‘A fraud on the nation’: critics blast Indian government’s promotion of traditional medicine for COVID-19 – Science Magazine

Government health workers hand out Ayurvedic medicine to people who are getting tested for COVID-19 in Gurugram, a city in northern India, in May.

By Priyanka PullaOct. 15, 2020 , 6:55 AM

Reporting for this story was supported by a journalism grant from the Thakur Family Foundation, which has not exercised any editorial control over the contents of this report.

The Indian health ministryhas begun to recommend traditional remediesto tackle the countrys COVID-19 outbreak, dismaying many Indian doctors and scientists. On 6 October, health minister Harsh Vardhan released recommendations for preventing COVID-19 and treating mild cases based on Ayurveda, Indias millenniaold system of herbal medicine, triggering sharp criticism from the Indian Medical Association (IMA), a group of more than one-quarter of a million modern medicine practitioners.

In a press release, IMAdemanded Vardhan produce evidenceof the treatments efficacy; if hes unable to do so, the associationwrote, Vardhan is inflicting a fraud on the nation and gullible patients by calling placebos as drugs.Recommending any drug without evidence for a deadly disease that has claimed more than 100,000 Indian lives is a dangerous trend, adds C. S. Pramesh, a thoracic surgeon and the director of Mumbais Tata Memorial Centre. The government has no shortage of studies to point to, but Pramesh and others dismiss them as unconvincing.

The Indian governments push for Ayurveda is in line with the ruling Bharatiya Janata Partys mission to revive traditional medicine. Since 2014, when the Hindu nationalist party was elected to power, it has upgraded a government department for alternative medicine to the Ministry of Ayurveda, Yoga & Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha and Homoeopathy (AYUSH), and more than tripled its annual budgetto almost $290 million.

Developed by the AYUSH ministry, the COVID-19 advisory includes treatments such as clarified butter applied inside the nostrils; a hot concoction of pepper, ginger, and other herbs; and a patented formulation called Ayush-64. The latter, a mixture of four herbs, was developed in the 1980s for malaria by the Central Council for Research in Ayurvedic Sciences (CCRAS), now a body under the AYUSH ministry.

Although last weeks protocol only recommends the remedies for mild disease, it says moderately and severely ill patients can make an informed choice about using Ayurveda as well, and refers readers to another Ayurvedaguideline documentthat prescribes similar herbal interventions for people with severe manifestations of COVID-19 such as respiratory distress and pneumonia.During a recent press conference, the AYUSH ministrys secretary, Vaidya Rajesh Kotecha, claimed the remedies were supported by dozens of in vitro, animal, and human studies, listedin a report onthe ministrys website.

But almost all the human studies are small and uncontrolled, critics say. These are con trials and faked studies, says Cyriac Abby Philips, a hepatologist at Keralas Ernakulam Medical Centre.

For example, in one of the studies the AYUSH ministry cites as support for Ayush-64,published in theJournal of Ayurveda and Integrative Medicine, the investigators gave the drug to 38 patients with flu symptoms.There was no control arm, and some of the patients on Ayush-64 also received paracetamol and other modern drugs, making it impossible to tease out the effects of each.

In another study, published in 1982, investigators gave 29 malaria patients Ayush-64, while 30 received modern antimalarials, including chloroquine. The investigators noted that whereas all the patients on modern drugs were cured, only 72% on Ayush-64 responded. Nothing about the study supports Ayush-64s efficacy in malaria, Philips says.

And in any case, clinical studies for malaria and other diseases cannot be extrapolated to COVID-19, says Gagandeep Kang, a microbiologist at Christian Medical College, Vellore, who helped develop and test Indias first rotavirus vaccine. All diseases are not the same, she says.

N. Srikanth, an Ayurvedic practitioner and a deputy director general at CCRAS, tellsScienceInsiderthat trials of Ayurvedic therapies for COVID-19 are underway.And on 9 October, an association of government Ayurvedic scientists said IMAs claim that Ayurvedic drugs were no better than placebos was rigorously condemnable. They pointed out that some modern medical practitioners continue to use drugs such as hydroxychloroquine for COVID-19, even though there is little evidence for their efficacy. (Indias health ministryrecommended hydroxychloroquineboth as treatment and prevention for the pandemic coronavirus in March, based on a few small and inconclusive clinical trials, a decision it didnt roll back after subsequent larger studies failed to bear out their advice.)

