Two studies in the British Medical Journal have concluded that the impact of alcohol and weight on risk of liver disease is not merely additive, but synergistic, where 1 + 1 = 3. This suggests across-the-board safe drink recommendations need to be revised.

Dr Carole L Hart and others looked at nearly 10,000 men in Scotland over roughly 30 years. Compared to simply adding the risk of death from alcohol alone to that of excess weight alone, the extra risk added by a combined effect was over 5-fold.

Dr Bette Liu and others looked at 1.2 million UK women over a period of 6 years, checking on admission to hospital with, or death from, liver cirrhosis. A similar finding of synergy between being overweight or obese and alcohol was reported.

Professor Christopher D Byrne and S H Wild wrote an editorial on the Liu study to suggest an explanation for disease development, pointing out that there is no reliable test other than liver biopsy.

The results suggest that recommendations re safe consumption of alcohol should be modified to take body weight into account.

All 3 articles are available in full, free of charge, at the British Medical Journal’s website, www.bmj.com.

The largest preventable cause of death world-wide is smoking. And even if you’re not a smoker, exposure to secondhand smoke is known to cause thousands of deaths from heart disease and lung cancer. For that reason, 32 US states have passed legislation banning smoking in some or all public places.

This has often been a hard-won battle because restaurant and bar owners have feared a decline in business if their patrons can’t light up. But is that what has actually happened?

I’ll fill you in on that debate in just a minute. First let’s take a look at the effects of secondhand smoke.

Fact Sheet

The American Lung Association publishes a fact sheet about secondhand smoke, the smoke given off the burning end of tobacco and the smoke exhaled from the lungs of smokers. This smoke is involuntarily inhaled by non-smokers because it lingers in the air for hours. Here are some facts:

• The current Surgeon General’s Report concludes that scientific evidence shows no risk-free level of exposure to secondhand smoke. Even short exposure can raise the risk of heart attack.
• The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has classified secondhand smoke as a Group A carcinogen, a known cause of cancer in humans.
• Secondhand smoke is blamed for more than 50,000 deaths in non-smokers each year.
• Secondhand smoke is especially dangerous for young children, causing 150,000-300,000 lower respiratory tract infections in infants and children under 18 months of age.(1)

Secondhand smoke is no mere nuisance – is has turned out to be far more harmful than expected.

Recent Studies

Most people associate smoking and secondhand smoke with lung cancer, but cancer takes years to develop. Dr Neal Benowitz, of the University of California, says, “If you have heart disease, you really need to stay away from secondhand smoke. It’s an immediate threat to your life.”(2)

Within minutes of being exposed to smoke, blood vessels constrict and blood becomes stickier and prone to clotting. Many people don’t know they have heart disease until they suffer a heart attack, so there is no safe level of secondhand smoke.

As if that’s not bad enough, it appears that smoke interferes with how blood is transported to the brain. A study published 2/13/09 in the British Medical Journal found a much higher incidence of dementia in people over 50 who had been around high levels of secondhand smoke.(3) This is the first large scale study to associate the exposure to secondhand smoke with dementia and other neurological problems in older adults.

On the heels of that information, scientists at the University of California, Riverside, found that secondhand smoke exposure can end in non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) – a major cause of liver injury in people who drink little or no alcohol. Results of this study are published in the September 2009 issue of the Journal of Hepatology.(4)

Benefits of the Ban

        That brings us back to the issue of public smoking bans – some have been in place long enough to measure the results of decreased public smoking. What has happened?

• Helena, Montana had 16% fewer heart attack hospitalizations in the first six months after the ban went into effect. Nearby areas without a smoking ban saw heart attacks rise.(5)
• Pueblo, Colorado recorded a 41% drop in heart attack hospitalization in the three years after workplace smoking was banned.(6)
• Overall, cities in America, Canada and Europe that have begun smoking bans experienced a 17% reduction in heart attacks the first year. Each year after that, the decline in heart attacks has averaged 26% compared to areas that still allow public smoking. (7)

Are these dramatic health benefits bad for business?

