Cold Season Taking It's Toll...Perhaps It's Your Lack Of Sleep

People who sleep less than seven hours a night are three times as likely to catch a cold as their more well-rested friends and neighbours, U.S. researchers reported on Monday.

The study supports the theory that sleep is important to immune function, said Sheldon Cohen and colleagues at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.


Volunteers who spent less time in bed, or who spent their time in bed tossing and turning instead of snoozing, were much more likely to catch a cold when viruses were dripped into their noses, they found.

People who slept longer and more soundly resisted infection better, they reported in the Archives of Internal Medicine.

"Although sleep's relationship with the immune system is well-documented, this is the first evidence that even relatively minor sleep disturbances can influence the body's reaction to cold viruses," Cohen said in a statement.

"It provides yet another reason why people should make time in their schedules to get a complete night of rest."

Cohen's team tested 153 healthy volunteers, locking them in a hotel for five days after infecting them with a cold virus.

They had been interviewed daily for the previous two weeks to get details on their sleep patterns. They were tested for cold symptoms after the five-day lockup and had blood tests for antibodies to the virus.

The men and women who reported fewer than seven hours of sleep on average were 2.94 times more likely to develop sneezing, sore throat and other cold symptoms than those who reported getting eight or more hours of sleep each night.

Maggie Fox & Will Dunham over at Reuters have the rest of this story

CHINA IS KILLING U.S. CITIZENS: THE DRUG HEPARIN IS CONTAMINATED, PATIENTS BEWARE!

Don't Say You Haven't Been Warned!

Christmas Toys, Hannah Montana accessories and now the very valuable and extremely necessary hospital drug HEPARIN have all been contaminated by China's manufactures. Americas has sold it's self to the Devil. When will we wake up. The US has spent years and years of testing perfecting and using the FDA to approve drugs. So where do we get off allowing China to supply so much of what is essential in our lives.

They don't have the same standards and dangerously the US Federal Government assumes they have the same standards! It is not going to happen and we have let too much in America get out-sourced to countries that are just one step above "developing nation" status. And I include China in that list, sorry. HEPARIN is a drug used to thin blood, clear veins and prevent bood clots, while administering other drugs. HEPARIN saves lives and our US supply is contaminated. America this is 'ROCKET SCIENCE' and we have let a country that doesn't have our standards, supply it to us.

Baxter International Inc.'s heparin was contaminated by a cheaper ingredient in China, that country said, confirming a finding from U.S. regulators probing deaths and allergic reactions linked to the blood-thinning medicine.

Tests showed traces of a substance known as over-sulfated chondroitin sulfate, the State Food and Drug Administration in Beijing said in a statement yesterday. The contaminant, a less expensive ingredient derived from animal cartilage, isn't approved in the U.S. for medical use, said Janet Woodcock, head of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's drug division.

The finding gives investigators a new lead in their search for the cause of the dangerous side effects that prompted Baxter to withdraw the medicine, usually made from ingredients taken from pig intestines. Baxter, based in Deerfield, Illinois, supplied half the injectable heparin used in the U.S.
The Whole story is on BLOOMBERG.COM By Dune Lawrence and Justin Blum

NEW EMERGENCY C.P.R. HAS MORE COMPRESSIONS AND SAVES LIVES

More people can survive a cardiac arrest when emergency medical workers use a new resuscitation method that starts with a round of 200 chest compressions before a defibrillator shock, U.S. researchers said on Tuesday.

Rescue teams in Arizona who used the new approach on people who had a cardiac arrest outside the hospital tripled the survival rate of the standard approach

"Cardiac arrest is incredibly common and survival is poor," said Dr. Bentley Bobrow, medical director for emergency services for the state of Arizona and a researcher at the Mayo Clinic in Scottsdale.
The new resuscitation method, which is not intended for bystanders, increases blood flow to the heart and brain when the heart stops pumping blood.
"Even if you could improve survival by a few percentage points, you will save thousands of people across the country," said Bobrow, whose study appears in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
For bystanders, the most important thing is to give chest compressions while waiting for an ambulance, many experts say.

For more go to REUTERS Health Trends

THE PANCREATIC CANCER CLUB: PATRICK SWAYZE, MICHAEL LANDON, LUCIANO PAVORATI AND MY FATHER… MEMBERSHIP HAS NO PRIVILEGE

Patrick with Whoopi Goldberg---GHOST

Patrick and Jennifer Gray---DIRTY DANCING

How much longer does actor Patrick Swayze have to live? It is not an awful question. It is not a morose question. It is a hard question. So perhaps we should be asking, how would Patrick or any of us like to spend the rest of our life. Radiation, Chemotherapy it’s ugly and not effective. Pancreatic Cancer is one of the most ruthless cancers, because of these four main reasons.

1) It is one of the hardest cancers to detect. Your pancreas hides behind your stomach and a lot of other organs and there is no test for this type of cancer.
2) Usually by time it is detected it has made a major impact on your body that is irreversible.
3) Pancreatic cancer research is one of the most under funded cancers. It is not a glamour cancer, like lung cancer, breast cancer, skin cancer, ovarian cancer or even throat cancer. These are the cancers that get all the publicity. These cancers get all the celebrities to turn out for fundraising. .