Pramesh dismisses that argument as whataboutery. Any system of medicine, whether modern or alternative, must back up claims of efficacy with well-conducted trials, he says. And I have seen very little actual data that shows the medicines being recommended by the AYUSH ministry to be useful.

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'A fraud on the nation': critics blast Indian government's promotion of traditional medicine for COVID-19 - Science Magazine

Americans Are Still Paying Out of Pocket for Complementary and Alternative Medicine – Shepherd Express

Garlicky chicken soup was once the standard cure for a cold and peppermint was used to soothe an upset stomach rather than going to the drugstore for an over-the-counter pill. Grandmas remedies have been coming back in a big way: About 59 million Americans spend money out of pocket on complementary health approaches, totaling approximately $30.2 billion a year, according to information provided by the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH)a U.S. government agency housed under the National Institutes of Health that explores integrative and alternative medicine.

Complementary (also called integrative) medicine is when a non-mainstream practice is used in conjunction with conventional medicine. Alternative medicine uses non-mainstream practices in place of conventional medicine. Theyre often referred to together as Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM) and have a similar objective: to find and treat the underlying causes of health problems rather than to just address symptoms.

CAM practitioners use holistic and preventive approaches to relieve and cure ailments ranging from the common cold to inflammatory conditions like arthritis. CAM treatments include herbs, whole foods nutrition and preventive lifestyle habits to support health, such as exercise, avoiding processed foods and smoking, stress management and light or no alcohol use. CAM also includes chiropractic, yoga, meditation, vitamins, minerals and natural anti-inflammatories and antioxidants, as well as ancient healing approaches such as acupuncture.

Carol Brown is a Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine. She had worked in conventional medicine as a primary care physician before training in integrative methods. Sixteen years ago, she formed her own integrative practice in Oak Creek, Wis., CMB Health Specialties (formerly known as the Center for Integrative Health Care). Brown uses holistic approaches such as nutritional support, specialty lab testing to detect food allergies-sensitivities and hormonal imbalances, as well as intravenous nutrition therapy. She uses conventional medicine as appropriate and may refer patients to practitioners of alternative services, such as acupuncture or massage, or to conventional medicine physicians.

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Integrative medicine gets back to physiology; how does the body work, and what do we need to do to make it work? Brown says. Its about nutrition, supplying what the body needs and looking for underlying causes. If someone has a headache, there are pills for headaches, but we look to find out why they have a headache. It could be gluten intolerance, not enough sleep or any number of underlying issues.

Brown notes there is a population of people that are not helped by everyday medicine and are driven to seek care outside of conventional approaches. Theyre looking for some other way to help themselves. Theres also a population of older patients who know how medicine used to be, where there was more time to get to the bottom of ones health. Younger people are suspicious, because everyday medicine has become so commercialized. A lot of people are afraid to take a drug, and they want to get better without meds if that is possible, she says.

Sarah Axtell is a naturopathic doctor and founder of Lakeside Natural Medicine in Shorewood, Wis. A licensed naturopathic doctor is a primary care physician who is trained to diagnose and prescribe, as opposed to traditional naturopath who can do neither.

She also sees a growing demand for CAM approaches. With a shortage of primary care doctors, exponentially escalating health care costs, epidemics of lifestyle-related chronic disease and obesity and increasing dissatisfaction with conventional medicine, naturopathic doctors are a valuable solution in light of these critical shortages, she says.

Naturopathic approaches emphasize direct care, prevention, wellness and health promotion. Axtell has a doctorate in naturopathic medicine from the National University of Natural Medicine and is board certified by the North American Board of Naturopathic Examiners. Shes currently licensed as a primary care physician in the state of Oregonone of 22 states that has licensing or registration laws for naturopathic doctors.

Axtell notes that a licensed naturopathic doctor attends a four-year, in-residence, graduate-level naturopathic medical school; studies conventional, holistic and nontoxic approaches to therapy; is educated in the identical basic sciences as an M.D. or D.O. (Doctor of Medicine or Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine); has three years supervised clinical training as part of medical school; and takes rigorous, national, professional board exams. Shes one of many licensed naturopathic doctors in the state advocating for naturopathic licensure in Wisconsin.

