Aspartame may cause cancer

I already don't trust aspartame (found in EQUAL, yogurts, a bunch of "no-sugar" stuff, and in soft drinks) because Donald Rumsfeld used to be the CEO of Searle, the company that makes it. In fact, an article in Vanity Fair by Rich Cohen, which appears in the December 2005 Vanity Fair, Rumsfeld appears to have been the driving force behind FDA approval of aspartame. The FDA was reluctant to approve aspartame--because it seemed to be causing seizures in rats and people--but when Rumsfeld started working for the Reagan Administration, everything fell into place for the sugar substitute:

For two decades, aspartame had failed to win approval. Then Ronald Reagan was elected president, and Donald Rumsfeld, while keeping his position at Searle, worked on the president-elect's interim foreign-policy team. Soon after Reagan was inaugurated, Searle re-applied for approval of aspartame. Within a few months, Reagan had named a new head of the FDA and the chemical got the green light. Rumsfeld had correctly recognized that Searle's problem was not scientific; it was political.

If that ain't enough to get you to drop your Diet Coke, check this out from NewsTarget:

A new study on aspartame conducted by the Ramazzini Foundation reveals that aspartame causes a dose-dependent increase in cancers (lymphomas, leukemias and breast cancers) when consumed at levels approaching those consumed by humans in diet soft drinks. Specifically, the study shows (reprinted from the abstract):

a) a significant dose-related increase of malignant tumor-bearing animals in males, in particular in the group treated at 2000 ppm; b) a significant increase of the incidence in lymphomas/leukemias in males treated at 2000 ppm and a significant dose-related increase of the incidence of lymphomas/leukemias in females, in particular in the group treated at 2000 ppm; c) a significant dose-related increase of the incidence of mammary cancer in females, in particular in the group treated at 2000 ppm. Conclusions. The results of this carcinogenicity bioassay not only confirm, but also reinforce the first experimental demonstration of [aspartame's] multipotential carcinogenicity at a dose level close to the acceptable daily intake (ADI) for humans. Furthermore, the study demonstrates that when lifespan exposure to [aspartame] begins during fetal life, its carcinogenic effects are increased.

The study, entitled "Lifespan Exposure to Low Doses of Aspartame Beginning During Prenatal Life Increases Cancer Effects in Rats" has been accepted for publication in the peer-reviewed journal Environmental Health Perspectives (EHP), the most widely-read environmental science journal in the world.

If you're looking for weight loss (and there's no studies showing diet drinks do this) there's a better solution than cancer and/or imperiling the next generation (p.s. why doesn't the Pro-life movement jump on this?). Try some fresh water and lemon!

read more here.

Dr. Beer's Work Continues...

(Julia and her much wanted son Thomas, credit: UK Guardian)

Today, there's a great article in the UK Guardian about the work of Dr. Alan Beer, whose work is being continued by Dr. Raphael Stricker. I'd been following Dr. Beer's protocol originally NOT for fertility but to help calm my disordered immune system. As you know I'm NOT a fan of pharmaceuticals, but his judicious use of them really helped me feel better, and so we're continuing with the clinic for fertility help. The role of the immune system (including thyroid!) is woefully understudied.

For anyone who has trouble getting pregnant, trouble staying pregnant, or has secondary infertility (esp. if you already know you have any autoimmune disorders--you or in your family--such as arthritis, thyroid, diabetes, lupus, etc)., I'd recommend a look at Dr. Beer's Book (see below).

[And, as always, I remind you, I am NOT a medical professional. Please make all decisions in conjunction with your doctor]


After three failed attempts at IVF, Julia Kantecki began to lose hope that she and her husband Robert would ever conceive a child.

"My baby dream was slipping away. I was 40 and fearful of shrivelling into menopause and a childless future," says Julia, 45, a former marketing director.

Robert, 56, had had a vasectomy 20 years earlier and IVF was the couple's only chance of having a child together.

Since her mother had had five children without a problem, Julia, who lived in Doncaster at the time, assumed everything would go smoothly. So it came as an enormous disappointment when she failed to become pregnant.

The worst part was that the IVF doctors couldn't offer any definitive explanation for the failure. But her experience is far from unusual - although many women assume that the wonders of modern medicine mean they will conceive easily with IVF, in fact the success rate is around 20 per cent.

Julia's doctors simply suggested she might get lucky if she kept trying. She did keep trying, twice over - but without any luck.

