If you’re ready to take control of your health, start by washing your hands for 15 to 20 seconds, about as long as it takes to sing “Happy Birthday” twice. Doing this simple act, while avoiding certain behaviors – smoking, excessive drinking and eating too much – can dramatically improve your health, said internist William Meller, who specializes in evolutionary medicine in Santa Barbara, Calif.
Prevention goes well beyond the mammograms, prostate screenings or blood tests that we can get at the doctor’s office. It’s the little steps you take that can keep you healthy.
“Ideally, prevention should also emphasize healthy lifestyles, a practice that isn’t only health-conscious, but (is) inexpensive,” said James Pivarnik, president of the American College of Sports Medicine.
Here are 10 easy ways to get started:
1. Take a walk.
Humans are designed to be on the move, Meller said. “Walking triggers all of our bodily systems: digestion, stress relief, thinking and preparation for sleep.” It’s easy, simple, free and confers the benefits of exercise without the risk of damage from more energetic pursuits, Muller said. Walk every day – barefoot is fine – and get a pedometer to track your steps, shooting for a minimum of 10,000. Stay committed by setting walking dates with a friend.
2. Keep a food journal.
Writing down everything you eat can double your weight loss, according to a study published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine. “The more food records people kept, the more weight they lost,” said lead author Jack Hollis, a researcher at Kaiser Permanente’s Center for Health Research. Scribble down your dietary transgressions on a note pad, use an online food journal or send yourself text messages. “It’s the process of reflecting on what you eat that helps us become aware of our habits, and hopefully change our behavior,” said Dr. Keith Bachman, a member of The Kaiser Permanente Care Management Institute’s Weight Management Initiative.
3. Stop drinking soda.
Soda and other caloric, sugar-sweetened beverages have contributed to skyrocketing rates of obesity and Type 2 diabetes. But there’s also evidence that drinking diet soda leads to weight gain. Researchers suspect that tricking the brain – getting sweetness without the calories – makes you crave more sugar than ever. Your best bet is to stop drinking calories altogether, said obesity specialist Dr. Yoni Freedhoff. His most confused patients seem to be doing everything right but may have two glasses of milk, one glass of juice and one glass of wine a day. “That’s roughly 40 pounds of liquid calories per year,” he wrote on his blog, Weighty Matters. Freedhoff’s advice: Don’t rely on beverages for nourishment. “A well-balanced diet replete with fruits, vegetables and proteins should satisfy all of one’s nutritional needs,” he said. “Liquid calories are not satiating and in studies tend only to add calories to a meal,” said Freedhoff, founder of Ottawa’s Bariatric Medical Institute, a multidisciplinary weight-management center.
4. Strengthen your muscles.
If you want to keep your muscles from weakening as you age, start strength training. It’s “the only style of exercise that maintains and increases lean muscle tissue and burns between 22 and 36 calories per day,” said personal trainer Jim Karas. He suggests starting with push-ups for the upper body and lunges and squats for the lower body. “Move slowly, and think about the muscles you are engaging. One slow set of 10 is all you need, but make sure to fail,” which means you can’t perform another repetition.
5. Chill out.
Stressed-out people are more vulnerable to colds and other viruses, they take longer to recover from illness and they gain more weight than their relaxed counterparts, research has shown. We also know that “the inability to feel in control of stress, rather than the stressful event itself, is the most damaging to immunity,” wrote Joan Borysenko in “Mending the Body, Mending the Mind.” Another stress expert, Debbie Mandel, likes to lift weights when her stress levels creep up. “Then I’m ready to reframe negatives into positives to turn stress into strength,” said Mandel, the author of “Addicted to Stress.” In addition to exercise, deep-breathing techniques, meditation, tai chi and yoga are proven stress relievers.
6. Eat out less.
We often use restaurants in the same way our parents used supermarkets, one of the main reasons for the dramatic global rise in chronic diseases such as obesity, Type 2 diabetes and heart disease, said Freedhoff. “Nutrition and calories aren’t intuitive,” he said. “When restaurant salads can have more calories and fat than a Big Mac, you know you’re putting your health at risk. You’ll save more than your money by eating meals in. You might even save your life.”
7. Be a social butterfly.
Human beings are social creatures, if only because we need to reproduce. But research has shown that joining a club or sports team, belonging to a church group or keeping in contact with friends creates a sense of social identity that can help significantly reduce your risk of having a stroke, dementia and even the common cold. “We do not outgrow our need for others,” according to the MacArthur Foundation Study of Aging in America. “Loneliness breeds both illness and early death.”
8. Get your zzzzzzzz.
Sleeping well is the single most overlooked factor critical to good health, especially during the flu season, said sleep specialist Dr. Rubin Naiman, an assistant professor at the University of Arizona’s Center for Integrative Medicine. But because focusing on doing all the right things before bed can make it harder to sleep, Naiman suggests lightening things up, perhaps by watching comedy on television before bed. “Too often sleep is approached with an anxious mind and heavy heart,” he said. “Laughter is good medicine – and good sleep medicine. I recommend it over sleeping pills.”
9. Eat whole foods.
Whole foods – fruits, vegetables, legumes, nuts, seeds, eggs and whole grains – are unprocessed and unrefined and typically don’t have added sugar, salt or fat. They often have a low glycemic index, which means they don’t raise blood sugar and insulin levels as quickly as processed foods. Choose a baked potato instead of French fries, eat whole wheat bread instead of white bread, or start the day with oatmeal, rather than a sugary breakfast cereal. “I eat as many fresh veggies and fruits as possible and stay away from anything in a bag, a box or a can,” said Yvonne Conte of Syracuse, N.Y., the author of a guidebook to living a happier and healthier life. “When I started this, I lost 22 pounds. And it has stayed off. Best thing I ever did.”
10. Find your passion.
Do things that bring meaning to your days, said Patricia Boyle, a neuropsychologist in the Alzheimer’s Disease Center at the Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, whose research has shown that having a higher purpose can reduce the risk of death among older adults. “Purpose is cognitively stimulating, and this is very much along the lines of the adage ‘Use it or lose it,’ which certainly has merit,” said Dr. Thomas Perls, director of the New England Centenarian study.

