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WINNER OF THE RICHARD MARGOLIS AWARD FOR SOCIAL JUSTICE REPORTING
We were at the beach this weekend, and because of global warming (who ever heard of going swimming in the ocean in New England in late October?) there were tons of wild rose hips all over the place. Not one to waste, I gathered a bunch because I like to make a vitamin-C rich tea or juice from these--rose hips also have a folk reputation as good for fertility. Plus, they are so pretty with their intense red color and just bursting with seeds. Now, isn't it interest that researchers have found it decreases TNF-alpha, an inflammatory that is also related to repeat miscarriages?
This is from the BBC.
Rose-hips could help some of the UK's 400,000 sufferers
Rose-hips could offer a cheap and effective way of treating debilitating rheumatoid arthritis, research from Germany and Denmark has suggested.
Seventy-four sufferers, mostly females, took part in the six-month trial.
Just under half took the rose-hip remedy LitoZin while the others took a placebo. Both groups continued to take their usual medication.
Activity among the first group improved by 20-25%, according to results presented at the annual Eular meeting.
The number of joints causing pain or discomfort fell by 40%, but did not change for those treated with the dummy.
"I think we were all surprised to see such meaningful results," said Professor Stefan Willich from the Charite University Medical Centre in Berlin, who conducted the German arm of the study.
"Rheumatoid arthritis is one of the most difficult conditions I'm aware of. It's a tough disease, which makes it all the more remarkable to find such beneficial effects from this remedy."
Anti-TNF (anti-tumour necrosis factor alpha) medication and the latest "smart" drugs which target different parts of the immune system are becoming available, but they are expensive, and there have already been complaints of "postcode lottery" access...
Researchers are unclear as to why exactly rose-hip has this effect, but the supplement appears to have both anti-inflammatory and anti-oxidant properties.
One of the key active ingredients in LitoZin - a type of sugary fatty acid called GOPO - was hailed by scientists involved in the research as a "plant version of fish oil", the supplement believed to have a host of health benefits.
Professor Alan Silman, the medical director of the Arthritis Research Campaign, said that if rose-hips were shown to have only limited side effects they could be a useful adjunct to conventional drug treatment for people with rheumatoid arthritis...
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I think it's so funny that with pharma drugs we gloss over how powerful and toxic they can be, and here with rose hips look how bent out of shape they are about side effects! I wouldn't overdo it (and some people report a stinging sensation if they eat a bunch of whole rose hips), but in general they make great tea and jam.
MAN FERTILITY found this for me on the BBC. I have suffered from Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, which is called Myalgic Encephalopathy in the UK--which actually is a better descriptor because it has a lot more to do with the immune system, etc., than plain old "fatigue."
The reduction was small but "noteworthy", researchers say
A daily dose of specially-formulated dark chocolate may help cut chronic fatigue syndrome symptoms.
Patients in a pilot study found they had less fatigue when eating dark chocolate with a high cocoa content than with white chocolate dyed brown.
Researchers from Hull York Medical School said the results were surprising but dark chocolate may be having an effect on the brain chemical serotonin.
Experts said patients should consume chocolate in moderation.
Chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS), also known as ME, is a condition with a diverse range of symptoms but particularly characterised by profound muscle fatigue after physical exertion.
If you derive benefit, then it's a no harm, no risk situation
Professor Steve Atkin
Study leader Professor Steve Atkin, an expert in endocrinology, said the idea for the study came after a patient reported feeling much better after swapping her normal milk chocolate for dark chocolate with a high cocoa solid content.
He decided to see if other patients would benefit and carried out a trial of 10 patients who received a daily dose - 45g - of dark chocolate or white chocolate dyed to look like dark chocolate for two months.
The patients then had a month off before taking the other type of chocolate for two months.
Those taking dark chocolate reported significantly less fatigue and reported feeling more fatigue when they stopped eating it.
Polyphenols
Professor Atkin said he was very surprised at the strength of the results.
"Although it was a small study, two patients went back to work after being off for six months."
He explained: "Dark chocolate is high in polyphenols, which have been associated with health benefits such as a reduction in blood pressure.
"Also high polyphenols appear to improve levels of serotonin in the brain, which has been linked with chronic fatigue syndrome and that may be a mechanism."
This study shows that when they raise fish in captivity and release the offspring into the wild, the offspring aren't as "fit" to reproduce. It's funny how it's all focused on genetics. Everyone knows farm raised salmon aren't as healthy and therefore as nutritious to eat as wild salmon in part because they are fed fish junkfood: corn (when's a fish going to eat corn in the wild?), antibiotics, dyes. Obviously, this happens to humans as well.
Genetic Effects of Captive Breeding Cause a Rapid, Cumulative Fitness Decline in the Wild
HitoshiAraki,*Becky Cooper,Michael S. Blouin
Captive breeding is used to supplement populations of many speciesthat are declining in the wild. The suitability of and long-termspecies survival from such programs remain largely untested,however. We measured lifetime reproductive success of the firsttwo generations of steelhead trout that were reared in captivityand bred in the wild after they were released. By reconstructinga three-generation pedigree with microsatellite markers, weshow that genetic effects of domestication reduce subsequentreproductive capabilities by 40% per captive-reared generationwhen fish are moved to natural environments. These results suggestthat even a few generations of domestication may have negativeeffects on natural reproduction in the wild and that the repeateduse of captive-reared parents to supplement wild populationsshould be carefully reconsidered.
Department of Zoology, 3029 Cordley Hall, Oregon State University Corvallis, OR 97331, USA.
Besides the sugar, high-fructose corn syrup, pasteurized milk, Splenda, etc., Starbucks is ruining the environment!
