“With some experts saying that as much as 4,200,000 gallons of oil (100,000 barrels) a day have leaked into the Gulf of Mexico, we have to ask what the long-term effect to our health will be. We know that oil is mainly comprised of hydrocarbons, and that many of the hydrocarbons contained in oil, such as benzene, toluene and polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbons, are known to cause cancer. However, oil also contains heavy metals such as mercury, lead and arsenic that can cause a host of health problems including cancer,” says Carl.

Because of the chemical dispersants used to clean up the oil spill, hydrocarbons are readily being absorbed into clams, oysters and other shellfish.

“However, in much the same way that mercury and other heavy metal move up the food chain, these harmful hydrocarbons also move up the food chain as other marine organisms feed on the shellfish and then themselves get eaten by fish and other marine organisms,” he says.

“The oil spill in the Gulf will lead to high concentrations of heavy metals and hydrocarbons in shellfish and larger predatory fish such as, tuna, swordfish and shark,” explains Carl.

However, since the oil spill is so large, the contamination is not confined to only large predatory fish. Every marine organism in the Gulf of Mexico could be affected by the massive oil spill.

“Just like with the Valdez Oil Spill, contaminants from the oil spill in the Gulf will also last for years and build up in the food chain, causing increased risk of cancer and neurological disorders,” explains Carl.

Mercury levels in seafood have been unacceptably high for quite some time. Prior to the oil spill in the Gulf, laboratory tests from 20 restaurants in Manhattan showed higher than acceptable mercury levels in the sushi at most of these restaurants. Mercury levels from seafood in restaurants and grocery stores in California were routinely found to be higher than FDA limit of 1ppm in fish tissue.

“Since the contamination from the oil spill in the Gulf is so pervasive, in the near future and for many years to come, I expect that the mercury levels in random checks of seafood in both restaurants and grocery stores to be much higher than they were prior to the spill in the Gulf,” says Carl.

“Since no government agency regularly tests seafood for mercury, and since testing seafood for hydrocarbons is difficult to do, cancer levels are bound to increase with no end in sight,” he says. “Hopefully, more regulation and testing will enter into the seafood industry as a whole because of the oil spill in the Gulf. In the meantime, maybe we should seriously consider drastically limiting our intake of seafood.”

Getting just one IV Vitamin C treatment per week can greatly boost your immune system.

Quantity, frequency and duration are the prevention and if infected, the key to a swift recovery. If you show signs of the illness, get into our office that day to get an IVC Infusion. Studies show that an infusion of Vitamin C can boost your immune cells within a few hours. If your symptoms are severe a second infusion should be administered the next day. We will try our best to work in anyone who is sick and in need of a Vitamin C treatment that day.

The 2009 H1N1 Flu {aka: Swine Flu} is a new influenza virus that is spreading worldwide among people. Because this virus is very different from current seasonal influenza viruses, many people will not have protective immunity against it and the seasonal flu vaccine will not protect against it either. An additional vaccination for H1N1 Flu won’t be available until Mid-October, but there won’t be enough vaccinations to cover everyone. The current plan is to administer the limited supply of vaccinations from Mid-October to Mid-December.

“After studying natural medicine for over 35 years, the longer I practice and the more I learn and know, it is ever more difficult to understand how powerful remedies 100% natural and devastatingly effective continue to be deliberately overlooked, ignored and denied …all at the peril of public health. Natural agents that dwarf in comparison anything the pharmaceutical industry has to offer with far, far greater effect, safety and protection. It truly defies human understanding.”
-Dr. Hale-

“Over 3 million links for Vitamin C and flu. What more evidence do we need to realize there is a conspiracy to keep the power of massive doses of ascorbate secret from the public. The drug pushing industry cannot keep this secret long because of the internet. They won’t even order serum levels of vitamin C in sick patients because they would reveal the acute induced scurvy (i.e. the serum levels would be or almost be zero.) One trick that is anticipated is to use inadequate doses and then claim that high doses like 4 to 10 grams a day (which are ridiculously low doses for these diseases) did not help. … I have not seen a flu yet that was resistant to massive doses of ascorbic acid (vitamin C).”
-Robert Cathcart, M.D.-

“At the Longevity Centre of Houston last year all of our patients who received immune boosting vitamin C IV Infusions noticed an improved sense of well-being and were more resistant to infections.”
-Marina M. Pearsall, M.D., Ph.D.-

About the IVC Infusion

• Vitamin C infusions range from 30 minutes to 1 hour and a treatment plan can be designed to suit you. 
• We treat patients ages 10 y/o and older

Office Policy

• New patients are required to undergo a physical exam either in our office or with their Primary Care Provider.  Please have your Primary Care Provider fax your physical exam to (713) 787-6401
• Emergency IVC Infusions should call (713) 522-4037 for Same Day Appointments

*Ask about our “Family & Friends” IVC Discount available until Oct 31st*

Longevity Centre of Houston

2951 Chimney Rock Rd

Houston, TX 77056

7 1 3  -  5 2 2  -  4 0 3 7

Scientists found that when mice ate at unusual hours, they put on twice as much weight, despite exercising and eating as much as others.

