Some Dutch research presents a mixed bag of findings. Overall I am inclined to think that at least part of the research seems encouraging, though some aspects are quite disappointing.
What’s good? Well, the researchers do show some signs of logical thinking and one can but hope that they have a large enough sample size. The fact that they seem to repeat the data gathering every year is good. This allows them to refine their process on a regular basis.
Let’s take a look at some findings. The Dutch team has been engaged in a three-year project to research susceptibility to illness. The Grote Griepmeting (large flu monitoring) study said stress was a factor that was clearly linked to increased susceptibility to illnesses like the flu.
Men and women suffering from stress were a third more likely to come down with fever and shaking than more relaxed people, the study found. Linking stress to catching the flu, biologist Karin Postelmans said that the stress hormones cortisol and adrenaline "disrupt the efficiency of organs that are involved in making and controlling resistance cells". Well, nothing new so far. However, what concerns me is their next "finding".
The researchers suggest that taking supplements like vitamin pills could increase the risk of catching the flu. There were indications that taking vitamin pills was linked to higher incidence of illness, although this effect could be influenced by the fact that stressed people might be more likely to take supplements. "In this year’s measurements, we are looking into whether habitual pill takers are not coincidentally those people under the most stress or who have other lifestyle habits that increase the chance of flu," biologist Karin Postelmans said.
So what’s wrong with this? It’s just that it is a classic problem found when people collect lots of disconnected data and then draw unsound inferences, interpreting realtionships as causal when no such relationships exist. More to the point, they see apparent relationships when their research techniques cannot possibly support the nature of their conclusions. What they lack is a better research design and an appropriate theoretical framework capable of supporting their analysis and interpretation.
For example, they also found that adults are more likely to fall ill, if they have pets or children in the home. Pets led to a 30 per cent rise in the chance of flu and children to a 40 per cent rise, Postelmans said. Now children one might accept, since they frequent schools and play centers where the flu and other viruses are well known to be spread around. However, I can’t see a link with pets unless they also take them to places plenty of people congregate.
One wonders what the increased risk of suffering one or more flu infections is for people who are redheads, or who drive a porche or live in two-story homes. They are seeing relationships unsupported by theory where no such relationships meaningfully exist. Given their obvious access to data collection, this seems like quite a waste of resources. So here’s a tip: don’t stop taking your supplements.
Do you have a burning desire to lose weight? How about a desire to burn to lose weight? Not exactly the same thing is it, yet a story carried by Australia’s SBS network reports on a health spa in Hong Kong that offers just that. Amazing really; I mean, this sounds more like circus than health care.
But no, it seems a Hong Kong health spa has introduced this radical treatment to trim clients’ waist lines. Yes, they set them on fire.
This is taking the phrase ‘fat burning’ to a new level. The owner of Life Healing Spa told the South China Morning Post newspaper that its slimming technique can be used on any part of the body with impressive results. After being massaged, coated in Chinese herbs and wrapped in a wet towel, the client is then set alight. Fire extinguishers are kept close by and the process is repeated three to five times.
"We have someone standing by with a towel to put out the flames if they get too hot," beauty consultant Noel Ho reportedly said. That’s certainly comforting.
Winnie Ng, the spa’s manager boasted that one female client lost 15 centimetres off her waist after a single session. Another client was said to have shed nine kilograms after two weeks of daily visits.
According to Mr Ng, "It keeps you slim by detoxifying your body and by burning fat. It also eases internal humidity and rheumatism." Perhaps this is a subtle part of TCM with which I am unfamiliar, but I am having some difficulty with the "burning fat" part. So let’s review the procedure.
Customers are first tested by a machine that apparently tests a person’s aura and energy flows inside the body. They then undergo a full body exfoliation and soak in a 300-jet spa bath before being sprayed down with a high-powered hose to promote lymphatic drainage. This certainly sounds invigorating.
Clients are then massaged with Chinese herbs and lotions, such as ginseng, angelica, crocus, deer antler powder and rhubarb. A wet towel is wrapped around the client’s body, followed by a dousing in an alcoholic solution and then finally a lighter is used to set the person on fire.
Ah, I see. The alcohol which is on the wet towel does the burning. No doubt things do get rather hot beneath the towel, especially if it dries out from the heat, but the fat isn’t really burned at all.
According to the spa’s management, the technique is derived from ancient Chinese herbal medicine. Interestingly, the reporter sought comment from a traditional Chinese doctor named Yiu Yan-man, who stated that his training had never included the direct use of fire for any ailment or condition. "I have never heard of such a thing," Mr Yiu said. "Sometimes people heat up needles in acupuncture, but an open flame I never used."
Well that is interesting. I’m no TCM expert by any means but the procedure does sound very much like a form of generalized moxabustion.
According to the WordWebOnline dictionary, moxabustion is an adjunct to acupuncture characterized by the burning of moxas–preparations of dried leaves from the common mugwort (Artemisia vulgaris) or the wormwood tree (Artemisia chinensis)–at acupoints to stimulate chi. Practitioners attach moxas to acupuncture needles, place them directly on the skin in the form of small cones, or place the cones on a layer of ginger.
I have known practitioners to use moxabustion cups over troubled areas of the body, not just acupuncture points, to increase heat (and hence blood flow) and to draw toxins. Traditional and orthodox use of a poultice is designed to achieve a similar effect. So, who knows, even if it does sound strange, it may just work wonders.
Statin drugs can deplete your levels of CoQ10. Statins such as lovastatin (Mevacor), pravastatin (Pravachol), simvastatin (Zocor) and atorvastatin (Lipitor) are in a class of cholesterol-lowering drugs known as reductase inhibitors. These drugs lower cholesterol by inhibiting the enzyme HMG CoA reductase, which the liver needs to manufacture cholesterol. When this enzyme is inhibited, less cholesterol is produced.