Monday, September 17 By David Conrad THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH:
Starbucks goes through roughly 2.3 billion paper cups a year and touts its national award for using cups made of 10 percent recycled material. The sleeves on the cups even plead, 'Help us help the planet.' But don't be confused. Starbucks promotes recycling on its cups, but the cups themselves aren't recyclable here or in most other cities nationwide. 'Well, they tricked me,' said Nicole Mejias, 22, a self-described Starbucks freak. 'I immediately associate recycling with Starbucks because of their cups. That's so hypocritical. I would have never guessed' that the cups weren't easily recyclable. The reason: The plastic coating that keeps the cup from leaking also prevents it from being recycled with other paper products. That could be overcome, but it would cost more."* ------------------------------------ ** the home of the $5 latte, etc., which is okay, but recycling, that's oppressive!
From Grist (and Sandra Steingraber is one of my favorite environmental writers). This could have huge impacts on breast cancer (which i estrogen driven), fertility, etc.:
Over the course of just a few decades, the childhoods of U.S. girls have been significantly shortened. Girls get their first periods, on average, a few months earlier than did girls 40 years ago. But they get their breasts, on average, one to two years earlier. Recent studies show that the advent of breast budding -- one of the earliest visible signs of puberty -- appears to be arriving earlier and earlier in the lives of U.S. girls. We need to know why.
From today's New York Times. Rats instinctively go for organic vs. non organic food. The writer is perplexed as to why rats can tell the diff and not humans.
Could it be that most people on the Standard American Diet (i.e. ,SAD) have tongues that are so drugged by artificial flavors, MSG, etc. that they don't know what good, healthy food tastes like any more? An organic tomato beats a non-organic tomato any day of the week! ----------------------------
By HAROLD McGEE
Published: October 3, 2007
IN any controversy it can be helpful to consider the views of disinterested parties. So, on the subject of agricultural policy and practice, it’s worth noting that an unimpeachably neutral group has joined the ranks of those who prefer organic foods over foods produced with the help of synthetic chemicals. That group is 40 Swiss rats
A team of Swiss and Austrian scientists recently concluded a 21-year study of organic wheat production. As an “integrative method” for assessing quality, they gave lab animals a choice of biscuits made from organic or conventional wheat. The rats ate significantly more of the former. The authors call this result remarkable, because they found the two wheats to be very similar in chemical composition and baking performance.
In fact, the rats were better at telling the difference between organic and conventional foods than many humans have been. In the handful of carefully designed taste-offs reported in the last few years, people were often unable to identify the organic foods, and often didn’t prefer them.
This is puzzling, since organic produce generally does pack more antioxidants and other potentially healthful — and potentially flavorful — phytochemicals than conventional produce. Just last July, Professor Alyson Mitchell and colleagues at the University of California, Davis summarized 10 years of data from tomatoes grown in carefully controlled organic and conventional systems. The antioxidant contents varied from year to year, but were consistently higher in the organic tomatoes.
Newswise — A popular prostate cancer treatment called androgen deprivation therapy may encourage prostate cancer cells to produce a protein that makes them more likely to spread throughout the body, a new study by Johns Hopkins researchers suggests.
Although the finding could eventually lead to changes in this standard treatment for a sometimes deadly disease, the Johns Hopkins researchers caution that their discovery is far too preliminary for prostate cancer patients or physicians to stop using it. The therapy is effective at slowing tumor growth, they emphasized.
David Berman, an assistant professor of pathology, urology and oncology at The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, and his colleagues identified the unsuspected potential problem with treatments that suppress testosterone after discovering that the gene that codes for the protein, called nestin, was active in lab-grown human prostate cancer cells.
Curious about whether prostate cancer cells in people also produce nestin, the researchers looked for it in cells taken from men who had surgery to remove locally confined cancers of their prostates and found none. But when they looked for nestin in prostate cancer cells isolated from patients who had died of metastatic prostate cancer - in which cancer cells spread out from the prostate tumor - they found substantial evidence that the nestin gene was active.
What was different, Berman speculated, is that androgen deprivation therapy, a treatment that reduces testosterone in the body, is generally given only when prostate cancers become aggressive and likely to metastasize.
Because prostate cancer growth is typically stimulated by testosterone, the treatment is thought to slow tumor growth and weaken the disease. Patients who eventually die because their disease metastasizes are almost certain to have received this type of therapy, he says.
Speculating that depriving cells of androgens might also, however, affect nestin expression, the researchers experimented on a prostate cancer cell line that depends on androgens to grow. When they removed androgens from the chemical mixture that the cells live in, their production of nestin increased.
Aware that the nestin gene has long been suggested to play some role in cell growth and development, Berman and his colleagues used a bit of laboratory sabotage called RNA interference to decrease the genetic expression of nestin and found that these cells weren’t able to move around and through other cells nearly as well as cells with normal nestin levels.
Prostate cancer cells with hampered nestin expression were also less likely than normal prostate cancer cells to migrate to other parts of the body when transplanted into mice. However, while nestin expression seemed pivotal for metastasis in these experiments, it didn’t seem to make a difference in tumor growth.
“What all this suggests is that nestin levels increased when prostate cancer cells are deprived of androgens and may encourage the cells to metastasize,” says Berman.
Besides Berman, other Johns Hopkins researchers involved in this study were Wolfram Kleeberger, M.D., G. Steven Bova, M.D., Matthew E. Nielsen, M.D., Mehsati Herawi, M.D., Ph.D., Ai-Ying Chuang, M.D., and Jonathan I. Epstein, M.D.
The research, published in the Oct. 1 issue of Cancer Research, was funded by grants from the National Institutes of Health, National Cancer Institute, Evensen Family Foundation, and German Cancer Aid Foundation.
I know this headline sounds like something from the Onion, but it's true: -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(AP) SAO PAULO, Brazil - A 51-year-old surrogate mother for her daughter has given birth to her own twin grandchildren in northeastern Brazil, the delivery hospital said.
Rosinete Palmeira Serrao, a government health worker, gave birth to twin boys by Caesarean section on Thursday at the Santa Joana Hospital in the city of Recife, the hospital said in a statement on its Web site.
Hospital officials were not available for comment on Sunday, but press reports said the grandmother and twins were discharged on Saturday in excellent health. The Caesarean section was performed about two weeks ahead of time because Serrao was having trouble sleeping, the statement said.
