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November 2001 Vol. 6 No. 11
We, as Americans, and all others of the world who believe in freedom as deeply as we do, would rather die on our feet, then live on our knees.
FDR
From a Memorial at Arlington National Cemetery:
“Not for fame. Not for place or rank. Not lured by ambition, or goaded by necessity.
But in simple obedience to duty as they understood it.
These men sufferend all, sacrificed all, dared all.”
Table of Contents:
Pepper Protein Lowers Insulin Levels
Exercise Improves Brain Power
Drug-Resistant Bacteria in US Meat
Heart Attack Risk Lower During New Moon
Apply the 80/20 Rule to Everything
Diet Helps Fibromyalgia
Stress Worsens Your Immune System
US Diabetes Rate May Soar Up to 200%
Pepper Protein Lowers Insulin Levels
A compound that makes peppers hot effectively lowers blood sugar in dogs, say researchers from Jamaica, suggesting that it might someday be used to treat diabetes in humans.
Peppers are used by traditional Jamaican healers to treat diabetes, but the compound, capsaicin, has never been formally tested. The compound is also used in the US to treat painful nerve damage called diabetic neuropathy . The investigators tested the effects of capsaicin on blood sugar and insulin levels in dogs. Beginning 2 hours after receiving a sugary treat, blood sugar levels in the dogs that received capsaicin were well below those in dogs that did not receive the pepper protein, the authors report.
The levels of insulin — the hormone that controls the body’s handling of sugar — were higher after 2.5 hours in the dogs that received capsaicin, the report indicates, even though the insulin appeared to stick less stro ngly to blood cells. The researchers note that they are not sure whether the pepper extract increases the release of insulin or slows down its breakdown.
Phytotherapy Research August 2001;15:391-394
Exercise Improves Brain Power
A preliminary study has found that exercise may rev up a person’s brain power. In the study, the researchers measured the thinking ability of 20 men and women aged 18 to 24 after 30 minutes of moderately heavy to heavy running on a treadmill. Once the participants’ heart rates had returned to resting levels, they were wired up to an instrument that measures brain waves called an electroencephalogram (EEG).
They then took two computer tests, one more difficult than the other. These results were compared with results from tests the participants took without exercising beforehand.
Brain wave measurements showed that exercising increased the speed of the decision-making process. Specifically, brain activity kicked in 35 milliseconds faster after exercise compared with when study participants did not exercise. Although that may sound like a small amount of time, that it is actually quite significant.
In addition, the respondents answered more accurately after exercise then they did when they had not exercised. If the findings hold true, they can be added to a growing body of research on the beneficial effects of eve n short periods of activity. One recent study found that 10 minutes of moderate exercise daily can improve mood and reduce fatigue.
Another study reported that stair climbing for 2 minutes several times a day can lower total cholesterol, raise HDL cholesterol and improve the resting pulse rate in sedentary young women.
Annual Meeting Of The Society Of Psychophysiological Research in Montreal, Canada October 18, 2001
Drug-Resistant Bacteria in US Meat
Antibiotic-resistant bacteria are common in American meat, and the microbes survive in the human intestine for a week or more, where they could potentially be the source of drug-resistant infections in people. Antibiotics are routinely given to chickens, pigs and cattle to prevent illness and to promote growth. The drugs are put in feed or water in concentrations below that used to treat infections. The practice, while commonplace, is controversial because it encourages the emergence of antibiotic- resistant microbes.
In 1998, the European Union prohibited the use of antibiotics as animal growth-promoters if the drugs are similar to ones used in human medicine. Numerous groups are pushing for a similar ban in the United States. Three new studies suggest the interaction among animals, people and microbes may not be as simple and predictable as previously believed. Two of the studies uncovered significant amounts of drug-resistant bacteria in chicken and meat taken from US supermarket shelves. The third demonstrated that such bacteria can persist in the intestinal tract days after a person ingests them.
Researchers say the findings bolster the arguments of public health experts who want to limit the use of antibiotics in livestock. The drugs are used to treat sick animals, but in the US they are also routinely given to boost the nutritional benefits of animal feed and promote growth in food animals.
The concern with this practice is that the needless use of antibiotics gives a survival advantage to drug-resistant strains of the bacteria behind foodborne illnesses and other infections. Many health experts worry that food animals are providing a ”reservoir” of drug-resistant bacteria that could be transmitted to humans. And the new studies add even more weight to these concerns, according to researchers.
They found that at least 17% of chickens from chicken samples from supermarket shelves in parts of Oregon, Georgia, Maryland and Minnesota had Enterococcus faecium bacteria that were resistant to an antibiotic combination called quinupristin-dalfopristin. E. faecium is notoriously resistant to antibiotics, and illnesses caused by the bacteria — which include infections of the blood and urinary tract — are a growing problem in US hospitals. The quinupristin-dalfopristin combination was approved in the US in 1999 for the treatment of E. faecium infections that do not respond to the old standby antibiotic vancomycin.
