The cure for your next infection may come from sewage

As antibiotics become less effective, viruses found in dirty places may save our lives instead.

By Sigal Samuel  May 14, 2019

Isabelle Holdaway, age 15, was out of options. After undergoing a lung transplant necessitated by her cystic fibrosis, she’d gotten an infection that wasn’t responding to antibiotics. Her liver was failing. Her skin was covered in lesions. Her chance of survival was less than 1 percent.

But today, just a few months later, she’s doing much better — thanks, apparently, to a virus scraped from the bottom of a rotten eggplant in soil teeming with worms.

Holdaway, who lives in London, was treated with an experimental “phage therapy,” devised by her local doctors and researchers at the University of Pittsburgh. Phages — viruses that infect and kill specific bacteria — are often found in really dirty places. Ditches. Ponds. Sewage.

The idea of purposely dosing your body with a virus found in such conditions might provoke a shudder of disgust. But as more infections become resistant to traditional drugs due to our chronic overuse of antibiotics, more patients are turning to phage therapy as a last resort.

And some scientists are racing to meet the demand. They travel the world to hunt for new viruses and then store them in freezers, assembling vast phage libraries. Pittsburgh’s has more than 10,000 different viruses, which can be used to target different strains of bacteria.

Holdaway was treated with a cocktail of three phages. One came from the above-mentioned eggplant, which was found in South Africa in 2010. The two others, found in the US, were genetically modified to become more efficient killers of Holdaway’s bacteria. Her case marked the first time a patient was treated with genetically engineered phages.

She’s still undergoing that twice-daily therapy, but her health has already improved dramatically. The infection has been reined in. Her liver has recovered. The lesions have mostly disappeared.

It’s a pretty incredible story, but it’s important to note that this was not a full clinical trial, so scientists can’t say for sure that the phage treatment is what saved Holdaway’s life. However, Benjamin Chan, an associate research scientist at Yale University who was not involved in the study of her case, told me there’s “a very, very good chance” that the phages were responsible. “You saw improvement correlating with administration of the phage,” he said.

And Holdaway is one of a number of other patients who’ve seen positive results after undergoing phage therapy. This treatment provides a bit of much-needed hope at a time when standard antibiotics are starting to fail miserably. Already, 700,000 people around the world die of drug-resistant diseases each year, including 230,000 deaths from multidrug-resistant tuberculosis. And the problem is only getting worse.

How phage therapy was found, lost, and found again
This therapy might sound outlandish, but it’s not actually new — it dates back to a century ago. Phages were often used to treat infections in the first few decades of the 20th century, and in some places in Eastern Europe and Russia, that’s still the case.

But in the West, phages were mostly abandoned when antibiotics came along. The new class of drugs was easier to use, and more versatile: An antibiotic can be used to treat many different infections, whereas a phage is much more specific — it might only successfully infect a particular strand of a particular species of bacteria.

Another advantage of antibiotics was that instead of hunting for them amid pond scum and sewage, you could make them in the lab. It was a clean and convenient solution, and it saved millions of lives.

The problem is that, practically as soon as a new antibiotic is introduced, the bacteria it targets begin to evolve in response, developing a resistance to the drug. And for decades, doctors, farmers, and others have been driving the resistance by doling out an overabundance of antibiotics.

The result? Not only infections like tuberculosis, but also common problems like STDs and urinary tract infections are becoming resistant to treatment. According to a major new UN report, if we don’t make a radical change now, drug-resistant diseases could kill 10 million people a year by 2050. That’s more people than currently die of cancer.

This is a looming emergency that has so far gone mostly unnoticed by the US public. The big pharmaceutical companies, having determined that there’s not much money to be made in researching and developing new antibiotics, also tend to ignore it. But for patients already suffering from drug-resistant diseases, the emergency is here and now. They’re desperate for a treatment, even if it’s an untested one.

Enter phage therapy.

How the therapy works
A typical phage looks like a lunar lander. When it comes into contact with bacteria, it uses its “feet” to grab onto it. It injects its own DNA into the host and then starts to reproduce, making so many copies of itself that it eventually bursts open the bacteria.

There are several advantages to the way phages work. Because a phage is so host-specific, scientists can deploy phages that will only grab onto the bacteria they want to eradicate — unlike broad-spectrum antibiotics, which often kill the good bacteria in your gut along with the bad. Even better, deploying phages can cause the bacteria to evolve in response, and that evolution sometimes involves switching from being antibiotic-resistant to being sensitive to antibiotics.

