By Jack Challem
Jack Challem, The Nutrition Reporter™, writes a monthly "op-ed" column for Let's Live magazine. These are some of the columns. For subscription information on Let's Live, go to www.letslivemag.com.
Copyright 1998, 1999, 2000 by Jack Challem, The Nutrition Reporter™
All rights reserved.
It's Time to Boycott "Addiction, Inc."
By Jack Challem
If there's one outfit you ought to boycott, it's Philip Morris, the company I call "Addiction, Inc."
Philip Morris, of course, is the huge tobacco and cigarette company that's been selling "cancer sticks" and killing people for profit for decades.
These days, trying hard to look socially responsible, Philip Morris supports fine art exhibitions, helps abused women, and provides humanitarian aid to victims of natural disasters.
Yet it's all "dirty money." The company's business model is built mostly around addictive substances.
When Philip Morris decided recently to buy Nabisco, one of the biggest makers of junk food, a newspaper cartoonist depicted a couple of children commenting on how addictive Oreo cookies were.
So if Philip Morris isn't trying to hook you on tobacco, it's sugar.
Philip Morris also owns Miller beer. And so, the company doesn't just try to addict you to cigarettes and sugar. It tries to do the same with booze.
Philip Morris owns Kraft as well, one of the largest makers of processed and refined foods-basically, foods that aren't all that good for you.
Proud of itself, Philip Morris recently ran full-page newspaper ads describing how it helps feed the hungry. Over the past 10 years, the company donated $350 million in money and food-"including many of our brands like Kraft Macaroni & Cheese, Post Cereals, and Jell-O-to feed the hungry."
Just what poor, hungry people need-Jell-O and junk foods.
Fifty years ago, the world put Nazis on trial for atrocities described as crimes against humanity. In the 1990s, the tobacco companies were fined big time for knowingly selling cancer-causing products. It's my wish that, someday, executives of the Philip Morris family of companies-and all the other junk food and fast food companies-are held responsible for how their products damage the health of millions of people. That kind of profiteering is also a crime against humanity.
In the mean time, I urge you to do what I do. Stop buying products from Philip Morris companies.
What We Don't Know About Genes Could Fill a Genome
By Jack Challem
From all the newspaper headlines, you'd think that we've witnessed the Second Coming of Medicine.
True, scientists had mapped the human genome-the collection of some 50,000 genes that influence who we are, our health, and our risk of disease.
The truth is, what we don't know about genes could fill a genome. Too much of the promise of gene therapy is nothing more than medical hype.
A case in point. In the early 1990s, scientists identified two genes, known as BRCA1 and BRCA2, that they thought caused breast cancer.
While women who carry one or both of these genes have a high risk of developing breast cancer, scientists soon realized that BRCA1 and BRCA2 are actually involved in only 10 percent of all breast cancers.
Then researchers discovered that the BRCA genes aren't all that bad after all. They seem to enhance lactation, and they increase the risk of cancer only after being mutated, such as when damaged by free radicals. In other words, BRCAs were good genes that could turn bad.
The latest installment, published in the journal Nature Immunology, found that the BRCA1 gene plays a fundamental role in our entire immune system. In other words, BRCA1 has been fully redeemed.
It now turns out that the BRCA1 gene is essential for the creation and function of T cells, also known as T lymphocytes. These cells orchestrate how the immune system fights cancer and infections.
In addition, BRCA1 also suppresses genes that cause cancer, and it helps repair damaged DNA, thus reducing the risk of cancer yet another way.
Every day, we learn a little more about how genes work. Looking back, it's now easy to see how little scientists knew 10 years ago. In a few more years, we're likely to look back and think scientists were naive at best and pretty stupid at worst.
Let's not get carried away by all the hype about gene research. There's a lot more to your health than genes.