That drug, called virginiamycin, has been used in the US since 1974 to promote growth in farm animals. Similarly, another research team found that of 200 ground meat samples bought in the Washington, DC, area, 20% contained various strains of Salmonella bacteria, most of which were resistant to at least one antibiotic.
Among the strains isolated was a particularly virulent, resistant strain known to be a major cause of salmonella outbreaks. The meat samples included beef, chicken, turkey and pork.
The third study suggests that drug-resistant E. faecium from animal products does live in the human digestive tract for up to 2 weeks after ingestion. Danish researchers had healthy volunteers consume milk laced with saf e amounts of the bacteria, then collected stool samples to track what happened to the bacteria once ingested. They found traces of drug-resistant E. faecium in samples from 8 of 12 volunteers 6 days after ingestion and in one volunteer 14 days afterward.
This residence itself is not enough to cause illness. But if, for instance, a person receives antibiotics in a hospital, these drug-resistant bacteria may “overgrow” in the intestines, spread to the skin and other body ar eas and possibly contaminate hospital equipment such as catheters.
Taken together, these studies provide the “smoking gun” that argues for a ban on using antibiotics to promote growth in livestock. Europe has issued such a ban, and, Gorbach noted, the US Food and Drug Administration is considering the move.
Health experts who advocate limiting antibiotic use want the drugs to be used only against specific pathogens in sick animals, by order of a veterinarian.
NEJM October 18, 2001;345:1147-1154, 1155-1160, 1161-1166, 1202-1203
Heart Attack Risk Lower During New Moon
Although it may be lunacy to think that more people die of cardiac arrest when the moon is full, the darkness of the new moon could somehow be safer for the heart.
In cardiac arrest — which is different from a heart attack — the heart stops beating, perhaps due to an electrical or rhythm disturbance. Victims die if their heart is not re-started within minutes with a properly timed electric shock.
Researchers analyzed a database of over 2.3 million emergency visits in seven northern New Jersey emergency departments and factored in lunar cycles during the 4,000-day period of the study.
They didn’t find any correlation whatsoever with full moon, but did find a decrease of 6.5% in incidence of cardiac arrest during new moons.
Annual Meeting of the American College of Emergency Physicians Chicago, IL October 16, 2001
Apply the 80/20 Rule to Everything
by Brian Tracy
The 80/20 Rule is one of the most helpful of all concepts of time and life management. It is also called the Pareto Principle after its founder, the Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto, who first wrote about it in 1895. Par eto noticed that people in his society seemed to divide naturally into what he called the “vital few,” the top 20% in terms of money and influence, and the “trivial many,” the bottom 80%.
The Great Discovery
He later discovered that virtually all economic activity was subject to this Pareto Principle as well. For example, this rule says that 20% of your activities will account for 80% of your results. 20% of your customers will account for 80% of your sales. 20% of your products or services will account for 80% of your profits . 20% of your tasks will account for 80% of the value of what you do, and so on. This means that if you have a list of ten items to do, two of those items will turn out to be worth as much or more than the other eight items put together.
The Greatest Payoff
Here is an interesting discovery. Each of these tasks may take the same amount of time to accomplish. But one or two of those tasks will contribute five or ten times the value as any of the others. Often, one item on a list of ten things that you have to do can be worth more than all the other nine items put together. This task is invariably the one that you should do first.
The Most Valuable Tasks
The most valuable tasks you can do each day are often the hardest and most complex.
But the payoff and rewards for completing these tasks efficiently can be tremendous. For this reason, you must adamantly refuse to work on tasks in the bottom 80% while you still have tasks in the top 20% left to be done. Before you begin work, always ask yourself, “Is this task in the top 20% of my activities or in the bottom 80%?”
Getting Started
The hardest part of any important task is getting started on it in the first place. Once you actually begin work on a valuable task, you seem to be naturally motivated to continue. There is a part of your mind that loves to be busy working on significant tasks that can really make a difference. Your job is to feed this part of your mind continually.
Managing Your Life
Time management is really life management, personal management. It is really taking control over the sequence of events. Time management is control over what you do next. And you are always free to choose the task that yo u will do next. Your ability to choose between the important and the unimportant is the key determinant of your success in life and work.
Effective, productive people discipline themselves to start on the most important task that is before them. They force themselves to eat that frog, whatever it is. As a result, they accomplish vastly more than the average person and are much happier as a result. This should be your way of working as well.
