Stick to coffee, tea or water; skip the liquid HFCS sugar

Tags: High Fructose Corn Sugar, Obesity, Wrinkles, Impotence, Heart Disease, and Memory Loss

BY MICHAEL ROIZEN

AND MEHMET OZ

Appeared in print: Monday, Mar 22, 2010

... Drinking liquid sugar is like extending an invitation to obesity, wrinkles, impotence, heart disease and memory loss. So for now, if the drink has calories in it, leave it in the can. ...

Sucrose or cane or beet sugar was not used in large quantities in prepared foods because it could crystallize out during cold storage and can lead to spoilage on storage. Treating carbohydrates such as corn starch with an enzyme to produce glucose was well known, but has only 60% of the sweetness of fructose so a new expensive enzyme was found which produced High Fructose Corn Syrup or HFCS was still too expensive to compete with table sugar or sucrose. Two Japanese scientists in 1971 found a relatively cheap way to convert corn to fructose and glucose at varying ratios by attaching the enzyme to a substrate in a column so this enzyme could be re-used. The High Fructose Corn Syrup has 55% Fructose and 45% Glucose or HFCS. But imported cane sugar was very cheap so it could still not compete with regular sugar compose of 50:5O Fructose-Glucose called sucrose which most plants make.

As often done by the Reagan and Bush administration, profits for corporations trumps all other considerations including safety or health of the American consumers. So they started in the mid-eighties to heavily subsidize corn and ban imports of sugar by imposing a heavy tariff and they declared HFCS SAFE without testing just like they did not test GMO corn and soybeans for our safety. The liquid high fructose corn syrup had one very big advantage over table sugar. It could be added to foods frozen after preparation without sugar crystallizing out which was a god-send to producers of prepared foods.

We all have a sweet tooth so producers started putting it into just about all prepared foods and fast foods or as a sauce or dip or dressing. It is almost impossible to eat at most restaurants and fast food joints without taking a large dose of HFCS.

The big problem is that our bodies did not develop a good way to handle large amounts of fructose in the liver and glucose with Insulin. But the HFCS causes obesity because it prevents our appetite satiation to shut down our hunger hormone Ghrelin from our belly Omentum so we keep eating until we are stuffed. We eat more when we are distracted from the eating process by television.

Chewing your food 20 times before swallowing is one way to eat slow enough to not overeat providing you skip soft drinks and other high HFCS sugar containing stuff such as fruit juices. Apple juice and oranges juices don't tell you how much fructose you are taking in. Obviously it is enough to make Americans the fattest people on the planet with high blood pressure, diabetes, kidney failures, heart attacks, strokes, and cancer.

ABC has a show where Jamie, a Chef is trying to get the very obese people in Huntington, West Virginia to change what they are eating by learning to cook easy to prepare good food. Even our government guideline for school lunches lists French Fries as one of the necessary vegetables. Of course our Dept of Agriculture does not support the farmers, but support the guys who make the most money from the food farmers grow. Just five companies are involved directly in providing the raw material for all foods we eat.

But they also give us to have another big load of sugar from carbohydrates by stripping fibers from grain flour to cut cooking time and easy frozen storage. In a more recent article Roizen and Oz of ABC's 3 PM ET/PT very popular daily health show, they write about all the dangerous fibers these corporations are adding to make profits.

Jim Kawakami, April 12, 2010, http://jimboguy.blogspot.com

Dr Roizen of the Cleveland Clinic and Dr Oz of Columbia University

We recently received a letter touting the new measures that a giant beverage company is taking to “support first lady Michelle Obama’s initiative to combat obesity.”

The company is putting labels on the front of its sugary sodas that state the calorie contents of the entire can or bottle. Until now, the calories were listed “per serving” and appeared somewhere on the side or back.

It’s not enough. Shifting those stats front and center may appear more honest and transparent, but it sure doesn’t make these products any healthier.

If a company wanted to be upfront, then the damage or aging that the beverage does should be on its front.

For example: “Drink a six-pack of this a day and make your arteries 12 years older and your memory disappear nine years earlier, and be 26 pounds heavier in just five years.”

It’s not just sodas that are loaded with sugar and calories — and we mean loaded. One can of soda packs 10 teaspoons of sugar. Other drinks that are sweetened with high-fructose corn syrup or just plain, old-fashioned sugar — many iced teas, fruit drinks, lemonade, energy-boosters and sports drinks — help deliver 47 percent of all the added sugar we consume.

To make matters worse, the sheer quantity of soft drinks guzzled has skyrocketed a staggering 500 percent in the past 50 years. How much are we swigging? In 2008, the beverage industry pumped out 47 gallons of soda for each American (yes, gallons).

All that liquid sugar isn’t just making us fat. It’s also increasing our risk for deadly diseases such as diabetes, metabolic syndrome and heart disease. So don’t be fooled by soda labels that appear to bare all. Stick with these smart sips instead:

Water: It keeps you hydrated, has zero calories and costs nothing, so make it your go-to beverage. Think you need to down eight glasses a day? Maybe not, though it certainly won’t hurt. The latest word on water is that unless you sweat up a storm in the gym or live in a sweltering climate, thirst is the best indicator of how much you need. Keep your water habit environmentally friendly by toting your own reusable water bottle instead of filling landfills with disposable ones.

