Did you know that the spice Turmeric can seriously improve your health?

You may like to have a look at this interesting webpage about the health benefits of Turmeric. -- If you  browse the internet using your favourite search engine you will find a multitude of further articles about this ancient spice that retains a worthy place in our modern world and especially in meals like curries. You will find that it has a role to play in cancer prevention, in reducing inflammation and chronic pain, in treating bowel problems and many more. It doesn't have bad side-effects like painkillers and other pharmaceutical drugs do, and that's a huge advantage. But it does have one disadvantage, and that is that it can stain. Indeed, it was first used as a dye. - Now me, I'm really good at spilling stuff, especially now that my hands have been so damaged by the effects of steroid meds, etc. So although I used to add turmeric powder to my meals I got fed up of sometimes getting turmeric stains on my clothes and I stopped using it in cooking. I now buy it in capsule form and I simply swallow a couple of the capsules a day with a meal and a good drink of water. - But there can't be too many people as clumsy as I am, so I'm sure most of you would want to use it in the time-honoured way of simply adding it to your curry/soup/stew or whatever.

Criminal fine for J & J drug company re Risperdal anti-psychotic

"Johnson & Johnson has agreed to pay as much as $2.2 billion to resolve an investigation into its marketing of the anti-psychotic drug Risperdal, according to a published report."
Read article in the Houston Chronicle (USA)

Eat less salt to reduce your risk of cancer

Big 'news' this week is that eating less salt lowers your risk of developing cancer, especially cancer of the stomach. See this BBC News report, where you will read: "Cutting back on salty foods such as bacon, bread and breakfast cereals may reduce people's risk of developing stomach cancer, according to the World Cancer Research Fund (WCRF)." I put inverted commas round the word 'news' because my website has been informing people of this fact for many years and so it is hardly news. The usual establishment health message about salt reduction is that reducing salt intake reduces your risk of stroke, heart disease and heart attacks, and that it lowers high blood pressure, and while this health message is undoubtedly correct, it omits a multitude of other health benefits that result from eating less salt, most amazingly omitting the information that cutting salt intake is the fastest, safest way to lose excess weight. - In view of all the publicity about the prevalence and dangers of obesity, it's a real shame (I use the word advisedly) that this weight reduction information is not being promulgated by the public health brigade. Indeed, they almost seem to go out of their way to keep us in the dark about it. (The explanation for the weight loss is that salt reduction reduces the fluid retention which contributes to all overweight. Read about the groups of people that are particularly vulnerable to salt.)

The Doorbell and the Painkillers

Decades ago, possibly when I was in my teens, I read a short story about a doorbell and painkillers. It was during my science fiction/science fantasy days, I reckon. I've tried to find it, or some reference to it, on the internet, but without success. Stripped of its gothic atmospheric detail, the story, as I remember it, was this:

Whenever visitors rang the bell at the door of a remote, castle-like edifice, a strange, piercing sound arose, seemingly from far away - the bowels of the castle? - and an uncommunicative man-servant opened the door to them.

I forget the rest of the story, except that we discover the macabre and cruel secret of the working of the bell. - There are other people somewhere in the castle, underground maybe, or housed in a distant wing. They are in great pain. They are being cared for - nursed/doctored/spoken to solicitously - by person or persons who appear to care about their welfare. The treatment for their pain is pills - soothing pills - painstakingly concocted by their carers.

When they take the pills, the pills appear to help a bit; the pain subsides a bit. They perhaps allow themselves to relax a little. There is occasionally talk of becoming well enough to leave the castle, well enough to return home. But however they may appear to improve, and maybe to rest or sleep fitfully, there are terrible, anguished relapses, when, in concert, the patients scream in agony, clutching their stomachs, as though suffering the torments of the damned.

In brief, dear Reader, the pills they are being given contain tiny metal pieces, and the doorbell governs immensely powerful magnets, cunningly positioned. And when visitors ring the doorbell, the magnetism is engaged, and the tiny bits of metal within the innards of the 'patients' are pulled/attracted by that inhuman mechanism, and tear at the delicate, long-troubled tissues and nerves of those doomed victims of ill-conceived medication. And it is the sound of their screams that alerts the man-servant that there is someone at the door, someone waiting to be admitted... 

And the moral of this story is: Put not your trust in painkillers! They may cause you great harm...

Just because a painkiller is available over the counter (otc) it doesn't mean it's harmless, especially if it's paracetamol/acetaminophen/Calpol/Tylenol/

Just because a painkiller is available aver the counter (otc) it doesn't mean it's harmless, especially if it's paracetamol/acetaminophen/Calpol/Tylenol/Panadol. See this abcnews article. And see this Google search page.This drug is particularly dangerous to children. See Philly.com Report. For children especially it can cause asthma, liver damage and even sudden death. - That's apart from starting them on the path of painkiller dependence and painkiller addiction.

It is better to deal with the cause of the pain, rather than trying to eliminate the symptom. Pain is not caused by paracetamol deficiency.