Then, like many women who have difficulty conceiving, Julia entered a cycle of self-blame, sadness and loss of hope.

"I kept wondering whether I'd done something to kill our future babies," she says.

"Was it because I got stressed, or drank that glass of wine?"

Conventional medicine holds that IVF failure and miscarriage are the result of hormonal problems, abnormalities of the uterus, genetically defective embryos or ageing eggs.

But doctors from the Alan E Beer Center for Reproductive Immunology, in San Francisco, believe they may be caused by a woman's immune system going into overdrive and wrongly attacking her embryos as if they were foreign bodies.

The Beer Center, which has treated more than 7,000 couples for fertility-related immune problems, claims a pregnancy success rate of 85 per cent within three natural cycles or IVF attempts.

While on holiday with her mother, Julia visited a clinic run by Dr Beer.

She was told that three IVF failures indicated possible immune problems. Blood test results showed that Julia had abnormally high levels of natural "killer" (NK) cells - thought to help keep the body from developing cancer - and harmful antibodies that doctors at the clinic said were attacking her embryos.

"They told me that my body was treating pregnancy as if it was dealing with a cancer and killing my babies before they'd had time to implant in my uterus properly," says Julia.

An added complication was an inherited clotting disorder making her susceptible to developing blood clots in the placenta, which could also endanger her embryos.

The good news, one of the nurses told her, was that they knew exactly how to treat these conditions. With the right medications, she stood an 80 per cent chance of having a baby.

It was in the Eighties that Alan Beer, an academic who had trained in immunology and obstetrics, began to suspect that NK cells produced by an over-active immune system could damage embryos and cause implantation failure.

He tested women who were miscarrying and suffering IVF failure and found that they had abnormally high levels of NK cells.

These, he believed, could attack both the developing embryo and hormones essential to maintain pregnancy.

"When women tell me they're always healthy and never get infections, alarm bells start ringing since it suggests their immune systems are working overtime," says Dr Raphael Stricker, who took over as medical director of the Beer Center after the death of Dr Beer last year.

The theory is that this can be redressed artificially, with drugs.

"Immune therapy for reproductive failure is a temporary measure.

"It's designed to replicate the natural suppression of the immune system at the very beginning of a normal pregnancy," explains Dr Stricker.

"The drugs involved are taken for the least amount of time and prescribed at the lowest doses possible."

For Julia, the Beer Center's theories were a revelation.

"I was shocked that my body might be such a non-baby friendly environment," she says. "Symptoms like the mild arthritis I had in my fingers, which is also apparently an immune problem, now made sense.

"It all sounded too good to be true - but it was worth a try."

She returned home with her first prescription for the drugs, but her GP dismissed the treatment as "unorthodox"...

However, the consultant she saw at Doncaster Royal Infirmary was, says Julia, more "open-minded" and agreed to prescribe the drugs privately...


From the happy picture, you can see "the rest is history."

Read the rest here.

Read the tributes and comments passing internet surfers have left on GreenFertility regarding dear Dr. Beer here.

Check out Dr. Beer's (with Julie Kantecki and Jane Reed) book, Is Your Body Baby Friendly?

Autism on trial

This is such a thoughtful blog entry by Sharyl Attkisson, the Capitol Hill Correspondent for CBS News, that I'd like to include some excerpts, especially as some of the autism-vaccine cases are going to trial** and this whole mess is a metaphor for what the BLEEP! are we doing to preserve our own health? Is anyone noticing all the degenerative diseases and how so many kids have neuro/behavioral problems?

(** don't forget years ago that the Homeland Security bill had an anonymous rider slipped in at the last minute that exempted pharma co's from suits by parents of autistic children. They wouldn't be doing such underhanded tricks if they didn't have something they were worried about IMHO).

With the first autism case now being heard in federal vaccine court in Washington D.C., it makes sense to ask: Why is anyone even still debating the possibility of a link between vaccines and autism? After all, for years, many government health officials, advisors and vaccine manufacturers have said there's no association.

Here are a number of reasons why the question remains open:

1. While government scientists, advisors and pharmaceutical companies have been responsible for infinite lifesaving and life improving medical advances, they are not infallible.