Tea (green and black): More people worldwide drink tea than any other libation, aside from water.

That’s good news, because it’s one heart-smart drink. Downing three or more cups a day has been shown to decrease heart attack risk by 11 percent.

Catechins, which are a type of health-helping flavonoid found in tea, keep your ticker healthy by boosting production of nitric oxide, a compound that keeps blood vessels nice and relaxed. When you drink your tea, just be sure to do it Asian-style — minus the milk. The proteins in milk bind to tea’s catechins, making them less active, according to a study in the European Heart Journal.

Coffee: Unless you’re a woman who is either pregnant or trying to be, a couple of daily cups of Joe are perfectly safe. In fact, they may even be good for you.

Coffee has been shown to help fend off colon cancer and Parkinson’s disease. It also can slash your chances of developing type 2 diabetes. It turns out that java is a prime source of chlorogenic acid, a compound believed to slow glucose absorption during digestion.

A hint of fruit juice: In a perfect world, we’d all hydrate sans sugar. But when you just can’t live without some sweet refreshment, turn to 100 percent fruit juice, since it’s got vitamins and minerals as well as sugar (in the form of fructose, but that’s still sugar).

We YOU Docs especially like juices that are also fortified either with calcium and vitamin D or with heart-healthy omega-3s. Just keep servings on the small side — no more than 6 ounces a day — to keep the sugar hit down. (I was drinking 24 ounces a day! Jim)

Drinking liquid sugar is like extending an invitation to obesity, wrinkles, impotence, heart disease and memory loss. So for now, if the drink has calories in it, leave it in the can.

The YOU Docs — Mike Roizen and Mehmet Oz — are authors of “YOU: On a Diet.” Want more? See “The Dr. Oz Show” weekdays on KEZI. To submit questions and find ways to grow younger and healthier, go to www.RealAge.com, the docs’ online home.

© 2010 King Features Syndicate

HFCS, Soap Triclosan Ban? Allergies Autoimmune Vitamin D

Tags: HFCS, Soap, Triclosan, Antibacterial, Interferes, Brain-Reproductive Development, Increases Deadly Bacteria

Has anyone tried using vitamin D to fix your immune system? It does something very few medicines can do: It increases the effectiveness of our immune system to attack bacteria and viruses, but also fixes our immune system so it does not over-react causing auto-immune diseases which has already helped many patients including myself.

Allergies is another case where our immune system reacts inappropriately to harmless substances. So far no one has suggested this application, but as I have said before, it is certainly worthwhile to try if your vitamin D blood test metabolite 25-hydroxy Vitamin D is too low. The normal range is usually listed as 30 to 80 nanograms/ml or abbreviated ng/ml, but more doctors are recommending we keep it the middle of this range to build up a store house.

Taking 2,000 IU vitamin D3 daily gives us a 12 day stored supply, but we have the ability to store it for about 2-3 months to take advantage of our need during the winter months. Evolution would have wiped out Europeans if they where not able to develop light skin to absorb UVB, now blocked out with the heavy use of sunscreens to cause great deficiency of vitamin D in Americans leading to an increase in cancer and other diseases. Heavy weight loss also decreases our level of vitamin D.

Get tested for vitamin D metabolite in spite of what your doctors tell you and unless your doctor prescribes at least 2,000 IU of vitamin D3 daily, take 2,000 to 5,000 IU daily with meals. Remember 30 minutes with large skin exposure in the 10-4 o'clock maximum sun exposure times during most of the summer and some of the fall gives us about 22,000 IU of vitamin D!

Most doctors now recommend getting it from your foods which is wrong since sunscreens prevent natural production of vitamin D. If you have autoimmune disease, it is mandatory you get the test and I hope he or she will prescribe large doses of at least 50,000 IU per week. One Eugene doctor had to give 30,000 IU Vitamin D daily according to my nurse.

So far I have lost 4 lbs this week by avoiding high fructose foods and especially juices, but still continue my high fiber diet which is also important for weight loss. The food corporations have removed almost all the fiber from foods such as grains leading to white bread, white pasta, and all foods made from flour. Without the fiber, these carbohydrate foods are converted to sugar starting with our saliva! Fiber protects the carbohydrates so less is absorbed and will help us lose weight.

I stopped drinking 24 oz of orange juice daily and temporarily stopped eating high sources of fructose in bananas and apples. We should ban HFCS in prepared foods, fast foods, and everything else and go back to cane sugar which we used before the Obesity Crisis where 80 percent of Americans Overweight or Obese.

We should consider banning most fruit juices in school vending machines along with HFCS soft drinks because we get huge doses of fructose sugar. High Fructose Corn Syrup or in short HFCS prevents our natural ability to stop eating when we have eaten enough. Because of the high hfcs in juices, I was always hungry and had to eat late at night so I could sleep. Now I do not get hungry at night and lost 4 lbs this week!

Jim Kawakami, April 11, 2010, http://jimboguy.blogspot.com

Washington Post The Food and Drug Administration said recent research raises "valid concerns" about the possible health effects of triclosan, an antibacterial chemical found in a growing number of liquid soaps, hand sanitizers, dishwashing liquids, shaving gels and even socks, workout clothes and toys.