I often get asked: When are they going to allow us to use stem cells for autism in the US? I am getting impatient every treatment center I’ve called in the US say they won’t do it!
My response:
I expect that it will be at least 10 years and they will not be in the form you are expecting…the form that is so successful all over the world. Here’s why:
1. The US medical and pharmacological system is based upon the production and patenting of drugs for the treatment of symptoms.
2. The FDA has declared that stem cells are a regulated drug.
3. Clinical trials for bringing a drug to market take 7-12 years and 250-900 million dollars to develop, market and patent.
4. The US is JUST starting this process after being entirely focused on embryonic stem cells (that are currently irrelevant because they have produced zero treatments).
5. The beauty of stem cells, besides that they work so well, is that they are in so many forms, from so many parts of the body. Stem cell treatment is essentially a procedure, not a drug IMO. Patenting a drug means you have exclusive rights to sell it and you have no competitors. That is the desire of the pharma industry.
I hope all of that is clear. So as it stands, the hope for treatment over the next decade at least still lies only outside the US.

Most Americans are aware of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), but less than half know that the serious lung disease can be treated, according to national survey results released this week by the U.S. government as part of National COPD Awareness Month in November.

COPD affects 20 percent of U.S. adults over age 45. Half of the 24 million people in the United States with COPD remain undiagnosed even though they have symptoms, such as wheezing, chronic cough, or shortness of breath while doing activities that used to be easy.

Smoking causes 80 percent of cases of COPD (including chronic bronchitis and emphysema), while the remaining cases are caused by other environmental exposures or genetics.