We are gaining momentum here in Wisconsin and hope to gain licensure in the near future, Axtell says. The Wisconsin Naturopathic Doctors Association has generated great support from both Democrats and Republicans in both houses of the legislature. They have worked hard to educate legislators on the importance of licensure for NDs. When legislators fully grasp the positive impact naturopathic medicine has on the health of Wisconsinites, legislators in turn support licensure, which will increase access to and ensure safe delivery care by highly trained natural medical providers. The Association hopes to see a licensure bill introduced in the 2021 session.

The Wisconsin Department of Safety and Professional Services is the state agency that licenses medical professionals, including M.D.s, D.O.s, nurse practitioners and dieticians. They also license professionals practicing alternative medicine modalities such as chiropractic, acupuncture and massage. Theres currently no state licensing required to practice alternative therapies like aromatherapy, biofeedback, herbalism or nutrition counseling-coaching. Training in those methods often range from self-study to certification through trade organizations or associations that offer online distance learning to in-person classes and workshops that issue certification.

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Its easy to get lost on the internet when researching the efficacy of CAM therapies, and like any topic, there are articles that both support and criticize it. The NCCIH was established with a focus to conduct and support research and provide information about complementary health products and practices. Brown likes to refer people to PubMed, a comprehensive database of scientific and medical journals documenting peer-reviewed studies, many of which have researched CAM topics.

Theres actually a ton of research out there, Brown says, and she points to the Cleveland Clinics Integrative and Lifestyle Medicine Department as an example of a big hospital system that has implemented CAM approaches. She notes that countries such as Germany, Sweden, Italy and Japan have done advanced research on CAM therapies, but here in the U.S., drug companies have the deep pockets to fund a myriad of large-scale studies that dwarf non-profitable natural approaches. But some of the strongest proof that CAM therapies work has come from its users. The evidence of getting better is proof enough, Brown affirms.

Most major health insurance plans dont cover CAM therapies and are quick to deem them as experimental or not medically necessary. Some cover CAM therapies such as chiropractic care with restrictions or co-pays or include CAM in flex spending accounts (people are advised to first check with their insurance companies to find out what services are covered). Most practices offering integrative or naturopathic careor services considered alternative, like acupuncture, massage or nutrition counselingdo not accept insurance and are private pay, which can be a prohibitive cost for some people.

But some alternative medicine providers are striving to make their services more affordable. Milwaukee Community Acupuncture is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit offering acupuncture on a pay-what-you-can model, with a sliding scale from $20 to $50 per visit. Amy Severinsen is a licensed acupuncturist who co-founded Milwaukee Community Acupuncture with Oliva Crane. Severinsen realized the need for affordable acupuncture after she visited China and toured acupuncture clinics and saw how affordable it was for people there, so people came in more frequently.

Previously, I had a private practice, and people responded really well, but because they were paying out of pocket, they couldnt afford to keep coming in, she says. Acupuncture works best when a patient receives a series of treatments. Because one doesnt have to disrobe while receiving an acupuncture treatment, Milwaukee Community Acupunctures professionals can see more than one person per hour in a group setting, making their community model cost-effective. The COVID-19 pandemic has forced them to alter their business to see fewer patients in the treatment room at one time; check the website for COVID-19 safety precuations.

Severinsen believes most insurance companies dont cover alternative therapies such as acupuncture because stronger studies are needed to support its effectiveness. Once they see those results, I think they will offer to cover more, she says. I also think its difficult to plug acupuncture into the system of coding and diagnosis, because its a different way of diagnosing people and looking at the body.

Sheila Julson is a freelance writer who enjoys capturing the stories behind Milwaukees happening food, beverage and urban farming scenes. She also pens articles about holistic health, green living, sustainability and human-interest features.

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Americans Are Still Paying Out of Pocket for Complementary and Alternative Medicine - Shepherd Express

A Few Words on Health Disparity in the Asian American Community – Pager Publications, Inc.

As stressed medical students looking for an eventful destination to spend our spring break, my friend and I chose to take a trip to Americas Big Apple, New York City. On a sunny day in NYC, I remember enjoying our morning cups of coffee and walking into a subway station when, suddenly, an older man shouted at us, Take your Corona and get out of my country!

Having grown up in Hong Kong and then Southern California where there is a prominent Asian population, I am fortunate to say I have never really experienced discriminatory events, especially none this direct. More than shocked, I was disheartened. Despite hindrances and inconsistencies in life, my ancestors never stopped pouring sweat to better America, this country that we call home. Knowing that Asian American history is deeply intertwined with this countrys development, it felt like our contributions did not matter when that man verbally attacked us. It felt like we were not welcome after all.

