New study shows these common over-the-counter drugs linked to Alzheimer's and other forms of dementia

New study shows these common over-the-counter drugs linked to Alzheimer's and other forms of dementia
Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/048433_anticholinergic_drugs_Alzheimers_dementia.html#ixzz3QEibU2KO

(NaturalNews) A new study clearly shows common over-the-counter medications widely used for asthma, allergies, and insomnia increase the risk for dementia. The study also found that the risk may not be reversible, even after several years off of these medications.

The drugs studied are anticholinergic drugs, which block a neurotransmitter, acetylcholine, in the central and the peripheral nervous system. These drugs are available over-the-counter and through prescriptions. Many are used on a regular, long-term basis to treat a variety of medical complaints including:

• allergies and allergic reactions
• motion sickness
• irritable bowel syndrome
• insomnia
• colds
• ulcers
• asthma
• excessive sweating
• COPD
• urinary incontinence
• depression
• smoking cessation
• cough suppressant
• muscle relaxer
• Parkinson's disease

These drugs include:

• Zyban
• Wellbutrin
• Dramamine
• Cogentin
• Chlor-Trimeton
• Benadryl
• Sominex
• Advil PM
• Unisom
• Robinul
• Atarax
• Atrovent
• Oxivent

The study showed the risk of dementia rises when these anticholinergic medications are used at higher doses or for longer periods. It is not unusual to find these drugs used in combination, especially with the elderly population. For instance, one individual may be using a sleep aid, an allergy medication, and a medication for depression. If all of these drugs are anticholinergic drugs, the accumulative effect increases exponentially, raising the risk of dementia.

Earlier studies had shown these medications increased the risk of dementia; however, these studies also concluded cognitive decline decreased when these drugs were discontinued. The new study, a more longitudinal study, suggests that years after continuation, the risk of dementia remains higher for people who have used more of these drugs or used them for a longer period of time, suggesting a cause and effect even when the drugs were discontinued years prior to the development of dementia.

The study showed that even low amounts over long periods of time increased the risk of dementia. While the study focused on older adults, what about children and young adults? How many children and younger adults are regularly taking anticholinergic over-the-counter or prescription medications for allergies or asthma? How many adults of all ages are taking anticholinergic over-the-counter or prescription sleep aids?

This should be a wake up call for all of us to remember that medications treat symptoms, not the cause of disease. To get well, to be truly well, we must give the body the nutrients it needs to heal. We must detox. We must live lives that are as clean as possible: clean food, clean water, clean environment. It has been made clear over and over that we cannot trust pharmaceutical companies! If you have been taking any pharmaceuticals, it's time to detox. Start with this Cheap and Easy Detox Plan and consider following the 80% Raw Food Diet.

Sources:

http://www.medscape.com

http://www.sciencedaily.com

The study: Shelly L. Gray, Melissa L. Anderson, Sascha Dublin, Joseph T. Hanlon, Rebecca Hubbard, Rod Walker, Onchee Yu, Paul K. Crane, Eric B. Larson.Cumulative Use of Strong Anticholinergics and Incident Dementia.JAMA Internal Medicine, 2015; DOI:10.1001/jamainternmed.2014.7663

About the author:
Kali Sinclair is a copywriter for Green Lifestyle Market, and a lead editor for Organic Lifestyle Magazine. Kali was very sick with autoimmune disease and realized that conventional medicine was not working for her. She has been restoring her health by natural means and is interested in topics including natural health, environmental issues, and human rights.

 

U.S. Media Blackout: Italian Courts Rule Vaccines Cause Autism

Recent Italian Court Decisions on Vaccines and Autism
http://healthimpactnews.com/2015/u-s-media-blackout-italian-courts-rule-vaccines-cause-autism/

by Mary Holland J.D.
Age of Autism

On September 23, 2014, an Italian court in Milan award compensation to a boy for vaccine-induced autism. (See the Italian document here.) A childhood vaccine against six childhood diseases caused the boy’s permanent autism and brain damage.

While the Italian press has devoted considerable attention to this decision and its public health implications, the U.S. press has been silent.