The FDA and the Environmental Protection Agency say they are taking a fresh look at triclosan, which is so ubiquitous that is found in the urine of 75 percent of the population, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The reassessment is the latest signal that the Obama administration is willing to reevaluate the possible health impacts of chemicals that have been in widespread use.

In a letter to a congressman that was obtained by The Washington Post, the FDA said that recent scientific studies raise questions about whether triclosan disrupts the body's endocrine system and whether it helps to create bacteria that are resistant to antibiotics. An advisory panel to the FDA said in 2005 that there was no evidence the antibacterial soaps work better than regular soap and water. ... http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/07/AR2010040704621.html

The Journal of the American Medical Society Reported 20 Years or So Ago that Triclosan in Soap is Ineffective in Removing Deadly E-Coli H7-157 from Our Hands and Kills Friendly Bacteria to Increase H7-157 Levels. Jim

... In animal studies, triclosan has been found to interfere with hormones crucial for normal brain development and function and reproductive system development and function, Janssen says. ...

http://www.webmd.com/news/20100409/triclosan-question-and-answer April 9, 2010 --

With the FDA reviewing the antibacterial chemical triclosan, widely found in everyday products such as hand soaps, body washes, toothpastes, cosmetics, toys, clothing, and furniture, should you or shouldn't you ditch products with this ingredient?

Here are the most frequently asked questions about triclosan, with answers from experts on both sides of the debate, to help you decide.

Q: What is triclosan?

Triclosan is a chemical added to many products for its antibacterial action.

Q: How long has it been in use?

''It's been in use for over 40 years," says Brian Sansoni, a spokesman for the Soap and Detergent Association, whose members produce soaps and body washes. Initially, its use was only in health care settings such as hospitals, he says.

In the last 15 years, triclosan began showing up in consumer hygiene products, he says.

Q: What prompted the recent FDA investigation of triclosan?

The FDA announcement this week about triclosan was in response to a letter from Rep. Edward J. Markey, chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Energy and the Environment. ...

Markey had sent the letter in January, requesting information about the status of the FDA's ongoing review of triclosan in consumer products.

Markey is concerned and is calling for the FDA to ban the use of triclosan in personal care products. He wants the Environmental Protection Agency to take steps, too, such as evaluating the potential of triclosan -- washed down the drain with personal care product use -- to contaminate drinking water and contribute to antibiotic resistance. ...

Just watched Juliet and Julie. Marvelous!

Why High Fructose Sports Drinks? Medical Alert Service: Philips Lifeline

Tags: High Fructose Sugar Causes Obesity, Medical Alert Service, Philips Lifeline, Sugar Fix

Please try to let your family, friends, acquaintances how harmful high fructose Corn Syrup Sugar is on their health. Many would be interested about why it causes Obesity. About 75% of Americans are either obese or overweight with obesity now winning out.

Jim

Medical Alert Service: Philips Lifeline Because I live alone and will eventually get too old to prevent a serious fall, I decided to get a Medical Alert Service. For some reason, I do not regard celebrity endorsements on television a reason to buy a product or service. So I have been waiting to find an alert system that records serious falls where the person is knocked out so they cannot push a button.

This is the first one that had a service where falls are recorded. Philips Lifeline is the largest by far and they do not advertise, but work with hospitals. http://www.lifelinesys.com/content/home 1-800-797-4191 For more information.

Also I got a Philips Lifeline recommendation from Medic Alert which I subscribe and wear their medical bracelet with instructions because special treatment is required such as no transfusion of blood unless specially tested and the white blood cells removed if I am in an auto accident.

I later found that my hospital Peace Health Sacred Heart Hospital handles the installation of Philips Lifeline. I guess my doctors saw healthy I was that they did not recommend it for me. The guy who installed my unit at home yesterday works in the Peace Health gerontology section.

In contrast to the product advertised excessively on television by movie starts and former high health officials, who force their clients to sign a two year contract that they cannot change. My contract allows me to cancel anytime before the next month begins. I took the more expensive $50/month service instead of the lower cost one at, I think, $34-$40/month which does not have the new fall detection device.

Many greatly obese clients who live on wheel chairs due to the excessive high fructose corn syrup sugar in all prepared foods including just about everything at fast food joints including MacDonalds. Don't use salad dressings or sauces which are loaded with high fructose corn syrup.

Surprisingly soon after I stopped basically taking in any high fructose corn syrup sugar, I started to lose weight! I guess the princeton study about this sugar and obesity verses regular sugar with the same calories gave different results with fructose not able to tell our brain to stop eating while cane sugar activated the satiation point so we do not overeat. Ghrelin from our belly Omentum organ makes us hungry so we won't starve. But if we don't satisfy our hunger fairly soon with non-vending machine good food, we tend to overeat at the next meal. High Fructose Corn Syrup Sugar prevents the Ghrelin from turning off when we should be satisfied so we keep eating and eating.

I found that when I stopped drinking orange juice, eating bananas, apples, and blue berries which have the highest levels of fructose, I very quickly started losing weight. I have a high quality digital scale so I can see the weight drop one pound and certainly can see the obvious two pounds I lost within days. But those who splurge on Fast Foods, it would not be as quick unless you drop this sugar completely because small amounts can activate your hunger pangs and get you to overeat.

