FSM News and Articles
Natural cold and flu busters unlikely to do the trick but could do harm: Turmeric, another popular supplement – “it’s in bloody tea and coffee now,” says Professor Moses – is also a blood thinner. High doses of turmeric combined with blood-thinning medication can increase the risk of internal bleeding, and pose risks before and after surgery. “We’re not worried about the turmeric in a latte or a foul-tasting coffee,” Professor Moses says. “But the tablets and capsules [people] buy, they are not natural any more, they have been made in a factory. And that’s where we worry.” Professor Moses also lists black pepper, schisandra fruit, goldenseal root, green tea, guarana and yerbe mate as known to alter the way conventional medicines work. But there are many others.
FSM Friends News and Articles
The ridiculous and possibly harmful practice of cupping: “Practitioners of cupping think that it somehow corrects your ‘qi,’ a mysterious life force that simply doesn’t exist. When pressed, they often remark that it ‘improves blood flow,’ a catch-all explanation that has no scientific basis and that is more or less meaningless.”
Traditional Chinese medicine is recognised by the WHO, but not everyone is happy about it: The World Health Organization (WHO) has formally included Traditional Chinese remedies in its respected “International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems” (ICD) “ as a “supplementary chapter [that is a] subclassification for optional use.” A WHO spokesman claimed that this was “not an endorsement of the scientific validity [or efficacy] of any Traditional Medicine practice.” But if they aren’t saying it works or is useful, why are they including it? Surgical oncologist David Gorski M.D. calls it “a triumph of the ‘integration’ of quackery with real medicine”.
As Nature points out, “Critics view TCM practices as unscientific, unsupported by clinical trials, and sometimes dangerous: China’s drug regulator gets more than 230,000 reports of adverse effects from TCM each year.” And that is before one even addresses the terrible harm done to animal life in the pursuit of useless, dangerous, and widely debunked ‘remedies’. The medical community should NOT be enabling this.
General
Neil deGrasse Tyson scolds cherry picking climate science: This video discusses the consequences of ignoring climate science but it also speaks to doubting any science-based pursuit, including medicine. The rallying cry of sceptics that “the science isn’t settled” basically is saying “we don’t know everything”. And this is used as an excuse to question how things are currently done or, worse, to do nothing at all. Tyson points out that it is possible to find a scientific paper that supports almost any viewpoint on earth but that, doesn’t make that publication right. It is the body of evidence as accumulated over the years that points in the right direction. Every publication should be scrutinised for correctness and that is exactly what good scientists do and a practice even sceptics would be well advised to adopt.
The best mockery of anti-vaxxers is this car-based analogy: “The Anti-Braker movement was started by Robert Moore Jr, a man who finally woke up enough to realize that brakes are applied in the vast majority of accidents, and nobody is even talking about the clear and obvious correlation between brakes and severe car wrecks.”
I did some of my own RESEARCH. I found that:
– It’s near IMPOSSIBLE to find an independent expert on brakes. They’ve ALL worked with the automotive industry. YOU CAN’T TRUST THEM, SHEEPLE!!
– Mechanics: The very people who we trust to work on and care for our cars – get PAID to install and change brakes!
– Mechanics will NOT treat your choice with respect if you say you want your car to go without brakes.
– Mechanics won’t warn you about the dangers of over-braking. They are COVERING IT UP.
– They are taking our choices away, and keep trying to censor me! This is like the ‘Handmaid’s Tale’!!
Another view: Crackdown on supplements industry is long overdue: “An investigation by the New York attorney general’s office found that supplements sold by GNC, Target, Walmart and Walgreens not only made grand claims about their efficacy, but also contained little or none of the “medicinal herbs” that allegedly provided medical relief.”
Had pre-eclampsia in pregnancy? These 5 things will lower your risk of heart disease: Signs and symptoms of pre-eclampsia usually resolve by about two months after the birth. However, women then have four times the risk of developing high blood pressure and twice the risk of having heart disease over their lifetime. The greatest risk is in the first ten years following pre-eclampsia. Yet a survey of 127 Australian women, with a history of pre-eclampsia found only two-thirds were aware of their increased heart disease risk, with most discovering this by their own efforts. The good news is lifestyle changes can help lower heart disease risk.
Today’s Abused Health Concept
Ginkgo biloba doesn’t work for anything. It’s just a tree: Another in the long line of of ‘natural’ remedies sold by the supplement industry, when in investigated, it helps with… NOTHING. “As I’ve written before, supplement marketing is like the wild west. You generally can’t trust anything you read from the manufacturers, except perhaps the ingredients list. And even the ingredients are sometimes inaccurate and contaminated.”
Great Moments in Health and Science
The development of Emergency Medicine as a medical specialty – ACEM’s journey to today: Although emergency care in some form has existed for millennia, doctors specialising specifically in the complex area of emergency care is less than 50 years old. Prior to this, emergency departments were staffed on a rotational basis by physicians from separate areas of training.
Thanks to Science
You can reduce your child’s chances of contracting influenza by 50-60% – by vaccinating them! Kids are more vulnerable to the flu – here’s what to look out for this winter: The influenza vaccine is an odd beast. Unlike other vaccinations that can offer long term immunity, influenza vaccines are seasonal. The influenza virus is constantly changing and mixing and matching its antigens, so what causes most influenza cases one year may not be the predominant strain the next year. Unfortunately, as making vaccine takes time, there’s an element of prediction to determine what viruses we need to protect the population from – some years it’s a better match than others.
But THIS year, the vaccine does seem to match circulating strains quite well. We are seeing higher numbers of flu cases and deaths – particularly in SA, NSW and VIC – and some people who got vaccinated quite early (eg. March – early April) may lose protection towards the end of the flu season. The elderly, immunocompromised, and children are most at risk of flu complications and usually have access to a free vaccine. This guide explains flu symptoms seen in children – who are more at risk of contracting and having complications from flu – so it’s worth keeping in mind even if your family have been vaccinated.