Fans of the Ban

For the most part, the answer is “no”. And no one is more surprised than Gail Anastas, director of communications for the Massachusetts Restaurant Association. “It caused kind of a minor blip in business at first,” she says, “but then they did things to attract people back.” Harvard researchers reported in the Boston Globe on 4/4/05 that sales and employment at Massachusetts restaurants and bars grew slightly during the first six months of the ban. Tax collections on meals rose 9% while those on alcohol sales remained steady.

George Harrington, owner of a restaurant/bar in downtown Salem was very apprehensive about the ban. Then the unexpected happened: “We’re serving a lot more food at the bar,” he explains. “People like sitting at the bar, chatting and eating. They didn’t do it before because there might be somebody sitting next to them smoking. That’s been a major plus for our bar business.”

Banning public smoking has been a hotly debated social change in modern times, but evidence is accumulating that hundreds of thousands of lives will benefit.

Before you make any changes to your usual routine of diet, exercise and supplements, consult your physician for advice.

Until next time.

Sources:

1. “Secondhand Smoke Fact Sheet”, American Lung Association, www.lungusa.org
2. Neergaard, Lauran, “Report: Smoking bans protect nonsmokers’ hearts”, Associated Press, 10/15/09
3. Harrell, Eben, “Study: Secondhand Smoke Tied To Dementia”, Time.com, Feb 13, 2009
4. University of California, Riverside, “Second-hand Smoking Results in Liver Disease, Study Finds”, Science Daily, Sep 14, 2009
5. Simms, June, “Study Says Smoking Bans Do Not Hurt Jobs in Bars, Restaurants”, VOAnews.com, May 26, 2009
6. Simms, June, “Study Says Smoking Bans Do Not Hurt Jobs in Bars, Restaurants”, VOAnews.com, May 26, 2009
7. Tamkins, Theresa, “Big Drop in Heart Attacks After Smoking Banned in Bars, Restaurants”, Health.com, Sep 21, 2009
8. Smith, Stephen, “Restaurants, bars, gain business under smoke ban”, The Boston Globe, April 4, 2005
9. Neergaard, Lauran, “Report: Smoking bans protect nonsmokers’ hearts”, Associated Press, 10/15/09

© 2009 Chesapeake Nutraceuticals

Monster Hospital

He cannot understand how a place as sterile as a hospital can feel so dirty. The odour of rubbing alcohol permeates the entire building, burning his nostrils as the elevator doors open.  He steps onto the fourth floor and immediately hears an anguished cry from a room to his left.

“IT HURTS! OWWWW!! OHGOD!OHGOD!OHGOD!OHGOD! AUGH! MERCY! IT HURTS! PLEASE!”

“Mrs. Murphy, please… just try and lie on your side…”

Pleading with her won’t help you, he thinks. In 12 hours, Mrs. Murphy will be dead. She’ll die in her sleep from an infection and severe pneumonia, both of which she contracted despite an otherwise successful operation to remove a tumor from her right lung. The nurses and doctors have no chance to save her.

Fuck it, the nurses and doctors here are idiots anyway, he thinks to himself. Her immune system couldn’t handle the invasive surgery and was deteriorating at an alarming rate. Mrs. Murphy will die tonight at 1:13AM, while her nurse smokes a joint in a car outside the ER. Her boyfriend will come by to play her his latest mixtape – trying to become a DJ, he goes by the name of Smokestax.

Backing away from Mrs. Murphy’s room – wife of Charles, and mother to Johnny and Sean Murphy – his gaze stops on a small placard with an arrow pointing to the left. The engraving on the copper sign, affixed to a faded and crumbling baby-blue wall, reads ROOMS 401-429. He turns to his left and walks down the hallway.

401… 403… 405, on his right. 402… 404… 406, on his left. He slowly plods toward 423, muttering under his breath as he passes each room: “401… pancreatic cancer; water in the lungs, dead before New Year’s. 403… punctured lung; full recovery. 405… brain embolism; he’ll develop an allergic reaction to his medication and fall into a coma, dead by February…”

He never understood why he was so aware of these intangibles, and frankly he never cared. It was more a burden to him than anything else. The strengths and weaknesses of those around him, their deepest secrets and their darkest thoughts, all their repressed memories and blocked emotions; he knew them all.