Dr. Johnson had an usual finding when he was studying uric acid for gout. He found it causes high blood pressure and uric acid is produced from High Fructose Corn Syrup Sugar! So when I decided to drink orange juice containing Calcium Citrate to lower my blood acidity, I was doing precisely the wrong thing. I think my fasting blood glucose level went up because I ate delicious dark chocolates containing sugar, but I suspect it was high fructose corn sugar which is 55% Fructose and 45% sucrose to make it less sweet. Sucrose has a One to One ratio of glucose to fructose go the mixture is actually roughly 78% Fructose and 22% glucose instead of 50/50 of each in cane sugar or sucrose.

The glucose level is high enough to give me a 100 glucose instead of 90 even at the relatively low level I take in. I tried this many times with stuff I really like, and my fasting glucose always goes up to 100. Those who have the potential to get Diabetes must keep their glucose levels below 90. Keep these foods out of your home! You can make one week of simple foods which taste good and won't kill you or cause you to become obese. Buy vegetables and fruits in season and at farmer's markets when you can. They taste better and are lot cheaper than in the winter and early spring months.

Must read the easy to read book "The Sugar Fix: The High-Fructose Fallout that is Making You Fat and Sick" by Richard J. Johnson, MD. He published his work in peer reviewed journals and has submitted patent applications for this discovery.

High Fructose Corn Syrup Sugar is present in huge amounts in bitter Coke, Pepsi, all cola drinks except diet ones, lots in Gatorade but but also in restaurant foods and especially in FAST FOOD JOINTS.

In the Healthcare Bill, Obama forces the restaurants and fast food joints to list all ingredients. I will look for a copy.

Athletes who use a lot of energy such as in football or basketball can drink Gatorade and other sports drinks, but the rest of us should not. These high fructose sugar drinks go to the liver where part of the fructose converts to glucose which the liver stores as glycogen for sustained energy such as needed by marathon runners.

The glucose part of sucrose gives us high blood sugar levels. So much sugar is put in these drinks to make them drinkable. The first Gatorade was really awful. When Pepsi took it over, they put cheap high fructose corn sugar in it to provide extra stored glycogen energy in their liver for sustained energy.

Another source of glucose are fiberless carbohydrates such as White Bread, anything made from White Flour, and White rice. If you eat real potatoes. Fiberless carbohydrates start releasing sugar in your mouth and in your intestines and into your blood stream. Carbohydrates with fire such as whole wheat or grain, brown rice, and other with fiber are not liked by the commercial produces of food that is killing Americans because they do not cook as quickly and are more difficult to freeze. So the fiber is removed to give us a sugar high and diabetes! www.DoctorOz.com said if we take in 500 grams of fiber daily, our diabetes type 2 would go away! The damage won't.

Which Books Should We Read If We Have Limited Time?

Tags: Winners, bookcritics.org, your tastes, Historical Fiction, Science, N. Korea, Value of Work, Genes

I like the www.bookcritics.org because it is a more democratic Way of picking good books from less familiar and well known publishing houses they cover more than the elitist oriented ones and political such as Pulitzer Prizes ones. This award is highly prized by authors of books. I also love the University of Virginia Book Festival whose selection process is superb. Miami Book Festival is also superb for political books not in the main stream only.

Don't forget that everyone has their own taste in books. So the best way to buy and read books is to go to Independent Book Stores who tend to have good books available, because they cannot make money on the best sellers. The Big Commercial Books stores based the books they keep on their shelf on how much is selling so if you don't look in the first several weeks, they will probably be off the shelfs. Remember the public display table Books are paid for by the book publisher.

I buy my books from www.amazon.com because they seem to have every book no matter how popular. The unpopular books are normally priced higher. I go to Powell's for fiction because they actually read the books for their reviews. http://www.powells.com/indiespensable/?slideshow=Indiespensable%2017 It is based in Portland, Oregon and normally I buy enough books to avoid shipping charges, but normally I pay a higher price than I do on Amazon, but gladly do it to support Independent Book Stores. I belong to the Progressive Book Club, but I rely on watching the author I see on www.c-span.org scroll at top for BookTV and other recommendations.

Official History. Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Cromwell,_1st_Earl_of_Essex

... Cromwell played an important part in the English Reformation. The parliamentary sessions of 1529–1531 had brought Henry VIII no nearer to annulment.^[10] However, the session of 1532—Cromwell's first as chief minister—heralded a change of course: key sources of papal revenue were cut off and ecclesiastical legislation was transferred to the King. In the next year's session came the fundamental law of the English Reformation: the Act in Restraint of Appeals of 1533 which forbade appeals to Rome (thus allowing for a divorce in England without the need for the Pope's permission). This was drafted by Cromwell and its famous preamble declared:

Where by divers sundry old authentic histories and chronicles, it is manifestly declared and expressed that this realm of England is an Empire, and so hath been accepted in the world, governed by one Supreme Head and King having the dignity and royal estate of the imperial Crown of the same, unto whom a body politic compact of all sorts and degrees of people divided in terms and by names of Lords Spiritual and Lords Temporal, be bounden and owe to bear next to God a natural and humble obedience. ...

Another non-fiction book I will probably read is the Age of Wonder by Richard Holmes (Pantheon). Many times really good books are on the NY Times Best Seller list for the first one or two weeks, then the readers of good books disappear. Malcolm Gladwell is an exception.