I dedicate the rest of this story to Pancreatic Cancer Action Network National , an organization that in the next weeks is going to Washington D. C., seeking to get more funding for this horrible cancer. Go to their site and see how they are making a difference.

PANCAN - 2141 Rosecrans Ave., Suite 7000, El Segundo, CA 90245
Toll Free: 877-272-6226, Phone: 310-725-0025, Fax: 310-725-0029

New Stem Cell Discovery 2007, Hope or President Bush Grasping At Straws

We are just barely finishing Thanksgiving turkey, only to hear President George W. Bush crowing that, "when It comes to stem cell research, I was right."

This is in reference to this weeks new medical discovery where Scientists, for the first time, have turned ordinary skin cells into what appear to be embryonic stem cells -- without having to use human eggs or make new human embryos in the process, as has always been required in the past.

The technique uses laboratory-grown human embryonic stem cells -- such as the ones that President Bush has already approved for use by federally funded researchers -- to "reprogram" the genes in a person's skin cell, turning that skin cell into an embryonic stem cell itself.

The approach -- details of which are to be published this week in the journal Science but were made public on the journal's Web site yesterday -- is still in an early stage of development. But it could offer an end run around the heated social and religious debate that has for years overshadowed the field of human embryonic stem cell research.

A debate that has put Former First Lady Nancy Reagan and President Bush at odds with each other because she has continues to advocate for more tax money and research in the area. Since the new stem cells in this technique are essentially rejuvenated versions of a person's own skin cells, the DNA in those new stem cells matches the DNA of the person who provided the skin cells.

In theory at least, that means that any tissues grown from those newly minted stem cells could be transplanted into the person to treat a disease without much risk that they would be rejected, because they would constitute an exact genetic match.

Until now, the only way to turn a person's ordinary cell into a "personalized" stem cell such as this was to turn that ordinary cell into an embryo first and later destroy the embryo to retrieve the new stem cells growing inside -- a process widely known as "therapeutic cloning." This is the same technique defended by such Michael J. Fox.

That prospect, like others in the promising arena of human embryonic stem cell research, has stirred strong emotions among those who believe that days-old human embryos should not be intentionally destroyed.

Embryonic stem cells are capable of becoming virtually any kind of cell or tissue and are being intensely studied around the world as the core of a newly emerging field of regenerative medicine, in which researchers hope to grow new tissues to revitalize ailing organs. Although human embryonic stem cells have never been tested in humans, some researchers expect human clinical trials to begin within a year or so.

This in essence was the research that the late Christopher Reeves was holding out for. Researchers caution, however, that like many other nascent therapies that initially seemed promising, stem cells may never live up to their promise.

And before President Bush should crow, it is yet determined if this method of creating the stem cells is really better, over the long run, than the former methods of stem cell creation.

Portions courtesy of Rick Weiss Washington Post Staff Writer

DYNAMIC BLACK JOURNALIST ROBIN ROBERTS RETURNS TO WORK

"Good Morning America" co-anchor ROBIN ROBERTS, who underwent successful surgery last Friday for early stage breast cancer, is expected back on the morning program on Monday, "GMA" spokeswoman, BRIDGETTE MANEY, "She is still awaiting her test results, but is feeling great and looking forward to getting back to work," says Maney.

You go girl! It's great starting this Friday morning with a Praise Report. And as you say each day, "See ya' tomorrow". [d]

PRAISE REPORT: SUCCESSFUL SURGERY FOR BROADCASTER ROBIN ROBERTS

Surrounded by family, GMA anchor Robin Roberts underwent surgery Friday morning for early stage breast cancer in New York City.

"Robin's surgery was very successful today," a spokesperson for "Good Morning America reported "She has already left the hospital and is home resting.

The tests following her surgery take some time to process, so when we have more information we will update you. Thank you for your thoughts and prayers for Robin at this time."

Roberts worked right up until the day before her surgery, signing off "Good Morning America" on Thursday with her usual "See ya tomorrow!"

The pleasant, easy-going Black morning show host announced that she had been diagnosed with breast cancer on Tuesday during the shows broadcast, holding Diane Sawyer's hand as she made the revelation.

Roberts also thanked the audience at home, saying, "To you, our viewers, please know that your thoughts and prayers very much sustain me as they always have each and every morning when I sit in the chair next to Diane [Sawyer] and say 'Good Morning America.' You have always been there for me ... and I love you back."

ATTENTION ALL BLACK FOLKS: WE ARE WAY TOO BIG!

EW!!!!

With over two-thirds of Americans now overweight, 70 million over fifty pounds and another 70 million over one to forty-nine pounds, it just may take a combined effort of a diet pill and a diet compatible with that pill.

In February 2007, GlaxoSmithKline Pharmaceuticals announced the FDA approval of the weight loss Orlistat in the form of a lesser dosage, 60 mg capsule, sold over-the-counter starting summer 2007.

It will cost 60 cents a capsule taken three times a day with each meal. The company recommends it not be used as a true stand-alone weight loss method, but only in combination with exercise and a diet that is reduced fat that contains about 15 grams of fat per meal.

SOURCE