Environmental Medicine News

The News Review:

- CAN PUBLIC HEALTH INSURANCE FIX HEALTH CARE?
- A Healthy Balance: Natural medicine in real life
- CM seminar introduces Chinese herbal medicine
- New device may provide noninvasive biopsy and treatment guide
- Three elected to American Academy of Arts and Sciences
- Integrative medicine: Mushrooms green tea and breast cancer
- Greene: Some docs do know harm

CAN PUBLIC HEALTH INSURANCE FIX HEALTH CARE?
Atlanta Journal Constitution
A vessel deep in her brain had burst filling her head with blood. She never had a chance. When I broke the news to her sisters I learned that she had stopped taking her blood pressure medicine several days before. Why? Although employed she was uninsured. And when money got tight she had to choose between buying medicine for herself or food for her kids. Like most moms she put her children’s needs ahead of her own. She paid for the decision with her life.
Related from Insurancemonster: Health Care: The Case for Mandatory Universal Health Insurance

A Healthy Balance: Natural medicine in real life
Ballard News Tribune
Features Ballard students honored by UW's 'Search for Young Scholars'Reserve seats for annual Nordic Museum fundraiser Beer festival returns to FremontA Healthy Balance: Natural medicine in real lifeLocal muralist aims to save endangered species through artDiversionsAn animal of a workoutCommunity CalendarAlternative comic legend calls Ballard home 101 Things to do in Ballard: Seaview is Ballard's boardwalkAt Large in Ballard: Everybody knows VictorBallard Food Police: A cheeseburger to be proud ofWatershed day at CarkeekSpring cleaning builds community in east BallardGreen My Ballard: Electric bikes for the not-so-young anymore Union Pacific railroad donates $5000 for children's booksTaproot presents 'Around the World in 80 Days'B-MNT 'Rama- Everything nightlife in Ballard and FremontSpanish Fest held at Whittier School (slideshow)Ballard restaurants join national event to fight AIDSFair Trade drumming up support Eco Mow saving the planet one lawn at a timeAt Large in Ballard: Special reportSpring dance and social this SaturdayVIDE: Sushi wars A Healthy Balance: Natural medicine in real life New column By Katie Baker April 21 2009 Have you ever wondered if there was an alternative to prescription drugs and their side effects? Do you swear by your grandma?s home remedies? Are you interested in alternative medicine but unsure where to go or who to trust? Do the miracle cures online sound too good to be true (they are!) but still peak your interest?We?re all looking for ways to save money get healthier and find more meaning in our lives. This column is going to take a look at natural options what wellness means and ways to achieve it in the midst of our busy schedules. Health has physical psychological mental and spiritual aspects that are different for each person. It is my hope that this column can provide some suggestions that are applicable to most of us that my readers can take some new piece of information from each column and use it to make their lives healthier. As a student at Bastyr University the seven pillars of naturopathic medicine were drilled into my head from day one.

CM seminar introduces Chinese herbal medicine
Asian Reporter
CM seminar introduces Chinese herbal medicineBy Julie StegemanThe Portland Classical Chinese Garden (PCCG) was the tranquil backdrop for Berries Bark and Roots a seminar introducing Chinese herbal medicine presented last month by the regon College of riental Medicine (CM). Deb Espesete an CM herbal supervisor and licensed acupuncturist led the seminar. Chinese herbs are part of traditional Chinese medicine also encompassing acupuncture meditation and massage which seeks to maintain or restore health by adjusting the flow of qi (the body’s life force) and the circulation of yin and yang. Chinese medicine can be used as a stand-alone therapy or in conjunction with conventional western medicine such as using acupuncture to alleviate the side effects of chemotherapy for cancer treatment. Espesete provided a general overview of Chinese herbal medicine explaining that the practice was first documented in approximately 200 B.

New device may provide noninvasive biopsy and treatment guide
Medill Reports: Chicago
?Cancer patients are often too weak to do this. ?The purpose of this technology is to reduce the amount of cells needed to determine how cancer cells are reacting to treatment. The scientists reported their results in Nature Medicine earlier this month. ?This study is based on previous papers? said Marcus Peter professor at The Ben May Department for Cancer Research at the University of Chicago who was not involved in the study. ?It?s all about reducing the number of cells needed to perform an analysis. That?s critical because cancer is so inhomogeneous. ?Peter emphasized that the impact for diagnostics would be more immediate than that for treatment.

Three elected to American Academy of Arts and Sciences
Washington University Record
The receptor inhibits NK cell function when it recognizes the appropriate credentials which in this case are major histocompatibility complex class I molecules. Normally present on the surface of cells these molecules often are absent on tumors and virus-infected cells allowing the NK cell to attack the abnormal cells that are “missing-self. Yokoyama who also is director of the Medical Scientist Training Program clinical attending physician in internal medicine and rheumatology and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator was the 2001 recipient of the Novartis Prize for Basic Research in Immunology which is awarded only once every three years at the International Congress of Immunology. He earned a medical degree at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. He came to the School of Medicine in 1995 as the director of the Division of Rheumatology in the Department of Medicine.
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Integrative medicine: Mushrooms green tea and breast cancer
Stamford Times
Kay Judge and Maxine Barish-WredenMcClatchy NewspapersHundreds of studies have looked at the potential of mushrooms to prevent and treat cancer and green tea is widely used in the world as a health booster. Could mushrooms and green tea together provide an added benefit for cancer protection? Are other foods also valuable for cancer prevention?A recent case-control study published in the International Journal of Cancer looked at the intake of mushrooms and green tea in 1009 pre- and postmenopausal Chinese women with breast cancer and compared this with a matched group of 1009 healthy Chinese women without breast cancer. The findings: Women who regularly ate fresh mushrooms and also drank green tea had a much lower cancer risk than women who consumed neither. How might mushrooms and green tea reduce cancer risk? Among other things mushrooms contain lentinian a compound that stimulates the immune system which in turn can slow tumor growth. Green tea contains polyphenols called catechins that may help to stop the spread and invasion of cancer cells to healthy tissues.

Greene: Some docs do know harm
Denver Post
The best response panelists agreed is to address factors that can turn idealistic med students into expeditious functionaries driven more by budget concerns than compassion. They described a tendency to dehumanize patients. They spoke of a numbing effect that can come with practicing medicine. And they talked about a messiah complex among those who alter the course of nature. Grodin equated the Nazi belief that sick people weighed down society to a bent among managed-care systems to want only healthy people as clients. “At times students are taught to think patients are a burden” Egan added. It’s tough to trash medical providers especially after they deliver our babies and save our lives.