The Cleanest Race: How North Koreans See Themselves - And Why It Matters by Matthew Crawford

Emanuel and Eric, I strongly recommend both of you to watch the video at C-Span http://www.booktv.org/Program/11315/The+Cleanest+Race+How+North+Koreans+See+Themselves+And+Why+It+Matters.aspx

Myers who lives in South Korea thinks that our approaches from the Right, Left, and Center won't work on North Korea. The Japanese Occupation controlled the elite with propaganda where we are one people. When the Japanese left, these propagandists moved to North Korea and supported the North Korean rulers with a non-typical approach that we are generally familiar with. Of course the non-middle class or poor Koreans who don't read were brutally suppressed.

The propagandist in North Korea depended on perceived military might and Mother ruler beliefs to think that Mother will protect the suffering North Korean people. Myers said that it is ridiculous to believe that North Korea will give up their Nuclear Bombs. Having the Chinese negotiate with North Korea is basically futile too. First they hate the Chinese and Chinese have no interest in giving up the economic perks they get the North Korea.

Their approach to control is to keep the populace ignorant and the elites heavily propagandized. But word of the outside world is leaking in by satellites providing access to South Korean and Chinese television so it is likely that change will come over time.

Just like we did not understand the Japanese during World War II, our American interpreters who thought they knew the Japanese language forgot about the culture of Japanese where they say things indirectly. Since I have lots of experience in this language at home, I had no problem understanding the true meaning of what the Japanese were saying by thinking all the time.

Unlike South Koreans, the North Koreans seem to be more favorable towards Japan. My hearing sometimes is bad, but I thought Myers said something about Hikomori in understanding. Only the lower classes have left North Korea or try to, but many also return.

"Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry Into the Value of Work."

Although very few of my friends believe me, I was going to turn the TV off, but I saw the high intelligence in his eyes and expression so I kept it on luckily before he started to speak. Talking well is genetic and has nothing to do with intelligence. Many dumb salesman are superb talkers. Unfortunately in our society, we base intelligence on how well they talk. I based it later on how well they answer difficult questions. I was right! He can!

He is a non-conformist thinker, a rare commodity in our corporate so-called free enterprise hierarchical country. By the way they operate CEO's are basically dictators. That is why CEOs make very poor political leaders with many examples to prove my point including Bush, Cheney, Corzine, those in I am chief in government positions such as Hoover, and possibly Spitzer . But no one seems to express this obvious observation. Whitman, if she is elected in California, would be a disaster. Brown has proven that he is able to govern throughout his career. He is honest and competent. It would be tragic if Californians vote to go from the frying pan to the fire by electing Whitman.

Since you are both intellectuals, you might want to read the book by Matthew Crawford "Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry Into the Value of Work." See below. http://www.booktv.org/Program/11418/2010+Virginia+Festival+of+the+Book+Matthew+Crawford+quotShop+Class+as+Soulcraft+An+Inquiry+Into+the+Value+of+Workquot.aspx

He got his Ph.D. on Political Philosophy at the University of Chicago, mainly on interpreting Plutarch. When he could find no Academic job, he headed a Think Tank, but would not name it. He left because they wanted to start with a conclusion and then find evidence for it. It was most likely one of conservative Think Tanks. Not much on Wikipedia, but does list his publications before he opened a motorcycle repair shop. This book has found lots of interest in academic circles. A strong contact was Alan Blinder of Princeton and as you know, a former Federal Reserve Vice Chairman.

The author is a moderate Republican who wants to get rid of Monopolies to get true competition and provide jobs that have face time so it cannot be shipped electronically overseas. It is about time we start making the Blue Collar Skill profession prestigious as so called scholarly professions.

I normally skipped over this in pre-recording it, but I watched Rebecca Skloot who I really liked in her short 30 minute interview just before his. The c-span.org hosts seem to ask many really good questions! The same holds for the audience at the Virginia Book Festival. She was at the Virginia Book Festival, one of my favorite science writers. The books they select are of higher quality than other ones. She is a very good Free Lance Book Critic of Science Books.

Just before a Federal District Judge invalidated many Gene Patents, she talked about her book where in 1950 cell lines from Henrietta Lacks were taken without her knowledge and then she died at age 30. John Hopkins finally found a cancer cell line which was truly Immortal. Skloot indirectly said that genes should not be patented. In 1950 life could not be patented as it should be including seeds which Monsanto did by going through our public seed bank! The want to eliminate any alternatives to genetically modified food crops so they can sell their Weed killer. Round Up Resistant crops have already been discovered.

That is how Evolution in terms of mutation and selection works! Evolution occurs much faster than we have been taught to believe. Epigenetic turning off or on of genes due to environmental or psychological effects as we see in the Scots-Irish Republicans. Unless the families move away from this environment, they will always be unusually paranoid with fear that change will hurt them. Why don't the smart ones know this. Oh yes, they do not believe in Evolution. God predetermines everything!

Don't they know that some crazy forget Jesus Norwegian brought his religion to our country in the 19th century during the Robber Baron times? The same can be said of the many new religions now.

Jim Kawakami, April 8, 2010, http://jimboguy.blogspot.com

Jon Stewart's CNN Crossfire Comment: Stop Helping Politicians and Corporations!