• It's the same group that originally thought it was safe to use x-ray machines in shoe stores, gave pregnant women Thalidomide for morning sickness and once allowed mercury in medicines. They assured us Vioxx and Duract were safe painkillers, prescribed Rezulin for diabetics and then denied any of them were responsible for patient deaths. If we never questioned that group, we might not have discovered that Fen-phen and the dietary supplement Ephedra are not safe weight loss products, that antidepressants in kids can lead to suicidality and Viagra can cause blindness. The list goes on.

• When it comes to vaccines, the same group failed to predict that the 1990's rotavirus (diarrhea) vaccine would have to be pulled from the market after infant deaths. They encouraged use of the oral polio vaccine (eventually discontinued after it gave too many children polio). And they allowed the use of a mercury neurotoxin preservative in childhood vaccines, only to admit later that they hadn't thought to calculate the cumulative amount kids were getting as more and more vaccines were added to the childhood immunization schedule.

• Recent history demonstrates that too often, government health officials, mainstream doctors and pharmaceutical companies aren't on the leading edge of alerting us to health risks; they're bringing up the rear. Patients feel left to fend for themselves, seeking independent research and opinions on their own. They and their dogged, relentless determination have often been the catalyst that eventually brings medical dangers to the forefront.
...


7. Those who say autism and ADD are not linked to vaccines do not know what is causing the epidemics.

• The most frightening part of the autism/ADD epidemics is that if, indeed, they're unrelated to vaccinations, that our best, brightest public health experts still have no idea what is causing it. Excluding ADD, one out of every 150 American children are now being diagnosed with autism.

One scientist who testified for the plaintiff this week in The Vaccine Court said there's a way to test children for a hidden hole in their immune make-up that makes them susceptible to bad immune reactions from vaccinations. He said that, ideally, every child should undergo such a test before their first vaccinations. But he also said the test is very expensive and so "not worth it." Many parents might disagree. If they knew such a test was available, they'd find a way to pay for it. But such information has to be disseminated to the public before a first step can even be considered.

Mainstream medicine initially said that autism was caused by mothers who weren't affectionate enough with their children. If that doesn't teach us that we should always seek further knowledge and not necessarily accept what's spoon-fed to us by certain experts…then nothing will.

Definitely, read more here. Thank you for speaking truth to power, Sharyl Attkisson!

My 2 cents: with all the handwringing over possible lead in Thomas the Train (lead gets on hands, gets in mouth, etc.) why isn't there more handwringing about MERCURY, which is much more neurotoxic and we INJECT it, thereby bypassing the digestive system, etc. Just a thought (you might also not want to stick mercury amalgams into your mouth--lead would actually probably be safer!).

McDonald's seeking moms' approval

From the Chicago Tribune

McDonald's has equipped six mothers with laptop computers to record their impressions of its operations over the next few months. The moms were chosen by an independent company from a group of 4,000 applicants, and the blogs and journals will be posted "unedited" beginning June 20 on McDonald's home page, where it hopes to attract other moms interested in seeing the comments, officials said last week.

The sad thing is, I don't think McDonald's really needs approval from moms...look at their sales, and the number of obese kids (these stats are from the article):

According to the Centers for Disease Control, obesity rates have soared over the past 20 years. Now, 32.9 percent of adults are considered obese, and 18.8 percent of children ages 6 to 11 are obese. In children ages 12 to 19, 17.4 percent are obese.

I have friends who are doctors and they bring their kids there several time a week!

Ultrasound in pregnancy

Here's a tidbit I found on Medscape:

"Although it is helpful in estimating gestational age, identifying twin pregnancies, and detecting genetic anomalies, the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology (ACOG) position is that routine ultrasonographic screening during pregnancy is not mandatory. They deem routine use reasonable when requested by a patient.

...However, some expectant couples have followed the lead of actors Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes and purchased (for costs ranging between $15,000 and $200,000) their own ultrasound machines, which they use daily."

I know some natural practioners recommend limiting ultrasounds largely because we dont' know what they do. An OB friend also forwarded a study suggesting a correlation between lots of ultrasounds and autism. Who knows?

Read here about more Unnecessary Testing in Obstetrics, Gynecology, and General Medicine

PMS is a sign of imbalance

My acupuncturist is always asking me if I have cramps, breast pain, etc., and I am coming to see that these things are not normal. Of course, in Western medicine, if you come in complaining, they stick you on birth control pills. But PMS is your body telling you it's imbalanced. When I finally did enough acupuncture and herbs to get re-balanced, all my crazy symptoms went away. I'm also talking about PMS that was so bad that I'd have to lay in bed all day...