“415… heart attack; he’ll have another one before week’s end but live another 23 years. 417… Fractured skull; brain damage, she’s a veggie for life. 419… liver disease; her son donated his liver but died during the operation, she’ll survive, but no one has told her yet.”

He doesn’t care. He never cared. When his own mother died, he didn’t so much as shed a tear. Why care? He never asked to know about everyone’s problems, nor does he want to keep it up, but that’s life. And if that’s life, he may as well not care. It doesn’t seem to make a difference anyway.

Steps away from room 423 now… his heart is not racing, sweat is not dripping from his brow. He is as calm and collected as ever.

He reaches for the doorknob and, upon making contact, shudders violently; ungodly, terrifying, disgusting images enter his mind, swirling about as if being blended into a black ball of pure and repulsive evil. Worse than anything he has ever seen or imagined, this hatred and atrociousness engulfs his brain and spreads its monstrous grip until he blacks out from agony.

He opens his eyes. He doesn’t know where he is… On the floor, he thinks. He scans left and right… People, he thinks. His head pounds. Is that music? Or horrible screaming?

“Where… where am I…?” he mutters groggily. A swift kick to his ribs knocks the wind out of him. Gasping for air and clutching his chest, he hears someone whisper in his ear: “It’s Daniel’s birthday, muhfucka.”

A new article in Men’s Health reports the “Drunkest Cities in America” for 2010. From USA Today, “The magazine, which will publish the list of 100 major cities in its March edition, drew upon such data as death rates from alcoholic liver disease, booze-fueled car crashes, frequency of binge-drinking in the past month, number of DUI arrests, and severity of DUI penalties.”

Unfortunately, Austin, Texas came in at the 5th drunkest city in the US, far above most of our states larger cities. Here’s the Top Ten:

1. Fresno, California
2. Reno, Nevada
3. Billings, Montana
4. Riverside, California
5. Austin, Texas
6. St. Louis, Missouri
7. San Antonio, Texas
8. Lubbock, Texas
9. Tucson, Arizona
10. Bakersfield, California

Austin, the “Live Music Capitol of the World,” is well-known for the downtown party scene, especially 6th Street, music events like Austin City Limits (ACL) and South by Southwest (SXSW), and UT Longhorn Football (and the tailgating that comes with it).

Despite the fact that we have thousands of travelers from all over the world visiting Austin, we can’t blame Austin’s alcohol culture on tourism. Yes, this city is fun, but too often,  these music and sporting events are sponsored by alcohol companies, and therefore are used to encourage drinking, without thinking about the impact it is having on the community around us.

Here’s what our youth had to say about growing up around an alcohol culture in Austin:

When some people think Austin, they think 6th Street, live music clubs, college parties, etc. Those events all have alcohol handy to help people supposedly have a fun night, but they can lead people to drink and drive, to drink and fight, or to drink and basically act a fool. Sadly, I’ve also seen so many people in bad car accidents or situations with the police because of alcohol. It’s a sad situation and hopefully the city of Austin will get a reality check from this so we can do something to fix this problem. –Marissa Hornsby, Senior at Connally High School

Growing up in the 5th drunkest city in American isn’t hard, but it seems once you pass 21, activities always include alcohol–parties, football games, and just chilling with friends. Sadly, the trend is starting to go younger and younger. Parties aren’t just for laughing and having fun, or playing games; now you know that there is going to be all kinds of alcohol. That brings pressure for people who don’t usually drink to drink. –Samantha Cannon, sophomore at Connally High School

Hopefully, Austin can continue to be the fun, vibrant city, but we can work together as a community to reduce our label as a drunken city.

Thanks to Ian Broyles and Caomai for the great photos for this post.

“Dear Kaldi, yes, he herds the goat

Tiresome walks without an antidote

Til one day a bush he found

With bright red cherries all around

The goats they ate and chomped the fruit

Then pranced and danced without a flute.”