Excuse Me...But Herbal Remedies Are Safe
By Jack Challem
Over the past few months, we seen one medical and media attack after another on the use of herbal remedies. While some of the concerns have been legitimate, in terms of herb-drug interactions, most have seriously distorted the facts.
In a recent editorial in the New England Journal of Medicine, former FDA Comissioner David Kessler, M.D., railed against herbs, urging Congress to restrict over-the-counter sales of herbs and other supplements. As an example of herbal dangerous, Kessler cited a case in which a combination of Chinese herbs accidently contained a hazardous one-in Belgium!
Herbs have been used medicinally in every culture for thousands of years. Anthropologists have even found signs of herbal remedies at 60,000-year-old Neanderthal sites. Although nothing is perfectly safe, herbs have passed the test of time, and science is now discovery exactly how they work.
So why the controversy?
The answer, I think, is simple. Herbs are effective, inexpensive, and safe alternatives to high-priced and dangerous prescription drugs. When you and I use herbal remedies (and other supplements), we become the winners. The losers are doctors, hospitals, and drug companies who see a potential loss of money and market share.
Just recently, a team of doctors in New York found that St. John's wort worked as well as the antidepresssant drug Zoloft. Meanwhile, in Germany, doctors reported that St. John's wort worked better than Prozac-and with one-third of the side effects. These are the types of studies that show drugs to be unnecessary medical expenses.
In terms of safety, prescription drugs are really no more than lethal poisons with a few beneficial effects. A study in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that prescription drugs, given to hospitalized patients, kill more than 100,000 people a year and seriously injure more than 2 million others.
If David Kessler were really interested in public safety, he'd ask Congress to place greater restrictions on drugs-and fewer on herbal remedies.
Vitamin "Experts" Mislead the Public
By Jack Challem
The news in April should have been cause for a modest celebration: government recommendations for vitamins C and E increased by 50 percent.
But a news release, which influenced most newspaper headlines, cast a decidedly negative spin: large amounts of supplemental vitamins C and E were dangerous.
The reason boiled down to old-fashioned vitamin politics. Nutrition conservatives-those who don't think much of vitamin supplements-essentially rigged the results.
A small group of scientists, under the auspices of the National Academy of Sciences, was charged with revising the old Recommended Dietary Allowances (RDAs) for antioxidants, originally meant to prevent rare vitamin-deficiency diseases. The new Dietary Reference Intakes (DRIs) were supposed to reduce the risk of common chronic diseases.
The recommended amount of vitamin C increased to 90 mg for men and 75 mg for women, up from 60 mg. The recommended amount of vitamin E increased to 22 IU (of natural vitamin E), up from 15 IU.
While the change was a step in the right direction, it was more like a crawl than a stride. The new DRIs weren't all that different from the antiquated RDAs, last published in 1989.
The head of the antioxidant panel said there wasn't enough evidence to use antioxidants for preventing chronic disease. It apparently didn't matter that thousands of studies on the health benefits of vitamins are published each year. That's what I call head-in-the-sand science.
One disgruntled panel member told me that most of the scientists sitting around the table simply wanted to "cover their asses." In a bureaucratic committee, you do that by not doing much at all.
I've been reading the research on vitamins and talking with nutritionally oriented physicians for more than 25 years. The evidence in favor of vitamin supplements is nothing less than persuasive. To reduce my risk of chronic disease, I've been taking hefty supplemental doses of natural vitamin E and vitamin C for 30 years.
But then, I'm not a nutrition bureaucrat. I don't have to bury my head in the sand. And I don't have to cover my ass.
Gene Therapy At Home
By Jack Challem
Practically every week, we hear about scientists discovering new genes that cause disease: the breast cancer gene, the prostate cancer gene, the Alzheimer's gene, the glaucoma gene, even a shyness gene.
Genes, composed of strands of DNA, are the biological programs that direct the behavior of each cell in your body. When healthy DNA provides the correct instructions, your body makes thousands of useful biochemicals. Damaged DNA garbles these genetic instructions and increases the risk of disease.