Here's a post from another list I'm on, not an alternative health one, but just a chatty women's site, and I believe the author is from Brazil. She was nice enough to let me re-post it. Should be of interest to anyone who has PMS, PCOS, infertility, or trouble losing weight:

How I beat PMS

I wanted to share my experience in handling PMS. I was 35 years old, overweighted and diagnosed with Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome. I had painful menstruations and headakes, stress, all the PMS stuff. I started to exercise (swimming and weight train) and lost the weight I've needed to loose (about 90 pounds!), on my own. Then I started a treatment with chinese medicine (acumpuncture, and herb medicine) for stress and PMS, with a chinese doctor. Soon enought my Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome was gone and PMS disappeared (and I became pregnant at 38 years-old, had a smooth pregnancy and gave natural birth). Well, I could say it was hard and difficult but it wasn't.

Changing my lifestyle to a healthier one was the solution for my gynecologicals problems. And NOT LISTEN to my doctors too, that wanted me to take drugs and hormones and NEVER spoke about my weight problem. They don't know a thing about women. I really think that if we enter the circus of tradicional medicine, the way things are today, we are lost and doomed. We need to be looked at as a whole being, not just organs and hormones. Science can't do that right now. (By the way, I'm physicist and disbeliever in science, because I know it.)

Coffee can help prevent blindness

The jury's still out on coffee and fertility, but the more I look into it, coffee is not as bad for you as people think (it could be the icky pesticides and the dioxin-y filter--free trade organic French press for me, please)--its been shown to help regulate insulin levels, prevent gout, and now look at this is from the Journal of Neurology Neurosurgery and Psychiatry:

People who drink coffee are less likely to develop an involuntary eye spasm called primary late onset blepharospasm, which makes them blink uncontrollably and can leave them effectively ‘blind’, according to a study published online ahead of print in the Journal of Neurology Neurosurgery and Psychiatry.

The effect was proportional to the amount of coffee drank and one to two cups per day were needed for the protective effect to be seen. The age of onset of the spasm was also found to be later in patient who drank more coffee – 1.7 years for each additional cup per day.

...‘The most obvious candidate for the protective effect is caffeine, but the low frequency of decaffeinated coffee intake in Italy prevented us from examining the effects of caffeine on blepharospasm.

They suggest that caffeine blocks adenosine receptors as has been proposed for its mechanism in protecting against Parkinson’s disease.

The authors estimate that people need to drink one to two cups of coffee per day for the protective effect to be seen.

‘Considering that the caffeine content of a cup of Italian coffee (60–120 mg) is similar to the average content of a cup of American coffee (95–125 mg), the protective effect on the development of blepharospasm might be exerted at caffeine doses greater than 120–240 mg, comparable with the caffeine doses suggested to be protective in Parkinson’s disease,’ they say.

Click here to view the paper in full: http://press.psprings.co.uk/jnnp/june/jn119891 press release.pdf

How we eat/consume around the world: Food for Thought

Take a look at this photo essay of what people around the world eat in a month, and think about how much of our food we cede to the food processing corporations..,
http://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1626519,00.html

My thoughts:

• The US had by far the most food and among the least fresh veggies/fruits
• Followed by the British
• The Ecuadoreans look very happy and love their simple potato and cabbage soup
• Ditto for the Bhutanese
• The Germans also have very little fresh food and they look kinda dyspeptic
• Some families had very little food at all...
  

"Thomas and Friends" railway toys recalled for lead

Warn everyone you know who has little boys (and, of course, lead is bad for fertility...):


Yahoo! News: "'Thomas and Friends' railway toys recalled

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - More than 1 million of the popular 'Thomas & Friends' wooden railway toys made in China are being voluntarily recalled because some may contain lead paint.

About 1.5 million wooden vehicles, buildings and other train-set parts for young children are being recalled, the CPSC said in a statement. The toys were sold in the United States from January 2005 through June 2007, the statement said.

Read more here.

Soy's new competition: hemp

I'm baaaa-aaack.