That got my friend and me, both Asian American medical students thinking: Are Asian Americans misrepresented and experiencing disparities within our health care system, too?

Health disparity is a term that refers to the differences in medical resources and health outcomes experienced by social groups. These groups are defined by gender, race, education and socioeconomic status, to name a few. Despite significant research on health disparities, Asian Americans are among one of the least studied groups on this matter.

And why is that?

From our nations history, there is a deeply rooted belief in the model minority myth. This ideology stereotypes Asians to be more educated, financially stable and healthier compared to other minority groups. While this generalization might seem positive, it actually brings more harm than good. Such a social myth can undermine the struggles experienced by less fortunate Asian Americans. By generalizing the whole Asian American community using a few successful examples, Asian American folks in need are inevitably overlooked. In reality, certain Asian groups (Vietnamese, Hmong and Cambodians) have higher poverty rates than the national average. In addition, suicide is ranked as a higher leading cause of death among Asian Americans than among other ethnic groups combined.

Secondly, there is immense diversity within the Asian American community. In Asia alone, there are 49 countries with 23,000 different languages in use. Data also shows that about 70% of Asian Americans are foreign-born. In a clinical setting, the immense diversity of languages poses a language barrier to equal access to medical resources. According to research done by Dr. Grace Ma at Temple University, cancer is the leading cause of death in Asian patients. Yet, they have the most trouble understanding clinical instructions and the highest dissatisfaction rates in regards to their cancer care.

Last but not least, many health providers are ill-equipped to discuss Eastern medicine with Asian patients. Growing up in an Asian household, I experienced Eastern medicine, such as tiger balm or herbal tea, like many people in our community. On several occasions, these products have worked wonders. Asian patients may resort to Eastern medicine and, in turn, oppose Western treatments. Since most Western physicians are unfamiliar with alternative medicine, such a preference can further pose as a threat for disparity and miscommunication. As healthcare providers, we should educate ourselves on topics such as alternative medicine to better serve our patients from Asian American communities.

Asian Americans are not only a minority in number, but it is also undeniable that we are among the groups vulnerable to health disparities. As future educators and physicians, it is important for us to understand the factors that create health disparity in our system. Even seemingly positive stereotypes can cause us to overlook the diversity within a group and cause patients to suffer. Especially in a sensitive time when Asians are experiencing more xenophobia due to COVID-19, we should question societal beliefs and be cautious about our assumptions with all patients.

Image Credit: Three Women, Masked 02(CC BY-NC 2.0)bybyronv2

Contributing Writer

University of California Riverside School of Medicine

Jasmine is a first year medical student at University of California, Riverside School of Medicine in Riverside, California class of 2023. In 2019, she graduated from UCLA with a Bachelor of Science in microbiology, immunology, and molecular genetics. She enjoys traveling, eating and napping in her free time. After graduating medical school, Jasmine would like to pursue a career in surgery or emergency medicine.

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A Few Words on Health Disparity in the Asian American Community - Pager Publications, Inc.

University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics joins national trial testing alternative treatment for appendicitis – UI The Daily Iowan

UIHC is one of 25 clinics across the U.S. to participate in the Comparing Outcomes of Antibiotic Drugs and Appendectomy trial to examine if antibiotics can treat appendicitis as well as surgery

Tate Hildyard

University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics are seen on Tuesday, June 23, 2020.

University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics is one of 25 clinics across the U.S. to participate in a national trial that, so far, shows antibiotics could be an alternative to surgery for treating appendicitis.

UIHC is participating in Comparing Outcomes of Antibiotic Drugs and Appendectomy. Trial Site co-leader at UIHC Dionne Skeete said the hospital had 156 of the 1,552 participants enrolled with appendicitis.

Because of Iowas population and UIHC joining the study halfway through the trial, Skeete said UIHC has a smaller number of patients in the study.

UI Clinical Assistant Professor in the Department of Emergency Medicine Brett Faine, who co-leads with Skeete, said comparing treatments for appendicitis has been a controversial question and has not formally been studied in the U.S. before the current trial.

The early results of the study were published in the New England Journal of Medicine this week.

This trial included all patients with all levels of severity for appendicitis, Faine said. So, it really provided the best evidence we have ever had.

So far, he said antibiotics were found to be an alternative to an appendectomy as a treatment.

The trial found that three out of 10 patients who received antibiotics underwent an appendectomy within 90 days, Skeete said. The patients who took antibiotics also experienced the same symptoms for an equal amount of time compared to patients who had surgery, she said.

