Health Information Snippets
Healthy and wise beats wealthy anyday!

Well it’s been proven now - eat a slab of steak every night and you will increase your risk of bowel cancer by a third. I guess it’s always been high on the suspect list, but included in the list of red meat culprits are processed meats like bacon, sausages and the like. That’s the bad news. Which is probably why the Western diet which is high in red meat and saturated fats isn’t your ticket to healthy living. What’s interesting that comes out in the study is that the famed Atkins diet which is low carbs and high protein/fat have also received a drumming. So if those are the things that significantly increase your risks of bowel cancer, what dietary measures should you take to reduce your likelihood of bowel cancer? Eating fish and high fiber foods are the things you need to add to your diet if you want to reduce your chances of getting colon cancer. So grandma was right about eating your greens after all.

I watched with some incredulity as the news last night portrayed a ‘Ginger drink’ whose manufacturers claimed actually killed prostate cancer cells. And I guess that was what Dr Dong MD, phD at Sydney University Australia thought too when he was sent a ginger punch drink and was asked if he would test it on prostate cancer cells to see if it did what it claimed it would do. So with a healthy dose of skepticism and a sense of humour, Dr Dong obliged (he kept an open mind). Trials started in Christmas 2004 and by May 2005 he had completed the study. The results startled him and his colleagues…the drink had a near perfect 100% kill rate on the cancer cells.

This ginger punch was no snake oil concoction whipped up by some backyard wannabe famous. It was the baby of biochemist Greg Jardine. Reaping the anti-oxidants that grapes offered in wine, Greg optimized the concentration of them in the beverage that he produced (red wine only offers 1/3 of the anti-oxidants available in grapes, Greg Jardine and his team of scientists purified the mixture to ensure that 100% of the anti-oxidants remained in the beverage that he produced). Then ginger and lime which also had well documented anti-oxidative capacities were added to the mix that the perfect killer cancer cell mix was produced. This drink was the non-alcoholic ginger punch that was sent to Dr Dong for testing with prostate cancer cells.

With the outstanding preliminary results under his arm, Dr Dong is now proceeding to animal trials and it is predicted that these studies will be completed by the end of this year. Other cancer cell lines eg breast cancer would also be tested. Great news indeed and if it does eventually become mainstream treatment, it would be a toast of the town!

I used to always think that anything sticky would be bad for my children’s teeth and it has been so for as long as I can remember - my dentist even frowned with disapproval when he noted that I gave my children raisins as ‘wholesome snacks’. Well, that myth seems to have been debunked by the latest study presented Wednesday (June 8, 2005) at the American Society for Microbiology’s annual meeting in Atlanta where they found that (surprise, surprise) raisins actually contained compounds that actually fight bacteria that cause cavities and gum disease. What the study found was that raisins contained a compound called oleanolic acid which inhibited the growth of bacteria that caused gum disease. What is not clear is how much raisins you need to consume in order to achieve this effect. Experts however (aren’t they always?) are skeptical and are sticking to their guns adamant that raisins with their sticky attributes are ‘bad’ for your kid’s teeth. So the jury is still out I guess. I for one am more inclined to continue to give my children ‘healthy’ raisins if only because the other snack alternatives are worse - and I’m referring to things like chips and lollies.

Well, looks like the Supreme Court has ruled against the use of marijuana medicinally to ease pain. It went one step further to state that the use of marijuana use for medical purposes was equivalent to a federal crime. So for terminally ill patients who have been privately growing marjuana in their backyards to kill pain on the prescription of their doctors are now fair game to be prosecuted. It was a 6-3 ruling with 6 judges ruling that it was criminal and 3 other judges stating that it wasn’t. Interestingly enough, the plaintiffs were steadfast in their claim that they will persist in using the drug to ease their pain.