At the amazing organic writers' colony, they had hemp and rice and soy milk available, and I was trying to get people to try the hemp. Hemp is an environmental crop--it grows quickly and with little need of fertilizer--and thus I try to promote its use--and in particular it's annoying because IT IS BANNED in the U.S., (although hemp seeds can be imported from Canada). Many of our nation's forefathers grew hemp because it was a smart thing to do--provided food and fiber and didn't wear out the soil (hello, George Washington?) But it's banned here because of a silly, nonsensical association with druuuuuuuuugs, i.e., marijuana. Hemp products do not contain THC, the active ingredient in marijuana.

Hemp seeds have protein, fiber, and are also a good supplemental source of vegetarian Omega-3s, missing in soy and rice milk. Here's an article from the LA Times:

Soy's new competition: hemp

Hemp foods began filtering into grocery stores about five years ago, after the 1998 legalization of industrial hemp farming in Canada. The U.S. currently prohibits commercial cultivation of industrial hemp, but allows the import of seeds, oil, flour and other byproducts to be manufactured into ready-to-eat foods in the U.S.

The plant's shelled seed, or nut, can be added to baked goods and nutritional supplements and bars, sprinkled onto other foods such as salads and yogurt, or eaten alone as a snack. The seed can also be milled into flour, which can be used for baked goods, and pressed to make oil, which can be used in salad dressings, dips, spreads and sauces. (Due to its high unsaturated fat content, hemp oil must be refrigerated and is unsuitable for frying.)

...Hemp appeals to consumers for several reasons. It can be used as an alternative to soy products such as soy milk, which some people can't tolerate. Some people find hemp foods tasty. (We'll get to that in a minute.) Others are attracted to hemp's nutritional value. This may be its strongest draw.

The runty little nut, which resembles a sesame seed, does pack some stellar nutrients.

Two tablespoons of shelled hemp seeds contains 11 grams of protein, no cholesterol and, most important, about 2 grams of the very healthful unsaturated omega-3 fatty acid, alpha-linolenic acid (ALA).

Hemp oil also contains a good ratio — roughly 3 to 1 — of omega-6 fatty acids to omega-3s, says Barry Swanson, a professor in the food science and human nutrition department at Washington State University.

"That is an exceptional ratio, as far as balance is concerned, between omega 6s and omega 3s," Swanson says.

Further, he says, hemp has other good constituents: "The gamma-linoleic acid [an omega-6] and stearidonic acid [an omega-3] in hemp are both things our body needs more of, that don't occur in very many food products."...

read more here

Review: Gramicci (and Palma) and Sabbatical

Hi folks,

I'm off to a writers' colony, the amazingly pesticide free and organic Hedgebrook, to be exact. (Colonies, where they basically feed you and nurture you and try to get you to write, are great, but most aren't organic, and this one is accommodating my wheat/dairy thing. Yay!)

And I'll be packing my amazing Gramicci organic hemp/cotton Sierra t-shirt. It already feels broken-in, like it's been washed 10000 times, and there's lot of charming details, like raw seams. If there's anything I like, it's being comfy whilte I write.

And the shirt is accented by a necklace from the Palma Collection. More on their sustainable jewelry later.

So this means no email, no phone, but if you want to send me stuff or post an oldfashioned letter:

marie lee c/o
Hedgebrook
2197 Millman Road
Langley, WA 98260

Quiz: What Type of Doctor is Best For You and Your Thyroid Treatment?

A reader asked me exactly this question, and I hesitated to answer because I've been "around the block" thyroid wise, and finally found a guy I trust (an endocrinologist). But some people like having their primary care physicians monitor things, and there are also some general medicine doctors who might have a specialty in endocrine problems...and then there's the alternative docs. The bottom line: if yo have (or suspect you might have) a thyroid problem. you NEED a specialist. If you have "unexplained infertility," thyroid is one of the first places you should start.

So again, I turn this over to About.com's thyroid guru.

"Quiz: What Type of Doctor is Best For You and Your Thyroid Treatment?
from Mary Shomon

What type of doctor is likely to be the best fit with your approach to health? For some people, it may be an endocrinologist, others want someone who focuses specifically on the thyroid, and for some, an alternative or holistic doctor is best. Take this quiz to explore some of your own feelings about your health care, the style and personality of your doctor, your thoughts about alternative medicine, and you'll get an automatic assessment of the type of doctor you might find best for your health care.

Take the Quiz.

BBC NEWS | Health | Ovary loss 'raises dementia risk'

From the BBC NEWS: Ovary loss 'raises dementia risk'

A Mayo Clinic, Minnesota, team found the risk was especially raised among young women - removal of one ovary by the age of 38 raised the risk by 260%.

