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Choose your foods like your life depends on them.
July 2005 newsletter

Medical Schools Seek Help with Natural Medicine

A two-year study [1] conducted by the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine and released in 2004 found that fully one-third of Americans over the age of 18 use natural medicine treatments in maintaining health and treating illness. These methods include a diverse list of modalities - acupuncture, chiropractic, herbal medicine, clinical nutrition, homeopathy and massage. When prayer was nearly 2 out of 3 Americans use some form of alternative medicine treatment in their health regimen.

After 30 years of steadily increasing public demand for a more natural and humane side to medicine, natural therapies have come to be so sought after that the majority of medical schools in the U.S. now offer some form of instruction in nontraditional therapies. Schools including Harvard Medical, Johns Hopkins and Thomas Jefferson University have centers for complementary and alternative medicine.

Now in a continued sign of natural medicine's increasing acceptance - the oldest medical school in the United States, The University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine is partnering with the Tai Sophia Institute of Laurel Maryland to further both education and research into the fields of natural and alternative medicine [2] [3].

The Tai Sophia Institute started as an acupuncture clinic in 1975 and has since grown to become an institution of healing arts offering graduate degrees in Acupuncture, Herbal Medicine, and Applied Healing as well as a program in Chinese Herbs.

The partnership between University of Pennsylvania and Tai Sophia will have three primary components. First will be the creation of a Master's Degree in Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM) to be offered by Tai Sophia in conjunction with Penn medical school faculty. The degree will be available to both medical and nursing students at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. A second component will be a program developed by University of Pennsylvania's Division of Cardiology and Tai Sophia seeking to meld Alternative Medicine into conventional cardiac care at Penn's Presbyterian Medical Center. The third component will be the development of postgraduate and continuing education programs in CAM at the University of Pennsylvania's School of Medicine.

1. Common Dreams New Center. San Francisco Chronicle reprint "Americans Broaden Concepts of Medicine".
2. Penn med school opens doors to alternative Rx. The Philadelphia Inquirer, May 6, 2005.
3. Ivy League medical school seeks help in Md. for alternative medicine. The Daily Record, April 1, 2005.

Turmeric fights skin cancer

One of the main ingredients in curry is the bright yellow herb turmeric. The compound that makes turmeric so yellow is curcumin, which has been found to fight cancer. A recent study in the U.S. found that curcumin interferes with melanoma cells. Melanoma is the deadliest form of skin cancer. Laboratory tests showed that curcumin made melanoma cells more likely to self-destruct, a process called apoptosis. Their research is being reported in next month's issue of the journal Cancer.

Curcumin has also been found by the same team to inhibit breast to lung cancer metastases in mice.

Dr. Bharat Aggarwal from University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston and colleagues found that curcumin suppressed two proteins that tumor cells use to keep themselves immortal. "Based on our studies, we conclude that curcumin is a potent suppressor of cell viability and inducer of apoptosis in melanoma cell lines," Aggarwal stated.

Earlier research has shown that curcumin, which is also an antioxidant, can help tumors from forming in the laboratory.

Aggarwal said that people who eat plenty of turmeric have lower rates of cancer.

Naturopathic physicians emphasize to their patients the importance of relying on whole plants and other whole foods for a synergy of nutrients and compounds that almost always make the medicinal compounds more effective and more tonic than simply taking isolated compounds. So enjoy curry in your diet. Here is one recipe that at first requires purchase of several different spices, but quickly becomes a favorite:

Eggplant curry

• 2-3 medium size eggplants
• 2 potatoes
• 2 tomatoes
• 1/4 lb (1 stick) of butter or 8T coconut oil
• 1 tsp turmeric
• 1 tsp ground mustard
• 1/2 tsp coriander
• 1/2 tsp ginger
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon
• 1 tsp sea salt
• 2-3 cloves garlic

continued top of column 2...

Turmeric from column 1...

This curry goes well with brown rice, so you may want to start that at the same time that you have the curry assembled and beginning to simmer: 2 cups brown rice to 6 cups water, simmered on the stove, stirred occasionally, till water is absorbed.