Italy’s National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program

Like the U.S., Italy has a national vaccine injury compensation program to give some financial support to those people who are injured by compulsory and recommended vaccinations. The Italian infant plaintiff received three doses of GlaxoSmithKline’s Infanrix Hexa, a hexavalent vaccine administered in the first year of life. These doses occurred from March to October 2006. The vaccine is to protect children from polio, diphtheria, tetanus, hepatitis B, pertussis and Haemophilus influenza type B. In addition to these antigens, however, the vaccine then contained thimerosal, the mercury-containing preservative, aluminum, an adjuvant, as well as other toxic ingredients. The child regressed into autism shortly after receiving the three doses.

When the parents presented their claim for compensation first to the Ministry of Health, as they were required to do, the Ministry rejected it. Therefore, the family sued the Ministry in a court of general jurisdiction, an option which does not exist in the same form in the U.S.

Court Decision: Mercury and Aluminum in Vaccine Caused Autism

Based on expert medical testimony, the court concluded that the child more likely than not suffered autism and brain damage because of the neurotoxic mercury, aluminum and his particular susceptibility from a genetic mutation. The Court also noted that Infanrix Hexa contained thimerosal, now banned in Italy because of its neurotoxicity, “in concentrations greatly exceeding the maximum recommended levels for infants weighing only a few kilograms.”

Presiding Judge Nicola Di Leo considered another piece of damning evidence: a 1271-page confidential GlaxoSmithKline report (now available on the Internet). This industry document provided ample evidence of adverse events from the vaccine, including five known cases of autism resulting from the vaccine’s administration during its clinical trials (see table at page 626, excerpt below).

Italian Government, Not Vaccine Maker, Pays for Vaccine Damages

As in many other developed countries, government, not industry, compensates families in the event of vaccine injury. Thus GSK’s apparent lack of concern for the vaccine’s adverse effects is notable and perhaps not surprising.

In the final assessment, the report states that:

“[t]he benefit/risk profile of Infanrix hexa continues to be favourable,” despite GSK’s acknowledgement that the vaccine causes side effects including “anaemia haemolytic autoimmune,thrombocytopenia, thrombocytopenic purpura, autoimmune thrombocytopenia, idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura, haemolytic anemia, cyanosis, injection site nodule, abcess and injection site abscess, Kawasaki’s disease, important neurological events (including encephalitis and encephalopathy), Henoch-Schonlein purpura, petechiae, purpura, haematochezia, allergic reactions (including anaphylactic and anaphylactoid reactions),” and death (see page 9).

The Milan decision is sober, informed and well-reasoned. The Ministry of Health has stated that it has appealed the Court’s decision, but that appeal will likely take several years, and its outcome is uncertain.

Rimini: 2012 – Italian Court Rules MMR Vaccine Caused Autism

Two years earlier, on May 23, 2012, Judge Lucio Ardigo of an Italian court in Rimini presided over a similar judgment, finding that a different vaccine, the Measles-Mumps-Rubella vaccine (MMR), had caused a child’s autism. As in the Milan case, the Ministry of Health’s compensation program had denied compensation to the family, yet after a presentation of medical evidence, a court granted compensation. There, too, the Italian press covered the story; the U.S. press did not.

In that case, a 15-month old boy received his MMR vaccine on March 26, 2004. He then immediately developed bowel and eating problems and received an autism diagnosis with cognitive delay within a year. The court found that the boy had “been damaged by irreversible complications due to vaccination (with trivalent MMR).” The decision flew in the face of the conventional mainstream medical wisdom that an MMR-autism link has been “debunked.”

Italian Court Decisions Break New Ground in Debate Over Vaccines and Autism

Both these Italian court decisions break new ground in the roiling debate over vaccines and autism. These courts, like all courts, are intended to function as impartial, unbiased decision makers.

The courts’ decisions are striking because they not only find a vaccine-autism causal link, but they also overrule the decisions of Italy’s Ministry of Health. And taken together, the court decisions found that both the MMR and a hexavalent thimerosal- and aluminum-containing vaccine can trigger autism.