When one of my friends had a hysterectomy (and it was for something fairly vague, fibroids, I think), she said the docs took out her ovaries "as long as we're in there," citing that it would cut her ovarian cancer risk because there'd be no ovaries to get the cancer.

But ovaries also secrete hormones (namely estrogen, which fights aging). There's aren't too many non-essential organs in our well-planned bodies. Think before you chop!

Here's another examples of let's not mess with Ma Nature, please!

read more here.

Long-Term Risks of Egg Donation

Here's an interesting article from the NY Times that questions the ethics of egg donation for money, as the long-term safety of the procedure is unknown. However, shouldn't the logical conclusion, then , be to question IVF and other procedures, where eggs are harvested in the same way? You gotta wonder.

May 15, 2007

As Demand for Donor Eggs Soars, High Prices Stir Ethical Concerns

By RONI CARYN RABIN

Samantha Carolan was 23 and fresh out of graduate school when she decided to donate eggs to an infertile couple. Ms. Carolan concedes that she would never have done it if not for the money, $7,000 that she used to pay off some student loans...

Ethicists and some women’s health advocates worry that lucrative payments are enticing young women with credit-card debt and steep tuition bills to sell eggs without seriously evaluating the risks...

“One of the most striking facts about in vitro fertilization is just how little is known with certainty about the long-term health outcomes for the women who undergo the procedure,” a recent report by the Institute of Medicine said...

The reluctance is understandable. The process of egg extraction is time consuming, and it is not comfortable. For some women, it can be painful. A woman first has to take medications to stop her menstrual cycle and then daily hormone injections for several weeks to stimulate her ovaries to produce a crop of mature eggs at once.

The drugs may cause bloating, weight gain, moodiness and irritability, and there is a risk of a rare condition called ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome that can cause life-threatening complications, blood clots and kidney failure...

And since egg donors go through much the same process as women trying to conceive in vitro, there are concerns that they may be prone to the higher rates of certain cancers that some studies have found among infertility patients. Still, said Dr. James A. Grifo, director of the division of reproductive endocrinology at the New York University School of Medicine, “There is no credible evidence of long-lasting effects or health consequences down the line.”

That does not necessarily mean that the procedures are safe.

“There’s no health-outcome data collected by anybody other than some voluntary reporting, and there’s no postmarket testing on how these drugs are being used,” said Susan Berke Fogel, co-founder of the Pro-Choice Alliance for Responsible Research, a project of the Public Health Institute in Oakland, Calif.

In a recent article in The New England Journal of Medicine, a Harvard Business School professor said the controversy over the price of eggs was obscuring questions of women’s health. The author, Debora L. Spar, an economist who wrote “The Baby Business” last year, calls for more studies of the drugs being used, more long-term follow-up of donors and federal regulations to ensure proper informed consent....

Read more here.

USERNAME: GreenFertility
PASSWORD: GreenFertility
Answer to secret Qu: Soylent Green

REVIEW: Waiting for Daisy by Peggy Orenstein

Subtitle: A Tale of Two Continents, Three Religions, Five Infertility Doctors, an Oscar, an Atomic Bomb, a Romantic Night, and One Woman's Quest to Become a Mother

I really like this book, if anything, that it supports the FertilityBitch theory that fun free sex is the way to go (and, scientifically, if you shut your ears to the artificial fertility treatment types and their so-called ticking biological clock, that's also what the numbers bear out**). I will note that in Asia, getting pregnant in our forties is considered to be pretty normal--it's believed that with good health practices, fertility doesn't automatically poop out at the stroke of 35 (and don't forget about the effect anxiety/stress has on fertility...).

Peggy Orenstein (I've always enjoyed her pieces about young women in the NY Times) injects herself with unspeakable things that make her so hormonally craaaazy that "fertilizing intercourse" boils down to her yelling to her husband to hurry up and watch some porn (and in another room, by yourself, por favor), get it up, and just get it over with. Okay, are we pregnant yet?

Like the best "fertility" books (e.g. Julia Indichova's Inconceivable), this one is also a mediation on life and what it means to produce life (or not--so comprehensive is her SIX-YEAR experience, she even delves into adoption). Orenstein has the advantage of turning the reportorial eye on both the mundane and the profound (and the humorous) ranging from the Oscars to the scarily unregulated fertility industry.

