NO CHANGE: Big Insurance

18 September 

Aetna granted 19% increase

Aetna gets OK to hike rates on individual health policies in California
The increase will average 19% and will take effect Oct. 1 along with double-digit hikes by Anthem Blue Cross, Blue Shield of California and Health Net that also had been reviewed by the Department of Insurance.

United Health is promoted by AARP and owned in a major part by Big PhRMA Novartis.

California regulators seek up to $10 billion in fines from PacifiCare

The health insurer violated state law nearly 1 million times from 2006 to 2008 after it was bought by UnitedHealth Group, the Department of Insurance says.

by Duke Helfand

California regulators are seeking fines of up to $10 billion from health insurer PacifiCare over allegations that it repeatedly mismanaged medical claims, lost thousands of patient documents, failed to pay doctors what they were owed and ignored calls to fix the problems.

In court filings and other documents, the California Department of Insurance says PacifiCare violated state law nearly 1 million times from 2006 to 2008 after it was purchased by UnitedHealth Group Inc., the nation's largest health insurance company by revenue.

Regulators say the companies broke promises to maintain smooth operations for 130,000 of PacifiCare's customers, resulting in what insurance regulators nationwide believe is the largest fine ever sought against a U.S. health insurer.

Zapper Kills Cancer Cells

Quite a number of years ago AARP reported in its "Bulletin" publication that the 'Zapper', an easily made device based on the work of Dr. Hulda Clark was ineffective.

When I read that I laughed and shuddered to think of the dis-service this was doing to AARP Bulletin readers.

I have reported on this many times in the past, but just recently relocated the abstract, and am pleased to share it here. Dr Henry Lai is one of the premier scientists who has clearly established the link between EMF (cell phones in particular) and cancer.

Frequency medicine has been with us since the time of the ancients and it is time we open our thinking to what it can do for health.

Dr Becker, Tesla, Rife...

Here is the report showing the success of Dr Lai and his colleague, showing that the inexpensive 'zapper' does show effectiveness in killing cancer cells.

Low-intensity electric current-induced effects on human lymphocytes and leukaemia cells

Narendra P. Singh and Henry Lai
Department of Bioengineering, University of Washington
Seattle, WA, USA

The purpose of this study is to investigate whether low-intensity current affects cells in culture. Two types of human cells: white blood cells (lymphocytes) and leukaemia cells (molt-4 cells), were studied. A low-intensity time-varying electric current (0.14 milliamp) generated by the Clark Zapper was applied to cell cultures via two platinum electrodes for 2 hrs at 37o C. Cell counts were made at different times after electric current application. Results show that the current had no significant effect on human white blood cells up to 24 hrs after exposure, whereas it significantly inhibited the growth of leukaemia cells. At 24 hrs after exposure, concentration of leukaemia cells exposed to the electric current was only 58% of that of non-exposed leukaemia cells. These data suggest that the electric current can selectively inhibit the growth of leukaemia cells and does not significantly affect normal cells. A manuscript describing these results is in preparation for publication. In addition, the same electric current exposure (0.14 milliamp, 2 hrs at 37oC) was applied to E. coli bacteria cultures. No significant effect of the current was observed in E. coli cultures at 24 hrs after exposure.

Further research should investigate whether this selective electric current-induced growth inhibition also occurs in other types of cancer cells. The critical current parameters and mechanism of this effect should also be investigated.

Make a Zapper

Pay No Attention to the Man Behind the Curtain

Vitamin E Reduces Inflammation

but if you want to believe the recent junque science report reiterated from mainstream media in the AARP Bulletin, you are taking your life in your hands.

AARP is doing a grave dis-service to its members by allowing this biased reporting and yet failing to allow for opposing viewpoints that, like one comment on the report on the AARP Bulletin web site. This commenter begins by stating that all participants in the study had a 28.3 BMI and would be considered obese.

And if you read just the last part of this post you'll see AARP has it wrong. All they would have to do is to read the reports on E, C, Selenium and the Jupiter Study on Natural Health News. It's a simple thing to use our search function, and real data. You can even link to our reading site with more about vitamin E.

Or you can read what some other MDs have to say about these faulty studies here: Another push to get cholesterol levels ever lower, but let’s make sure it isn’t killing people first and here.

I'll still side against the cholesterol study and I'll side for vitamin E, C and selenium effectiveness.

Health Discoveries: Selenium, Vitamin E Don't Help After All
By Katharine Greider - December 1, 2008 - From the AARP Bulletin Today

Do vitamin E and selenium help prevent prostate cancer? The answer is no, according to findings from a major trial with 35,000 men. The SELECT study, sponsored by the National Cancer Institute and begun in 2001, was stopped early, in September, after finding no evidence of any benefit from either supplement.

The news disappointed many cancer experts, says Elise Cook, M.D., a study researcher and a cancer prevention specialist at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. But it provides important information about what doesn’t work. Cook says many men had been reluctant to join the study because they were already taking vitamin E for heart as well as prostate health. “Since then, other studies have shown that it really didn’t help their hearts, either,” she says.

and they also ran an instant replay of the much touted Jupiter study, falling for the drug company propaganda.

