XTEND-15sec-NEWSt
12th March 2003
Click on the summary link of interest:
HGH... a few new interesting facts....n1
On the 3rd and the 7th of May last year the Wall Street Journal featured articles about the pharmaceutical companies Merck and Pfizer. Within these articles it was stated that the companies have given up on trying to develop an oral HGH (Human Growth Hormone) product. This has involved a financial write off of hundreds of millions of dollars in R & D for these pharmaceutical giants. They concede that there is no other effective way to introduce HGH into the body other than by injection.
Warren Matthews comments: No surprises here. The HGH molecule is simply too big, and too fragile to be introduced into the body by any method other than injection. Because of its inherent dangers injectible HGH is a prescription only medicine. If it was technically possible to develop an oral delivery system you can rest assured that either of these two companies would have found a way. I hope that readers who are currently taking one of these 'HGH' products which are promoted on the internet will have second thoughts about wasting their money. Any benefit that they may get from these products is due to the inclusion of a weak mix of amino acids for which they are paying a heavy premium. For the latest in our thinking about HGH and IGF-1 click on our anti-aging page here.
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Supplements improve behavior in young adults!n2
In the July 2002 issue of the British Journal of Psychiatry the results were published of a study carried out by British investigators on a group of 231 young adult offenders at young offenders institutions. They were interested to see if the taking of supplements would have an impact on their behavioral patterns. Half of these young adults were given supplements and the other half was given a placebo. According to the researchers there was a 26% drop of offenses by those on the supplements. They concluded that supplements may well help reduce antisocial behavior in prisons and also have implications for those people with poor diets in the community.
These results tie in with another study published in the February 2000 issue of the Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine which showed 47 percent fewer disciplinary problems among school children given daily vitamin and mineral supplements in amounts equivalent to those present in a well-balanced diet compared to a control group of their peers.
Warren Matthews comments: You may remember that in the 29th January issue of Xtend-Your-Life which was devoted to legalized drug pushing to children that I related the results of changes to children in a school which adapted a program of healthy eating. The above study further reinforces that so much anti-social behavior results from nutrient deficiencies, not psychological problems.
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Ibuprofen could be bad for heart patientsn3
Fresh evidence adds to suspicions that ibuprofen could be dangerous for most heart patients because it can block the blood-thinning benefits of aspirin.
New research published this week in the Lancet medical journal found that those taking both aspirin and ibuprofen were twice as likely to die during the study period as those who were taking aspirin alone or with other types of common pain relievers.
Scientists believe ibuprofen clogs a channel inside a clotting protein that aspirin acts on. Aspirin gets stuck behind the ibuprofen and cannot get to where it is supposed to go to thin the blood.
Read the full article by Emma Ross of Associated Press by clicking here.
Warren Matthews comments: It is so important to try and track down the cause of pain and attempt to deal with it at the source by using natural remedies if at all possible. Pain killers only mask the symptoms and often require increasing doses to be effective with all sorts of negative flow on effects. I also have reservations about using aspirin unless there is a definite need due to possible long term negative effects.
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Ibuprofen Could Be Bad for Heart Patients (Full Article)f1
By Emma Ross
Associated Press.
LONDON (AP) - Fresh evidence adds to suspicions that ibuprofen could be dangerous for most heart patients because it can block the blood-thinning benefits of aspirin.
New research published this week in the Lancet medical journal found that those taking both aspirin and ibuprofen were twice as likely to die during the study period as those who were taking aspirin alone or with other types of common pain relievers.
Scientists believe ibuprofen clogs a channel inside a clotting protein that aspirin acts on. Aspirin gets stuck behind the ibuprofen and cannot get to where it is supposed to go to thin the blood.
Aspirin is considered the most important medicine for heart disease. Nearly all heart patients take it every day because it prevents the clots that cause heart attacks and strokes. Ibuprofen, which is in Motrin and Advil among other brands, is widely used for arthritis and other aches and pains.
Scientists at the Medicines Monitoring Unit of Britain's Medical Research Council checked the medical records of 7,107 heart patients who had been discharged from hospitals between 1989 and 1997 with aspirin prescriptions and had survived at least one month after leaving the hospital.
They were divided into four groups according to their prescriptions.
The first group included those on aspirin alone.
The second were given aspirin and ibuprofen and the third group had aspirin with another pain killer, diclofenac. Ibuprofen and diclofenac both belong to a widely used class of pain relievers known as nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, or NSAIDs.
The last group included those taking aspirin with any other NSAID, such as acetaminophen, which is in Tylenol.
The researchers found that those taking ibuprofen were almost twice as likely as those taking aspirin alone to die by 1997. That meant that for every 1,000 patients treated, there were 12 extra deaths a year when ibuprofen was taken with aspirin.
For heart-related deaths, ibuprofen was linked to three extra deaths per 1,000 patients treated per year.
Experts say it is important to track both heart-related deaths and deaths in general because deaths are sometimes attributed to the wrong cause and heart-related cases may be missed. For instance, a death certificate may say the person died in a car crash when, in fact, a heart attack or stroke at the wheel caused the crash.
No extra deaths were seen in the groups taking the other types of NSAIDs.
"The message here is beginning to be 'go for something other than ibuprofen,'" said Garret FitzGerald, who was not connected with the latest study, but whose research sparked concerns about the combination just over a year ago.
"Mechanistically, you have a very clear rationale for why it should happen," said FitzGerald, professor of cardiovascular medicine and chair of pharmacology at the University of Pennsylvania. "Now we have four studies each coming out with the same message. It's several pieces of ancillary evidence that when assembled are more persuasive than when taken in isolation."
"Lots of people take these two kinds of drugs chronically and probably a large number take both together chronically," FitzGerald said. "Talk to your doctor before you embark on this combination thinking that it's totally innocuous because both are available over the counter."
Dr. Tom MacDonald, who led the Lancet study, said taking the odd ibuprofen for a few days would not be a problem. It's regular use that seems to be at issue.
But the findings are not rock solid, experts said.
"This definitely raises a red flag... but I don't think this can be viewed as the definitive answer on the question," said Dr. Veronique Roger, head of cardiovascular research at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., who was not connected to the study.
It could be that heart patients who take ibuprofen have additional conditions that in turn make them more prone to premature death and were not accounted for in the study, she noted.
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