The National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute 2009 survey of 4,172 adults found that 68 percent of respondents were aware of COPD, compared with 64 percent last year and 49 percent in 2004. Among current smokers, awareness of COPD was 74 percent, compared with 69 percent last year. About 41 percent of smokers don’t talk to their doctors about COPD symptoms because they don’t want to be told to quit smoking.

Only 44 percent of adults know that COPD can be treated, the survey found.

Ed. COPD is one condition (of many) where adult stem cell therapy has a track record of great success.

The Royal Thai Government’s strategy in 2004 for Thailand to become Asia’s medical hub is becoming a reality as Thailand continues to see an increase in medical tourism. With an annual growth rate of 14% for the sector, ahead of the county’s GDP, the Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT) and the Department of Export Promotion (DEP) expects to see two million visitors wanting to take advantage of lower medical treatments by 2010.
In 2008 Research and Markets reported that, although Thailand is faced with tough competition from India and Malaysia, Thailand has treated the highest number of international tourists in Asia. High health care costs, overloaded medical facilities and the fact that Thailand provides the most advanced treatments by internationally trained medical staff are reasons why medical tourists are choosing Thailand. “Thailand’s ultra-new and modern hospitals are less than a decade old and feel more like luxury hotels catering to tourists, than places to treat the infirm” (Tourism Authority of Thailand). The cost for health care in Thailand is about one fifth of what you would pay in the United States or Europe, making it more significant that in 2008, foreign patients generated an estimated $6 billion USD for Thailand. According to one international medical travel journal, the Royal Thai Government has put together a five-year plan that aims to double this revenue by 2014.
Deloitte Consulting estimated 750,000 Americans traveled abroad for health care services in 2007, a figure that was expected to double last year, with a forecasted global market expansion of more than 20% annually going forward to 2012. Thailand is ready to meet the growing industry by continuously making sure international standards are met and offering a level of hospitality not found in any other medical center around the world at affordable prices.

Washington, D.C.: Today on the floor of the House of Representatives, Congressman Ron Paul introduced three bills that would restore constitutional government; end FDA censorship of health claims; and end FTC censorship of health information.

HR 3396: The Congressional Responsibility and Accountability Act. This bill prohibits regulations promulgated from regulatory agencies from going into effect unless passed into law by Congress in the way in which the Constitution designates. Under Article I of the Constitution, the Congress of the United States, our elected representatives, are the ones given the exclusive power to make laws. In violation of the non-delegation doctrine, about 90% of all law created by the federal government is the product of unelected heads of bureaucratic agencies, not our elected representatives. From 1934 to the present, the Congress of the United States has delegated executive, legislative, and judicial governing power to these agencies. The founding fathers warned that this combination would give birth to tyranny, self-dealing, and corruption and would be the death of liberty. Because the unelected bureaucracy makes the laws, the nation has been transformed from a republic into a bureaucratic oligarchy. Congressman Ron Paul’s Congressional Responsibility and Accountability Act restores constitutional government by returning to Congress the responsibility to make laws, thereby making them once again accountable for the laws to those who elect them.

HR 3395: The Health Freedom Act. This bill removes FDA’s power of prior restraint over all nutrient-disease relationship claims. Under the bill, the FDA may not prohibit any statement concerning a nutrient affecting a disease (including treatment effects) from being made in the market and may only act against a statement once made if it possesses clear and convincing evidence that the statement is false. Presently the FDA blocks an enormous quantity of truthful information concerning the effects of nutrients and foods on disease from reaching consumers. That barrier is removed by the Health Freedom Act, but the Act preserves the power of the government to prosecute those who communicate falsehood. The essential purpose of the First Amendment is to disarm the federal government of the power to impose a prior restraint on speech. The FDA has imposed a prior restraint for decades to the health detriment of the public. Passage of the Health Freedom Act will restore constitutional governance by reasserting the supremacy of the First Amendment over the Food and Drug Administration.