Serrao decided to serve as a surrogate mother after four years of failed attempts at pregnancy by her 27-year-old daughter, Claudia Michelle de Brito.
Brazilian law stipulates that only close relatives can serve as surrogate mothers. De Brito is an only child and none of her cousins volunteered, so Serrao agreed to receive four embryos from her daughter.
I am of course a huge fan of independent presses, including Beacon, which courageously published the first full-length edition of the Pentagon Papers more than 35 years ago. And my novel... :)
The Burmese protests are widening, the international response is building--and the Burmese generals are panicking. Today the Burmese junta banned gatherings of more than 5, and sent thousands of troops to take control of the street -- but still the monks and protesters march. Desperate officers have beaten, tear-gassed and fired on their own people, reportedly shooting five monks in Rangoon.
The next 36 hours are crucial. Leaders have called an emergency session of the UN Security Council--but only a decisive initiative will prevent a massacre like the one from 1988. Already 85,000 people from 192 countries have signed our emergency global petition.Please click the link below to sign (a single click will add your name), then send this email to others so they can too--we'll send the updated petition to the Chinese government and the UN Security Council members every day:
Here's a link to an article (and an ABC News video) about how acupuncture, even if done incorrectly, still works better than conventional pharma/surgical therapies in the treatment of back pain.
There's been a lot of news lately also showing that those expensive spinal fusion surgeries are very invasive and often don't do squat. You might want to try acupuncture first: click here.
I think this picture of Buddhist monks in Myanmar peacefully protesting the military government--and being guarded by supporters--is so beautiful. Feel the energy! From the NY Times:
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BANGKOK, Sept. 24 — Protesters poured onto the streets of Myanmar’s cities in unprecedented numbers today, pushing a month-old confrontation with the military government toward an unpredictable and possibly dangerous outcome.
In the country’s largest city, Yangon, the Buddhist monks who have led the protests for the past week were outnumbered by civilians, who included prominent political dissidents and well-known cultural figures.
A crowd estimated by The Associated Press to be as large as 100,000 set out in the morning from the gold-spired Shwedagon Pagoda and marched unopposed in separate columns through the city.
As they have in past days, some monks carried their begging bowls upside down, in a symbol of their refusal to receive alms from members of the military.
Other protests were reported in Mandalay, Sittwe and Bago. Monks and their supporters have marched in other cities as well in recent days.
The government continued to remain silent and mostly out of sight, giving the streets over to the protesters with virtually no uniformed security presence in evidence.
For all the energy and jubilation of the crowds, the country formerly known as Burma seemed to be holding its breath. As the demonstrations expanded from political dissidents a month ago to Buddhist monks last week to the broad cross-section of the public that filled the streets today, the government’s options seemed to be narrowing.
The demonstrations proceeded under the shadow of the last major nationwide convulsion, in 1988, when even larger pro-democracy protests were crushed by the military at the cost of some 3,000 lives.
“We are in uncharted territory,” said the British ambassador to Myanmar, Mark Canning, speaking by telephone from Yangon after observing the crowds today.
“These demonstrations seem to be steadily picking up momentum,” he said. “They are widely spread geographically. They are quite well organized, they are stimulated by genuine economic hardship and they are being done in a peaceful but very effective fashion.”
One possible outcome is that the demonstrations could simply run out of steam. But their rapid growth and the pent-up grievances that are driving them make that seem unlikely. With each day, the size of the crowds seems to attract even more participants.
Another possibility is the opening of some form of compromise or dialogue between the government and its opponents. But that is an option the country’s military rulers have never embraced.
Instead, they have jailed their political opponents, held the pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi under house arrest and rejected the demands of the country’s marginalized ethnic minorities...
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read more here. (use our login: GREENFERTILITY for username and password/soylent green is the answer to thte secret question)
Read more about the courageous Daw Aung San Suu Kyi here (she won the Nobel Peace Prize...anyone remember? Hello?)
These chocolates are nothing but cacao beans and sugar. I was a little apprehensive what the taste/texture would be like without the cocoa butter and soy lechithin...but the quality of the cacao beans they use, sourced from places lik Venezuela, the Ivory Coast (my favorite!), Madagascar, Ghana is so high that blending it with organic beet sugar grown in Sweden imparts a pure, clean sweetness that complements, rather than interferes with the nuanced flavors of the beans.
Now that's chocolate. The line ranges from 65 - 91% cacao content, and offers a true chocolate experience, rich in both satisfying flavor and antioxidants. Theo Origin Bars are vegan and soy-free and the company is committed to supporting small farmers.
I have the utmost respect for Chinese culture, esp. as that's where Korea gets a lot of its culture, including its Eastern medicine practice.
However, there are a lot of things about modern China that scare me, not least the environmental problems wrought by a rapidly industrializing country driven by economic concerns. But also, I was walking by a Falun Gong protest on campus and in NYC and picked up their literature. I practice chi gong myself (a generic term for exercises that move around your chi, or "spirit") and I can't see what the Falun Gong adherents are doing that's so threatening except that they are devoting themselves wholeheartedly and peacefully to a practice they believe in.
I think it behooves us to look into this issue a little more closely.
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On August 3, Congressman Dana Rohrabacher, the Ranking Member on the U.S. House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on International Organizations, Human Rights and Oversight, introduced a House Resolution to boycott the 2008 Summer Olympic Games in Beijing.
He explained, "The Olympics represent the noblest elements of humanity and the Chinese regime represents the opposite. The Olympic torch is supposed to be a beacon of light shining upon mankind's higher aspirations in the world and it's a travesty to have that torch hosted by a regime that is the world's worst human rights abuser."
Because she practiced Falun Gong, Ms. Wei Fengju was tortured to near death in the Heizuizi Forced labor Camp. Unable to recover, she passed away on July 11, 2007.