The dancing goat legend is the most well-known part of coffee’s 1000 year-old history. Roasts are named after it and the Ethiopians get credit for figuring out that if you roast beans then add water, you’ve got one hell of a picker upper.

However, coffee’s original impression on the world was more scientific. It was recently discovered that coffee can help those that suffer from liver disease, meaning that not much has changed throughout the beans journey.  

The first textual mention of coffee was found within a medical book written by the Arabian Astronomer “Rhazes” in the 10th century. He describes Bunchum (coffee) as “hot and dry and very good for the stomach.”

Similar to tea, coffee blossomed through the medical community where it gained ground as a cure for indigestion. The blessed bean was also listed as a cure for the bubonic plague.

When coffee finally made its way out of Africa and the Middle East to Europe in the 17^th century, doctors were fast to praise the drug.

Physician Gideon Harvey wrote in his book Advice Against the Plague (1665), that coffee is:

A very whoesom and Physical drink, having many excellent vertues, closes the Orifice of the Stomack, fortifies the heat within, helpeth Digestion, quickneth the Spirits, maketh the Heart lightsom, is good against Eye-sores, Coughs, or Colds, Rhumes, Consumptions, Head-ach, Dropsy, Gout, Scurvy, Kings Evil, and many others.

Yet benefits and health warnings go hand in hand. Since coffee made people feel good, there had to be a catch.

In 1674, a group of women drew up a petition against coffee explaining that “this pitiful drink is enough to bewitch Men … and tie up the Codpiece-points without a Charm.” They also claimed it made men too thin and that it caused headaches.

Well the headache part has been embraced as anyone who has gone without caffeine has felt the afternoon pound. Thankfully our advancements have de-bunked the impotency idea.

Coffee has moved far beyond the legendary herder. It has been poked and prodded and found to be more than just an enjoyable beverage that causes hyperactivity in goats.

As the medical community continues to find more antioxidants, cures for liver disease and possibly cancer, coffee remains an ancient drink providing the same benefits as it did hundreds and hundreds of years ago.

1. Protein study shows Evolutionary link between plants and animals -

Inserting a human protein important in cancer development was able to revive dying plants, showing an evolutionary link between plants and humans and possibly making it easier to study the protein’s function in cancer development, a Purdue University study has shown.

And yet millions of creationists are still unimpressed. Go figure.

2. Mouse with human liver aids research –

How do you study-and try to cure in the laboratory-an infection that only humans can get? A team led by Salk Institute researchers does it by generating a mouse with an almost completely human liver. This “humanized” mouse is susceptible to human liver infections and responds to human drug treatments, providing a new way to test novel therapies for debilitating human liver diseases and other diseases with liver involvement such as malaria.

Just in case you needed another reason to want to punch anti-animal-testing extremists in the face.

3. Steve Novella gives the 411 on the Bloom Box – After it being featured on this week’s 60 Minutes, I too was interested in finding out more about this Bloom Box and whether it really was as impressive a solution for clean energy as it seemed on the show.

4. $cientology hires reporters to investigate the St. Petersburg Times – For those who don’t know the St. Petersburg Times has over the past several months become one of $cientology’s worst enemies, doing the kind of in depth investigative reporting on the evil cult that every other news outlet should have been doing decades ago. Now the $cientology is out for blood and has gotten three veteran journalists to try and investigate the paper’s conduct:

While the journalists have promised an independent review, the Times has refused to cooperate, saying their work will be used to fuel the church’s ongoing campaign against the Florida paper.

“I ultimately couldn’t take this request very seriously because it’s a study bought and paid for by the Church of Scientology,” says Executive Editor Neil Brown. “Candidly,” he adds, “I was surprised and disappointed that journalists who I understand to have an extensive background in investigative reporting would think it’s appropriate to ask me or our news organization to talk about that reporting while (a) it’s ongoing, and (b) while they’re being paid to ask these questions by the very subjects of our reporting.”

. . .