That’s a great result because it means patients have more treatment options: After undergoing a round of phage therapy, they can complement it with a course of antibiotics, which may now actually work for them — as appears to be the case for one of Chan’s patients with cystic fibrosis.

Phages are believed to be the most abundant lifeform on Earth. At any given time, there are an estimated ten million trillion trillion of them drifting around. So how do scientists find the right ones?

“It’s informed guesswork,” said Chan, who has hunted for phages all over North America, South America, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Asia.

Because phages are highly dependent on their hosts, which are certain strains of bacteria, you have to go to places where you can find the bacteria you’d like to be able to kill. For example, if you want to find phages that’ll kill cholera-causing bacteria, you’d have to go to a country that still has cholera outbreaks, perhaps a country that doesn’t have a good water treatment system. You’d take a water sample, bring it back to your lab, and genetically sequence the phages found in it. You’d identify if and how a phage is attaching to cholera-causing bacteria. Then you’d store it in vials in your freezer so it’ll be there, waiting, for the day a sick patient calls and asks for help.

Chan’s globe-trotting work is not glamorous. “We often go to sewage treatment plants and just scoop out sewage,” he said. “A lot of the phages are in sewage because that’s where you find a lot of human-associated bacteria.”

But he’s encouraged to see the dirty work paying off. Over the past three years, he said, he’s noticed increasing excitement about phage therapy. At Yale New Haven Hospital, he and his colleagues have treated 16 patients with phage therapy as of last week. “That number is growing crazy quickly,” he told me, adding that he receives new requests for treatment daily. As his list of prospective patients grows longer, he’s hoping to start a clinical trial by the end of this year.

Not every patient who requests phage therapy ends up getting it. Because it’s untested, it can only be legally dispensed on a compassionate basis — that is, only when all the standard treatments have failed. For each case, scientists have to demonstrate to the FDA that other treatments haven’t improved the patient’s health and explain how phages will get the job done. In an emergency situation, FDA approval can be obtained within hours.

Chan believes that once clinical trials have been completed, phage therapy will quickly grow more popular. He acknowledged the yuck factor of getting injected with a virus culled from sewage, but said that when someone has a truly terrible infection, they get over that psychological hurdle pretty fast. “In the cases we’re treating, people have these infections for years and things are getting much worse,” he said. “These people are like, ‘Dude, just fix it.’”

But phages won’t fix every patient’s problem. Since they’re so host-specific, the therapy is limited in a way broad-spectrum antibiotics are not, some researchers have noted. It can take a long time — sometimes too long — to find a phage that’ll work on a specific strain of specific bacteria. The same London doctors who treated Holdaway also tried to treat another girl with cystic fibrosis who suffered from a different strain, but by the time the right phage was found for her, she had died.

Another hurdle will be getting pharmaceutical companies to invest in research and development. But Chan said he’s already getting inquiries from Big Pharma companies, some of which are “actively and aggressively working in the phage space now.” These include heavy-hitters like Johnson & Johnson and Merck.

Depending on how phage therapy gets regulated, that could increase or decrease the financial incentives for companies to invest in phage therapy. For now, there’s no across-the-board regulation, just ad hoc FDA approvals or rejections for individual patients. This therapy is so new to the West that it’s hard to say how big a role it will come to play. But as the antibiotic resistance crisis worsens, it’s clear there’s appetite for alternative treatments like this one.

This Is How Much Coffee You Can Drink Daily Before It Hurts Your Health

By Caroline Muggia

May 13, 2019

Whether you're an avid coffee drinker or grab a cup here and there, you'll be excited to know that a new study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition has determined that we can drink five cups of coffee daily without comprising our heart health.

In fact, previous studies suggest that drinking lots of coffee may have many health benefits including reducing your risk of type 2 diabetes and certain cancers as well as boosting brain health and metabolism. While these studies showed positive health outcomes, some research has found coffee consumption to be linked to imbalanced blood sugar levels and weight gain. The present study set out to determine just how many cups people could drink to get benefits without negatively affecting their cardiovascular health.

The study looked at cardiovascular risk in 347,077 people who drank coffee and found that moving on to the sixth cup of coffee in the day increased the risk of cardiovascular disease by 22 percent.