On March 28, 2007, actress Mia Farrow, a good-will ambassador for the United Nations Children's Fund, drew the world's attention to the Beijing Olympics when she and her son Ronan wrote an op-ed article for the Wall Street Journal [1]. In the article, Farrow launched a campaign to label the 2008 Olympics the "Genocide Olympics." Her forthright candor gave voice to the world's awakening shock at Communist China's ever-burgeoning atrocities, its total disregard for human values and its severe human rights violations.
Not only is China bankrolling Darfur's Genocide [2]; for more than eight years it has sought to eliminate Falun Gong, which in 1999 had an estimated 70 million practitioners in China; it has likewise abused democracy activists, lawyers, human rights defenders, religious leaders, journalists, trade unionists, Tibetan Buddhists, Uighurs, ''unofficial'' church members, and political dissidents.
---------------------------------------------- read more here.
Let's all send regular reader Ali, who always takes the time to write really good comments, a big congrats, as she had the cutest baby daughter, cute as a new penny.
Ali also did a great job listening to herself and her mommy wisdom, took great care of herself with the food, the acupuncture, etc., and it paid off. Great role model!
"The easiest and most comprehensive way for you to find wholesome, fresh, sustainable food in the US and Canada. Find food in your neighborhood and when you travel that is healthful, humane, better for the environment, and that supports family farmers."
Check it out. Good for your fertility, good for the earth's. Click here.
There is a growing movement in Korea to encourage domestic, instead of foreign, adoption. This could be a welcome trend. I still think the best, most important hting to be done is to help birthmothers who WANT to keep their children to give them the cultural and financial supports so they can raise them on their own.
About 60 percent of all adoptions were made domestically in the first half of this year, making it the first time for them to surpass overseas adoptions.
The Health and Welfare Ministry reported Thursday that 59.2 percent of adoptions, or 729 of 1,223 children in the January-June period, were by domestic couples, far higher than the 41percent to 42 percent average over the past five years.
A ministry spokesman said the ``increase'' is largely attributed to a new law prioritizing domestic adoption to overseas adoption _ rather than changing attitudes towards adoption _ as well as tax incentives and campaigns to encourage domestic adoptions.
But it may take time to assess the full impact of the new law on adoption patterns, a ministry spokesman said.
Over 2,000 Korean children have been adopted by foreign families every year, but a fall in these adoptions has contributed to an overall decrease in total adoptions.
As a result, more children are now housed at childcare centers or with temporary families awaiting adoption.
The Overseas Korean Foundation estimated a total of 157,145 Korean children have been adopted by foreign couples over the past 50 years, the majority being from the U.S., followed by France, Sweden and Denmark.
In 2005, Korea was rated the fourth biggest source for overseas adoptions, behind China, Russia and Guatemala _ 2,101 Korean children were adopted by foreign couples in 2005.
The government has been making efforts to shake off the country's reputation as a ``baby-exporting'
' nation but any fruitful results have yet to be observed.
Of course this study is coming out of the UK...I can't believe the American pediatricians are all worried that not letting kids have food w/toxic chemicals might be bad for their social lives! Geez! Can we get a grip, here? Plus, I love that "many parents have suspected"--no one ever wants to listen to the parents! ------------------------
NYT: Some Food Additives Raise Hyperactivity, Study Finds
Common food additives and colorings can increase hyperactive behavior in a broad range of children, a study being released today found.
It was the first time researchers conclusively and scientifically confirmed a link that had long been suspected by many parents. Numerous support groups for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder have for years recommended removing such ingredients from diets, although experts have continued to debate the evidence.
But the new, carefully controlled study shows that some artificial additives increase hyperactivity and decrease attention span in a wide range of children, not just those for whom overactivity has been diagnosed as a learning problem.
The new research, which was financed by Britain’s Food Standards Agency and published online by the British medical journal The Lancet, presents regulators with a number of issues: Should foods containing preservatives and artificial colors carry warning labels? Should some additives be prohibited entirely? Should school cafeterias remove foods with additives?
After all, the researchers note that overactivity makes learning more difficult for children.
“A mix of additives commonly found in children’s foods increases the mean level of hyperactivity,” wrote the researchers, led by Jim Stevenson, a professor of psychology at the University of Southampton. “The finding lends strong support for the case that food additives exacerbate hyperactive behaviors (inattention, impulsivity and overactivity) at least into middle childhood.”
In response to the study, the Food Standards Agency advised parents to monitor their children’s activity and, if they noted a marked change with food containing additives, to adjust their diets accordingly, eliminating artificial colors and preservatives.
But Professor Stevenson said it was premature to go further. “We’ve set up an issue that needs more exploration,” he said in a telephone interview.
In response to the study, some pediatricians cautioned that a diet without artificial colors and preservatives might cause other problems for children.
“Even if it shows some increase in hyperactivity, is it clinically significant and does it impact the child’s life?” said Dr. Thomas Spencer, a specialist in Pediatric Psychopharmacology at Massachusetts General Hospital.
“Is it powerful enough that you want to ostracize your kid? It is very socially impacting if children can’t eat the things that their friends do.”
Still, Dr. Spencer called the advice of the British food agency “sensible,” noting that some children may be “supersensitive to additives” just as some people are more sensitive to caffeine.
The Lancet study focused on a variety of food colorings and on sodium benzoate, a common preservative. The researchers note that removing this preservative from food could cause problems in itself by increasing spoilage. In the six-week trial, researchers gave a randomly selected group of several hundred 3-year-olds and of 8- and 9-year-olds drinks with additives — colors and sodium benzoate — that mimicked the mix in children’s drinks that are commercially available. The dose of additives consumed was equivalent to that in one or two servings of candy a day, the researchers said. Their diet was otherwise controlled to avoid other sources of the additives.
A control group was given an additive-free placebo drink that looked and tasted the same.
All of the children were evaluated for inattention and hyperactivity by parents, teachers (for school-age children) and through a computer test. Neither the researchers nor the subject knew which drink any of the children had consumed.