Chair of the studys Patient Advisory Board Bonnie Bizzell said patients who had an appendicolith a stone-like deposit in the appendix had worse outcomes when taking antibiotics.

Skeete said it is up to the patient to weigh the pros and cons of their personal situation to determine if they want to take antibiotics or get surgery for an appendicitis treatment.

The benefit of surgery is that you know you get the appendix taken out and then you do not have to worry about appendicitis ever again, Skeete said. But the downside is that its surgery. So, there is a risk. The benefit of antibiotics is that, you know, you get a dose of an antibiotic and you avoid surgery. You get better without having to have that kind of operation.

The treatment option of antibiotics allows more flexibility for clinics when something such as COVID-19 stresses hospital availability, Faine said.

RELATED:UIHC performing trial to reduce celiac disease symptoms

Being in the middle of the pandemic, if operating rooms have to be shut down, or as we saw earlier because of the pandemic, if operating capacity has to be limited, antibiotics do seem to be suitable options, he said.

The trial gave attention to preventing selection bias within the criteria that patients had to meet to be a part of the study. Skeete said previous studies of the same kind excluded women as a part of the study population.

Bizzell said that patient engagement was a large part of the trial.

I think, what else makes it very unique is that the CODA Trial included patients that had not been included before and in other trials that looked at, comparing antibiotics to surgery, she said.

The last patients trial was enrolled and completed in January, Skeete said, but the study will be finishing up for the next two years.The team will look for the rate of complication during the follow up.

We are still going to do the follow up to see if the group is having adverse effects, Faine said. But, overall, antibiotics versus surgery were not inferior to the improvement outcomes.

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University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics joins national trial testing alternative treatment for appendicitis - UI The Daily Iowan

UAE to provide incentives to Indian healthcare firms with strong R&D facilities: Envoy – The Tribune India

Dubai, October 19

The UAE government will provide incentives, including financial contributions, and will make efforts to create a full ecosystem to support Indian healthcare manufacturing companies having strong research and development facilities, Indias envoy in the country said.

The UAE-India Healthcare Conference 2020, which was organised on Monday jointly by Embassy of India, Abu Dhabi, and Consulate General of India, Dubai, FICCI and Invest India, helped explore ways to promote collaboration and partnerships in healthcare, pharmaceuticals, medical devices and alternative medicines.

Pavan Kapoor, Ambassador of India to the UAE, drew attention toward close collaboration between the two countries during Covid times and stated that the UAE side had shown a strong desire for setting up manufacturing facilities for vaccines and generic medicines by Indian companies having strong R&D facilities.

The UAE government will provide incentives, including financial contributions, and will also make efforts to create a full ecosystem to support such healthcare manufacturing companies from India, he said.

Kapoor asked Indian companies to look into this offer, which will provide an excellent opportunity for them to enter into the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) as well as African markets in the entire pharma supply chain ecosystem.

The GCC is a regional intergovernmental political and economic union consisting of all Arab states of the Persian Gulf - Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates - except Iraq.

Ambassador Kapoor also emphasised that there were huge opportunities for the UAE to invest in India where seven mega parks- three in the pharmaceutical sector and four in medical devices have recently been announced.

Ayushman Bharat Yojana requires a lot of infrastructure and the same can be complemented by the UAE side. The introduction of AYUSH system of traditional Indian medicine can also be used to complement the health system in the UAE, he added.

Humaid Al Qutami, Director-General of Dubai Health Authority said, The UAE and India share a deep-rooted, historic partnership and there are several areas in the health sector where both sides can explore collaboration and continue this partnership with an aim to benefit the people of both the countries and provide high-quality and efficient patient care.

Humaid Al Qutami also highlighted areas such as innovation, research and development, medical education and training as well as telehealth, where there is a strong potential for further collaboration.

He added that this conference would be the right forum to establish a channel to achieve the common goals for the healthcare sectors of both countries. We look forward to a fruitful collaboration between both the countries, he added.

Ahmed Albanna, Ambassador of the UAE to India, said that COVID-19 has altered the dynamics of our global economic ecosystems.

Ambassador Albanna said: COVID-19 will mark an era of a paradigm shift in the realm of diplomacy with healthcare medical diplomacy taking the centre stage.