"In order to maintain a healthy heart and a healthy blood pressure, people must limit their coffees to fewer than six cups a day," said study author Professor Elina Hyppönen, of the Australian Centre for Precision Health in a statement.

This may be great news if you were hoping to grab another coffee this afternoon, but if you're not on the coffee train yet, it's important to point out that coffee isn't for everyone, regardless of its supposed link to health benefits.

Everyone reacts differently to coffee because of how the body metabolizes caffeine—for some the buzz is gentle, and they can head to bed right after cup, while for others, it can create anxiety and make them more tired throughout the day.

Depending on how you feel physically and mentally after a cup of coffee you'll know if your body is tolerating it well. With an estimated 64 percent of Americans drinking a cup of coffee daily, it's helpful to know just how many cups we can drink without putting our heart health at risk.

Eat well, exercise more: New global guidelines to reduce risk of dementia

(CNN) There's no effective treatment for dementia, which affects 50 million people worldwide, but the World Health Organization says there's much can be done to delay or slow the onset and progression of the disease.

In new guidelines released Tuesday, the WHO released its first recommendations to reduce the risk of dementia globally. They include regular physical exercise, not using tobacco, drinking less alcohol, maintaining healthy blood pressure and eating a healthy diet -- particularly a Mediterranean one.

The international health body also warned against taking dietary supplements such as Vitamins B and E in an effort to combat cognitive decline and dementia.

"While some people are unlucky and inherit a combination of genes that makes it highly likely they will develop dementia, many people have the opportunity to substantially reduce their risk by living a healthy lifestyle," professor Tara Spires-Jones, UK Dementia Research Institute program lead and deputy director of the Centre for Discovery Brain Sciences at the University of Edinburgh told the Science Media Center.

"The WHO has looked at the available evidence and made recommendations that some lifestyle changes, in particular increasing exercise before any cognitive symptoms are present, can reduce dementia risk," she added.

"Other recommendations have a less strong evidence base but may have evidence that they do not increase risk or harm, and can therefore be recommended safely, although their impact on risk is less certain."

The WHO said there are 10 million new cases of dementia every year and this figure is set to triple by 2050. The disease is a major cause of disability and dependency among older people and "can devastate the lives of affected individuals, their carers and families," the WHO said.

The disease also exacts a heavy economic toll, with the cost of caring for people with dementia estimated to rise to $2 trillion annually by 2030, according to the WHO.

What will and won't help

The 78-page report outlined what the WHO believes will -- and won't -- help reduce the risk of dementia, which has been described by campaigners as the biggest health challenge of our generation.

It recommended physical activity, stopping smoking, consuming less alcohol and a healthy, balanced diet. In particular, it says committing to a Mediterranean diet (simple plant-based cooking, little meat and a heavy emphasis on olive oil) could help.

"The Mediterranean diet is the most extensively studied dietary approach, in general as well as in relation to cognitive function," the report said. "Several systematic reviews of observational studies have concluded that high adherence to the Mediterranean diet is associated with decreased risk of mild cognitive impairment and Alzheimer's Disease, but modest adherence is not."

The report recommended proper management of weight, hypertension, diabetes and dyslipidemia -- unhealthy or unbalanced cholesterol levels -- as measures that could potentially reduce the risk of dementia and cognitive decline.

While the report stressed that social participation and social support are strongly connected to good health and individual well-being, it said there was insufficient evidence linking social activity with a reduced of risk of dementia.

Similarly, it said cognitive training could be offered to older adults but the evidence linking it to a lower risk of dementia was "very low to low."

The report also warned against using supplements such as B vitamins, antioxidants, omega-3 and ginkgo.

"The negative recommendation, advocating that people do not use vitamin or dietary supplements (unless they are needed for a clinical problem) is welcome, and it is to be hoped that it saves lots of people from wasting their money," said professor Tom Dening, director of the Centre for Old Age and Dementia, Institute of Mental Health at the University of Nottingham.

Experts said that the advice issued by the WHO was comprehensive and sensible but some cautioned that the evidence that these steps would reduce dementia risk was not always strong.

"Keep on doing the things that we know benefit overall physical and mental health, but understand that the evidence that these steps will reduce dementia risk is not strong," Robert Howard, a professor of Old Age Psychiatry at University College London told the Science Media Center.

"Like many colleagues, I already tell my patients that what is good for their hearts is probably good for their brains."