Action Exercises
Make a list of all the key goals, activities, projects and responsibilities in your life today. Which of them are, or could be, in the top 10% or 20% of tasks that represent, or could represent, 80% or 90% of your results ?
Resolve today that you are going to spend more and more of your time working in those few areas that can really make a difference in you life and career, and less and less time on lower value activities.
Diet Helps Fibromyalgia
People with fibromyalgia may experience reductions in their symptoms if they eliminate one or more foods from their diet. Fibromyalgia is a chronic condition, often accompanied by depression and fatigue, in which a person feels pain in the muscles and tissues surrounding the joints.
Nine in 10 fibromyalgia patients are female.
While the cause of fibromyalgia is unknown, researchers have found pain-processing abnormalities in the spines and brain stems of some people with fibromyalgia.
In the study, investigators reviewed medical charts of 17 fibromyalgia patients who agreed to eliminate common foods from their diet such as corn, wheat, dairy, citrus, soy and nuts.
After 2 weeks without eating any of the potential food allergens, nearly half of the patients reported “significant reduction of pain,” and 76% reported a reduction in other symptoms such as headache, fatigue, bloating, h eartburn, and breathing difficulties. After the food elimination phase of the study, the patients were then instructed to reintroduce a particular food every 2 or 3 days and monitor their reaction to the food.
Some of the reactions to foods were pain, headache, and gastrointestinal distress. The most common problem-causing foods or ingredients for the patients in this study were corn, wheat, dairy, citrus and sugar.
Annual Meeting of the American College of Nutrition in Orlando, Florida October 2001
Exercise Benefits Fibromyalgia Patients
Patients with fibromyalgia can boost their strength and improve certain parameters with weight-bearing exercise, researchers from Finland have demonstrated.
Women with fibromyalgia completed a 21-week strength training program and it was found to reduce their levels of depression and fatigue, but pain levels did not change.
Researchers divided 21 women with fibromyalgia into two groups. Eleven women went through the strength training program and 10 received no special care. An additional 12 healthy women went through the weight training program as “control” subjects. About 90% of people with fibromyalgia are women.
Currently, it is standard treatment to use light exercise or physical therapy, along with medication and psychological therapy, as part of a comprehensive plan for treating fibromyalgia. While no studies have found that exercise improves pain, it has been shown to help patients function better, improve mood, and reduce fatigue.
Annals of Rheumatic Disease 2001; 60: 21-26
Stress Worsens Your Immune System
Stress may make it easier for germs to infect skin wounds as researchers below proved.
Investigators created skin wounds in mice that were exposed to stressful living conditions. The researchers then applied Streptococcus bacteria to the wounds, and compared the healing rates of the stressed mice with those of mice with skin wounds that were also exposed to the bacteria but did not undergo the same levels of stress.
Mice that had been stressed out prior to wounding and infection showed a 30% delay in wound healing at 3 and 5 days compared with the mice that were not stressed, the report indicates.
In addition, the investigators found that after 5 days, the stressed mice had 100,000 times more opportunistic bacteria in their wounds than the non-stressed mice. Seven days after the bacteria exposure, about 85% of the wounds in the stressed mice were infected, versus about 27% of the wounds in the non-stressed mice.
In this study, stress increased the rate of wound infection by threefold. Stress disrupts the body’s equilibrium, in turn significantly impairing its ability to control and eradicate bacterial infection during wound healing. The bottom line is that stress shuts down either the recruitment or the function of those immune cells needed to fight infection.
Research in humans has found that psychological stress can take a toll on the immune system by reducing the concentration of cytokines, proteins that help to ward off infections. In one study, skin wounds on the arms of women who had higher levels of the stress hormone cortisol had lower levels of key compounds released by the body to mediate healing.
Brain, Behavior, and Immunity online 2001;10.1006
US Diabetes Rate May Soar Up to 200% The number of Americans diagnosed with diabetes will soar 165% over the next 50 years, but getting more people to change their diet and exercise habits could help put the brakes on the boom.
According to Dr. James P. Boyle from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and colleagues, 29 million Americans will be diagnosed with diabetes in 2050, compared with about 11 million today.
Adults aged 75 and over, who account for a growing segment of the population, will comprise the bulk of new cases. Among ethnic groups, black men will see rates of diabetes climb 363% and black women will see a 217% incre ase in rates of the disease.
Both white men and women will also see rates of diabetes more than double during this period, according to the report. The study of the growing rates of the chronic disease points a finger at population growth, poor health habits and changing demographic trends.
The researchers note that the report may underestimate future rates of diabetes. For one, many cases go undiagnosed. It is estimated that as many as one third of those with diabetes are not diagnosed. Additionally, the study did not include projections for Hispanics, a group with increasing rates of the disease.
Diabetes Care November 2001;24:1936-1940