In the wake of the pandemic, the new dimension of medical diplomacy has indeed further bolstered the strategic partnership between the two nations. There is a huge untapped potential in the healthcare sectors between the two countries, he added.

Dr Sangita Reddy, President, FICCI, said that at no other time in the world has healthcare become as centerstage as it is today.

This is an important meeting of people with shared ideologies to innovate, collaborate and to find new solutions, she said.

Abdulla Ali Al Mahyan, Chairman, Sharjah Health Authority, and Dr Amin Hussain Al Amiri, Assistant Undersecretary of Health Policy and Licensing, Ministry of Health and Prevention, Abu Dhabi stressed on the historic and strategic relationship that exists between both the nations.

We have great cooperation with India, and we look forward to supporting any Indian pharma or medical industry to invest with us, Dr Amiri said. Dr Amiri also provided several facts about Indian healthcare workers and UAE as well as pharma and medical tourism, going forward.

Dr Praveen Gedam, Additional CEO of National Health Authority, highlighted the transformation currently underway in India as the Ayushman Bharat Programme is being delivered.

This program will eventually benefit more than 500 million people and create huge opportunities for investment by the UAE and other international investors in the healthcare sector., he said.

Dr Aman Puri, Consul General of India, said, This conference becomes all the more relevant as key stakeholders from UAE and India healthcare landscapes join together to deliberate on exploring new avenues for partnership between the two countries.

Abdul Salam Al Madani, Executive Chairman, Waterfalls, UAE said that there is a need to further strengthen business relations with India.

Dr Azad Moopen, Chairman & MD, Aster DM Healthcare; Dr Shamsheer Vayalil, Chairman & MD, VPS Healthcare Group; Girish Krishnamurty, CEO & Director- Tata Medical and Diagnostics, Tata MD; Dr Akbar Moideen, VP Thumbay Group; Dr Viren Shetty from Narayana Hrudayalaya; Sophiya Faizal, Director, KEF Holdings (Meitra Hospital), Dr Taher Shams, MD Zulekha India, made presentations on opportunities in healthcare in the UAE and India.

The conference also had three separate sessions focusing on the UAE India Partnership in Healthcare Delivery, Pharma & Medical Devices and Ayush in which renowned doctors, entrepreneurs and regulatory authorities made their presentation and discussed ways and means to further boost bilateral cooperation in the respective fields. PTI

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UAE to provide incentives to Indian healthcare firms with strong R&D facilities: Envoy - The Tribune India

Vitamin C linked to virility, better overall health in men – Chicago Daily Herald

Male fertility rates in the United States have been steadily decreasing over the past decade. Over 70 million couples worldwide complain of infertility with low sperm count accounting for more than 50% of the causes of infertility.

Obesity, smoking, high blood pressure, diabetes and chronic stress all contribute to this decline. Medical research has shown that, under these stressful conditions, sperm quality and quantity may be improved by regular consumption of vitamin C.

Reproduction and the resultant children are a time and energy consuming endeavor. In nature, the healthiest animals are the ones who are most able to reproduce. The same holds true for humans. Medical conditions can significantly impact health, reducing sperm quality and quantity. Chronic lifestyle stress results in an increase in anti-stress hormones (think cortisol) that reduce sperm quality and quantity as well, leading to impotence. In technologically advanced countries, chronic stress and chronic illnesses are potentiating low sperm counts and a decrease in overall fertility. All of these stress conditions reduce tissue levels of antioxidants and the testes are very susceptible to tissue damage resulting from reduce levels of antioxidants, thus resulting in a reduced quantity and quality of sperm.

Vitamin C (ascorbic) acid is a powerful antioxidant that has many metabolic functions. It was first reported to be a cure for scurvy, a disease resulting from poor wound healing. Although it is well documented that vitamin C is essential for tissue repair, it is also involved in the production of neurotransmitters, by some white blood cells in the killing of bacteria and viruses, and is needed by multiple enzymatic pathways.

Humans do not make their own vitamin C, even though we have the genes to do so. We must get our vitamin C through food or supplementation. Low levels of vitamin C combined with chronic stress and illness are the prefect recipe for low sperm counts and infertility.

Medical research has consistently demonstrated that increasing vitamin C levels can improve the quality and quantity of sperm both in humans and animals. A recent review of the medical research on vitamin C and sperm quality and quantity summarized medical research from 2004-2015. Overall the results indicated that vitamin C leads to better sperm quality/quantity, DNA protection and increased pregnancies (about a 20% increase). In some studies vitamin C administered by injection was better than taking it orally. Admittedly, most of the studies have been done in mice and rats but those human studies are equally positive.

