Apparently there has been a somewhat silent debate raging behind the scenes at the FDA over the diabetes drug Avandia, where some felt that it was a definite cause behind several occurrences of heart attacks in patients who were taking

it every month (which is clearly unacceptable), and others felt that the studies that were conducted to determine this were not in fact, conclusive.  Avandia is actually still a best selling drug, and at one point it was actually the most successful, top selling drug of all.  You can see why the debate was raging, there was a lot of money at stake if this drug were suddenly pulled from the market,

and of course there was a lot of financial interest in it staying on. A panel decision did find that patients should have been warned more about the increased risk of heart attack while on the drug.

In 2007 though, a cardiologist did a study that suggested that Avandia was hurting patient’s heart health, and the drug’s sales of course went way down in response to such a shocking finding.  Doctors who agree that Avandia has substantially

increased patient’s risk of heart attack are really pulling for patients to go with a different diabetes drug called Actos, which does not exhibit the same risks as Avandia does.

So, what does this mean from here? Well, obviously I’m sure sales of the drug will go down even further from here, although they still have millions of patients on their roster and are still making a nice profit on it. The FDA has not outright ordered that it be pulled from shelves yet, but we’ll see where it goes from here.

There are quite a few people who feel it should be totally removed from the market, but there are also people who believe that the finding s are not conclusive enough to take that drastic of an action, and that diabetes patients and their doctors should still be given a choice of drugs, including Avandia.

Of course, we were bombarded by the media saying that the swine flu, or the H1N1 virus as it was dubbed to avoid paranoia and pandemonium, was going to be a flu of epidemic proportions, perhaps wipe out a percentage of our population, and was going to be like the black plague. However, none of that came to pass. It was yet another instance of the media grabbing on to something that was not overly significant for the sake of ratings and constant updates, and having no valid proof that this illness was going to wipe anyone out.

While it is true that the swine flu looked scary at first since where it started in Mexico, it seemed to be it’s most virulent, however, it was soon discovered that you could treat it easily as long as it was caught early on.

So, the people wearing all the surgical masks at airports and on vacations seemed like it was warranted at first, but now it makes them look a bit overly paranoid now that we have the facts and real numbers.

In fact, it was found that pregnant women and older people were the most susceptible to the illness, and they were the only real population segment that was dying from the swine flu. Sure, there were fluke deaths here and there as well, but nothing like they thought it was going to be, and certainly no worse than the death rate for the regular old flu.

So, it looks like we are out of the woods from this “epidemic” and can now rest easy and take the surgeon’s masks off. For now, until the next media scare hits

Every time I hear stories about science manipulating the mind or anything having to do with our inherent personalities or memories, it gives me chills. Not just because it’s obviously messing with mother nature in a way that probably was never intended, but because it reminds me too much of these science fiction movies where most of humanity is totally manipulated by unseen forces, unsure of who they really are.

Yeah, I’m talking things like the Matrix, Stepford Wives, or any other movie where we’re not quite sure who’s actually “human” any more. Oh, and how about the replicants in the first real sci fi movie breakthrough of our lives, Blade Runner!?

Yes, clearly I’ve seen way to many movies, but this story I’m about to tell you reminds me of how easily manipulated our minds and bodies can be now with the advent of modern science. The technique for erasing bad memories or phobias though, isn’t all that invasive as you’d think. Scientists aren’t going into people brains with prying lasers or scary looking surgical instruments or anything of that sort, but rather they are using a form of exposed behavioral therapy.

Basically, without getting into too much detail, they work with a window of opportunity that they think is open for a while after one is exposed to the object of their fear, so if they have a fear of spiders, they expose them to that sort of object, then they use that window to exploit closing off the negative memories. They combine shock therapy with this methodology, and it seems to eradicate permanently that former fear the person harbored.

By making this sort of behavioral therapy work, they have challenged the idea that modern science cannot alter memories permanently, and that people’s long term memories are not erasable or able to be manipulated in any sort of substantial way. Pretty significant. They may be able to help people with serious life altering phobias, which is a good thing, let’s just hope this doesn’t get misused.

There has been a lot of attention focused on the transmission of, and the prevention of this transmission of, communicable diseases, infections and illnesses in hospitals and other health care facilities due to the outbreak of the H1N1 virus and the flu and cold season in general. Hand sanitizer and even surgical masks have been flying off the shelves of drugstores in record numbers because people are concerned for themselves and their families in this germ season, and with the added threat and unknowns of the swine flu (H1N1), it’s all that much more important to protect yourself.

A website and organization came to my attention that works on preventing HAI’s, or Healthcare Associated Infections. They want to spread the word about how important it is to take certain precautions if you are a healthcare worker or a patient in one of these facilities, so that we can help to prevent the unnecessary spread of infections in the very places where we go to get treated and get well, our hospitals and other facilities which treat disease and other infections.

The website is HAIWatchNews.com, and it has videos and other educational and informational literature on how people can help raise awareness of this problem and help to prevent it from happening. The World Health Organization estimates that at any given time, an estimated 1.4 million people worldwide suffer from infections they got at a health care facility, so this problem is pretty serious and deserves attention. The US is on the lower spectrum because we are a developed country, however, third world and under developed countries have the higher rates of infections that are spread in hospitals due to the lower standards of care and lower tech and less clean facilities that they are forced to work with due to lack of funding.

Not only can HAI’s add immensely to the already astronomical cost of healthcare, which ultimately trickles down to us all when you come right down to it, but it also results in almost 100,000 deaths here in the US alone per year. Those numbers are staggering, and to me they were very surprising and helped to raise my awareness of the importance of this issue. It looks like HAI Watch is funded by Kimberly Clark as part of a public service campaign to help educate health care workers on a continuing basis about the most updated protocols to prevent HAI’s.

Apparently flu mania has struck. Ever since the swine flu was announced as this season’s “epidemic” people have been rushing to get swine flu shots, buying stores out of bacterial sanitizers for the hands and other things like rubber gloves that help prevent transmission of germs, and it seems like we’ve gone all out into a germophobe mentality.  I’ve seen many retail store workers with rubber gloves on even, and while I commend them for taking precautionary steps, I wonder if their glove wearing may not be a little bit of overkill and if they might catch something a little less ominous than the swine flu anyway?

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not against prevention, in fact that’s the majority of what I write about and study, however, I think that there are way better solutions to helping your body fend off and resist the flu and colds than simply preventing their transmission. Things like keeping your immune system in working order and making sure it’s in top condition, keeping your moods stable which helps to keep your immunity up, and eating a lot of the right foods which help to fend off the bad germs, I think those are the right things to do, not go on some vendetta against touching people or coming into contact with large quantities of people at social gatherings – that I think goes overboard a bit and take the focus off the right ways of preventing infections and getting over them quickly when they are picked up.

One thing I can tell you that helps your immune system is to make sure you avoid stress a lot.  Stress is one of the main things that can compromise your immune system, and so is lack of sleep, so not getting sleep and being stressed out are pretty much a deadly cocktail when it comes to suppressing the immune system from working properly.

You’ve probably noticed this happening to you at some point.  Have you noticed a stressful, non sleeping time of your life, when you seem to pick up a lot more bugs than usual?  There’s more than just coincidence to it, your immune system is reacting to it and you’re picking things up and prolonging them much more easily.