Biotech firms hope that gene therapies will eventually repair defective genes we're born with. But in their race to create the next generation of drugs, they've overlooked some simple ways to keep our genes healthy.
For most of us, health problems don't result from defective genes we're born with. For example, only a small percentage of breast cancer cases are related to inherited breast cancer genes. Most cases of breast cancer-and most diseases in general-appear related to acquired DNA damage.
With all the hype about gene research and therapy, it's easy to forget that genes don't function in a vacuum. Your body needs vitamins B3, B6, B12, and folic acid to make new DNA. If you don't have adequate levels of these vitamins, your body cannot synthesize DNA, and if you can't synthesize DNA you cannot make new cells.
Even with good nutrition, errors form when a cell copies DNA to make a new cell. To fix these errors, specialized repair enzymes cruise up and down DNA strands. These enzymes depend on folic acid.
DNA is also damaged by free radicals, hazardous molecules produced as a byproduct of your body's energy production and found in pollutants. This damage can lead to prematurely aged cells and cancer. But many studies have shown that vitamins E and C protect DNA.
The best way to stay healthy is to preserve the genes you've already got. You don't need gene therapy for that. All you need is a rich nutritional environment for your genes.
The War Against Drugs
By Jack Challem
For the millionth time, I've read a magazine article about how to keep children off drugs. Spend more time with your kids, discreetly pry into their lives, the writer advised.
Such efforts are well meaning, but they're also misguided.
The problem isn't just illegal, addictive street drugs-grass, cocaine, speed-that are so easily abused. The real drug problem includes thousands of over-the-counter and prescription drugs.
The fact is we live in a drug-dependent society. We've been taught from an early age that one miracle pill or another will cure most everything. People take drugs-albeit legal ones-for headaches, infections, allergies, depression, PMS, hot flashes, hair loss, obesity, and dozens of other problems.
So should we be surprised when some people figure illegal drugs will solve their problems, too?
The marketing of legal drugs too oftens feels like a feeding frenzy, with pharmaceutical companies aggressively pursuing market share more than patient care. American drug companies make around $100 billion a year, and they invest billions in their respectable version of drug pushing, called marketing and advertising.
But the reality is that drugs are dangerous, even though they've been approved for sale by the FDA. If you take away all the warnings, side effects, and contraindications of drugs in the 3,000-page Physicians Desk Reference, you'd end up with only a puny 150-page book on drug benefits.
Given this, it should have been no surprise when the Journal of the American Medical Association reported that 100,000 hospitalized patients die each year from physician-prescribed drugs, and that another 2 million had serious side effects.
It's not going to be easy changing the quick-fix mindset encouraged by drug companies. But as a society, we have to add a dose of temperance to the way we all use drugs.
The answer may be more that "just say no" to illegal drugs. It may be saying "no" as much as possible to all drugs.
One Carbon and Three Hydrogens
By Jack Challem
Could one atom of carbon and three of hydrogen keep you younger, give you a positive attitude, and reduce your risk of heart disease and cancer?
The answer is yes. It all boils down to a process called "methylation."
Biochemists understand methylation, but because they talk a different language from the rest of us, the process is usually so technical that it puts most people to sleep.
Methylation occurs when one molecule donates a "methyl group"-a carbon with three attached hydrogen atoms-to another molecule.
That would make for a pretty big yawn, except that methylation is so important to life and health. In fact, methylation reactions occur in your body a billion times a second, according to Craig Cooney, Ph.D, author of Methyl Magic (Andrews McMeel Publishing, 1999).
Methylation turns on your genes, which are the "software" that programs your body. When methylation goes awry, or is sluggish, the result can be heart disease and cancer.
For example, high blood levels of homocysteine, a risk factor for heart disease, develop because of faulty methylation.
Your body needs methylation to make healthy new cells, brain chemicals, hormones, nerve cells, and lots more. Without methylation, life would not be possible.