Cube the eggplant, and bake œ hour in the oven, spread out on baking sheets. Cube the potatoes. In a large pot on the stove, melt the butter and add all spices. Stir and saute the spices a few minutes until bubbly and fragrant. Add the eggplant and potatoes, and toss well until evenly coated with the spices. Then add 3 cups water and cover. Bring to a boil, then lower the heat to simmer. Stir occasionally for about 45 minutes. Remove the cover. Chop tomato and toss into curry.

This curry for all its deliciousness does seem to have an excess of nightshade family vegetables. If you are sensitive to these vegetables, you may want to try a curry of cauliflower and string beans. Use the same recipe, but no need to bake the vegetables ahead of time.

A complementary side dish to curry is raita. Although raita has many different forms, a simple one that is nice for this dish is cucumber raita. Chop up one half cucumber and add to one cup of yogurt. Season with either finely chopped mint leaves or dill weed to taste.

Did you know that we have in the U.S. ...

primary care physicians who not only have the training of conventional doctors (diagnostic testing, physical examination, prescription of pharmaceuticals, minor surgery etc.)

but have also been medically trained in botanical medicine, clinical nutrition, detoxification of heavy metals and other chemicals, homeopathy and other natural healing modalities???

Look no further: American Association of Naturopathic Physicians

The Newborn Bodyburden

In the months leading up to a baby's birth, the umbilical code carries blood back and forth between the fetus and the placenta - where oxygen and nutrients are picked up by the blood for delivery to the developing baby.

Although it has been known that there are some substances harmful to a developing fetus which readily cross the placenta blood barrier; alcohol being a prime example, for a long time it was thought that the placenta acted as a rather efficient "filter" removing the majority of toxins from the fetal blood supply thereby allowing it to develop unaffected by harmful substances.

Now a study conducted by the Environmental Working Group (EWG) and Commonweal has shown that the placenta is not as efficient a filter as was once thought. Using cord blood taken from 10 U.S. babies born between August and September 2004, tests were conducted in an attempt to detect some 260 different chemicals. Essentially all of the chemicals tested for were found in the cord blood samples including pesticides, consumer product ingredients (perfluorinated chemicals associated with products like Teflon, Scotchgard, carpet protectors and food wraps), and waste products produced by burning both coal and gasoline. This joint study is the first reported detection of over 200 of the chemicals in cord blood.

These findings are of particular concern for a number of reasons:

1. In a developing child, and particularly in the fetus, chemical exposure is greater on a pound-for-pound basis than for an adult.
2. An immature, porous blood-brain barrier allows greater chemical exposures to the brain - even into teenage years.
3. A baby's organs and systems are rapidly developing. This makes them more vulnerable to damage from chemical exposures.
4. Systems such as the liver that remove toxins from the body are not yet fully developed in infants and children.
5. A longer anticipated life span of a child (when compared to an adult) allows more time for the negative effects of chemical exposure to arise.

Today there are approximately 75,000 chemical compounds in use in the United States. In addition - an average of 7 new chemicals are introduced into use every day. The vast majority of these chemicals are used with little or no testing with regard to the long-term effect they have on our health. This is in-spite of evidence that chemical exposures can and do have much more significant effects on the very young and yet to be born as evidenced by the mercury poisoning disaster of the 1950s in Minamata Japan and how in the case of DES the way our genes may even be re-programmed in ways that are both undesirable and lasting ways.

Couples planning to start a family in the near future are increasingly taking the strategy of consulting with an environmental medical specialist to test for chemical and heavy metal exposure. These are then chelated out of out of both prior to attempting conception, in order to give the children a better non-toxic start to their lives. Naturopathic doctors study environmental medicine, with some specializing more than others in this area. One of the leaders in environmental medicine is Dr. Walter Crinnion at Southwest College of Naturopathic Medicine. For further information on environmental medicine please see Dr Doris Rapp's books: Our Toxic World and Is This Your Child's World?

See the Environmental Working Group site for the full report - BodyBurden The Polution in Newborns. See also the Naturopathyworks page on Environmental Medicine.