The study, in the journal Obesity, is said to be the first to show directly that there is a “wrong” time to eat.

Recent studies have suggested that circadian rhythms, the body’s internal clock, have a role in how our bodies use up energy. However, this had been difficult to definitively pin down.

Deanna Arble, lead author of the study, said: “One of our research interests is shift workers, who tend to be overweight.

“This got us thinking that eating at the wrong time of day might be contributing to weight gain.”

The experiment looked at two groups of mice over a six-week period. Both groups were fed a high-fat diet, but at different times of the mice “waking cycle”.

One group of mice ate at times when they would normally be asleep. They put on twice as much weight.

This was despite them doing the same level of activity, and eating the same amount of food, as the other mice.

Groundbreaking

The findings may have implications for people worried about their weight.

“How or why a person gains weight is very complicated, but it is clearly not just calories in and calories out,” said Fred Turek, from the Northwestern’s Center for Sleep and Circadian Biology, where the research took place.

“Better timing of meals could be a critical element in slowing the ever-increasing incidence of obesity.”

Tam Fry, from the National Obesity Forum, agreed. He said: “It is groundbreaking. It really gets you thinking why this has not been done before.

“It could be very dramatic if it affects whether you are going to get fat or not.”

At this stage, the results could still be interpreted as controversial when applied to humans.

The scientists now hope they can find out more about how the process works. It is thought that sleep, hormones and body temperature all play a part in how we gain weight.

By Sudeep Chand
Health reporter, BBC News

Dental practices are required to keep the material used to fill cavities, called dental amalgam, from the commonwealth’s water supply because it contains mercury. The MassDEP passed regulations three years ago that require dental practices to install and operate wastewater treatment systems that capture and recycle amalgam waste that contain mercury.

MassDEP sent enforcement notices to 30 dental facilities for failing to certify that they had installed state-approved equipment for keeping mercury amalgam out of their wastewater – even after being told they were already late in complying with the regulations. The agency gave the dental practices 30 days to comply with the rules. As of July 28, 14 dental facilities had not complied and were fined $500.

The dentists or dental facilities that remain out of compliance include Dr. Matthew Healey of Billerica; Family Dental Practice of Cambridge; Montgomery Dental Associates of Chicopee; Dr. Keith Morris of Dorchester; Dr. Jeffrey Poirier of Fitchburg; Groton Dental Wellness Spa of Groton; Groveland Family Dental Center of Groveland; Dr. Elsa Guzman of Jamaica Plain; Dr. Donald E. Jaffe of New Bedford; Dr. James E. Kearns of North Dartmouth; Family Dentist of Norwood; Dr. John Brazill of Pittsfield; Dr. Ashok K. Patel of Waltham; and Dr. Joseph Guarino of West Roxbury.

Medical costs associated with obesity increased from 6.5 percent of all medical spending in 1998 to about 9 percent in 2006, according to the study released here and published today in the journal Health Affairs.

Overall, medical care for obese patients is about 43 percent more expensive than for normal weight patients — about $4,870 a year compared with $3,400, said Eric Finkelstein, lead author of the new study, which was conducted by the research group RTI.

The main driver of the increased economic burden of obesity is that more people are obese than ever before, not that medical care is more expensive, Finkelstein said.

One person in four in the United States is obese, up from one in five in 1998, according to the CDC data.

For the Health Affairs study, researchers examined Medicare, Medicaid, and private insurance company data on annual medical spending for 10,597 people in 1998 and 21,877 people in 2006. They used self-reported data on height and weight to determine body mass index (BMI).

Costs for obese patients enrolled in Medicare or Medicaid hit $7 billion a year for the non-institutionalized population and are largely attributable to the spending for prescription drugs and hospitalizations.

“Obesity is costly,” Finkelstein said. “The only way to show real savings in cost is to reduce the prevalence of obesity and related illnesses.”

Government Urges Measures to Curb Obesity
Coinciding with the new data, the CDC released a list of strategies to curb growing obesity rates that focus on public health initiatives such as increasing physical education in schools, improving community infrastructures to promote walking and bicycling, and initiatives to encourage grocery stores to build in poor areas.