And, may I spoil the ending? After all the IVF and stuff (including an expensive, awful, painful fiasco with donor eggs), and the skeevy, rippy-offy doctors who glibly fan false hopes, take her money, are unbothered by incompetence at both the medical and laboratorial level, and seem to truly not care about her psychic pain resulting from their broken promises, she and her hubby randomly get busy one night (i.e., the one time she is not obsessively checking her basal body temps), they have sex for the sake of sex...and the rest is history--Cute Baby! Amen!
-----

** Apparently a majority of couples will get pregnant merely after having unprotected intercourse for 2 years (84% of couples within a year with regular intercourse and no contraception is another stat). The problem is, most doctors start crying "fertility problems!" at about 6 months, and you start falling (then hurling yourself) down the slippery slope of carcinogenic Clomid and hamster gonads and womb transplants before your know it.

Check out the info from the BBC here.

BBC NEWS | Health | Long wait for coeliac diagnosis

From the BBC :

"People with coeliac disease are waiting an average of 13 years to be diagnosed, a poll has revealed.

The gut disorder is caused by gluten intolerance, and can lead to bone problems, infertility or bowel cancer....

It also found patients often have to insist on being given the blood test, which is the first step to diagnosis."

Read more here.

This is very related to THYROID because I read somewhere that 50% of people with autoimmune thyroid disease also have celiac...if eating wheat makes you feel funny, you owe it to youself to get yourself checked out.

p.s. if you have been following a gluten or wheat free diet, a celiac test may not be accurate, since your body may have stopped producing the antibiodies, but if you feel you react to wheat, there's no reason not to put yourself on a gluten free diet.

Pop Quiz: How's your Thyroid?

Thyroid disease is WAY underdiagnosed, which is a shame because it's a LEADING cause of infertility AND if it's not treated during pregnancy, can have major major effects on the fetus!
Kind of silly, because it's easily treated. Take Mary's quiz and see you how rate.

Quiz: Could You Be Hypothyroid? from Mary Shomon, Your Guide to Thyroid Disease

Could your thyroid -- the master gland of metabolism and energy -- be underactive?

As of 2006, experts estimate that as many as 59 million Americans have a thyroid condition, and the vast majority are hypothyroid -- and have an underfunctioning, slow or sluggish thyroid.

START THE QUIZ NOW!!

The Dorgan Amendment

So...while the drug companies are pushin' their products, the government's not to interested in keeping us safe from Big Pharma. I wrote earlier about the Dorgan Amendment (Read here.).

Here's a political opinion on the failure of the Dorgan amendment from the DailyKos. Sigh!!! I agree that Conservative are GREAT at getting people, especially the poor and disenfranchised, to vote against their own interests. Geez!

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/5/7/224327/0087

What is the Dorgan amendment? A sensible, necessary bill addressing drug price gouging and drug safety that of course got killed. Read here.

While we're on the subject:

The manufacturer of the potent painkiller OxyContin and three current and former executives at the company yesterday pleaded guilty to falsely marketing the drug in a way that played down its addictive properties and led to scores of people becoming addicted, prosecutors said.

Read more here.

NYT: Doctors' Hidden Motives for Prescribing Dangerous Drugs to Kids

photo: Fabrizio Costantini for The New York Times

I think Risperdal is a scary scary drug that docs are starting to hand out like candy for ADHD, autism, acting out, and now eating disorders! Among the autistic kids, I can usually tell when a kid's been put on it: he blimps up and acts lobotomized--not exactly a great therapeutic outcome, not to mention that this works on the brain's dopamine receptors (so does crystal meth), who knows what that's going to do to the developing brain. What also scares me is that this drug has PERMANENT side effects like tardive dyskinesia, a disorder that involved involuntary jerky movements of muscles...can you imagine sentencing someone to have this for the rest of their lives?

Minnesota is the only state that actually demands transparency laws (Uh, so what's going on in the states where the docs and drug companies KNOW they won't be taken into account?--eeek!), so we get to see how much the doctors are being bribed (is there another word for it?) to push these drugs on desperate parents and children who can't really give consent.

And don't forget, every time someone is prescribed a drug (instead of counseling, better diet, etc.) it gets peed back out into the water system...

By GARDINER HARRIS, BENEDICT CAREY and JANET ROBERTS

Anya Bailey is among a growing number of children given antipsychotic drugs by doctors who are paid by the makers of those drugs.