Tags: NYT Douthat Criticizes Debates on Television, Jon Stewart, Maddow, Yoo, O'Reilly Factor, CNN Disaster, MSNBC

Americans want to understand what the hell is going on in our country and having panels is both confusing to the viewer who is not ideological. Even though PBS Newshour is boring, at least they try to help us understand the important issues before us, but be warned they are just like the networks realize who provides at least a substantial part of their support. But PBS unlike commercial television any potential conflicts of interests such their supporter Toyota each time.

As Ross Douthat of the NY Times says below,

Douthat: ... What might work, instead, is a cable news network devoted to actual debate. For all the red-faced shouting, debate isn’t really what you get on Fox and MSNBC. There’s room, it would seem, for a network where representatives from the right and left can both feel comfortable, and compete on roughly equal terms. Sort of like they did on ... “Crossfire.” ...

What cable news needs, instead, is something more like what Stewart himself has been doing on “The Daily Show.” Instead of bringing in the strategists, consultants and professional outrage artists who predominate on other networks, he ushers conservative commentators into his studio for conversations that are lengthy, respectful and often riveting. Stewart’s series of debates on torture and interrogation policy, in particular — featuring John Yoo and Marc Thiessen, among others — have been more substantive than anything on Fox or MSNBC. ...

(Actually Rachel Maddow trumps Jon Stewart in both length and complexity of her arguments and get a better sense. Sure Stewart's discussions are longer than soundbites but at most just a few minutes. You should go to longer talks such as a guest of the Bill O'Reilly Show on www.YouTube.com . Bill O'Reilly | The O'Reilly Factor - FOXNews.com Watching Stewart's Show is painful for me because his The Daily Show discussions contain mostly fluff. Jim)

_________________________

Rachel Maddow prepares so well that often the guest who tries to pass on false conclusion is really embarrassed. Rachel was a Rhodes Scholar. Her discussions with those of a different view are spectacular and I learn a lot from her.

Entertainment must be an element of the showing bias towards one side or the other. Entertainment is not what PBS has. Olbermann and Maddow at http://CountDown.msnbc.com and http://rachel.msnbc.com respectively don't often have debates because the Republicans are afraid to appear because they will be confronted with a someone who is knowledgeable enough to tear apart their attempt at using tested soundbites from the Heritage Foundation or American Enterprise Institute and also a number of propaganda Think Tanks supporting corporations and billionaires such as the Oil Riches inherited from his oil late father. The son of Koch has contributed billions to over 40 organizations to Stop Global Warming Laws. Not reported widely is that the so-called fake e-mails not that and just lies by the oil companies supported lobbyists.

Of all the commentators on television, no one beats Rachel Maddow of MSNBC. She tries extremely hard to get Republicans to come on her panel and sometimes succeed by repeated attempts. She and her staff prepares very well so the guests cannot get away with tested soundbites. Unfortunately it is in Prime Time on the East Coast, but Maddow and Olbermann repeats still beat the stars at CNN. Rachel beats Larry King, but rarely the FOX Boys and Girls news. Watchers of television news want to understand rather be propagandized which CNN does too much. Old people watch the news. For example Rush Limbaugh's audience on radio had an average age of 67. Too bad they did not show a distribution curve or a median age which would have been even more informative. Rachel gets a much younger viewing audience.

Jim Kawakami, April 6, 2010, http://jimboguy.blogspot.com

OP-ED COLUMNIST

Can CNN Be Saved?

By ROSS DOUTHAT

Published: April 4, 2010

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/05/opinion/05douthat.html?bl

Listening to Jon Stewart helped destroy CNN. Now imitating him might be the network’s only hope of salvation. ...

Correction:

An earlier version of this column stated incorrectly that conservative guests were invited to appear on MSNBC’s “The Rachel Maddow Show” only when they had anti-Republican views to express. Ms. Maddow has stated that invitations to guests on her show are not limited in this way and that invitations to conservative guests are often refused. The columnist has addressed the error in a blog post. -----

But she has been able to get some really good debates with those with a different mindset that she has and listens to them without interruption. Some of them have been staunch Republicans who wanted to present their own views such as McCain's opponent in the Arizona Republican primary.

It was October of 2004, the heat of the presidential campaign, when Stewart showed up on “Crossfire,” long CNN’s flagship political program, and delivered a now-legendary tirade.

“Stop, stop, stop, stop hurting America,” he told the hosts, Paul Begala and Tucker Carlson. He called them “political hacks.” He accused them of “helping the politicians and the corporations.” He compared their show to a professional wrestling match. “You’re doing theater,” he said, “when you should be doing debate.” ...

It was bad before this year; now it’s terrible. CNN’s prime-time hosts have lost almost half their viewers in the last 12 months. In February, the once-proud network slipped behind not only Fox News and MSNBC, but HLN (its sister network) and CNBC as well. Anderson Cooper sometimes gets beaten by re-runs of Keith Olbermann’s “Countdown.” ...

