"I believe in the imagination. What I cannot see is infinitely more important than what I can see."Duane Michals
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Beware: Your Fireplace Or Wood Burning Stove May Be Harming Your Health In An Unexpected Way
As the holidays near and the air becomes more frigid, families gather around fireplaces and wood-burning stoves seeking warm comfort. Unfortunately for many --- especially those who suffer from asthma and allergies -- the use of such heating devices can ...
Breast Cancer; Its Causes
Breast cancer is a malignant tumor developed from cells of the breast, and it is one of the most common cancers affecting females, at time has not been established what is the exact cause of this one, but last researches clearly pointing that there are ...
Eat Right For A Healthy Life
Our diet is an essential factor for the formation of our body. It is clearly mentioned in an Ayurvedic classic 'Charak Samhita' that consuming improper diet in improper way is the main cause of 'Disease'. According to 'Charak Samhita -"An appropriate and ...
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Medical science is on the verge of declaring psoriasis to be strictly the result of an immune system malfunction. This is information that has been known for some time, actually, but the conservative nature of medical science has kept it out of the mainstream until recently. While the news is exciting because the cause is being uncovered, the direction this is all taking is not. The direction is toward a number of new drugs called biologics that interfere with the immune system's functioning and create further risks in the process.
First a little background. The small intestine has the dual function of being a digestive/absorptive organ as well as a barrier to keep out toxic compounds and macromolecules. Either one of these functions may be disrupted by various mechanisms, resulting in problems with 'leakage' into the bloodstream. When this happens, it is called intestinal permeability, or leaky gut. The intestine contains numerous bacteria with toxic properties. These include certain bacteria and bacterial antigens capable of inducing antibodies, as well as food antigens that can produce immune system reactions. Also, studies have shown that Non-Steroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drugs (NSAIDs) disrupt the intestinal barrier function and cause increased permeability, or Leaky Gut Syndrome. This is relevant for those people with arthritis who are taking NSAIDs because the increased permeability may be a factor in their disease process.
What does all this mean? It means that large food particles as well as other unwanted things pass through your intestinal walls and create havoc (immune responses etc.) It also means that organs like your kidneys, liver, and skin are working overtime to compensate for this imbalance. It means that you are immune-compromised, and it means that it is highly likely that you have a bacterial imbalance in your gut, some of which is getting inside the body where it doesn't belong. Absorption of these normally-excluded substances increases accordingly. This results in distribution in the blood of invasive macromolecules, which results in inflammation. Increased permeability of the mucosal barrier in the gut allows for excessive absorption of bacteria, food antigens, and large molecules. When this breaks down, antigens are allowed to enter the system in excessive amounts, which leads to an immune system response in individuals with psoriasis. This response involves specific white blood cells called T-cells, which travel to the site of the psoriasis and populate it, causing rapid proliferation of the skin cells and inflammation. At first it was thought that T-cells themselves were responsible for psoriasis, but it turns out that it is this over activity acting as a catalyst for the production of skin cells.
This is where things take a turn for the worse, because instead of working with the immune system, the thrust of modern medicine and their backers is to develop new drugs to knock out the T-cell function of the immune system, thereby allowing excessive skin cell growth to 'settle down'. As effective as this may be in the short run, it comes with cautions, namely the reduction in efficiency of the immune system. T-cells are in the front lines of defence for the body. It would appear to make more sense to stop the process that produces T-cell proliferation. Healing the lining of the intestinal walls so that antigens are no longer allowed to pass through the walls into the bloodstream can do this. In this way the immune system will no longer have a reason to go into overdrive, when antigens are no longer present. New drugs will only serve to do what drugs have always done, which is to suppress symptoms. In the case of the new biologics, it is suppression of the immune system. The root cause will remain as long as the lining of the intestine is allowed to deteriorate. There is another way to deal with the whole matter.
About the Author
The author is a nutritionist who founded The Psoriasis Connection (PCI) in 1998 and has just published the book 'Psoriasis the Real Way Out'. PCI's information can be seen at www.psoriasisUSA.com.
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EU Joins Widening Push to Find New AntibioticsWall Street JournalBy STEN STOVALL LONDON—The European Union Thursday pledged funds to find new antiobiotics, its first attempt to help drugmakers develop medicines to fight increasingly drug-resistant superbugs that are taking more lives every year and adding to rising ...and more » |
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Bill introduced to reform sales of scarce medicineBusinessWeekOther reasons include increased demand for some drugs, companies ending production of low-profit medicines, consolidation in the generic drug industry and limited supplies of some ingredients. A press release from Cummings, who is the ranking Democrat ...and more » |
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Who pays for personalized medicine?Science CodexIn a new Perspective piece published today in the New England Journal of Medicine, Jason Karlawish, MD, professor of Medicine, Medical Ethics and Health Policy in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, and co-author Aaron S.and more » |
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