So, how do you improve your body's methylation?
With vitamins and other micronutrients.
Betaine (trimethylglycine, or TMG) is a great methyl donor. Betaine boosts levels of S-adenosylmethionine (SAMe), the powerhouse of methyl groups.
Choline, a B vitamin, is also a good methyl donor. It's the key building block of acetylcholine, one of the neurotransmitters that enables you to think.
The B-vitamin folic acid and vitamins B6 and B12 help drive methylation reactions. Low levels of these nutrients increase the likelihood of heart disease, cancer, and Alzheimer's, probably because their absence undermines methylation.
Methylation may not be the only important biochemical reaction that takes place in your body. But one thing's for sure. Without it, you wouldn't be reading this.
Connecting the Dots in Research
By Jack Challem
The field of nutrition is populated with thousands of researchers, many experts in narrow fields but few generalists who see the big picture of diet and health. They see the trees, but not the forest.
A case in point. Researchers recently discovered that, contrary to a long-standing belief, people don't lose brain cells as they age. New brain cells are produced throughout life, though the rate of production slows with age.
Other scientists recently reported that production of brain cells involved in learning and memory decline when exposed to stress hormones. The researchers found that stress reduction lowered stress hormone levels in laboratory rats, and when they declined, neuron production normalized.
At about the same time, P. Samuel Campbell, Ph.D., of the University of Alabama, Huntsville, reported an animal study in which supplemental vitamin C reduced stress hormone levels in stressed rats. They noted that these hormones (produced during anger and anxiety) reduced immune function, which would increase the risk of infection and cancer. Rats fed extra vitamin C maintained normal corticosteroid levels, despite being stressed.
How important is this research to you? According to John R. Smythies, M.D., of London, England, the brain contains the highest concentration of vitamin C in the human body, with as much as 25 times more vitamin C than found in blood. In other words, under normal conditions, the human brain requires huge amounts of vitamin C.
When you connect Smythies report to the others, it becomes clear that the brain needs plenty of vitamin C to prevent damage from stress hormones.
But you won't find these connections in the medical journals. Scientists can be experts at equivocating and avoiding the real-world implications of their research. Sometimes they just don't know any better, because they see only the trees and not the forest.
It is possible, however, for you to read about such research and connect the dots. In doing so, you can be a little bit of a scientist-and learn to see the beautiful forest we call nutrition science.
The Drugging of Our Children
By Jack Challem
Could you imagine living in a place where narcotic drugs were routinely prescribed to children?
Odds are you already do. It happens in practically every city, suburb, and town in the United States.
The drug is methylphenidate, a stimulant better known as Ritalin. It's in the same class as morphine and other narcotics, whose manufacture is controlled by the drug-busting federal Drug Enforcement Administration.
Over the past decade, teachers have clammored for Ritalin prescriptions for many of their unfocused or hyperactive students. And all too many pediatricians have obliged them by writing prescriptions for this heavy-duty drug.
Currently, an estimated 3 million American school children get Ritalin to treat what is formally called attention deficit disorder (ADD) and attention deficit hyperactive disorder (ADHD). The amount of Ritalin produced and prescribed has increased by seven times since 1990.
Most of the kids who get Ritalin are boys doing what boys have always done-that is, being a bit more wild than girls. But working parents and stressed-out teachers no longer have the time to deal with such behavior.
So Ritalin has become a quick and easy fix. But instead of teaching children self-control and better behavior, Ritalin promotes life-long drug addiction.
The drug doesn't deal with the underlying causes of true ADD and ADHD: children aren't getting the right kinds of brain food. Omnipresent fast food restaurants and fried foods have altered the traditional dietary levels of essential fatty acids, needed for normal brain function. In addition, fresh vegetables, loaded with vitamins and minerals, are quickly becoming a thing of the past.