Health Discoveries: By Jupiter! Statins Cut Heart Disease
By Barbara Basler - December 1, 2008 - AARP Bulletin Today

Men and women in their 50s and 60s—with normal cholesterol levels—dramatically cut their risk of heart disease and stroke by taking a statin drug normally used only to lower cholesterol, a new study shows. Published in the Nov. 20 New England Journal of Medicine, the study, dubbed “Jupiter,” could change the basic guidelines for preventing heart disease.

Researchers from Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston looked at nearly 18,000 people with no history of heart disease but who did have elevated levels of high-sensitivity C-reactive protein, or hs-CRP, as measured in blood tests. Compared with the group taking a placebo, those on the statin reduced their chances of a heart attack by 54 percent, stroke by 48 percent and the need for bypass surgery or angioplasty by 46 percent. Learn more about the study on bulletin.aarp.org/yourhealth

The December, 2008 issue of the journal Experimental Physiology published the discovery of researchers at the University of Illinois of an anti-inflammatory effect for vitamin E in an animal model of inflammation.

Scientists are becoming increasingly aware of the role of inflammation in a number of diseases and conditions. Chronic inflammation of the skeletal muscles in humans is a cause of significant physical impairment. Antioxidants such as vitamin E have been shown to reduce proinflammatory cytokine expression in cell culture studies, but the vitamin's effects had not been tested in the heart and skeletal muscle of mice with induced systemic inflammation.

University of Illinois kinesiology and community health professor Kimberly Huey and colleagues administered vitamin E or a placebo to mice for three days before injecting the animals with a low dose of E. coli lipopolysaccharide to induce inflammation. A control group received saline injections.

The team found increased levels of the cytokines interleukin-6 (IL-6) and interleukin-1beta (IL-1beta) in the skeletal and cardiac muscle of mice that received lipopolysaccharide, yet among those that received vitamin E, levels of these cytokines were significantly lower than those of the placebo group. The cytokines function as intercellular communicators which assist in immune response, yet can lead to excessive inflammation. Additionally, the researchers observed decreased activation of nuclear factor kappa-beta (another agent involved in inflammation) in mice that received vitamin E.

“The mice were administered vitamin E for three days prior to giving them what amounts to a minor systemic bacterial infection,” Dr Huey explained. “One thing we did – in addition to (looking at) the cytokines – was to look, in the muscle, at the amount of oxidized proteins. Oxidation can be detrimental, and in muscle has been associated with reduced muscle strength.”

Dr Huey revealed that “there was a significant reduction in the amount of lipopolysaccharide-induced oxidized proteins with vitamin E compared to placebo.”

“So that’s a good thing,” she noted. “Potentially, if you reduce the oxidized proteins, that may correlate to increased muscle strength.”

In previous research conducted by team member Rodney Johnson, an association in mice between vitamin E supplementation and reduced brain inflammation was observed. Inflammation in the brain is associated with Alzheimer’s disease in humans.

Dr Huey concluded that vitamin E “may be beneficial in individuals with chronic inflammation, such as the elderly or patients with type II diabetes or chronic heart failure.”

“This is clearly an animal model so whether it would translate to humans still requires a lot more research,” she remarked. “Vitamin E is a supplement that is already approved, and these results may suggest an additional benefit of taking Vitamin E beyond what’s already been shown.”

And consider that Chronic Inflammation will respond well to vitamin E and some other natural substances as mentioned in this report -

In aged people with multiple degenerative diseases, the inflammatory marker, C-reactive protein, is often sharply elevated, indicating the presence of an underlying inflammatory disorder (Invitti 2002; Lee et al. 2002; Santoro et al. 2002; Sitzer et al. 2002). When a cytokine blood profile is conducted on people in a weakened condition, an excess level of one or more of the inflammatory cytokines, e.g., TNF-a, IL-6, IL-1(b), or IL-8, is usually found (Santoro et al. 2002).

Scientists have identified dietary supplements and prescription drugs that can reduce levels of the pro-inflammatory cytokines. The docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) fraction of fish oil is the best documented supplement to suppress TNF-a, IL-6, IL-1(b), and IL-8 (Jeyarajah et al. 1999; James et al. 2000; Watanabe et al. 2000; Yano et al. 2000). A study on healthy humans and those with rheumatoid disease shows that fish oil suppresses these dangerous cytokines by up to 90% (James et al. 2000).

Other cytokine-lowering supplements are DHEA (Casson et al. 1993), vitamin K (Reddi et al. 1995; Weber 1997), GLA (gamma linolenic acid) (Purasiri et al. 1994), and nettle leaf extract (Teucher et al. 1996). Antioxidants, such as vitamin E (Devaraj et al. 2000) and N-acetyl-cysteine (Gosset et al. 1999), may also lower proinflammatory cytokines and protect against their toxic effects.