Prof. Keith Scott-Mumby's Total Health Newsletter #30. Week ending Dec 13th, 2009
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• This week's Quote

1. Blood Clot Dangers After Surgery Worse Than Thought
2. Whats Wrong With The Curcumin Story? Don't believe everything...
3. Don't Use Bug Sprays If You Might Be (Or Become) Pregnant
4. Orthodox Medicine Is Slowly Getting There
5. Thomas Tallis. Spem In Alium
6. What's In A Word?

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This Week's Quote:

"One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors..."

-- Plato (pupil of Socrates and teacher of Aristotle)

1. Blood Clot Dangers After Surgery Worse Than Thought

Vitamin A to the rescue!

A new study published in the British Medical Journal has shocked the allopathic community. They are aware of the risk of thrombosis (clotting) post-surgery. It can be dangerous and sometimes proves fatal.

But the scale of the problem is far worse than was thought. It has always been supposed that clotting was less of a risk after so-called keyhole surgery. I thought that too; now it turns out it’s just a phoney supposition, as most “science” is.

The new study, using data on nearly 1 million women in the United Kingdom who were tracked for an average of 6.2 years after surgery, outlines the risk in precise detail; that's a BIG study. It emerged that 1 of every 140 women who had surgery that required a hospital stay was re-admitted for venous thromboembolism within 12 weeks of the operation. The rate was highest for hip or knee replacement surgery at 1 in 45, and was 1 in 85 after cancer surgery.

And the risk of such a blood clot remained high for at least 12 weeks after surgery, the study found.

By contrast, the incidence of venous thrombosis during a 12-week period for women who did not have surgery was one in 6,200.

So they have decided that patients need more “management” post-operatively, to “reduce the risk”. That means giving warfarin (Coumadin), one of the most dangerous drugs in all of medicine (kills more than chemo and is the commonest cause of emergency life-threatening admission to ER)!

If you ever face surgery—and you might, no matter how holistically oriented—don’t let them give you this dangerous drug.[By chance, the day after this letter was published, I received notification of a Danish study, published in the Lancet, 10 Dec 2009, which reported that in the 16 months after heart attack, 12% of pateints taking vitamin K antagonists like warfarin were readmitted or died, due to bleeding episodes.]

So be warned.

Omega-3s dramatically reduce clotting, so take lashings of those.

But also nobody seems to have heard of the idea that vitamin A sufficiency is the answer: it eliminates all pathological clotting tendencies, even though vitamin A is involved in clotting pathways and is used in bleeding disorders, such as acute promyelocytic leukemia!

I clearly remember a study published in the 1980s that showed vitamin A protects against post-operative clotting. It was a vigorously done study, with good results. When I say I remember it clearly, I can’t remember it at all (not to locate it again)! But there are many papers on this topic. Retinoids (derivatives of vitamin A) are known to prevent hypercoagulable states—those where clotting is very likely. For instance this one: Haematologica. 2003 Aug;88(8):895-905

A growing number of in vitro studies have reported desirable effects of retinoids on cell migration, proliferation, apoptosis, matrix remodeling, fibrinolysis, coagulation, and inflammation, all of which impinge on vascular disease.

Vitamin A is an antioxidant that generally helps to protect your cells against damage. It helps cells reproduce normally and is also needed for red blood cell production. Vitamin A deficiency has been found in women with heavy bleeding. One study showed that 92 percent of women prescribed supplemental vitamin A found that their heavy bleeding was either cured or alleviated.

You also need vitamin A to build immunity, restore cell function, prevent aging and to fight cancer. Did you know that vitamin A is now used clinically to treat cancer cases, who have a far higher than normal tendency to clot? Yet the dinosaurs go on saying anti-oxidants kill and retinoids and vitamin E are bad!

[SOURCE: Dec. 4, 2009, BMJ, online]

2. What's Wrong With The Curcumin Story? Don't Believe Everything.

You may have read somewhere that curcumin reduces the onset of diabetes type 2. The active ingredient is the yellow spice turmeric.

Oh yeah! Well, if this is correct, how come that India has such a high incidence of diabetes? India consumes more curcumin per capita than any other nation on Earth. Yet India leads the world in diabetes (and so-called metabolic syndrome, which starts with obesity and ends with diabetes).

Dr. Tortoriello, working with pediatric resident Stuart Weisberg, M.D., Ph.D., and Rudolph Leibel, M.D., fellow endocrinologist and the co-director of the Naomi Berrie Diabetes Centre, discovered that turmeric-treated mice were less susceptible to developing Type 2 diabetes, based on their blood glucose levels, and glucose and insulin tolerance tests.

But something doesn't add up here and, you know me, I'm a sleuth for humbug and faulty logic! In our rush to embrace natural and holistic remedies, it's easy to lose a sense of balance. Turmeric does appear to have all kinds of beneficial properties, including blocking certain cancers of the head and neck, liver and lung. It also improves cardiac health markers.

Turmeric seems to work as an anti-inflammatory.

But if it is so protective India ought to be among the nations with the lowest incidence of diabetes, not top of the list!

3. Don’t Use Bug Sprays If You Might Be (Or Become) Pregnant

How may women use bug sprays around the home? Plenty.