The researchers discovered that children in both age groups were significantly more hyperactive and that they had shorter attention spans if they had consumed the drink containing the additives. The study did not try to link specific consumption with specific behaviors. The study’s authors noted that other research suggested that the hyperactivity could increase in as little as an hour after artificial additives were consumed.
The Lancet study could not determine which of the additives caused the poor performances because all the children received a mix. “This was a very complicated study, and it will take an even more complicated study to figure out which components caused the effect,” Professor Stevenson said.
Washington Post Staff Writers Friday, August 31, 2007; Page A01
In an attempt to raise the nation's historically low rate of breast-feeding, federal health officials commissioned an attention-grabbing advertising campaign a few years ago to convince mothers that their babies faced real health risks if they did not breast-feed. It featured striking photos of insulin syringes and asthma inhalers topped with rubber nipples.
Plans to run these blunt ads infuriated the politically powerful infant formula industry, which hired a former chairman of the Republican National Committee and a former top regulatory official to lobby the Health and Human Services Department. Not long afterward, department political appointees toned down the campaign.
The ads ran instead with more friendly images of dandelions and cherry-topped ice cream scoops...
Hm, this should be painfully obvious that from a basic evolutionary point of view, it benefits the organism to not get pregnant in times of stress (famine, war, etc.) and that our chronic-stress environment is probably making people less fertile...not to mention that IVF (takes out the stress-relieving act of making love, for one) is in itself a cause for stress.
I.e., turns the ol' cycle into a vicious cycle.
Still, it's nice to hear an "official" "scientific" person bringing this up (from the New York Times):
A Low-Tech Approach to Fertility: Just Relax
By RANDI HUTTER EPSTEIN, M.D.
Published: September 4, 2007
Erik S. Lesser for The New York Times
Dr. Sarah L. Berga has devoted her career to one of the most hotly debated subjects in the fertility business: getting pregnant without costly drugs. She is one of a handful of physician-scientists exploring how chronic stress may keep some women from ovulating and how relaxation techniques may help.
More precisely, these researchers are examining how chronic stress alters brain signals to the hypothalamus, the walnut-size organ that serves as the master of ceremonies overseeing the delicately timed hormonal dance. Or as Dr. Berga puts it, she explores “how the hypothalamus talks to the pituitary that in turns talks to the ovary.”
Her research suggests that a cascade of events, beginning with stress, leads to reduced levels of two hormones crucial for ovulation. And her published studies, small but scrupulous, are starting to convince her critics.
In a study of 16 women reported in 2003 in the journal Fertility and Sterility, Dr. Berga showed that ovulation was restored in 7 of 8 women who underwent cognitive behavioral therapy, compared with 2 of 8 who did not get therapy. In 2006, in The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism, she reported that women who did not ovulate had excessive levels of cortisol, a stress hormone, in the brain fluid.
Dr. Berga spoke recently about her research from her office at Emory University.
Q.You’ve studied not only people but also animals. What did those studies tell you about stress?
A. Before we did the 16-woman study, we studied monkeys. We found that when we stressed monkeys alone, 10 percent stopped menstruating temporarily. When we added exercise and limited their food intake, again about 10 percent stopped menstruating temporarily. But when we combined stress, exercise, and cut down on food, 75 percent became amenorrheic.
Q.Then you did a similar study in which two groups of women — one group with normal ovulation, the other group with stress-related amenorrhea — exercised almost to their full potential. What did you find?
A. We saw that if you are stressed when you start exercise, your body reacts differently than if you are not chronically stressed and exercise. Not only does it appear that exercise was more stressful for already stressed women, but certainly exercise did not help them lower their stress hormones, which is of course one reason people take up exercising.
Q. Today, you head a department at a prestigious university, which must help you promote your message. How was your research received initially?
A. With great skepticism. There are definitely more people now who endorse our work but there is certainly a group that doesn’t want to believe it. Chronic stress, whether emotional or physical, taxes the body. We can accept that stress is linked to heart disease, but not to fertility.
Q. Are you saying that a woman who may have had a stressful month at work is hurting her fertility? Isn’t life without stress impossible?
A. We are talking about chronic stress related to behavior or personality. People are designed to endure acute stress. That is a part of life. I am telling women, and men, that it is important to find a balance and learn to cope with their stress.
Q. Some of your work focuses on undereaters and overexercisers. Isn’t it the nutritional state that is hurting the women, not their mental state?
A. Anorexia or excessive exercise can certainly make women stop menstruating. But I believe that many of these women undertake exercise or limit food intake to deal with stress. I believe that treating the underlying stress is more likely to encourage women to relax, eat healthier and exercise healthier rather than just telling women to change their diet and exercise regime.
Q. Do you hope that your research will change the way fertility treatment is administered? How would you want to see it change?
A. Ideally, it would be good for doctors and patients to understand the link between stress and fertility so that they would know when to offer some sort of intervention. For instance, cognitive behavioral therapy is a relatively simple and inexpensive 16-week program that sometimes removes the need for expensive and risky infertility drugs and procedures.
Q. It sounds as if you’re against fertility drugs, which are a necessary component of in vitro fertilization.
A. We do I.V.F. in this department. I like to think we offer the least technology necessary to get the job done. I do think that with a certain population of women — women who may be infertile due to stress — benefit the least from I.V.F. Others absolutely need these drugs and procedures. I also believe that it is imperative that doctors communicate the risks of the drugs and help patients understand when they are and are not necessary.
Q. You have not studied the fetus as much as female hormones, but do you believe that stress hurts the fetus?
A. I do believe stress on the mother may imprint the fetal genome forever. There is some pretty solid animal research, done by other researchers, and some highly suggestive human studies. Other researchers have shown that stress decreases thyroxine levels, which controls energy availability. The mother is the sole source of thyroxine for the fetus during the first trimester of pregnancy and the major source of thyroxine for the second two trimesters. And thyroxine is absolutely vital for appropriate fetal brain development. I think doctors should tell women that if the maternal component is stressed, the fetal component will also be exposed to maternal stress hormones.