Church spokesman Tommy Davis says that he recently received the approximately 20-page study and that it will not necessarily be made public. It was commissioned, he says, because “we wanted to get an outside view” of the situation. Davis, who would not disclose how much the reporters were paid, calls the report highly critical of the Times stories on the church.

Shocker!

The names of those journalists who sold their souls to $cientology are: Russell Carollo, Christopher Szechenyi, and Steve Weinberg.

5. Judge Judy vs. creationism, anti-choicers, anti-stem cell researchers, and “fundie” politicians -

In demand to lower the risk of heart diseases foods consumed contained by everyday diet become one of abundant critical factors. Here are many foods that I enjoy found can truly lower large blood fixed a bee in the bonnet and levels of cholesterol ensuing contained by lower the risk of heart diseases.
Spironolactone is normally used to treat fluid retention in patients with liver disease or heart washout.
Cholesterol is a fat that is a character of ill health and causes many diseases after some event such as heart strokes, heart attacks many other heart diseases.
It is most dangerous to the heart when large plaque deposits win thinner and block the vital arteries.
The Carotid artery is plug uphill only only like the behind the times mans heart.
Heart is the most vital organ; it pumps blood to all other parts of the body.
Collective the amount of omega-3 fats and decreasing the amount of omega-6 in the diet is another effective way in reducing the risk for heart bug.

Further Readings
Reverse Heart Disease Now, Stephen T. Sinatra, James C. Roberts, Martin Zucker, 2007
Reverse Heart Disease Now, Stephen T. Sinatra, James C. Roberts, Martin Zucker, 2008
50 Ways Women Can Prevent Heart Disease, M. Sara Rosenthal, 2000

Recommended Links
Valvular Heart Disease
Heart Disease Fact BlogCatalog Topic
Heart Disease
Chronic pulmonary heart disease
Coronary Heart Disease
Heart Disease

Preventing Heart Diseases With Foods is filed under Heart disease.

The liver is the second largest organ in the body. It is in the upper part of the abdominal cavity and on the right beneath the diaphragm so it is protected by the ribs. It weighs about 3 pounds and it is divided into main lobes, the right and left.

The lobes contain liver cells and passage ways for the blood circulation that are called sinusoids. In the lobes the liver cells can transform chemical substances into nutrients and neutralizes toxins. The liver plays a huge role in circulation and composition of blood, the health of the liver can affect all the systems in the body from thinking to hormone regulation.

two conditions affecting people who drink little or no alcohol. The first is a mild condition, while the second represents its progression to a more severe disease.

1. Fatty liver, also known as steatosis, is an accumulation of fat in the liver that typically does not cause liver damage.
2. Nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) is the accumulation of fat in the liver accompanied by hepatic inflammation. Fibrous tissue can form with NASH, which can progress to cirrhosis or liver cancer.

Liver cancer function to destroy the liver. Liver shall be destructed severely and will not work normally. Severity can lead to death. That is the reason why, that preventions must be observed carefully to protect one self and to prevent the spread of the disease as well.

There are effective ways to prevent cancer of the liver:

Vaccine – there are no cancer vaccine for liver,, but there is a vaccine to prevent hepatitis B. knowing that hepatitis B is the early stage of cancer of the liver, this must be prevented as early as possible by having the injected vaccine.

Food contamination – this is a very obvious symptom that anyone must take into consideration. Street foods are not advisable because there are foods and beverages sold in the streets that could not be healthy for you. Most especially for foods that were not covered properly for safety and contamination free.

Alcohol – This is the number one factor that can lead to liver cirrhosis. Abuse drinking of alcohol can also lead to cancer of the liver. Too much of alcohol can destroy the normal functioning of the liver.

Causes of Fatty Liver

Obesity – The risk of NAFLD increases with every pound of excess weight.

Hyperlipidemia — High levels of triglycerides or low levels of high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol can cause hyperlipidemia.

Diabetes – This common metabolic disorder is characterized by resistance to insulin, the hormone that regulates the amount of sugar in your blood. Recent studies have demonstrated insulin resistance to be the primary trigger for fatty liver development.

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