Why I Didn’t Do Chemo

I am not a doctor or a scientist. I am a self-educated, chemo-free cancer survivor and I often have people contact me who want to know more about what I did. So, I am going to explain, in the simplest terms, what I have come to understand about chemotherapy. And why I did not do it.

Tell me if this story sounds familiar:Someone you know finds out they have cancer. They have surgery, multiple rounds of chemotherapy, and radiation. During treatment, the cancer shrinks and disappears. The doctors tell them they can’t find any cancer in their body. They are “NED” (No Evidence of Disease). They announce to the world that they are “cancer free.” Everyone is relieved and excited and celebrates.

Some time goes by, and the patient has more tests only to find out that the cancer is back. And this time it’s spread to their liver, their lungs, their brain, their bones…

They go through more rounds of chemo and radiation, but the treatments don’t work as well the second time. The doctors can’t seem to stop the cancer. Every time you see the patient, they look worse and worse. Eventually, after a difficult battle ranging from a few months to a few years, they die. 

So what happened?

This is what happened:Chemotherapy is toxic poison. It works by attacking rapidly dividing cells in your body, which affects your hair, nails, skin, digestive system, and blood. This process makes you very sick and can cause permanent damage to various parts of your body, including your brain, liver, hearing, and reproductive organs.

Chemotherapy attacks rapidly reproducing cells, which includes some types of cancer cells. But it also destroys your immune system.

NOTE: Your immune system is what keeps you alive.

We all have pre-cancerous cells in our bodies that are eliminated by the natural processes of our immune system.

If you have cancer in your body, your immune system is fighting it; albeit not very well, but it is fighting it.

If the cancer is growing, that means your immune system could be overwhelmed or suppressed, and not functioning as well as it should. But having cancer doesn’t mean your immune system is doing nothing.

If you take chemotherapy and it doesn’t kill all the cancer cells, you will find yourself in a very vulnerable position with a decimated immune system. You will have little defenses left to prevent any remaining cancer cells from reproducing.

Here’s the scary part. If you still have cancerous cells in your body, they will proceed to take over like wild fire. I’ve seen it happen over and over with friends and family that went through chemo; chances are, you have too.

Sometimes, chemo will stop one kind of cancer, but then the patient will develop an entirely different form of cancer. The chemotherapy and/or radiation caused new, new cancer. 

Most chemotherapy drugs are carcinogenic, that means they can cause cancer. Many chemo drugs are so toxic that nurses have to protect their skin from exposure when administering it to patients. These are chemicals that will burn through your skin, but they have no problem putting it in your veins.

This may also sound familiar:I ran into a friend of the family who had undergone chemotherapy recently. Let’s just call this person “Pat.” Please try not to picture Pat from SNL. Of course, now that’s exactly who you’re picturing… Whatever, here’s the story. I saw Pat several months before the chemo started. I didn’t see Pat again until after nearly a year of chemo. When I did, I was shocked. Pat looked 10-15 years older. Pat went from “middle aged” to “elderly” in less than a year. It was heart breaking. The transformation in Pat’s face alone was unbelievable. Pat’s face was sunken in. Pat’s skin was leathery and wrinkled, and Pat’s hair had grown back thin and lifeless. Pat is still alive and, as I write this, I don’t know the condition of Pat’s health. But one thing I do know and witnessed firsthand: the ravaging after effects of chemotherapy are real.

(Addendum: Pat passed away a few months after I wrote this post.)

When the doctors told me I would have to have chemotherapy, I accepted it, but I didn’t feel good about it.

It just didn’t sit well with me. I didn’t have peace about it.

Then I began to study the effects that chemotherapy would have on my body and immune system, which explained my instinctive resistance. I remember thinking to myself, there’s got to be another way…

This was my thought process:-My body is designed to heal itself.-Something inside me is malfunctioning and affecting my immune system, allowing cancer to grow.-Chemotherapy is poison that will hurt my body and destroy my immune system.-I don’t want to hurt my body and destroy my immune system. I want to build it up.-Cancer is not the cause of a sick body, it is the effect of a sick body.-I’ve got to find therapies that strengthen my body and my immune system, so it can heal itself.

And that’s exactly what I did. I radically changed my diet and did every natural, alternative, and holistic therapy I could find.

If all else failed, chemo would be my last resort.

