Prof. Keith Scott-Mumby's Total Health Newsletter #20. Week ending Oct 4th, 2009
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1. Alternative Doctor Website Gets A Facelift
2. How Do You MEASURE longevity? Well, here's a novel but scientifically proven way!
3. Oregon Country Fair Is this where all the hippies went, after the flower power days?
4. Vitamin D has more amazing properties
5. Fructose Now Implicated In Hypertension
6. Viagra, Cialis, Levitra No, not another advert!
7. What's In A Word?
8. This Week's Quote

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1. Alternative Doctor Website Gets A Facelift

I've been cringing for years at the state of the site. I have been torn between time spent re-vamping and improving it, and time spent on other "more important matters"!

It gets a lot of visitors, so I should have done this ages ago.

Anyway, I finally bit the bullet. You guys might care to take a quick peek. At present you can only see the new model on the home page but it will gradually be pushed down the layers. The next step is each section header to have this new format (cancer, allergies, vaccination etc).

2. How Do You MEASURE Longevity?

Well, here's a novel but scientifically proven way! It's called heart rate variability.

A few weeks ago I was in Oregon with my friend Josh Parker. He's a techie guy with lots of electronic doofers, including Rife machine updates and stuff. We talked about heart rate variability and why it is a good measure of stress and health. He's got one and I noticed it showed that music calmed him almost immediately.

He asked me to make a video while I was there and you can see the interesting results on this page: http://www.energeticsecrets.com/nostress/

3. Oregon Country Fair

While I was with Josh, we went to the Oregon Country Fair. It's a pretty wild carouse, as you can see from these pictures (I loved the poetry store idea! Name your price and choose a theme and she types you a poem, right on the spot!)

Takes me back to the "Summer Of Love", June 1967. I was there, in San Francisco, the very week that Scott McKenzie's classic song was the top of the hit parade (I had won a international poetry competition and the 1st prize was a trip round the world, all expenses paid!)

4. Vitamin D Has More Amazing Properties

Vitamin D is emerging as just about one of the most amazing natural substances for human health. Deficiency of this vital substance is a possible risk factor for a host of other diseases, including multiple cancers, arthritis, diabetes, multiple sclerosis, and even tuberculosis.

Now, it seems, vitamin D has been found to lower blood pressure. Meaning that the Western deficiency in vitamin D (partly caused by governments stupid low recommendation of only 200 units) is one of the likely reasons we are seeing an epidemic of hypertension just now.

A recent study showed that a vitamin D deficiency before age 45 was associated with a threefold increased risk for hypertension in midlife. By the end of the trial, when the average age of the women was 53, about one in four had developed high blood pressure.

There are two important health messages I can discern. One is obvious: get plenty of vitamin D (these researchers suggested 10 times the RDA, or about 4,000 units!). Many foods -- including milk, yogurt, breads, and cereals -- are fortified with vitamin D, but is very difficult to get adequate levels of the vitamin from food sources alone.

The other message is that whatever you do when you are kids has a very powerful impact on health in later life. Kids who are gaming couch potatoes, obese and fed on junk are going to grow up sick and die young.

Get them outdoors in the sunshine. If you live in northern grey climes, then supplement. It's dirt cheap, considering its benefits; less than $10 for a month supply of 2,000 unit capsules.

[SOURCE: American Heart Association 63rd High Blood Pressure Research Conference, Chicago, Sept. 24, 2009. ]

5. Fructose Now Implicated In Hypertension

So, continuing the theme of hypertension:

Fructose (fruit sugar) and, by inference, HFCS (high fructose corn syrup) has a lot to answer for. It causes obesity and liver damage for sure. Now it’s being blamed for high blood pressure, as if the obesity alone was not enough to do that!

Fructose is widely used by food and beverage manufacturers because it is inexpensive. After all, it’s profits that count, isn’t it, not human health?

