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| A recent GfK Roper “Gut Check” survey, sponsored by Align®, showed some common misconceptions about the digestive system. |
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The digestive system is made up of a series of organs that help the body break down and absorb food so the body can build and nourish cells and provide energy. It is also home to trillions of bacteria, both good and bad. When this delicate balance of bacteria is disrupted by factors such as diet, stress, or travel, occasional digestive upsets can occur.
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- Forty-three percent of those surveyed believe it true that most types of bacteria are not helpful for the GI tract. Our digestive system is home to trillions of bacteria – some good and some bad. Probiotics, or good bacteria, in the digestive system are essential for many vital body functions, including healthy digestion.
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- More than forty percent of those surveyed believe that all probiotics have essentially the same benefits. Not all probiotics are alike. Probiotics are strain specific, and thus different probiotics may have unique benefits. Different strains of the same species may differ in a number of ways, but what matters most to you is how well the bacteria strain works for you.
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- A large majority (77%) of those surveyed think that probiotics found in supplements are not as natural as those found in foods. Align contains the patented probiotic strain Bifantis® (Bifidobacterium infantis 35624) that is found naturally in the body and was discovered by scientists in a healthy person’s gut.
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The “Gut Check” survey findings also showed that these upsets can interrupt daily life. Of those who experience occasional digestive upsets:
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More than half feel their upsets impact their self confidence.
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Eight in 10 try to go about their day normally but most still make adjustments to their activities.
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Nearly half have missed an event, a trip, or avoided a social situation because of an occasional digestive upset.
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Over one third of survey respondents will change their diet to deal with their digestive upsets.
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Compared to those who do not experience occasional digestive upsets, those who do are more likely to avoid holiday parties or avoid traditional holiday foods.
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| Findings reported today from a new international study of healing prayer suggest that prayer for another person’s healing just might help — especially if the one praying is physically near the person being prayed for. |
| Candy Gunther Brown, an associate professor in the Department of Religious Studies at Indiana University Bloomington, led the study of “proximal intercessory prayer” for healing. It is available online today and will be published in the September 2010 issue of the Southern Medical Journal. |
| The study, titled “Study of the Therapeutic Effects of Proximal Intercessory Prayer (STEPP) on Auditory and Visual Impairments in Rural Mozambique,” measured surprising improvements in vision and hearing in economically disadvantaged areas where eyeglasses and hearing aids are not readily available. |
| Scientific research on intercessory prayer has in recent decades generated a firestorm of controversy, with critics charging that attempts to study the efficacy of prayer are inherently unscientific and should be abandoned because the mechanisms are poorly understood. Several studies have produced contradictory findings. |
| “If empirical research continues to indicate that PIP may be therapeutically beneficial, then — whether or not the mechanisms are adequately understood — there are ethical and nonpartisan public policy reasons to encourage further related research,” Brown said. “It is a primary privilege and responsibility of medical science to pursue a better understanding of therapeutic inventions that may advance global health, especially in contexts where conventional medical treatments are inadequate or unavailable.”Read more at www.newswise.com |
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| Scientists say they have new evidence to support the belief that Crohn’s disease, an inflammatory bowel condition that affects a half-million Americans, has a bacterial origin. |
| The debate about a link between Crohn’s disease and the bacterium MAP, whose formal name is Mycobacterium avium subspecies paratuberculosis, has been going on for nearly 30 years, explained Saleh A. Naser, an associate professor of molecular biology and microbiology at the University of Central Florida. |
| Naser reports in the Sept. 18 issue of The Lancet that he has been able to culture the bacterium from the blood of patients with the disease. |
