, a fool never”
- Spanish Proverb quotes


The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination.”
-Carl Sagan


“Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.”
- Albert Einstein


“Skeptical scrutiny is the means, in both science and religion, by which deep thoughts can be winnowed from deep nonsense.”
- Dr. Carl Sagan

Fundamentalism

“A celibate clergy is an especially good idea, because it tends to suppress any hereditary propensity toward fanaticism.”
- Dr. Carl Sagan


“A religion old or new, that stressed the magnificence of the universe as revealed by modern science, might be able to draw forth reserves of reverence and awe hardly tapped by the conventional faiths. Sooner or later, such a religion will emerge.”
- Dr. Carl Sagan



“Skeptical scrutiny is the means, in both science and religion, by which deep thoughts can be winnowed from deep nonsense.”
- Dr. Carl Sagan

Video: The bitter price to pay for Mexico's bloody drugs war - Telegraph

Video: The bitter price to pay for Mexico's bloody drugs war - Telegraph:



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Curry Eating Competition Lands Two People in the Hospital

Curry Eating Competition Lands Two People in the Hospital:

"...restaurant in Edinburgh recently held a spicy curry eating competition that wound up being a "shambles," as several people got sick and two were hospitalized.
An American student was one of the regretful contestants who ate the "killer curry" for the charity competition. It will be her last time doing so:"

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This Automated Pizza Vending Machine Has a Built-In TV

This Automated Pizza Vending Machine Has a Built-In TV: "

Behold, the ne plus ultra of American innovation: Pizzametry, an automated machine capable of making 150 different types of pizza in mere three minutes, while you watch TV. Let us marvel at the pneumatic glory of Pizzametry spinning dough, slicing pepperonis, squirting sauce, and sprinkling cheese.

Pizzametry has a flat-screen TV mounted on it, so you can learn about your pizza and watch a music video or two while you wait. Someday, all Americans will be born with Pizzametry machines glued to their ..."




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