HR 3394: The Health Information Protection Act. This bill prevents the Federal Trade Commission from taking action against any advertiser that communicates a health benefit for a product unless the FTC first establishes based on clear and convincing evidence that the statement made is false and that its communication causes harm to the public. Presently, the FTC reverses the Fifth Amendment burden of proof on the government when it charges advertisers with deceptive advertising and then demands that they prove their speech true based on contemporaneously held documentation or be deemed to have advertised deceptively. The Fifth Amendment requires that FTC bear the burden of proving advertising deceptive. It may not constitutionally shift the burden to the advertiser to prove its statements not deceptive. The First Amendment requires that FTC not act against speech unless the speech is probably false. It may not constitutionally accuse a party of false advertising yet lack proof that the advertising is false and condemn advertising based on an absence of documentation concerning the truth of the statement rather than the presence of evidence establishing the falsity of the statement.

Dr. Paul’s introduction of these three momentous bills offers hope to those who presently perceive themselves as disenfranchised and seek a return to constitutional government.

The starting gun has fired for 14 research teams, based in California, who now have four years to make good on the therapeutic promise of stem cells.
On 28 October, the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) committed US$230 million to teams of basic and clinical researchers aiming to move experimental stem-cell treatments into an investigational new-drug filing with the US Food and Drug Administration. Britain and Canada together paid an additional $43 million for four of the grants, which will include work by researchers in those countries.
One grant will attempt to use induced pluripotent stem cells — which have many of the capabilities of embryonic stem cells but can be tailored to match individual patients — to treat a rare skin disease called epidermolysis bullosa.
Four other awards focus on modifying adult stem cells to treat HIV and brain tumours.
Observers say that the chances of one or more of the experimental therapies making it to the clinic are improved because many of them take similar approaches to techniques that have already been approved, and because many focus on adult stem cells.

While the economic recession has eroded the growth rate for medical tourism by approximately 13.6 percent from 2007 to 2009, the economic recovery may help spur a sustainable 35 percent annual growth rate for the medical tourism industry by 2010, according to a new report released by the Deloitte Center for Health Solutions at the World Medical Tourism and Global Health Congress in Los Angeles, California.

“Barring any tempering factors, such as supply constraints, resistance from health plans, increased domestic competition or government policies, we project that outbound medical tourism could reach upwards of 1.6 million patients by 2012,” said Paul Keckley, Ph.D. and executive director, Deloitte Center for Health Solutions, based in Washington, D.C. “Medical tourism has transitioned from a cottage industry to an acceptable alternative for elective care that, despite the setbacks of the economic downturn, may begin to recover in 2010, as quality is better defined, new business models emerge, insurers, legislators and employers explore pilots and programs, health care providers become increasingly involved in coordinating care and consumers continue to test it out to explore savings.”

According to the Deloitte Center report, “Medical Tourism: Update and Implications,” in 2007, more than 750,000 Americans traveled abroad for outbound medical care. Since 2007, medical tourism has experienced a slow down driven by the economic recession and consumers putting off elective medical procedures over the past two years with an estimated 540,000 Americans traveling abroad for medical care in 2008 (a 20 percent decrease) and a projected 648,000 (a 10 percent decrease) doing so in 2009.

“The prolonged U.S. recession has had a significant impact on patients’ ability to afford medical care, and by extension their use of medical tourism,” added Keckley. “Pent-up consumer demand for elective procedures, especially outpatient dental and cosmetic procedures, will help fuel increased demand for medical tourism again. Health reform efforts in the near term will also likely contribute to medical tourism’s growth, though in the long run it is difficult to assess given uncertainty about the public option, employer and individual mandates.”

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Black Sabbath guitar legend Tony Iommi spoke with The Radcliffe & Maconie Show on BBC Radio 2 this week about his recent hand injury. “We’re just taking a break now,” Iommi says about the brief Heaven And Hell hiatus – the band also featuring singer Ronnie James Dio, bassist Geezer Butler and drummer Vinnie Appice.