Most Americans do not eat enough vitamin C-rich fruits and vegetables as part of their daily diet so vitamin C insufficiency may be quite common. Taking a daily vitamin C supplement may be prudent not just for infertility but for overall health. Some believe that intravenous vitamin C may be more effective for sperm quality and infertility than taking a supplement.

There are very few contraindications to taking vitamin C and this simple vitamin could be part of the answer to increasing male infertility.

Dr. Patrick Massey is medical director of complementary and alternative medicine at Alexian Brothers Hospital Network, and president of ALT-MED Medical and Physical Therapy, 1544 Nerge Road, Elk Grove Village.

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Vitamin C linked to virility, better overall health in men - Chicago Daily Herald

Mark Hyman, the ‘Dr. Oz’ of Nutrition, Says Food Is Killing People Like the Holocaust – American Council on Science and Health

It's difficult to out-Oz Dr. Oz, America's Quack, who has raked in giant piles of money by promoting pseudoscience on his TV show. But at least one person comes perilously close: Dr. Mark Hyman.

Hyman is the "Dr. Oz" of nutrition. He embraces legitimate science if and only if it suits his bottom line. Otherwise, he's promoting junk science and magical thinking. To get an idea of the sort of nonsense that he spews, his website features an interview with the Food Babe, as well as his infuriatingly stupid quote, "Food isn't like medicine, it is medicine." The comma splice just makes me that much angrier.

The Many Lies of Dr. Mark Hyman

Hyman made a recent appearance on the Rubin Report, which is hosted by conservative commentator Dave Rubin. Hyman took the inadvisable step of taking a cheap shot at ACSH, so we thought we would reciprocate by fact-checking some of the interview. (Note: The interview is 55 minutes long, and my head would explode if I actually listened to all of it.) Buckle up.

"I became a doctor and kind of got indoctrinated, literally, and became very focused on traditional, good medicine, but I realized the limits of it. And then I got sick myself and ended up having to fix myself using functional medicine.

Wow, the bullsh** is strong with this one. He claims that doctors are being force-fed lies in medical school and that the real truth is what he calls "functional medicine" -- which is just a different term for alternative medicine, holistic medicine, integrative medicine, or whatever rainbow-and-unicorn term these quacks prefer. I generally frown upon Wikipedia, but the first sentence in its entry on Functional Medicine is too good to pass up: "Functional medicine is a form of alternative medicine that encompasses a number of unproven and disproven methods and treatments."

Six out of ten Americans have a chronic disease. It kills 11 million people a year from food.

Huh?! His first statistic is true, but the second is a gigantic, whopping lie. (See figure taken from the CDC.) Considering that chronic disease includes everything from heart disease to Alzheimer's, there's a lot of territory to cover. Poor nutrition is simply one risk factor among many. Other risk factors are genetic or environmental. So, to single out food as the primary cause of chronic illness is just plain wrong.

Also, I have no idea where he gets his statistic that 11 million people die from food every year. Each year, about 2.8 million Americans die from all causes. Globally, there are about 56 million deaths from all causes. Hyman just fabricated the 11 million number, which he then refers to as "like a Holocaust" (at the 6:00 mark). Twinkies, Nazis? Basically the same thing.

"If I really want to cure my patients, I have to step back and look at the big picture of what's wrong with our food system, the impact it's causing on disease, on our economy, on social justice issues, poverty, mental health, kids' academic performance, national security, environment, climate. It's all one problem that is predominantly driven by our food."

Food is not the root cause of national security problems, let alone every other problem on the planet. Hyman sounds like that guy from The History Channel who blames everything on aliens. Anytime somebody fingersa singleboogeyman for causing every disease and problem known to mankind, this is a giant red flag indicating quackery.

"Most states have obesity rates over 40%."

Obesity is a substantial problem in this country, but this is another made-up statistic. Only one state (Mississippi) has an obesity rate over 40%, according to the CDC.

"We have one in three federal dollars that are spent on Medicare."

Yet another made-up statistic. Here are the federal outlays for 2019:

Medicare cost $644 billion. With $4.4 trillion in spending, that means the federal government spent about 15% of its budget (roughly 1 in 7 dollars) on Medicare. If we're generous and include Medicaid, that is 24% of the budget (about 1 in 4 dollars). Again, Hyman just fabricates numbers out of thin air. To add yet more absurdity, Hyman claimed a moment later that 80% of the spending is unnecessary because it's caused by food. Right, if only everybody ate broccoli everyday, nobody would have cancer or dementia.