“An investigation by the Department of Radiation Oncology, Northern Sydney Cancer Centre, Australia, into the contribution of chemotherapy to 5-year survival in 22 major adult malignancies, showed startling results: The overall contribution of curative and adjuvant cytotoxic chemotherapy to 5-year survival in adults was estimated to be 2.3% in Australia and 2.1% in the USA.”-Royal North Shore Hospital, Clinical Oncology (2005): 17.4, pg. 294.

The research covered data from the Cancer Registry in Australia and the Surveillance Epidemiology and End Results in the USA for the year 1998. The current 5-year relative adult survival rate for cancer in Australia is over 60%, and no less than that in the USA. By comparison, a mere 2.3% contribution of chemotherapy to cancer survival does not justify the massive expense involved and the tremendous suffering patients experience because of severe, toxic side effects resulting from this treatment. With a meager success rate of 2.3%, selling chemotherapy as a medical treatment (instead of a scam), is one of the greatest fraudulent acts ever committed. The average chemotherapy earns the medical establishment a whopping $300,000 to $1,000,000 each year, and has so far earned those who promote this pseudo-medication (poison) over 1 trillion dollars. It’s no surprise that the medical establishment tries to keep this scam alive for as long as possible.”-Andreas Moritz, Natural News

Disclaimers Abound

I have shared my story and convictions with many people diagnosed with cancer. I’ve listened to them agree with me and say to me, “You’re right. I know deep down you’re right.” And I’ve watched them choose to do chemotherapy anyway.

Some of them survived (miracle), most of them have not. The hardest part for me is wondering whether or not I could have said something else that would have made the difference. Those experiences added more fuel to my fire, which is why I’m doing this now.

Sometimes when we’re in difficult situations, we just want someone to tell us what to do. I sure did. More than anything.

But, in this case, I can’t tell you what to do. And neither can anyone else. Whether or not you take chemotherapy is a decision only you can make.

And it’s a hard one.

If you have cancer or are undergoing chemotherapy now, what you just read might be terrifying. You may be feeling more confused than ever. I know. I was exactly where you are, back in 2004. This is the time where you need to pray.  Ask God to reveal himself to you. Ask Him to lead you in the direction you should go. That’s exactly what I did. The God of the Universe who created you and loves you, has a plan for your life. He answered my prayers and He will answer yours.

I want to encourage you to do your own research outside of what the doctors are telling you, in order to make an informed decision. Take responsibility for your own health. This blog should not be the only thing you read.

Remember:

Your body is designed to heal itself.

Your immune system keeps you well.

Chemo kills your immune system.

Fighting Cancer Without Chemotherapy: 8 Alternatives to Chemo and Radiation

August 16, 2018

Chemotherapy and radiation might be the most common way to target and treat cancer, but it’s not the only option. With many patients and physicians taking a closer look at the negative effects of both treatments — some of which are believed to be worse than cancer itself — alternatives to chemo and radiation are becoming more and more mainstream, making fighting cancer without chemotherapy possible for some.

We share eight alternatives that are considered effective in treating cancer without the help of chemotherapy and radiation.

Immunotherapy

Perhaps one of the most common alternatives to chemo and radiation, immunotherapy helps train the body’s immune system to fight certain diseases, including cancer. According to the American Cancer Society, the alternative treatment works by “stimulating your own immune system to work harder or smarter to attack cancer cells” through immune system proteins.

There are a few different types of immunotherapy treatments — and others currently being studied — that work to treat cancer in a few different ways. Some of the treatments focus on boosting the immune system overall while others train it to recognize and attack cancer cells.

Gerson Therapy and juicing

Some experts believe you can get rid of cancer naturally through diet — and, in some cases, they are correct. For over 90 years, Dr. Max Gerson’s “Gerson Therapy” has remained one of the most effective alternatives to chemo and radiation and has helped hundreds of patients heal naturally.

Gerson Therapy calls for a massive diet change where patients can only consume organic vegetables, fruits, and sprouted ancient grains. Also, it asks patients to take certain supplements, perform coffee enemas, drink raw juice, and eat beef liver, as it is one of the most nutritious foods on the planet and contains high traces of vitamin B-12.

According to the Gerson Institute, the overall goal of the therapy and diet is to activate “the body’s extraordinary ability to heal itself through an organic, plant-based diet, raw juices, coffee enemas, and natural supplements.”