When Anya Bailey developed an eating disorder after her 12th birthday, her mother took her to a psychiatrist at the University of Minnesota who prescribed a powerful antipsychotic drug called Risperdal.

Created for schizophrenia, Risperdal is not approved to treat eating disorders, but increased appetite is a common side effect and doctors may prescribe drugs as they see fit. Anya gained weight but within two years developed a crippling knot in her back. She now receives regular injections of Botox to unclench her back muscles. She often awakens crying in pain.

Isabella Bailey, Anya’s mother, said she had no idea that children might be especially susceptible to Risperdal’s side effects. Nor did she know that Risperdal and similar medicines were not approved at the time to treat children, or that medical trials often cited to justify the use of such drugs had as few as eight children taking the drug by the end.

Just as surprising, Ms. Bailey said, was learning that the university psychiatrist who supervised Anya’s care received more than $7,000 from 2003 to 2004 from Johnson & Johnson, Risperdal’s maker, in return for lectures about one of the company’s drugs.

Doctors, including Anya Bailey’s, maintain that payments from drug companies do not influence what they prescribe for patients.

But the intersection of money and medicine, and its effect on the well-being of patients, has become one of the most contentious issues in health care. Nowhere is that more true than in psychiatry, where increasing payments to doctors have coincided with the growing use in children of a relatively new class of drugs known as atypical antipsychotics.

These best-selling drugs, including Risperdal, Seroquel, Zyprexa, Abilify and Geodon, are now being prescribed to more than half a million children in the United States to help parents deal with behavior problems despite profound risks and almost no approved uses for minors.

A New York Times analysis of records in Minnesota, the only state that requires public reports of all drug company marketing payments to doctors, provides rare documentation of how financial relationships between doctors and drug makers correspond to the growing use of atypicals in children.

From 2000 to 2005, drug maker payments to Minnesota psychiatrists rose more than sixfold, to $1.6 million. During those same years, prescriptions of antipsychotics for children in Minnesota’s Medicaid program rose more than ninefold...

Drug makers underwrite decision makers at every level of care. They pay doctors who prescribe and recommend drugs, teach about the underlying diseases, perform studies and write guidelines that other doctors often feel bound to follow....

In Minnesota, psychiatrists collected more money from drug makers from 2000 to 2005 than doctors in any other specialty. Total payments to individual psychiatrists ranged from $51 to more than $689,000, with a median of $1,750. Since the records are incomplete, these figures probably underestimate doctors’ actual incomes.

Such payments could encourage psychiatrists to use drugs in ways that endanger patients’ physical health, said Dr. Steven E. Hyman, the provost of Harvard University and former director of the National Institute of Mental Health. The growing use of atypicals in children is the most troubling example of this, Dr. Hyman said.

You can read more (once you stop vomiting) here.

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Prepubertal Enlarged Breasts (Gynecomastia) Linked to Lavender and Tea Tree Oils

Did you know that breast reduction surgery for BOYS was one of the most common cosmetic surgeries for kids? Endocrine disruptors (e.g., pthalates) are probably a big culprit. But some natural stuff can have hormonal effects, too. Check this out (and if you have any conditions related to estrogen sensitivity--i.e., breast cancer, you might want to tate note):

Prepubertal gynecomastia is uncommon and idiopathic in over 90% of cases.

Not infrequently, urologists may identify gynecomastia in children as part of a routine physical exam or in patients with gynecomastia specifically referred to rule out a testicular abnormality.

In the February 1st issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, Henley and colleagues from the University of Colorado report on 3 children whose gynecomastia resolved after stopping the use of lavender and tea tree oils. Both oils were tested on breast cancer cell lines to determine their interaction with the estrogen and androgen signaling pathways.

The first boy (age 4) presenting with worsening gynecomastia was found to have a normal testicular examination and hormonal profile. His gynecomastia resolved after his mother stopped applying a "healing balm" to the skin containing lavender oil. Another 10 year old boy presented with a 5 month history of gynecomastia and a normal evaluation. The areolar mounds disappeared 9 months after discontinuing the use of a hair styling gel containing Lavandula angustifolia (lavender) oil and Melaleuca alternifolia (tea tree) oil. The third boy age 7 years was evaluated for a 1 month history of gynecomastia and was found to be using lavender scented soap. His gynecomastia resolved several months after stopping the use of the soap.

full report here.