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Welcome to one of my favorite months;
admittedly, my affection for the month has to do with my
birthday. My birthday
and tulips. I love tulips and they are everywhere now
in the small corner markets in NYC – if you put a couple
of pennies in the vase, they don’t droop, and you have
them for a full week.
A few news articles this month relating
to menopause, women’s
health and one of our favorite herbs, black cohosh. Finally,
we’ll wrap up our series on sweetners with saccharin,
or the pink pack, Sweet ‘n Low.
MENOPAUSE NEWS
Sometimes, I just don’t get
it. A National Institute of Health (NIH) consensus
panel came to the conclusion on March 24th that Menopause
is not a disease (hello) and that women with symptoms that
are not severe should just “wait it out”, insinuating
to me anyway that women are over-reacting. They
can’t seem to agree which symptoms are “menopause” and
which are “aging” but they do agree that if
symptoms are moderate to severe, women should go on a low
dose HRT regiment. Who are these “experts” and
where have they been? Do they see women? This is three
years after HRT was pulled from the market with several follow
up studies pointing to greater risk of all sorts of diseases
including Alzheimer’s and we still haven’t steered
the discussion away from HRT? They go on to say that
there needs to be more research on alternatives, they can’t
comment on whether they are safe or effective or not -- have
they considered research that’s going on at other arms
of the NIH? I guess they’re too busy. I’m not
anti-HRT, (I only believe it shouldn’t be the first
thing we try) but I find this discussion an insult and an
obvious lack of concern for women’s health. Let them
take HRT and we’ll check back in 2020.
Click here for the Associated Press piece
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/03/24/health/main682816.shtml
AN INTERESTING BLACK COHOSH FINDING
A new study conducted by researchers at the New York Botanical
Garden found that an old specimen collected 85 years ago
still held it’s
medicinal activity. Interestingly, the sample was tested
for four of the most important triterpene glycosides that
Oöna is standardized to. While just about all
black cohosh is standardized to 2.5% triterpene glycosides,
Oöna is standardized to only these four important glycosides,
we don’t count any less effective glycosides to make
up our 2.5% total. That’s one of the reasons you find
our product more effective. The other constituent
of the plant, phenols, were lower than the modern medicinal
plant. The degradation of phenols may be from time or a natural
chemical variation due to geography or different harvest
seasons. What’s interesting about this is that
we assumed that the shelf life of black cohosh was a couple
of years, and despite less than optimal storage conditions
for decades, this botanical held its activity for many, many
years. Please see the link below for the entire article
and note the end of the piece where it talks about 13 studies
that support the efficacy and safety of black cohosh at the
NIH.
http://www.npicenter.com/anm/templates/newsATemp.aspx
?articleid=11867&zoneid=2
FOR PREVENTING A HEART ATTACK OR
STROKE,
ASPIRIN HAS A DIFFERENT EFFECT IN WOMEN
A low dose of aspirin taken every other
day is thought to reduce the risk of a heart attack. According
to a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine
last month, for women, the benefit of this regime is more
for preventing a first time stroke. For men, aspirin
reduces first time heart attacks but not strokes. Further,
the benefits for women under the age of 65 are limited, so
it’s important to consider the risks such as an increased
risk of bleeding. The warnings about bleeding are quite serious. Typically,
studies involving heart treatments have only included 10%
to 15% women.
For more information see:
http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/abstract/352/13/1293
or go to www.wsj.com and
type in Ron Winslow (author) in the search – you’ll
see the head line but it’s $2.95 for the piece. It
appeared Tuesday, March 8 front page of the Personal Journal
section
THE LITTLE PINK PACKET
Here’s
a joke for you that I got off the web… What’s
the difference between sugar and Sweet ‘n Low? Sugar
is when you kiss her on the mouth! I thought it was
cute-- if a little risqué.
Saccharin is the granddaddy of artificial
sweeteners as it’s been around since1879. It has no calories,
and is 300 times sweeter than sugar. It wasn’t
too popular until the late ‘50’s early ‘60’s
when a New York entrepreneur combined saccharin with another
sweetner cyclamate and made it into little packets for sanitary
reasons. Combining it with cyclamate reduced the “tin
like” taste.
But in 1969, cyclamate was banned for causing cancer in rats
and researchers began to take a closer look at saccharin.
While conflicting tests showed it caused cancer in some laboratory
animals, the fact that at least some of the research was
financed by the sugar industry raised credibility questions.
In 1977, based on a study of 200 rats in Canada, Canadians
decided to ban saccharin in food and beverages. Diabetics
were allowed to buy it.
The FDA decided to follow suit and ban the sweetner which
resulted in a public outcry and the hoarding of diet products.
At this point, Americans were in love with the pink packet
and diet soda like Tab. Later that year, Congress
passed a law prohibiting the FDA from banning saccharin (God
bless America) – however, the pink packet was to carry
a warning label.
Depending on what you read, you’d have to drink 750
cans of diet soda every day to cause an increased risk of
bladder tumors or it could be as low as 6 packets a day. It’s
also been “determined” that the cancer issue
is both particular to rats or ingesting very high quantities
of the stuff.
In 2000, President Clinton signed legislation that allowed
saccharin to remove the warning label. So what’s
the general consensus now?
While it’s pretty well determined that in high doses,
saccharin does pose a small risk factor – in its defense,
by far, it has the most studies at over 3,000. The
fear from toxologists is that they don’t want children
to begin using it in high doses early on and then a small
risk may become a big risk later in life. In my humble
opinion, it seems to me that saccharin or Sweet ‘N
Low has the most honest information available and it’s
really not that bad. My gut says to keep them all the
artificial sweetners at a minimum.
My philosophy that bears no scientific basis what so ever,
is to switch them all around. I use Sweet ‘N
Low in my tea (I wish I could do without), Splenda on cereal
and Aspertene in the diet soda! I don’t have
a lot of these or anything, maybe it’s the equivalent
of 6 packets total of all of them per week (okay, maybe a
little more) but I’m still hoping that one day I don’t
glow!
http://www.fda.gov/fdac/features/1999/699_sugar.html
http://www.junkscience.com/news/saccharin.html
That's it for this month! As always,
check out our website for lots more information at www.oonahealth.com.
In Good Health,
The Oöna Team
Questions or comments? Write valerie@oonahealth.com
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