Proteolytic Enzyme Therapy

Dr. Max Gerson wasn’t the only doctor to take a deep dive into the power of plant-based. In 1906, a man by the name of John Beard came up with the idea that pancreatic enzymes can serve as the body’s biggest protector against cancer. Nicholas J. Gonzalez, MD later studied this proclamation and found to have some success.

As it turns out, one of the suspected causes of cancer is the body’s autonomic nervous system, which consists of two separate nervous systems called sympathetic (fight or flight) and autonomic (rest and digest). The goal in Gonzalez’s work is to balance both systems through a vegetarian diet, as it can suppress the sympathetic system.

In addition to a diet change, the therapy focuses its efforts on reducing inflammation through proteolytic enzymes. Physicians that use this treatment recommend five grams of enzymes three times daily.

Diet

Many of the natural alternatives to chemo and radiation take a closer look at diet — and for a good reason. While it is best to change your diet under a physician’s watch, it doesn’t hurt to add cancer-fighting ingredients and cut out things like processed foods and an abundance of meat.

Some foods to consider are:

• Fruits and vegetables: These are the stars of many cancer diets and therapies as they contain an abundance of healthy vitamins and minerals that can help combat cancer. Some of the most beneficial fruits and vegetables include garlic, onions, tomato, and grapes.
• Turmeric: According to the Mayo Clinic, the curcumin found in turmeric “may help prevent or treat cancer.” That’s because curcumin has antioxidant properties that help to subside inflammation and swelling.
• Green tea: Like turmeric, green tea is high in antioxidants that can help reduce inflammation and swelling. Also, some studies show that the epigallocatechin-3 gallate — a non-toxic chemical abundant in green tea — can put up a defense against the urokinase enzyme that causes cancer growth.

High-dose vitamin C

It’s no secret that vitamin C does the body good — but can it cure cancer? According to some reports, maybe. Researchers have found that high-dose vitamin C treatments can prolong the life of cancer patients and even help reduce certain symptoms. This type of treatment is often used by holistic cancer doctors — and proven successful — but has not gone through proper clinical trials to back that up on a conventional level.

Frankincense Essential Oil Therapy

Essential oils might also be beneficial for fighting cancer without chemotherapy. German biochemist, Dr. Johanna Budwig believed frankincense essential oil was a powerful tool in fighting off cancer, specifically brain cancer. As it turns out, he might have been right.

Modern research trials show that Indian Frankincense might work as a natural alternative to chemo and radiation for brain, colon, breast, pancreatic, stomach, and prostate cancer. Researchers at Baylor University Medical Center in Dallas believe the reason is that frankincense can promote healing by influencing the genes.

Frankincense essential oil therapy requires an application of the oil on the neck three times a day. Also, it asks patients to consume a mixture of frankincense essential oil and water (three drops oil to eight ounces of water) three times a day.

Oxygen Therapy and Hyperbaric Chambers

Another common alternative to chemo and radiation is oxygen therapy and hyperbaric chambers. According to the Mayo Clinic, this type of treatment is linked to many different ailments and diseases, including AIDS/HIV, Alzheimer’s disease, Bell’s palsy, and Fibromyalgia. But, perhaps one of its most impressive abilities is the way it targets cancer.

According to Dr. Otto Warburg, the cause of cancer is oxygen deficiency, as it creates an acidic environment in the body, which causes cancer to thrive. Also, he believed that cancer cells can’t breathe oxygen and therefore don’t survive in a more alkaline state. Through that idea, oxygen therapy and hyperbaric chambers might be able to cure cancer without harsher treatments.

Since hyperbaric oxygen chambers have an air pressure level 2.5 times higher than average atmospheric pressure, the chamber forces the body to hold more oxygens. As a result, the blood delivers higher levels of oxygen to organs and tissues, which can have a damaging effect on cancer cells.

While this type of treatment is believed to have promising effects on cancer patients, it’s not considered conventional yet. However, some hospitals are looking further into its ability to fight cancer and even purchased some chambers.

Integrative Medicine

Some cancer patients — and physicians — believe chemotherapy and radiation are worse than cancer itself. And while that might be true, it doesn’t take away from the success rate of both cancer treatments. However, with alternative and holistic treatments becoming more mainstream, doctors and holistic healers have worked together to create a balanced treatment plan known as Integrative Medicine.