Q. In the 1940s, Freudian analysts told infertile women that lurking antimaternal thoughts made them sterile. Feminists later attacked this theory. Do you think of yourself as a continuum of this practice, or do you feel your ideas are completely different?
A. Back then they did not know the mechanisms and they intuited relationships, but they were not all wrong. They were closer to the truth than we’d like to believe. The truth is that if you are not in harmony with yourself and your culture, you are stressed. That is not totally different from Freud.
Q. Do you insist all of your patients have cognitive behavioral therapy before drug therapy?
A. I try to come at it from the perspective of suggestion. I went into women’s health to protect women’s autonomy, so the last thing I would want to do is to make a decision for my patients without their input. At the end of the day, it’s the couple who is trying to get pregnant who bears the most immediate consequences.
Nettles are a rich source of many trace minerals and they are "famous" for helping fertility of both men and women. When I was at my writers' colony, I got out a lot and harvested fresh nettles and dried them by my woodstove and drink it as a rich tea.
An article from the Idaho Observer says,
Nettles are used to increase fertility in both men and women. Due to its high calcium content, the tea is specific for easing leg cramps and other muscles spasms, and also diminishes pain during and after birth.
It does a lot of other stuff that you can read about here.
Most people need gloves to harvest them, by the way. And only use them before they flower; once they go to seed they are hard on the kidneys. Also, many people consider them to be a weed, so be careful where you get them and make sure they aren't being sprayed with pesticide! You can often also buy nettle seeds and grow your own.
Nettles also helped me get rid of my seasonal allergies. Read here.
This is such a cool video of the moving of an entire building/old house on campus to a new location (it's possible one of the buglike dots you see moving may be Yours Truly):
This is such an eeeek! My New York City street kitty became suddenly hyperthyroid when we moved to Providence...and we did buy some new furniture, mattresses, sofa, etc. I can't help but wonder...
Chemical-Laden Household Dust May Pose Thyroid Danger to Cats
Flame-retardant chemicals that are added to everything from carpeting to furniture may be responsible for a dramatic increase in hyperthyroidism in cats, according to an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) study published August 15, 2007.
The chemicals, known as polybrominated diphenyl ethers or PBDEs, were introduced around 30 years ago****, for use in households as a flame retardant. This coincides with the increasing incidence of overactive thyroid disease in cats. Hyperthyroidism was rare several decades ago, and is now one of the leading causes of death in pet cats. It’s known that key risk factors for feline hyperthyroidism are for indoor cats and those who eat canned foods....
They're in our homes. They're sleeping on our mattresses and furniture." Dye believes that house cats are ingesting the PBDEs, which are present in household dust, as they carefully groom themselves.
Linda Birnbaum, director of the Experimental Toxicology Division at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, told HealthDay news, "Cats are very highly exposed to these chemicals, and the levels in cats are higher than the levels in people. But cats may be a good indicator of indoor exposure to humans.”
In the study, researchers compared levels of PBDE in healthy cats and cats with hyperthyroidism, and found that the cats with an overactive thyroid had PBDE levels 20 to 100 times higher than the average adult human in the United States. All the cats had detectable levels of PBDEs, but the highest levels were seen in cats with hyperthyroidism.
The researchers also found that the PBDE content of certain canned cat foods –- in particular, seafood flavors like salmon and whitefish –- is substantially higher than dry or non-seafood canned cat food.
Symptoms of hyperthyroidism in cats include hunger, increased appetite, weight loss, increased thirst, vomiting, diarrhea, irritability, and vocalizing.
According to Dye, “Our results showed that cats are being consistently exposed to PBDE. Because they are endocrine-disrupting agents, cats may well be at increased risk for developing thyroid effects.”
According to Dye, cats and humans are the only mammals with high incidences of hyperthyroidism. The paper suggests that cats are, in a way, the canaries in the coal mine, suggesting a possible thyroid risk of PBDEs to humans. While a causal link between the PBDEs and feline thyroid problems has not been proven, more research will be done to investigate. If the relationship is proven, then similar research on the effects of PBDEs on humans will be conducted.
*** These chemicals--ahem--have been banned in Europe for quite a while, BTW. Since we've gotten wise to this, when we do purchasae furniture, we go to IKEA because it's made to those European standards. WHY do we keep insisting on poisoning ourselves????
Tom Elko sent me this post from Skybluewaters.com, a great regional Minnesota environmental site. I *do* have a friend who killed her birds by heating (NOT overheating, even) Teflon. Here's what it may do to babies:
Babies exposed in the womb to chemicals used in non-stick cookware and other products may be born slightly smaller than other infants, two new studies report.
Earlier tests on animals have linked two chemicals, perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS) and perfluorooctanoate (PFOA), to cancer and developmental problems.
Studies also show that the chemicals can remain in the environment — and in the body — for many years.
Scientists say the studies, both of which are published in Environmental Health Perspectives, are significant because they measure the effects of lower levels in humans.
In an article published online Aug. 16, researchers tested blood from 1,400 pregnant women in a Danish birth registry. Babies of women with high PFOA levels were on average 4 ounces lighter than those born to mothers with low levels, the study reports. The study was paid for by the International Epidemiology Institute, which receives support from chemical manufacturer 3M.
On Wednesday, a public records disclosure form revealed that 3M hired lobbying firm McKenna Long & Aldridge LLP. The Associated Press reported that the “firm will lobby on health-related issues and policies at the Department of Health and Human Services.”
U.S. health and safety officials have found yet another brilliant way to distract the public from realizing just how dangerous U.S.-made food and drug products are: Blame China! Lately, we've seen China blamed for everything from toxic toothpaste, deadly dog food, contaminated ginger and now lead-based paints in Mattel toys.
Of course, all the accusations are true. China's food and herbal products are so routinely contaminated with pesticides and heavy metals that high-quality supplement formulators in the United States refuse to buy products from China anymore. But the really clever part in all this is that blaming China prevents people from paying attention to the dangerous ingredients openly allowed in the U.S. food supply by the FDA.