Even the thrust-and-parry sessions of “The Daily Show,” though, are limited by the left-right binary that divides and dulls our politics. They’re better than the competition, but they don’t give free rein to eccentricity and unpredictability, or generate arguments that finish somewhere wildly different than where you’d expect them to end up. This is what you find in the riveting television debates of the past: William F. Buckley versus Gore Vidal,Vidal versus Norman Mailer, anything involving Ross Perot. And it’s what you get from the mad, compulsively watchable Glenn Beck, who’s an extremist without being a knee-jerk partisan: You know he’s way out there on the right somewhere, but you don’t know what he’s going to say next. ... http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/05/opinion/05douthat.html?bl

The Truth About Drug Companies: How They Deceive Us and What to Do About It

Tags: Sick Americans, Low Fiber Foods, Obesity, High Fructose Sugar, Marketing Drugs on TV, Low Vitamin D, Sunscreens, Alzheimer's Disease, Senior Drugs High Cost

Since it became legal to advertise on television, Americans spent $250 Billion in 2005 for prescription drugs. Americans also use more prescription drugs than most of Europe including the UK, Australia, Germany, France, Spain, Italy, New Zealand, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, and Argentina combined! Of course Big Parma has been increases prices much higher than inflation in a friendly Bush administration and high priced Medicare D Advantage without paying for it, so I would not be surprised if it is up to $500 billion now or higher!

Read "Our Daily Meds" by Melody Petersen, 2008, a New York Times Award winning journalist. On the cover page Marcia Angell of Harvard highly recommends Petersen's book.

I would not be surprised that Big Pharma went bonkers and had her removed from the NY Times. The publishers may also have been pressured to stop printing it. Thank you www.amazon.com . We must stop allowing advertising on television! Only the United States and New Zealand allow this.

It almost seems that the Big Five Food Producer Processors, Fast Food Companies, our Department of Agriculture, and the sunscreen industry (Americans have low vitamin D, the miracle hormone) collaborated the Drug Companies by giving them up to one hundred million sick American and Worldwide patients with high fructose, fiberless prepared foods, and high fat foods.

Even Chinese and Japanese kids are becoming obese in large numbers. Recently obese Americans outnumber overweight numbers. These facts are not mentioned very often with obesity reports neglecting to report well know causes for obesity. Probably high fructose corn sugar is used in just about everything to make tasteless prepared foods tasty.

This sugar prevents our appetite indicators to work so we eat until our stomach hurts! High Fructose corn sugar also forms deadly fats 30 percent of the time when metabolizing this sugar in the liver.

This leads to heart disease, metabolic syndrome, diabetes, cancer, obesity, and probably Alzheimer's Disease which has finally been diagnosed as a synaptic brain connection disease and plaque is just a side show an over-abundance of proteins in the brain! When mice with Alzheimer's disease were subjected to an enzyme that gets rid of excess protein, the mice behave subsequently like young mice without Alzheimer's Disease in the maze.

The LDL-2 heavy form of LDL causes plaque formation and may be able to penetrate the brain where this protein can block the person's brain synapses causing dementia. We already know drugs such as Detrol and certain antihistamines do block the enzymes which protect us from excess protein in the brain and as recently seen, Beta-Amyloid does block synapses!

Most of these diseases should have been detected a lot earlier. The facts were there, but humans tend to believe the accepted fact or theories no matter what the facts show.

Jim Kawakami, April 5, 2010, http://jimboguy.blogspot.com

"The Truth About Drug Companies: How They Deceive Us and What to Do About It.

Marcia Angell, MD, who was the former editor of the The New England Journal of Medicine. She was removed for being too aggressive about stopping Big Pharma from publishing fake endorsements and lying about the safety of their drugs.

Every day Americans are subjected to a barrage of advertising by the pharmaceutical industry. Mixed in with the pitches for a particular drug—usually featuring beautiful people enjoying themselves in the great outdoors—is a more general message. ...

Is any of this true? Well, the first part certainly is. Prescription drug costs are indeed high—and rising fast. Americans now spend a staggering $200 billion a year on prescription drugs, and that figure is growing at a rate of about 12 percent a year (down from a high of 18 percent in 1999).^[1]

Drugs are the fastest-growing part of the health care bill—which itself is rising at an alarming rate. The increase in drug spending reflects, in almost equal parts, the facts that people are taking a lot more drugs than they used to, that those drugs are more likely to be expensive new ones instead of older, cheaper ones, and that the prices of the most heavily prescribed drugs are routinely jacked up, sometimes several times a year. ...

Before its patent ran out, for example, the price of Schering-Plough's top-selling allergy pill, Claritin, was raised thirteen times over five years, for a cumulative increase of more than 50 percent—over four times the rate of general inflation.^[2] As a spokeswoman for one company explained, "Price increases are not uncommon in the industry and this allows us to be able to invest in R&D."^[3] In 2002, the average price of the fifty drugs most used by senior citizens was nearly $1,500 for a year's supply. (Pricing varies greatly, but this refers to what the companies call the average wholesale price, which is usually pretty close to what an individual without insurance pays at the pharmacy.)

Paying for prescription drugs is no longer a problem just for poor people. As the economy continues to struggle, health insurance is shrinking. Employers are requiring workers to pay more of the costs themselves, and many businesses are dropping health benefits altogether. Since prescription drug costs are rising so fast, payers are particularly eager to get out from under them by shifting costs to individuals. The result is that more people have to pay a greater fraction of their drug bills out of pocket. And that packs a wallop.