Merck and the Vioxx saga

"The Vioxx saga continues. Nearly eight years after Merck withdrew the controversial painkiller over links to heart attacks and strokes, a new paper indicates the drugmaker hid evidence that Vioxx tripled the risk of cardiovascular death for more than three years before taking the pill off the market in 2004. During the same period, the paper in the American Heart Journal notes, Merck had regularly insisted such an increased did not exist."
Read article at pharmalot.com

On Inside Health on Radio 4 this week: some people are being misdiagnosed as having exercise-induced asthma

On Inside Health this week: some people are being misdiagnosed as having exercise-induced asthma. So if you or someone you know has had this diagnosis, and especially if you are an athlete, more especially if medication has been prescribed, and even more especially if that is steroid medication, then I suggest you visit this BBC webpage. Rather than exercise-induced asthma, the problem may be vocal cord dysfunction, and this problem does not respond to inhalers. I suggest you also have a look at my recent blogpost about asthma.

Dr Mercola today explains about the drug industry's widespread corruption of scientific research

Dr Mercola today explains the widespread corruption of science: that drug companies invent data, fabricate research, falsify results,cover up adverse effects...

The Wind from the East

When I was a child, if we ever had a day out at the seaside it was on the East Coast. The east wind was the stuff of legend: a lazy wind - lazy because it didn't go round you; it went through you. A very cold wind. I used to think of it as coming straight from Russia. I think of it today because July 11th was the birthday of one of my great-aunts, and she once took me to stay for a week in Bridlington.

 

She liked us to go for a walk each day along the promenade to get the fresh sea air and to 'blow away the cobwebs'. On our walk one day we saw a boatman selling tickets to go on a trip on his boat. A notice-board proclaimed the cost of the trip and carried the promise, BACK FOR TEA! - "We could be back for tea without going on the trip," she laughed, but we went on the boat trip all the same.

Roche Must Pay $18 Million to Two Former Accutane Users

Roche Holding AG must pay a total of $18 million in damages to two former users of its Accutane acne drug who blamed the medicine for their bowel disease, a New Jersey jury ruled.
Read article at bloomberg.com

Pfizer involved in deception over new arthritis painkiller drug Celebrex

"A research director for Pfizer was positively buoyant after reading that an important medical conference had just featured a study claiming that the new arthritis drug Celebrex was safer on the stomach than more established drugs. “They swallowed our story, hook, line and sinker,” he wrote in an e-mail to a colleague. The truth was that Celebrex was no better at protecting the stomach from serious complications than other drugs. It appeared that way only because Pfizer and its partner, Pharmacia, presented the results from the first six months of a yearlong study rather than the whole thing."
Read article in the New York Times (USA)

Really I don't think arthritis painkilling drugs are worth the candle. They've done a great deal of harm over the years. See my posts about Vioxx, for example.

You can reduce the pain of osteoarthritis by the simple expedient of seriously cutting down on salt and salty food. This dietary measure also lowers high blood pressure, reduces your risk of heart attack, stroke, depression, fractures, some cancers and many other degenerative illnesses, as well as reducing excess weight caused by fluid retention and helping with breathing problems. - What's not to like? - Try it! - You will feel so much better!

GSK whistleblowers handsomely rewarded for their evidence which helped in the US prosecution of Glaxo for drug mispromotion and fraud

The Telegraph reports that four former GlaxoSmithKline employees will share up to £159 million for their part in the successful prosecution of the drug company. Unfortunately Glaxo's crimes and misdemeanours are regarded with amazing leniency in Britain, as evidenced by the award of a knighthood earlier this year to Andrew Witty, CEO of GlaxoSmithKline. Drug company profits trump patient safety and corporate ethics.

Do you really think that GSK, the drug company, is interested in helping people to be healthy?

Do you really think that drug companies are interested in helping you to be healthy? - Surely not? - Are you not aware that they repeatedly appear in both the civil and the criminal courts as defendants in cases of fraud, bribery, corruption and the like? - That their only real interest is in profits and their only motivation is greed? - Check it out:

 

See last Monday's article on the BBC News Website, in which we read that "GlaxoSmithKline is to pay $3bn (£1.9bn) in the largest healthcare fraud settlement in US history. The drug giant is to plead guilty to promoting two drugs for unapproved uses and failing to report safety data about a diabetes drug to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
The settlement will cover criminal fines as well as civil settlements with the federal and state governments.
The case concerns 10 drugs, including Paxil, Wellbutrin, Avandia and Advair."

Did you know that the many well-honed skills of GSK include bribing doctors to prescribe antidepressant drugs off-label for children, knowing that these drugs can and do result in grave harm to children, including death? And did you know that Andrew Witty, CEO of GlaxoSmithKline, was knighted in the 2012 New Year Honours List? - Beggars belief, doesn't it? - It's not as if the fraudulent practices of this firm have only come to light recently. They have been reported and in the public domain for years. Why was the head of this huge criminal business recommended for a knighthood?

I've mentioned Andrew Witty previously in one of my blogposts. - See HERE. Would you feel safe taking drugs made and marketed by this company? -  Well I wouldn't.