Specifically, the FDA currently allows known cancer-causing chemicals to be widely used in both foods and drugs. Sodium nitrite, for example, has been irrefutably shown to cause pancreatic cancer, colon cancer, leukemia and brain tumors in children, and yet the FDA looks the other way while processed meat manufacturers continue to add sodium nitrite to meat products sold throughout the country....
The USDA, meanwhile, openly allows U.S. farmers to inject cattle with hormones and antibiotics that are banned in most other countries, and the agency even has an open policy of allowing U.S. cattle to be fed chicken poop, roadkill, euthanized pets, and until recently, brain and spinal fluids from other dead, diseased cows. So what happens when consumers eating this stuff suffer bizarre neurological disorders like the human form of mad cow disease? Blame China!
To continue our improptu Kiddie Health Week, if you have kids or are planning to have them (hello, Ali!), watch out! Even if you keep your kiddies away from McDonald's, they can still develop a "taste" for it: ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- In test of identical foods, kids said even carrots labeled by chain were best
(AP) CHICAGO - Anything made by McDonald’s tastes better, preschoolers said in a study that powerfully demonstrates how advertising can trick the taste buds of young children.
Even carrots, milk and apple juice tasted better to the kids when they were wrapped in the familiar packaging of the Golden Arches.
The study had youngsters sample identical McDonald’s foods in name-brand and unmarked wrappers. The unmarked foods always lost the taste test. “You see a McDonald’s label and kids start salivating,” said Diane Levin, a childhood development specialist who campaigns against advertising to kids. She had no role in the research. Levin said it was “the first study I know of that has shown so simply and clearly what’s going on with (marketing to) young children.”
Study author Dr. Tom Robinson said the kids’ perception of taste was “physically altered by the branding.” The Stanford University researcher said it was remarkable how children so young were already so influenced by advertising.
The study involved 63 low-income children ages 3 to 5 from Head Start centers in San Mateo County, Calif. Robinson believes the results would be similar for children from wealthier families.
The research, appearing in August’s Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, was funded by Stanford and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The study will likely stir more debate over the movement to restrict ads to kids. It comes less than a month after 11 major food and drink companies, including McDonald’s, announced new curbs on marketing to children under 12.
McDonald’s says the only Happy Meals it will promote to young children will contain fruit and have fewer calories and less fat.
“This is an important subject and McDonald’s has been actively addressing it for quite some time,” said company spokesman Walt Riker. “We’ve always wanted to be part of the solution and we are providing solutions.”
But Dr. Victor Strasburger, an author of an American Academy of Pediatrics policy urging limits on marketing to children, said the study shows too little is being done.
“It’s an amazing study and it’s very sad,” Strasburger said.
“Advertisers have tried to do exactly what this study is talking about to brand younger and younger children, to instill in them an almost obsessional desire for a particular brand-name product,” he said.
Just two of the 63 children studied said they’d never eaten at McDonald’s, and about one-third ate there at least weekly. Most recognized the McDonald’s logo but it was mentioned to those who didn’t.
The study included three McDonald’s menu items hamburgers, chicken nuggets and french fries and store-bought milk or juice and carrots. Children got two identical samples of each food on a tray, one in McDonald’s wrappers or cups and the other in plain, unmarked packaging. The kids were asked if they tasted the same or if one was better. (Some children didn’t taste all the foods.)
French fries were favorites McDonald’s-labeled samples were the clear favorites. French fries were the biggest winner; almost 77 percent said the labeled fries tasted best while only 13 percent preferred the others.
Fifty-four percent preferred McDonald’s-wrapped carrots versus 23 percent who liked the plain-wrapped sample.
The only results not statistically clear-cut involved the hamburgers, with 29 kids choosing McDonald’s-wrapped burgers and 22 choosing the unmarked ones.
Fewer than one-fourth of the children said both samples of all foods tasted the same.
Pradeep Chintagunta, a University of Chicago marketing professor, said a fairer comparison might have gauged kids’ preferences for the McDonald’s label versus another familiar brand, such as Mickey Mouse.
“I don’t think you can necessarily hold this against” McDonald’s, he said, since the goal of marketing is to build familiarity and sell products.
He noted that parents play a strong role in controlling food choices for children so young.
But Robinson argued that because young children are unaware of the persuasive intent of marketing, “it is an unfair playing field.”
While we're at it...just in case the kids somehow escaped getting neurotoxins everywhere else, they can get them at school! ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From Treehugger (via Newswise)
Picture an FBI agent on the trail of poisons in America’s schools, and that’s what you’ve got when you take a look at Marc Lane, an entomologist and professor at Indiana University’s School of Public and Environmental Affairs. He says that pesticides in schools are a “pervasive, unnecessary health hazard”. He goes on to point out that “Over 80 percent of schools in America are applying pesticides on a regular basis, whether they have a pest problem or not," he said. "This is tragic not only because of the well-documented link between pesticides and health problems in children, such as asthma and neurological disorders, but also because pesticides generally do not work in a preventive manner in the school environment. Applying pesticides does not prevent pests from coming in, so using them when pests are not present does nothing other than expose children and staff to toxic chemicals."
Now according to Lame the most widely used insecticides are nerve poisons, which cause nerves to fire in an uncontrolled manner and disrupt endocrine systems. And it’s well documented that prolonged exposure can result in similar effects on humans, with results ranging from vomiting to severe breathing problems… But some further research indicates these insecticides may also play a role in causing issues such as ADHD, autism, and even infertility. ...
Environmental hazards are killing four million children every year. The World Health Organisation claims that problems such as polluted air and water are causing poisonings, acute respiratory infections, diarrhoea diseases and malaria due to thriving mosquito populations in dirty water.
Up to 30% of disease in children can be attributed to environmental factors. "This is something that intuitively we have always recognized, but we never put a number to it," said WHO expert, Jenny Pronczuk.
Children don't even have to come into contact with harmful chemicals during their life for them to have an impact on their health. Any exposure that the mother recieves whilst pregnant can also be passed on, and the effects of that exposure may only emerge in adolescence. Pronczuk said, "For example if you look at lead exposure, the effect will be different if the child was exposed in utero because the lead of the mother goes into the bones of the child."