You probably don’t take soda drinks, which are rich in HFCS. But you may use table sugar, so-called invert sugar (sucrose). Fructose makes up about half of ordinary table sugar (the other half is glucose).

The study, led by Johnson and Dr. Santos Perez-Pozo, a nephrologist at Mateo Orfila Hospital in Minorca, Spain, included 74 men, average age 51, who ate a diet that included 200 grams of fructose a day. This is way above average, take note.

After two weeks, men on the high-fructose diet had an average increase of six points in systolic blood pressure (the first number in a reading of, for instance, 120/80) and three points in diastolic blood pressure (the second number).

The study was a little more complicated, because the researchers were also following uric acid levels and the effect of an anti-gout drug allopurinol. But the essential result is in the pervious paragraph.

A second study scheduled for presentation at the same heart meeting found that the timing as well as the amount of fructose that's consumed affected blood pressure. The study was done on mice. Tiny monitors were implanted in the mice to measure their blood pressure.

Those mice which consumed fructose continuously or at night had an increase in blood pressure. All the mice gained weight (of course) but those which ate fructose at night gained the most and their blood pressure raised significantly.

Does any of that apply to humans? Well, in case you were wondering, we have 99% of the same genome as mice!!

[Sept. 23-24, 2009, presentations, American Heart Association High Blood Pressure Research Conference, Chicago]

6. Viagra, Cialis and Levitra (no not another advert!!)

Now here’s something that makes sense, surely?

Seen all those TV ads for erectile dysfunction (ED)? Well, maybe you’re lucky if you don’t live in the US. But we are sick of them here; morning, noon and night on all but the kiddy channels.

It’s all about Viagra (sildenafil) and Cialis (tadafil) and Levitra (vardenafil).

A topical cream for erectile dysfunction has been tested on animals and could work for humans who can’t tolerate the “little blue pills”.

This is such a good idea, you wonder why it took so long.

See, I have heard from very many women over the years (no, not ones I’ve been in bed with… you know what I mean! And stop sniggering!) that women don’t like ED pills. It makes them feel less than a full woman when a guy needs a drug to get going.

Well, how would it be if SHE uses the cream on her lover? That would be nice and sensual; I should think a very stimulating ritual where the guy could relax, knowing there was going to be a result.

The new cream consists of nanoparticles that can carry drugs or other substances, such as nitric oxide, and deliver them in a controlled and sustained manner, according to the researchers, who are from Albert Einstein College of Medicine at Yeshiva University in New York City. Nitric oxide is the signaling molecule that dilates blood vessels responsible for creating an erection.

The response time to the nanoparticles was very short, just a few minutes, which is basically what people want in an ED medication," study co-author Dr. Joel M. Friedman, a professor of physiology, biophysics and medicine, said in a news release from the university. Tablets take anything up to an hour to work, despite the honey ads saying “You will be ready when the moment comes”.

I think the future could be much better in this respect. The cream will work much quicker and not last as long. In fact I foresee it just getting the show on the road; then the couple together can make nitric oxide music!

Perhaps women can tell me if they would feel better about this approach than the pills and a man running round with a stiffy for half a day?

[SOURCE: Albert Einstein College of Medicine, news release, Sept. 18, 2009]

Related: See also "Gotta Love Viagra - For The Sake Of the Tigers (issue #17)

What's In A Word?

Gregarious.

A good human word this. One of the main human characteristics is gregariousness!

It means "liking to be together", to live in bunches or groups. More formally, it means belonging to a flock or herd. Plants that grow in bunches are gregarious. For people, we might say tribal or tribing. We are not naturally loners, as you can see on any big city street!

This Week's Quote:

Obstacles cannot crush me, every obstacle yields to a stern resolve. He who is fixed to a star does not change his mind.

Leonardo Da Vinci (the model "Renaissance Man")

So, that's all for this week!

Be well; find the sacred in all you do, otherwise don't do it!

Prof.

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This publication is copyright of Keith Scott-Mumby (www.alternative-doctor.com)
© 2009 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

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