How many know that these sprays are estrogen mimics and dramatically increase the risk of male child malformations? Almost none.

Yet it is a very real risk indeed, as a new study has shown. We have far too much chemical junk in our environment, as you know. But among the worst offenders are those which attack the androgeny of males. Due to environmental overload of estrogen mimetics we now see "men" in their 20s and 30s who have the testosterone levels that were typical of a 70-year old man when I was at medical school, 40 years ago.

But it's worse than that: male babies of women who use insect repellents during the first three months of pregnancy appear to be at an 81% increased risk for a birth defect called hypospadias, researchers report.

This birth defect, which affects one in every 250 male infants, looks like a half penis, open at the bottom. Urine sprays out from part-way along the shaft of the penis. [I have spared you the image but those who want to see what it looks like click here Stanford School of Medicine website.

And ladies, don't forget that environmental estrogens threaten you too: estrogen overload is one of the commonest womanly complaints today, leading to varied symptoms, including (but not limited to): PMS, mood swings, water retention, weight gain, acne, memory loss, fatigue, low sex drive and facial hair.

Unfortunately, these ailments are today so commonplace, most doctors don’t attempt to make the link to the probability of excess estrogen in the body.

SOURCE: BMJ specialist journals, news release, Dec. 1, 2009

4. Orthodox Medicine Is Slowly Getting There!

I have just returned from the American Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine conference in Las Vegas. There were lost of interesting papers, some even exciting.

One thing that did emerge clearly is that many universities and leading hospitals around the USA, and around the rest of the world for that matter, are busily investigating the properties of natural healthy substances.

In their slow, lumbering, dinosaur kind of way they have woken up to the fact that plant pharmacokinetics have amazing potential. Of course we can be cynical and say it's all driven by the phamaceutical industry looking for new compounds to patent. That's how they think and work.

But, you know, it would simply be untrue. There is a great deal of independant research going on out there, a lot of which will never lead to patentable drugs. The result is lots of delicious science for us to play with: proof and proof again of the value of plant antioxidants against inflammatory diseases, cancer and other scourges.

Not just plants: marine fish oil (omega-3s) reduces the incidence of fatal re-clotting after a heart attack by 50%. No proprietary drug can come even close to that.

Trouble is, we still have to get clinicians thinking along these lines, so the actually prescribe the stuff.

And we have to be on guard against the evil antics of Big Pharma, who will commission repeated badly organized and badly run studies into the effects of fish oil, until they get one crippled study that shows is increases re-clotting by 1%, at which point it will be trumpeted all over TV and the media that fish oil kills!!

That's how they think and work. Bad.

5. Thomas , Spem In Alium

Indulge me once again, even if you are not a fan of classical music. This was "pop music" in the days of Queen Elizabeth (Lizzie 1, not Lizzie 2, who is on the throne now).

I defy you to go on being out of balance or feeling ill after listening to this triumph of the human mind. It gives me goosebumps (chicken skin to you Americans) because I think back to the days at medical school when we sang lustily, while chopping up cadavers to learn the paths of arteries, tendons and nerves. It was a strange hymn to the glory of God and creation but in its way a logical summation of all that makes Mankind great (still can't bring myself to write Peoplekind); the human body is amazing but the mind of a musical composer is something, well... beyond.

This is a motet (religious part song) for 8 choirs of 5 voices in each, 40 voices in all, rising and falling and at times soaring to the beams of the church in which is was recorded. I've told you before I'm not a practising Christian, so nothing pushy here about religion. But you have to understand the motiviation of Thomas Tallis. He lived through some of the most dangerous and turbulent times in England, when Protestants got burned alive and then, a decade later, Catholics were being beheaded.

All you could do is trust in God and the text Tallis chose was "Spem in alium nunquam habui praeter in te..." (I have never put my hope in any other than thee...) I'm sure he meant it, heart and soul.

Note at 2 mins 56, when all the choirs surge together; the beautiful sweet resolution at 4 minutes 55; and the glories around 5 mins 28. But my favorite section is 6:40 to 7:50, where it rocks backwards and forwards between each of the choirs, to the words Creator coeli it terra (Creator of heaven and earth)...

Spem In Alium

If offer no excuse for this, other than that (certain) music is healing beyond measure, for body and soul. Rejoicing is the happiest state to be in! Close the door, turn the sound right up (or put on headphones to shut out the world) and go with this; rise up to your God, where and however that may be for you, and be blessed...

6. What's In A Word?

Succinct (pronounced suck-sinkt)

It means brief and to the point. Stated simply and in the shortest way. No waffle!

It comes from the Latin cingere (past participle cinctus) - to girdle or bind (girdled around means kept tight or short, get it?) Cinctura meant a girdle.

So actually it's related to cincher, a tight belt or girdle, and even to "a cinch", meaning easy to grasp or grab. Betcha didn't know that!

The Pope wears a succinctorium on certain solemn occasions, a band or scarf decorated with an Agnus Dei (lamb of God), dangling from his waist. I didn't know that!

Here's a pretty cincher:

Ooops! I'd downloaded this image to accompany the article before I realized she's not wearing any knickers. Better also check out "cleavage", which appears in issue 8.

Couldn't find an image of a succintorium...

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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