Other recommendations include adopting smaller portion sizes in schools, discouraging communities from promoting sugar-sweetened beverages, and backing community-based initiatives to combat obesity.

The consensus on the first day of the three-day summit was that stopping the obesity epidemic will require sweeping societal changes, not medical interventions.

“This is a social issue,” former president Bill Clinton told the crowd of anti-obesity advocates during a morning session, as he accepted an award for the work of his group, the Alliance for a Healthier Generation.

“We are trying to turn the Titanic around before it hits the iceberg,” he said.

Although societal changes are necessary, physicians can play a role in curbing the obesity epidemic by talking to their patients about weight loss in a clear manner so the patient really understands their health risks, Finkelstein said.

He cited a study that found that about half of patients diagnosed with hypertension or diabetes in the previous year didn’t know their diagnoses a year later. That, he said, suggested a huge gap in what the physician is saying and what the patient comprehends.

By EMILY WALKER
MedPage Today Staff Writer

This linkage builds on prior research, which has suggested that exposure to these pollutants, known as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), while still in the womb can provoke developmental changes that damage lung health and boost the risk for developing childhood asthma.

“As a reference, most people know that lead exposure is harmful to children, and the effects we saw in terms of the association between PAH exposure and decreased IQ scores are comparable with low-level lead exposure, which is of concern because IQ level is a known predictor of a child’s future academic performance,” explained study author Frederica P. Perera, a professor in the department of environmental health sciences with the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University in New York City.

“And here we’re talking about extremely common urban pollutants, found all across the U.S. and the world,” Perera added. “Traffic emissions from diesel and gasoline vehicles — like buses, trucks and cars — are a major source of these pollutants, as is fuel-burning coal. So, certainly the exposure is widespread and not confined to any one population or area, and we have no reason to think that the effects that we see in our study will be any different for other ethnicities or locations.”

Perera — who also serves as director of the Columbia Center for Children’s Environmental Health — reports the findings online July 20 and in the August print issue of Pediatrics.

To assess the impact of PAH exposure in the womb, the authors conducted air monitoring between 1998 and 2003, during the pregnancy of 249 black and Dominican-American mothers in the Washington Heights and Harlem areas of New York City.

The researchers pointed out that none of the children were born to parents who smoked, removing that type of pollutant exposure from the equation.

All of the women were between the ages of 18 and 35, and none had diabetes, HIV, high blood pressure or a history of illegal drug use.

Perera and her colleagues found that 140 of the children (a little more than 56 percent) had been exposed to high levels of PAH in the womb.

After adjusting for a range of potentially influential factors — such as maternal IQ levels and varying types of home caretaking environments — the authors found that by age 5, those children exposed to high PAH exposure in the womb scored more than four points lower on full-scale IQ tests, and nearly five points lower on verbal IQ tests.

Although such evidence suggests that early intellectual development is indeed negatively affected by high levels of pollutant exposure, research is ongoing and the child participants will continue to be monitored through age 11, the researchers noted.

Meanwhile, Perera says that “aside from making sure that there are no other pollutant sources in the house such as tobacco smoke, families can proactively protect themselves by maintaining a clean home environment and good ventilation of cooking fumes, and by making sure that pregnant women and children consume healthy diets.”

But, she noted, “as far as outdoor air exposure, that’s a question for policymakers. I’m not a policy expert, but I would say fortunately that there are means at hand to address this problem. They include plans to reduce vehicle emissions, and to develop the technologies that would do so, along with policies that focus on energy efficiency and energy alternatives.”

Michael Jerrett, an associate professor of environmental health sciences with the School of Public Health at University of California, Berkeley, expressed little surprise at the findings, and suggested that an association between in-utero PAH exposure and a lower IQ is “certainly plausible.”

“Children exposed to prenatal or in-utero air pollution from traffic oftentimes have lower birth weights, somewhat smaller head circumferences, and a number of adverse outcomes,” he noted. “There’s certainly enough there to suggest an effect. And I think any one of those outcomes — if they happen early enough in life — can affect development through childhood and exert an impact on intelligence,” Jerrett said.

“Of course you can’t rule out other factors — the school environment, the home environment, even the neighborhood environment — that might affect IQ,” Jerrett cautioned. “But certainly it is important for us to investigate this, and see what further study reveals.”

By Alan Mozes
HealthDay Reporter

Since the data used in the study were collected prior to the current economic downturn, it’s likely that the current rate of medical-related bankruptcies is even higher, said the researchers at Harvard Law School, Harvard Medical School and Ohio University.

They randomly surveyed 2,314 bankruptcy filers in early 2007 and found that 77.9 percent of those bankrupted by medical problems had health insurance at the start of the bankrupting illness, including 60 percent who had private coverage.