The fact that this report talks about the effects on children obviously makes for a more emotionally affecting story, and the vastness of the number affected is hard to comprehend. It’s important though, that the WHO look into these issues, because we could be walking into huge medical problems in the future. Our generation may be the first in history that becomes less healthy than the previous. The negative effects of our environment have increased faster than medical science.
From the Guttmacher Institute on IUDs (intrauterine devices--they're put in the uterine lining to "irritate" it to prevent implantation of an embryo):
A First Pregnancy May Be Difficult to Achieve After Long-Term Use of an IUD
Women who have never given birth and have used an IUD for an extended period of time face decreased fertility when they try to conceive, according to a prospective study conducted in England and Scotland.1 Thirty-nine percent of nulliparous women who discontinued IUD use to become pregnant gave birth within 12 months, compared with 54% of those who stopped using a barrier method; the proportion was significantly lower among women who had used an IUD for 78 months or more (28%) than for those who had used one for a shorter period (45%). The association between extended IUD use and decreased fertility remained after other factors that affect fertility were taken into account.
Read more here. One might want to consider the long-term effects of birth control before choosing. Hormones, uterine irritation...even spermicides like Nonoxyl-9 may have weird biological effects.
Here's a petition about the Korean hostages that I just received from my buddy Max Han at NYseoul.com. I'm appalled at how quickly this issue has been dropped in the American media when all these people's lives are at stake at least in part because of the mess we made in the Middle East (don't forget that our involvement there against the Soviets helped allow the Taliban to become ascendant in the first place!). Please consider signing it:
Taliban leaders: free the hostages
The Afghanistan hostage situation involving the South Korean aid workers being held by the Taliban, is spiralling out of control. If any more are killed, it could force aid agencies to pull out of Afghanistan -- denying millions of Afghanis the help they need after years of war.
The Taliban are guided by the Afghan Pashtunwali code, a principle that requires “hospitality to all, especially guests and strangers” – and this kidnapping is a clear violation of the code, offending te weary people of Afghanistan on whom they depend. So it’s time for the global community to stand with Afghanis and South Koreans, demand that the Taliban to honour their code and release the rest of the hostages. Sign the petition NOW --
To the Taliban leaders,
Please honour the code of the Pashtun people, respect aid workers as guests in Afghanistan and release all hostages unharmed.
Is this what the "free market" (i.e, profit at all costs) has wrought? That you're getting tons of cheap, inflammatory Omega 6s ( and God knows what else) in what you thought was olive oil?? From the New Yorker:
On August 10, 1991, a rusty tanker called the Mazal II docked at the industrial port of Ordu, in Turkey, and pumped twenty-two hundred tons of hazelnut oil into its hold. The ship then embarked on a meandering voyage through the Mediterranean and the North Sea. By September 21st, when the Mazal II reached Barletta, a port in Puglia, in southern Italy, its cargo had become, on the ship’s official documents, Greek olive oil. It slipped through customs, possibly with the connivance of an official, was piped into tanker trucks, and was delivered to the refinery of Riolio, an Italian olive-oil producer based in Barletta. There it was sold—in some instances blended with real olive oil—to Riolio customers...
In 1997 and 1998, olive oil was the most adulterated agricultural product in the European Union, prompting the E.U.’s anti-fraud office to establish an olive-oil task force. (“Profits were comparable to cocaine trafficking, with none of the risks,” one investigator told me.)...
The Hello Kitty cartoon character is known across Asia
Police chiefs in the Thai capital, Bangkok, have come up with a new way of punishing officers who break the rules - an eye-catching Hello Kitty armband.
The armband is large, bright pink and has a Hello Kitty motif with two hearts embroidered on it.
From today, officers who are late, park in the wrong place or commit other minor transgressions will have to wear it for several days.
The armband is designed to shame the wearer, police officials said.
"This is to help build discipline. We should not let small offences go unnoticed," Police Colonel Pongpat Chayapan told Reuters news agency.
"Guilty officers will be made to wear the armbands in the office for a few days, with instructions not to disclose their offences. Let people guess what they have done," he said.
"The fight to ban genetically modified foods has won more converts -- some employees of Monsanto the company that is doing the most to promote GM products.
The Independent newspaper reports that there is a notice in the cafeteria of the Monsanto pharmaceutical factory is High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, advising customers 'as far as practicable, GM soya and maize (has been removed) from all food products served in our restaurant. We have taken the steps to ensure that you, the customer, can feel confident in the food we serve.'
The notice was posted by the Sutcliffe Catering Group.
Monsanto confirms the authenticity of the notice, but company spokesman Tony Coombes says the only reason for the GM-free foods is because the company 'believes in choice.'
So why is it lobbying so hard (and so far successfully) that GMO products must not be labeled as such? We like choice, too!
Surgery is one of the major advances in modern medical technology. And, like with any new technology, it has a tendency to be over- and mis-used.
I know someone who had one of those benign cysts on her fingers (one on each hand), and I tried to get her to either leave 'em alone (annoying but not terribly painful or obstrusive) or smash 'em with a large book like a family Bible, as it's even called a "Bible cyst" in honor of this age-old folk remedy. But her surgeon talked her into surgery; her one concession to me was that although he wanted to do both cysts at the same time, she had him only do one.
The conclusion? The pain, swelling, and weird scar tissue far exceeds what she had originally, and she had to get therapy so her finger doesn't freeze in a weird position. She's regretful of the time lost/pain and suffering but sooooo glad she didn't have the other one done. From CNN.com/Health Mag:
"The fact is, no matter how talented the surgeon, the body doesn't much care about the doc's credentials. Surgery is a trauma, and the body responds as such -- with major blood loss and swelling, and all manner of nerve and pain signals that can stick around sometimes for months."
If you derive benefit, then it's a no harm, no risk situation 
Tom Elko sent me this post from 