Many of them simply can't do it. They trade off drugs against home heating or food. Some people try to string out their drugs by taking them less often than prescribed, or sharing them with a spouse. Others, too embarrassed to admit that they can't afford to pay for drugs, leave their doctors' offices with prescriptions in hand but don't have them filled. Not only do these patients go without needed treatment but their doctors sometimes wrongly conclude that the drugs they prescribed haven't worked and prescribe yet others—thus compounding the problem.

The people hurting most are the elderly. When Medicare was enacted in 1965, people took far fewer prescription drugs and they were cheap. For that reason, no one thought it necessary to include an outpatient prescription drug benefit in the program. In those days, senior citizens could generally afford to buy whatever drugs they needed out of pocket.

Approximately half to two thirds of the elderly have supplementary insurance that partly covers prescription drugs, but that percentage is dropping as employers and insurers decide it is a losing proposition for them. At the end of 2003, Congress passed a Medicare reform bill that included a prescription drug benefit scheduled to begin in 2006, but as we shall see later, its benefits are inadequate to begin with and will quickly be overtaken by rising prices and administrative costs.

For obvious reasons, the elderly tend to need more prescription drugs than younger people—mainly for chronic conditions like arthritis, diabetes, high blood pressure, and elevated cholesterol. In 2001, nearly one in four seniors reported that they skipped doses or did not fill prescriptions because of the cost. (That fraction is almost certainly higher now.) Sadly, the frailest are the least likely to have supplementary insurance. At an average cost of $1,500 a year for each drug, someone without supplementary insurance who takes six different prescription drugs—and this is not rare—would have to spend $9,000 out of pocket. Not many among the old and frail have such deep pockets.

Furthermore, in one of the more perverse of the pharmaceutical industry's practices, prices are much higher for precisely the people who most need the drugs and can least afford them. The industry charges Medicare recipients without supplementary insurance much more than it does favored customers, such as large HMOs or the Veterans Affairs (VA) system. Because the latter buy in bulk, they can bargain for steep discounts or rebates. People without insurance have no bargaining power; and so they pay the highest prices.

In the past two years, we have started to see, for the first time, the beginnings of public resistance to rapacious pricing and other dubious practices of the pharmaceutical industry. It is mainly because of this resistance that drug companies are now blanketing us with public relations messages. And the magic words, repeated over and over like an incantation, are research, innovation, and American. Research. Innovation. American. It makes a great story.

But while the rhetoric is stirring, it has very little to do with reality. First, research and development (R&D) is a relatively small part of the budgets of the big drug companies—dwarfed by their vast expenditures on marketing and administration, and smaller even than profits. In fact, year after year, for over two decades, this industry has been far and away the most profitable in the United States. ... http://www.nybooks.com/articles/17244

Value of Direct to Consumer Advertising Oversold Study Finds, But Direct to Doctor Much More Effective http://hms.harvard.edu/public/news/ss0808/090108_soumerai.html

The possible flaw in the Harvard study below could be that these were relatively new drugs and normally the advertising ramps up when they have a possible winner. A 2008 Harvard study taking advantage of the spill over of American advertising of three new drugs in English and French speaking parts of Canada saw a 48% increase in the use of one drug in the English speaking Canada for the first year compared with much smaller effects in the French Canada in Quebec. Note that 48% from a very small number is not that impressive.

The best thing a patient should do before filling his or her prescription is look the drug up and make sure it has been around seven years, the time it takes for all the side-effects and deaths to be common knowledge. For heaven sakes, even auto companies have routinely hid their defects as long as they can.

Smoking diminished strongly when an FDA head finally had the guts to strongly recommend not smoking because cigarettes can kill you. He also went out and communicated this instead of leaving it to die.

Jim Kawakami, April 5, 2010, http://jimboguy.blogspot.com

Advertising Oversold Study Finds ... Law and Soumerai chose to look at three specific drugs: Enbrel (rheumatoid arthritis), Nasonex (nasal allergies), and Zelnorm (irritable bowel sydrome). All three drugs were on the market for at least one year before the DTCA campaign began, and none were advertised in Canada through “softer” consumer ads, that is, ads that may mention the drug by name without identifying the relevant conditions.

The basic question was simple: did use of these drugs increase faster in English-speaking regions after American DTCA campaigns began? ...

Sales for Zelnorm, however, did spike noticeably in English-speaking Canada as soon as the ad campaign began. While prescriptions for this drug increased by over 40 percent, this jump was relatively short-lived, and after a few years, prescription rates in both groups resumed identical patterns. A similar analysis of U.S. Medicaid prescriptions found a slightly higher, but similarly brief, jump in sales.

The researchers hypothesize that DTCA may not be as effective as other types of consumer advertising due to the unique complexity of the marketing/sales trajectory.

With a typical consumer product, an individual sees an ad and then can choose to simply go out and buy the item. “But pharmaceuticals aren’t typical consumer products,” says Soumerai. “A person needs to see an ad, get motivated by that ad, contact their doctor for an appointment, show up at the appointment, communicate both the condition and the drug to the doctor, convince the doctor that this drug is preferable to other alternatives, then actually go out and fill the prescription. This is a chain of events that can break at any point.” ...

One hundred years of marketing experience and recent studies indicate that face-to-face promotion of drugs to doctors by pharmaceutical representatives is far more effective than DTCA. ...