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Bill Sardi
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Posted August 5, 2018: by Bill Sardi
It’s bad enough that the slowly progressive form of macular degeneration robs seniors of their central vision that hampers reading and TV viewing and forces the use of magnifiers. Fortunately, side vision remains. There is no effective treatment for this form of the disease that is commonly called dry macular degeneration (no swelling or hemorrhage). But then the disease can turn worse as blood circulation to the back of the eye is impaired and the compensational growth of new blood vessels to provide oxygenated blood rapidly invade the visual center of the eye (macula) that can result in permanent legal blindness (worse than 20/200 vision). This is commonly called wet macular degeneration.
To put a halt to the invasive blood vessels (called neovascularization or angiogenesis) eye doctors inject chemicals that block the growth of the new blood vessels. The medicine blocks growth factors from triggering the outcropping of these new blood vessels. These needle injections are needed every 30 days or so and are quite effective. However, about 15% of these cases fail to respond to the medicine and progress to legal blindness.
Posted in Dietary Supplements, Vitamins ; No Comments »
Posted July 8, 2018: by Bill Sardi
It is intuitive that nutritional status at hospital admission predicts the outcome of treatment and length of stay. Yet too many older patients are over-drugged and undernourished on the day of their admission to the hospital and not only experience more complications and hospital-acquired infections, but by conservative estimation spend an extra costly day or two in the hospital.
If nutritional assessment and corrective therapy were to be instituted upon hospital admission and reduced hospital length of stay by just 1 day, it is estimated in this report that practice would save $73 billion to Medicare Part A. That represents 24.5% of the $293 billion of Medicare funds spent on hospitalization (Part A).
Posted in Dietary Supplements, Health Care System ; No Comments »
Posted July 2, 2018: by Bill Sardi
In 1993, in what was called “the most important finding that’s ever been made in the study of Alzheimer’s disease,” investigators reported a variation of the APOE gene, a protein that transports cholesterol throughout the human body, drastically increases risk for this memory-robbing brain disease. The APOE gene provides instructions for making a protein called apolipoprotein E. APOE regulates the clearance of beta amyloid brain plaque, which is a common hallmark of age-related brain disease. Carriers of the APOE e4 gene in their brain cells are at such an increased risk for memory loss that it is called “the forgetting gene.” Carry two copies of this gene and the risk is worrisome. Look at the risk chart below:
|
GENE |
% Risk |
Age of Onset |
|
No APOE e4 |
20% |
84 years |
|
APOE e4 gene (1-copy) |
47% |
76 years |
|
APOE e4 gene (2-copies) |
91% |
68 years |
Posted in Brain, Dietary Supplements, Modern Medicine ; No Comments »
Posted June 4, 2018: by Bill Sardi
We live in an era of cancer immunotherapy. Oncologists once vehemently denied cancer could ever be overcome by the human immune system. A report in the British Medical Journal dated May 24, 1969 stated: “immunotherapy in patients with advanced disease is doomed to disappointment.”i
Over 50 years ago, even in the face of Dr. Chester Southam injecting millions of cancer cells into elderly patients (without their consent) to prove the human immune system is capable of resisting cancer when intentionally induced, Dr. Southam was unfairly demonized on ethical grounds and cancer immunotherapy was roundly denounced.ii Yet today immunotherapy is the most promising weapon in the fight against cancer.iii
Posted in Cancer, Dietary Supplements ; No Comments »
Posted May 25, 2018: by Bill Sardi
Bulging discs in the lower spine present a common form of back pain that is not easily resolved with surgery. For the first time supplementation with chondroitin and glucosamine is reported to resolve low-back pain, with relief of symptoms starting after 6 months and evidence by MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) serving as visual proof.
Posted in Dietary Supplements ; No Comments »
Posted May 10, 2018: by Bill Sardi
In the 1990s grain products were fortified with folic acid to prevent birth defects (spina bifida, anencephaly) and a decline in stroke-related mortality was reported. Researchers then subsequently reported that 31,000 stroke-associated deaths may have been prevented by folic acid food fortification. Folic acid blood levels doubled during this period (from 6.6 to 15 nanograms/milliliter per blood sample) with an accompanying 14% decline in homocysteine blood levels, which was believed to be the mechanism responsible for the decline.
Posted in Dietary Supplements ; No Comments »
Posted April 27, 2018: by Bill Sardi
There has never been such an increased demand for a single nutrient a there is for the trace mineral zinc with advancing age. That is because more and more Americans are living longer but also in states of chronic inflammation and disease associated with poor zinc nutriture.
Posted in Dietary Supplements, Minerals ; No Comments »
Posted April 20, 2018: by Bill Sardi
The medical research community now talks of moonshots (big leap-forward cures), regenerative medicine, precision individualized medicine, even one-time complete treatment cures. It is all part of the 21st Century Cures Act, which spreads $4.8 billion of research funding in an attempt to accelerate the development and approval of real cures. But will this Herculean effort bankrupt insurance pools?
The money is being directed toward expensive pharmacological cures that will further burst the Medicare Trust fund. Gobs of federal money are going towards innovations, like CRISPR gene therapy, that intends to completely remedy single-gene mutation diseases like cystic fibrosis, sickle cell, Huntington’s disease, and muscular dystrophy, all cured in a single treatment. But at what cost?
Posted in Dietary Supplements, Resveratrol ; No Comments »
Posted March 23, 2018: by Bill Sardi
As deadly as Clostridium difficile infection is, just like Count Dracula who was vulnerable to garlic and sunlight, so is this pervasive bacterium.
What modern medicine is unwilling to say is that the digestive tract of every human being harbors a potentially mortal soil organism that is killing off a growing number of Americans. A recent report says: “clostridium difficile infection is not new, but it is posing more problems than ever before.” People aren’t suddenly infected by Clostridium difficile via contact with pets, foods or human-to-human transfer of this bug. They already had it as part of the makeup of 100 trillion organisms that inhabit the human gut (intestines). Healthy digestive tracts resist growth of C. diff. Only an abundance of various families of healthy gut bacteria protects against a raging infection.
Posted in Dietary Supplements ; No Comments »
Posted March 13, 2018: by Bill Sardi
In the land of the blind,
a one-eyed man is king.
Over 130 years ago modern medicine began chasing down the cause of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and has come up empty handed. No one knows what causes ALS let alone what might successfully treat it. But recent discoveries explain why. Maybe ALS doesn’t originate in motor neuron cells but in the environmental surrounding nerve cells.
The current predicament of ALS patients is next to hopeless. This motor neuron disease is without a known cause and there is no meaningfully effective treatment. ALS affects 5000 newly diagnosed patients annually in the U.S. However, published research on the origin(s) of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS – aka Lou Gehrig’s disease) is mounting at a rapid pace and may portend a therapeutic change of course.
Posted in Dietary Supplements ; No Comments »
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