Some experts have pointed out that the first signs of nutritional deficiencies are behavioral. Fish oil or evening primrose oil capsules, along with vitamin C and B-vitamin complex supplements, can help restore a balance of brain chemicals.
Such nutrients work. The studies are in the scientific literature. And these supplements are far safer-and more responsible-than giving children dangerous drugs.
Busting the Quack Busters
By Jack Challem
Wallace Sampson, M.D., doesn't like alternative medicine. He thinks that people who use vitamins, homeopathy, and herbs are deluding themselves with unproven and worthless treatments. Last year, Sampson founded what he calls The Scientific Review of Alternative Medicine as a soapbox to criticize alternative therapies.
Sampson and many other self-appointed "quack busters" believe that conventional medicine is by nature "scientific medicine." It's anything but, which means they're the ones who are deluded. Individual doctors express their own biases and rationalize their actions-just like everyone else.
If you doubt me, ask yourself why one doctor prescribes drug A and another drug B for the same condition, or why yet another doctor prescribes a brand name drug over a generic.
It's not because of scientific thinking. If it were, all doctors would prescribe the same things. In reality, physicians' thinking and actions are strongly influenced by health maintenance organizations (HMOs), insurers, and drug companies.
And when an HMO or insurance company denies coverage for a medical test or therapy, the decision is rarely based on science. All too often, it's based on money management.
Have you wondered why doctors prescribe so many drugs? It's not because drugs are the best or the most scientific treatments. It's a testament to the marketing power of multibillion-dollar drug companies, compared with much smaller vitamin, homeopathic, and herb companies. It's raw economic power, not science.
Any doctor who questions vitamin therapy simply isn't reading the medical literature-thousands of studies on vitamins are published each year in medical journals. They're effective, safer, and less expensive than drugs. Likewise, herbs are now being studied by molecular biologists who are elucidating exactly why they work.
I can't speak for all alternative therapies. But I do know that science has a tendency to dismiss whatever it cannot measure. As our ability to measure alternative therapies improves, I think more folklores of the past will become the scientific medicines the future. Let's not be too arrogant or nearsighted in our judgments today.
Carotenoid Confusion
By Jack Challem
Is beta-carotene good? Or bad?
A couple of studies made people wonder. Heavy smokers and drinkers who took high doses of beta-carotene had a higher risk of developing lung cancer. But former smokers taking supplements had a lower risk of cancer.
That's enough to leave anyone confused.
However, if you look at the totality of beta-carotene research, it continues to be overwhelmingly positive.
Researchers recently reported that beta-carotene supplements increased the activity of various types of immune cells, which help the body fight infections and cancer.
Another study found that beta-carotene supplements lowered the risk of prostate cancer in men who generally shunned fruits and vegetables.
However, the emerging picture of carotenoid research is that related nutrients are also important to health.
Lutein, a carotenoid found in spinach and broccoli, protects the eyes and reduces the risk of macular degeneration, a leading cause of blindness. It may even reduce the risk of breast cancer.
Another promising carotenoid is lycopene, which gives tomatoes their red color.
Two studies have found lycopene to be the most powerful antioxidant among the carotenoids. It too may reduce the risk of prostate, breast, and lung cancers.
None of this means that carotenoids will cure cancer. But the evidence strongly supports their roles in maintaining good health.
The take-home message is one that more than a few scientists have missed.
Beta-carotene is a nutrient, not a drug, and nutrients always work as a team promoting normal biochemical processes in the body.
That means it's much more sensible to think of beta-carotene, lutein, and lycopene as a nutritional triumvirate. You need all of them to be healthy.
You can get these nutrients (and many others) by eating a diverse selection of fruits and vegetables. But if you don't eat fruits and veggies on a regular basis, it makes sense to fill the gap with a "mixed" carotenoid supplement.
The information provided by Jack Challem and The Nutrition Reporter™ newsletter is strictly educational and not intended as medical advice. For diagnosis and treatment, consult your physician.