| His study indicates that many patients could benefit from antibiotic therapy. But he is awaiting the results of an Australian study comparing the effects of antibiotics and anti-inflammatory drugs; a report is expected in November. |
| Evidence of MAP infection in Crohn’s disease patients has been extraordinarily difficult to come by because the bacterium grows very slowly in laboratory cultures from blood samples, Naser said. A study in 1985 did find such evidence, but it took six months to two years to grow identifiable quantities of MAP in the laboratory, he said. |
| The reason appears to be that MAP bacteria shed their cell walls when they infect humans, a tactic that enables them to escape attack by immune system defenses, Naser said. “If you want to culture a bacterium without cell walls, you have a serious problem,” he said. “Without cell walls, bacteria take a long time to reproduce.” |
| Naser and his colleagues have developed a culture medium that enables MAP to reproduce quickly, so its presence in human blood can be verified in 10 to 12 weeks, Naser said. Using that medium, MAP was found in the blood of 14 of 28 patients with Crohn’s disease, two of nine patients with ulcerative colitis, a closely related intestinal condition, but in none of 15 persons who did not have inflammatory bowel disease. |
| “We believe that if we repeated the study with more patients and more blood samples, there is a good chance we would find MAP in a higher percentage of patients,” Naser said. |
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The finding confirms a suspicion backed by clinical work of Dr. Walter A. Thayer, a professor of medicine emeritus at Brown University, that MAP can cause Crohn’s disease — “maybe up to 50 percent of cases,” he said.
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Although MAP is a member of the family that causes bacteria, it is resistant to most tuberculosis antibiotics, Naser said. He added he has had some success using a mixture of two antibiotics in the macrolide family. But the results of studies such as the one now under way in Australia will be needed to shape the treatment of Crohn’s disease, he said.
Read more at news.healingwell.com |
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Does colloidal silver really
carry the medicinal cure-all properties it is claimed to have, or is it
just risk without benefit? |
Silver has been used for hundreds of years as both a medicine and
preservative by many cultures around the world. The Greeks used silver
vessels to help keep water and other liquids fresh. Pioneers put silver
coins in the wooden water casks to keep the water free from the growth
of bacteria, algae, and other organisms, and placed silver dollars in
milk to keep it fresh. |
In the 1940s, the use of colloidal silver in the medical field began to
taper off mainly due to the advent of the modern antibiotics, but also
due to three other reasons. The first was the high cost. Even in the
depression era of the late 1930′s, colloidal silver was reported to
have been sold for as much as $200 per ounce (in present day dollars.)
The second reason was that many of the silver products available at the
time contained toxic forms of silver salts or very large particles of
silver related to the available technology of the time. The third
reason is that in 1938 the federal Food and Drug Administration
established that from that point forward, only those “drugs” which met
FDA standards could be marketed for medicinal purposes (1).
In 1999, the FDA banned the use of colloidal silver or silver salts in
over-the-counter products. Silver products can and are sold as “dietary
supplements” in health stores only if they make no health claims, but
many advertisers ignore the last restriction and still promote the
benefits of the use of colloidal silver. |
Prolonged contact or too much of colloidal silver can result in
argyria, which produces a “gray to gray-black staining of skin and
mucous membranes produced by silver deposition” (3). |
From his own bacteriological experiments,
Dr. Henry Crooks supports the use of colloidal silver, claiming that
all known disease-causing organisms die within six minutes of the
ingestion of silver. Medical promoters of the use of colloidal silver
allege that the presence of colloidal silver near a virus, fungus,
bacterium or any single celled pathogen disables its oxygen metabolism
enzyme, or its chemical lung, so to say. Within a few minutes, the
pathogen suffocates and dies and is cleared out of the body by the
immune, lymphatic and elimination systems (5).
People in the medical field against the use of colloidal silver argue
that just because a product effectively kills bacteria in a laboratory
culture does not mean it is as effective in the human body. |
There are compelling arguments both for and against the use of
colloidal silver as an alternative to antibiotics. However, very little
research has been done to test the effectiveness of the use of silver
in the human body to fight infections, and the risk of argyria
increases as the number of people using silver increases while the
amount of information known remains constant.Read more at serendip.brynmawr.edu |