However, this same enzyme, HMG CoA reductase, is also involved in the synthesis of CoQ10. That means the use of statin drugs can suppress CoQ10 production, sometimes up to 40%, which may lead to a CoQ10 deficiency and, in turn, assorted inflammation-based ills.
The deficiency of CoQ10 is not a trivial thing. It should be taken seriously. Some physicians like to make an each-way bet. They prescribe statins and then tell their patients to use CoQ10 supplements. This is better than just ignoring the problem, but it still reflects the poverty of orthodox medical thinking and ethics. It is best not to cause the problem in the first place.
What happens when the body is deficient in CoQ10? The consequences can be very serious. Possible complications include: atherosclerosis, gingivitis (bleeding gums), fatigue, fibromyalgia and high blood pressure. In addition, because CoQ10 is used by heart cells to create energy, a deficiency can result in less efficient heart pumping action and arrhythmias. Low CoQ10 levels can also impair male fertility. And, of particular concern when possibly facing serious influenza outbreaks, decreased levels of CoQ10 can lead to a weakened immune system. Nobody needs any of these complications, surely.
With a list like this, an ounce of prevention has to be worth a pound of cure. If you are taking cholesterol-lowering medication, find out from your pharmacist or physician if your medication is a reductase inhibitor. If so, start taking 100 mg of CoQ10 daily with meals. It is sold as a dietary supplement and is widely available in health-food stores and supermarkets. CoQ10 is also known as coenzyme Q10, Q10, vitamin Q10, ubiquinone or ubidecarenone.
High cholesterol has been hyped up into a massive health risk. It isn’t. People with genuine hypercholesterolemia and a number of other cardiac risk factors should certainly not allow it to remain way too high, but don’t believe the nonsense written by drug companies that your doctor parrots to you, not much of it is actually true. Remember, you need cholesterol and your liver manufactures it.
If you are really serious about maintaining your health then it’s time you learned about safer and more effective ways of dealing with your high cholesterol. Take a look at this natural cholesterol lowering formula. I can assure you this is the route I personally favor. I would not take statins in a million years!
Here is a short parable on finding value in the struggles of life. I have seen many people fail in one way or another in life, whether in business, career or more importantly, in character. Many wish for the easy life, for themselves, their family and friends. But that is not always the blessing it may at first appear. Quite a few of those failures I have seen were experienced by people for whom things in life just came too easily, they had never been tested in the fire, they knew no real struggles.
Like most people I don’t advocate going out of your way to find struggles, though I have seen some do it. What I do say however, is don’t despair when you find yourself facing struggles of one type or another. Finding your way through is the path of growth, and to me, when you cease growing, you die.
This is not a suggestion to wallow in misery! Far from it. The paths through may be many and varied, sometimes requiring a letting go or seeking a helping hand or two. Sometimes it will require enormous personal efforts, completely alone. Whatever the path, whatever its experience, struggle through for the joy and peace, the fulfilment and security in knowing more of your purpose in life, not merely to be a perpetual struggler or self-styled martyr.
Anyway, enough of my pratter. Here is the parable called "The Butterfly". I hope it feeds your reflections.
A man found a cocoon for a butterfly. One day a small opening appeared, he sat and watched the butterfly for several hours as it struggled to force its body through the little hole.
Then it seemed to stop making any progress. It appeared as if it had gotten as far as it could and could go no farther. Then the man decided to help the butterfly.
He took a pair of scissors and snipped the remaining bit of the cocoon. The butterfly then emerged easily.
Something was strange. The butterfly had a swollen body and shrivelled wings. The man continued to watch the butterfly because he expected at any moment, the wings would enlarge and expand to be able to support the body, which would contract in time.
Neither happened. In fact, the butterfly spent the rest of its life crawling around with a swollen body and deformed wings. It was never able to fly.
What the man in his kindness and haste did not understand, was that the restricting cocoon and the struggle required for the butterfly to get through the small opening of the cocoon are God’s way of forcing fluid from the body of the butterfly into its wings so that it would be ready for flight once it achieved its freedom from the cocoon.
Sometimes struggles are exactly what we need in our life.
If we went through all our life without any obstacles, that would cripple us. We would not be as strong as what we could have been.
Not only that, we could never fly.
The author The Butterfly is unknown.
Lies, damned lies and, yes we all know what’s next, statistics. Using statistical trickery it appears to have been added to the pharmaceutical companies’ black art of converting healthy people into patients. Of course this isn’t a new trick, they have been using numbers to exaggerate a drug’s benefits for years.
A prime example involves Lipitor. Jon Herring, Health Editor of Early To Rise, puts its succinctly:
In order to promote its use, drug companies and physicians consider the "relative risk reduction" of this drug – and ignore its "absolute risk reduction."
Lipitor promoters insist that those with so-called high cholesterol can achieve a 36% "relative risk reduction" in heart attack by using the cholesterol-lowering drug.
Now that’s an impressive reduction in risk, or at least it sounds like it is. Herring continues:
Meanwhile, that same raw data can yield a more revealing "absolute risk reduction" of a paltry 1%. Absolute risk reduction is a more useful and informative number, because it compares the actual difference between treated and untreated groups of people. Unfortunately, it is not good for increasing sales.
According to Shane Ellison, author of Hidden Truth about Cholesterol-Lowering Drugs, pushing absolute risk reduction under the drug-rug while magnifying relative risk reduction is a dangerous trend in advertising today. Disguised as science, it promotes drug use among healthy populations who are needlessly putting themselves at risk in terms of a drug’s adverse side effects.
This is a serious matter. In the case of Lipitor, the needless adverse side effects include cancer and heart failure. Do you think you really need statins? Search this site for more details, you may just rescue your health in time.