Italian Court Rulings Contradict Special U.S. Vaccine Court

These court decisions flatly contradict the decisions from the so-called U.S. vaccine court, the Court of Federal Claim’s Vaccine Injury Compensation Program. There, from 2007 to 2010, in the Omnibus Autism Proceeding, three decision makers, called Special Masters, found that vaccines did not cause autism in any of the six test cases, and one Special Master even went so far as to compare the theory of vaccine-induced autism to Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland.

The Italian court decisions contrast starkly with these U.S. cases based on similar claims.

Read the full story at Age of Autism.

 

New study finds vitamin D helps to regulate three genes involved in autism

New study finds vitamin D helps to regulate three genes involved in autism

https://www.vitamindcouncil.org/blog/new-study-finds-vitamin-d-regulates-three-genes-involved-in-autism/?mc_cid=030d1541da&mc_eid=ec1651b17f

When a member of the National Academy of Sciences speaks, most people listen. Professor Bruce Ames spoke a few days ago on a subject close to my heart, autism. He and his coauthor, Rhonda Patrick, discovered several of vitamin D’s potential mechanisms of action in preventing and treating autism.

Patrick, R. P., & Ames, B. N. Vitamin D hormone regulates serotonin synthesis. Part 1: relevance for autism. The FASEB Journal, 2014.

Using the University of California–Santa Cruz’s genome browser, the authors identified three genes that are abnormally expressed in autism. They report that all three genes are directly regulated by vitamin D. That is, the three genes have a vitamin D response element on the gene. This means that vitamin D is one of the hormones that controls expression of that gene.

The authors also solved some of the mysteries surrounding autism. One mystery is why autistic individuals have low levels of serotonin in their brain but elevated serotonin levels in their peripheral blood. The authors discovered that there are two genes involved in turning tryptophan into serotonin, a central gene and a peripheral gene.

Vitamin D up-regulates the central serotonin gene and down-regulates the peripheral serotonin gene. That may explain why autistic kids have elevated blood serotonin but decreased brain serotonin when their vitamin D levels are low. To date, many studies of vitamin D levels in autism show autistic kids are vitamin D deficient.

It is important to remember that it was not me who first theorized that vitamin D deficiency is a risk factor for autism. It was Professors John McGrath, Darryl Eyles and colleagues. In 2001, they first theorized that “vitamin D deficiency is a candidate risk factor for the neurodevelopmental disorders.”

McGrath J, Feron F, Eyles D, Mackay-Sim A. Vitamin D: the neglected neurosteroid? Trends Neurosci., 2001.

Drs Patrick and Ames may have solved another mystery of autism: why autistic children have low levels of oxytocin. Oxytocin is a hormone that does a lot of things, such as promote socialization. The authors explain that oxytocin is also directly controlled by vitamin D. If children are deficient in vitamin D, they will also have low levels of oxytocin.

The authors also may have explained why autism is five times more common in boys than in girls. It turns out that estrogen greatly increases expression of the central serotonin gene, thus protecting girls from autism caused from vitamin D deficiency but exposing boys.

Finally, tryptophan, the amino acid that is metabolized into serotonin, is also metabolized into a protein called kynurenine. Kynurenine is intimately involved in immunity. In the placenta, it is required during pregnancy to prevent a general autoimmune response by generating regulatory T cells, which maintains immunological tolerance to the fetus.

This paper is, in my opinion, groundbreaking. Just as John McGrath and Darryl Eyles used animal models to show relationships between vitamin D deficiency and neurodevelopmental disorders, Rhonda Patrick and Bruce Ames are the first to explain the biochemical mechanism by which it works.

 

 

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ANOTHER Epic Fail for Influenza Vaccine

ANOTHER Epic Fail for Influenza Vaccine  
by Barbara Loe Fisher

Here we are in the winter of 2015 and U.S. public health officials admit that the historically ineffective influenza vaccine is once again an epic fail.

 

Flu Vaccine Effectiveness Measured from 0 to 62 Percent

 

In the past three flu seasons, the CDC has claimed the flu vaccine's overall effectiveness clocked in at between 47 and 62 percent while some experts have measured it at 0 to 7 percent. Other studies suggest that when children get a flu shot every year it can interfere with healthy immune responses and make them more likely to get influenza in certain flu seasons.

 

Read this referenced commentary, watch a video and make a comment here.