Most of those bankrupted by medical problems were “solidly middle class” before they suffered financial disaster — two-thirds were homeowners and three-fifths had gone to college. In many cases, these people were hit at the same time by high medical bills and loss of income as illness forced breadwinners to take time off work. It was common for illness to lead to job loss and the disappearance of work-based health insurance.

The study also found that well-insured families often had to cope with high out-of-pocket medical costs for co-payments, deductibles and uncovered services. Medical bills for medically bankrupt families with private insurance averaged $17,749, compared to $26,971 for the uninsured and $22,568 for those who initially had private coverage but lost it during their illness.

The highest average costs were incurred by people with diabetes ($26,971) and neurological disorders ($34,167), the researchers found.

Hospital bills were the largest single expense for about half of all medically bankrupt families, while prescription drugs were the largest expense for 18.6 percent, according to the study in the August issue of the American Journal of Medicine, which was published online June 4.

“Our findings are frightening. Unless you’re Warren Buffett, your family is just one serious illness away from bankruptcy,” lead author Dr. David Himmelstein, an associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, said in a news release from the Physicians for a National Health Program.

“For middle-class Americans, health insurance offers little protection. Most of us have policies with so many loopholes, co-payments and deductibles that illness can put you in the poorhouse. And even the best job-based health insurance often vanishes when a prolonged illness causes job loss — precisely when families need it most. Private health insurance is a defective product, akin to an umbrella that melts in the rain,” Himmelstein said.

The findings show that, as a nation, “we need to rethink health reform,” added study co-author Dr. Steffie Woolhandler, an associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and a primary care physician.

“Covering the uninsured isn’t enough. Reform also needs to help families who already have insurance by upgrading their coverage and assuring that they never lose it. Only single-payer national health insurance can make universal, comprehensive coverage affordable by saving the hundreds of billions we now waste on insurance overhead and bureaucracy,” Woolhandler said in the news release.

“Unfortunately, Washington politicians seem ready to cave in to insurance firms and keep them and their counterfeit coverage at the core of our system. Reforms that expand phony insurance — stripped-down plans riddled with co-payments, deductibles and exclusions — won’t stem the rising tide of medical bankruptcy,” Woolhandler concluded.

The association’s research found that Harris County had an average of 53.7 unhealthy ozone days each year during a three-year period between 2005 to 2007, based on an 8-hour daily maximum concentration.

“Taking decisive action to clean our air must be a top public health priority,” Sara Dreiling, chief executive officer for the American Lung Association of the Central States, said in a statement. “Our failing grades for ozone and particle pollution mean that the health and lives of individuals in Houston are at risk. Now is the time to step up our response.”

The State of the Air report includes a national air quality “report card” that assigns “A” through “F” grades to communities across the country and ranks cities and counties most affected by the three most widespread types of pollution — ozone or smog; annual particle pollution; and 24-hour particle pollution levels.

The high number of unhealthy ozone days resulted in Houston ranking fifth on the list of the 25 Worst Ozone Polluted Cities. The four worst cities in this category were all in California. Dallas-Fort Worth was No. 7 on the list with an average of 38.8 ozone days per year during the three-year period.

The second part of the report graded particle pollution, a toxic mix of microscopic soot, diesel exhaust, chemicals, metals and aerosols.

Houston ranked No. 24 on the list of the 25 Worst Particulate Matter Polluted Cities with a 24-hour particle pollution level of 15.8.

State of the Air also found that six out of 10 Americans, or 186.1 million people, live in areas where air pollution levels endanger lives.

The report details trends for the 25 most-polluted cities. Grades for the 1,000 counties with air pollution monitors can be found by typing in the zip code at www.stateoftheair.org.

The data on air quality throughout the United States were obtained from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Air Quality System database. The American Lung Association contracted with Dr. Allen S. Lefohn from A.S.L. & Associates in Helena, Mont., to characterize the hourly averaged ozone concentration information and the 24-hour averaged PM2.5 concentration information for the 3-year period for 2005-2007 for each monitoring site.

WHO raises pandemic alert to second-highest level

Texas Declares Flu Emergency, Suspends Competitions by Schools

The writing is on the wall and the general threat is real. Unfortunately we cannot stop the influx of the Swine Flu virus, but we can and should attempt to limit its spread. Multiple daily hand washings {once an hour, on the hour is what I tell my children}, minimize casual contacts {hand shaking, gym equipment…etc} and seek medical advice for symptoms such as a “Bad Cold”. High Dose Vitamin C or the X-Flu Protocol will help your immune system fight off and/or prevent the virus from infecting you.
G. F. Pearsall, Jr., M.D.