According to Oasis of Hope Hospital, Integrative Medicine “combines conventional medicine with alternative interventions that help overcome and compensate for the deficiencies of chemotherapy, radiation, and surgery.” Traditional medicine — aka chemo and radiation — might still be used to treat aggressive tumors, but the alternative approach works in tandem to make tumors more vulnerable to the mainstream treatments, helping to preserve the immune system and create a better tolerance to chemotherapy.

Expert provides recommendations for sleeping pill alternatives

 BY SHAUL TURNER, UPDATED AT 10:41PM, MAY 1, 2019

DENVER -- The Centers for Disease Control reports one in three adults don’t get enough sleep.

More than 500,000 people take prescription drugs like Ambien or Lunesta to get the sleep they need,  but the Food and Drug Administration is now requiring labels to warn patients about the possibility of dangerous side effects.

Robert Turner, clinical supervisor of Rose Medical Center’s Sleep Center said users of the medications may not know all of its effects.

“With Ambien, people can do things while they’re asleep and be unaware of it," he said.

Turner advises that anyone considering treatment for a sleep abnormality disclose all health information with their doctor so he or she can make the best decision for their health.

"(Sleep aids) have some interactions with other medications," Turner said.

He added that powerful sleep aids are designed for short-term use during times of depression, stress or anxiety.

“Your daughter is getting married and you’re worried about the wedding," Turner provided as an example.

Turner recommends anyone struggling to fall asleep on a regular basis first try cutting back on caffeine.

"There are people who are using caffeine at dinner time -- having a cup of coffee at dinner -- then wondering why they can’t get to sleep," he said.

Supplements like melatonin, if approved by a doctor, can help as well. Get plenty of exercise, but not within three hours of your bedtime, and stick to a regular sleep schedule, which means not sleeping in late on the weekends.

Doctors say we all should be getting between seven and nine hours of sleep each night.  Not doing so may eventually lead to diabetes, heart disease, stroke and other health problems.

People love coffee and beer for the buzz, not the taste: study

Washington (AFP) - Fancy yourself a coffee connoisseur with a love for dark roasts? Or maybe hoppy pale ales are more your thing?

Issam AHMED

,

AFP•May 2, 2019

The truth may be that our preferences for caffeine or alcoholic beverages -- or indeed sugary sodas -- derive not so much from the way they taste but how they make us feel, according to a new study by genetic scientists at Northwestern University that was published in Human Molecular Genetics on Thursday.

In her latest work,Marilyn Cornelis, who has published previously on the genetics of coffee consumption, set out to determine which taste genes are responsible for what we drink, she told AFP.

But to her and the team's surprise, people's preferences weren't based on variations in taste genes but rather the genes that are related to the beverages' mind-altering effects.

"The genetics underlying our preferences are related to the psychoactive components of these drinks," said Cornelis.

"People like the way coffee and alcohol make them feel. That's why they drink it."

The American Heart Association and National Institutes of Health-funded study collected 24-hour dietary questionnaires from some 336,000 individuals of European ancestry from the UK Biobank.

Beverages were divided into a bitter-tasting group and a sweet-tasting group.

Bitter included coffee and tea, grapefruit juice, red wine and liquor; while sweet included sugar-sweetened drinks, artificially sweetened drinks and non-grapefruit juices.

The researchers then performed a genome-wide association study of the consumption patterns, which were in turn validated in three US populations.

"Taste may be a factor," Cornelis told AFP, but "it's an acquired taste."

Coffee, because of its bitterness, "is something which we should be avoiding on an evolutionary level," she said. "But we're consuming it because we learned to equate the taste with the caffeine effect."

One factor the researchers did not account for, she said, was sugar and cream that participants may have added to their coffee to conceal the bitterness.

- Obesity gene anomaly -

Cornelis also found that people who had a particular variant in a gene called the FTO preferred sugar-sweetened drinks. The result was surprising because the same variant has previously been linked to a lower risk of obesity.

Calling the finding "counterintuitive," Cornelis said: "FTO has been something of a mystery gene, and we don't know exactly how it's linked to obesity.

"It likely plays a role in behavior, which would be linked to weight management."

The study's overall findings could eventually help researchers find ways to intervene when consumption patterns become unhealthy.

Sugary beverages are linked to obesity and a variety of related conditions. Alcohol, meanwhile, is related to more than 200 diseases and responsible for about six percent of global deaths.

"It tells you if you're interested in intervening in some of these behaviors one thing will likely be the psycho-stimulant effects, so those could be barriers to people changing their behavior pattern," she said.