“I’ve had this problem with my hand and I’m having stem cell treatment on it,” Iommi continues. “I have to wear a guard on my hand to prevent me from banging it. But it’s coming along good.

“The cartilage went out on the joints, so the joints were rubbing on the joints. It was bone on bone and it was getting a bit painful. I’ve had pain for about 18 months and have been taking anti-inflammatories and pain killers. But I wanted to stop doing it because it upsets your stomach. This is the latest thing, so we’ll see if it works.”

Ed. Too right it works, just as it does for osteoarthritis and rheumatoid arthritis.

It’s hard not to be keenly aware that health care costs have skyrocketed – a week’s stay in the hospital for a few tests and treatment WITHOUT ANY PROCEDURES can cost $15,000 or more! So, it’s not surprising that an increasing number of people who need or want real treatment are looking elsewhere for a solution.

Where do they go? To places like Thailand, Panama, and Argentina. These countries have strongly emerging economies, and have correspondingly made significant investment in their medical capabilities. That translates to quality care – second to none – at reasonable cost.

“Medical Tourism”, the name for the new practice of going overseas to receive medical treatment and perhaps get a bit of travel in on the side, is becoming a very popular option, for many.

It can make a lot of sense. IVF, ALS, cerebral palsy, liver disease, stem cell therapies, dental implantation, and other treatments can cost far less in say, Thailand, than in the US – a tenth to a fifth as much. There is no delay in diagnostics and treatment, either. Diagnostics and tests are done in the same facility, the prognosis and treatment follows, immediately. One current patient of our was told that it would take up to four weeks to get his blood test results in the US. – here in Bangkok, a mere 48 hours – and a fraction of the cost!

Of course, medical care is only as good as the doctors that perform it. There is excellent news on this front, as well. Doctors in Thailand (again) are very active in the international medical community. Go to any major facility in the US, and you’re likely to see a large number of Asian doctors on the staff. Likewise, many Thai doctors are US trained. Doctors are constantly engaged in improving their skills, and in imparting those skills to others in the international medical community.

And, of course, the fact that you are in an exotic place, only adds to the enticement. The “tourism” aspect is a terrific adjunct – why not recover at a spa, or at some exotic location with clear water and pristine beaches? Why not, indeed. Facilities typically have arrangements to help you explore your new-found destination. Many patients comment that they wished they had allowed more time to relax and unwind after treatment. Even adding 2-3 days could be a bonus before facing the long trip home.

Medical treatment overseas may be just the ticket you’re looking for – if you don’t have health insurance or your insurance has determined that a wanted procedure is ‘elective’, or there are other impediments to your getting the treatment you want, it can be very much worth your while to investigate your “Medical Tourism” options.

As always, you should investigate your options and requirements as they apply to your situation. We are always happy to talk with you – no pressure, just the facts of what we can and can’t do.

A team led by scientists from The Scripps Research Institute has developed a method that dramatically improves the efficiency of creating stem cells from human adult tissue, without the use of embryonic cells. The research makes great strides in addressing a major practical challenge in the development of stem-cell-based medicine.
The findings were published in an advance, online issue of the journal Nature Methods on October 18, 2009.
The new technique, which uses three small drug-like chemicals, is 200 times more efficient than and twice as fast as conventional methods for transforming adult human cells into stem cells (in this case called “induced pluripotent stem cells or iPS cells”.
“Both in terms of speed and efficiency, we achieved major improvements over conventional conditions,” said Scripps Research Associate Professor Sheng Ding, Ph.D., who led the study. “This is the first example in human cells of how reprogramming speed can be accelerated. I believe that the field will quickly adopt this method, accelerating iPS cell research significantly.”
In addition to its significant practical advantages, the development of the technique deepens the understanding of the biology behind the transformation of adult human cells into stem cells.