(I'm now merely 7 minutes and 25 seconds into the video, and I simply can't take anymore of this. So let's fast forward to the point where he takes a swipe at ACSH. It begins at 13:00.)

"They create front groups... to confuse consumers saying, for example, that pesticides and high fructose corn syrup and trans fats and smoking are not bad for you, like the American Council on Science and Health."

By "they," I think Hyman is referring to aliens food companies. Anyway, Hyman is lying again. ACSH has always been anti-smoking. Always. In regard to trans fats, we're sort of ambivalent on the issue. Dr. Chuck Dinerstein wrote in 2018 that the FDA has largely eliminated trans fats from the American diet, but there doesn't seem to be much of an impact on cardiovascular disease. Pesticides are safe if used at appropriate doses (which they are). (Besides, plants make 99.99% of the pesticides we consume.) And when analyzed chemically, high fructose corn syrup is basically honey.

Don't ever listen to Mark Hyman.

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Mark Hyman, the 'Dr. Oz' of Nutrition, Says Food Is Killing People Like the Holocaust - American Council on Science and Health

World Wide Stem Cell Treatment Centers Provides Exceptional Regenerative Treatment Options To Those in Need – GlobeNewswire

PITTSBURGH, Oct. 16, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Those who are looking for an alternative treatment option when compared to traditional medicine are now in luck. Recently, World Wide Stem Cell Treatment Centers announced that it was opening the first of its more than 300 planned locations all over the world. With access to a wide range of treatment options, it is possible for patients to visit World Wide Stem Cell Treatment Centers and enjoy a more comprehensive recovery process than they ever have in the past. Therefore, it is important to highlight some of the major benefits that come with visiting World Wide Stem Cell Treatment Centers or health treatment options.

An Introduction to World Wide Stem Cell Treatment Centers: The First Location is Open

Right now, the first location has opened for World Wide Stem Cell. This treatment center location is in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Currently, more than 300 locations are scheduled to open worldwide.

In many situations, treatment options from World Wide Stem Cell can actually work very well when working in combination with traditional medical therapy. The goal of World Wide Stem Cell Treatment Centers is to provide patients with more options, allowing them to tailor their treatment options to meet their individual needs and avoid invasive surgery whenever possible. In this manner, patients can work with the professionals at World Wide Stem Cell to develop a custom treatment plan to meet their unique needs.

Who Might Need Stem Cell Therapy from World Wide Stem Cell Treatment Centers?

The reality is that anyone is able to benefit from stem cell therapy from World Wide Stem Cell. At the same time, it is also important for people to know what goes into stem cell therapy.

First, one of the most common patient populations that might benefit from a visit to World Wide Stem Cell is athletes who have suffered an injury. While participating in their sport. While sports are great for conditioning and staying in shape. Injuries are always a very real risk. When an athlete suffers an injury, World Wide Stem Cell is able to treat that athlete and in most cases have that athlete participating back in his sport again in up to 1/10th of the time without invasive surgery. So with that being said the entire population at one time or another are candidates for stem cells. Whether it be a knee, hip, shoulder or any other orthopedic joint. Stem cells in most cases are able to replace invasive surgery; with a stem cell injection. World Wide Stem Cell always treats every condition with the proper cells for that particular situation. We only use orthopedic surgeons and neurosurgeons that do all our injections and they are all done with ultrasound guided needle injections. Whether you are interested in orthopedic treatments, facial rejuvenation, anti-aging cells, hair replacement, erectile dysfunction. We have them all at World Wide Stem Cell. Call, email, inquire!

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300 Chapel Harbor DriveSuite 204Pittsburgh, Pa 15238Contact: JS Genslinger (founder)412-408-3183

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Personal Care Encapsulation Materials Market Size Forecast to Reach $8.7 Billion by 2025 Wall Street Call – Reported Times

Oct 19, 2020 10:10 AM ET

iCrowd Newswire Oct 19, 2020

Personal Care Encapsulation Materials Market size is forecast to reach $8.7 billion by 2025 after growing at a CAGR of 6.7% during 2020-2025. Encapsulation is a technique in which tiny particles are protected by coating them to form small capsules. The growth of the market of personal care encapsulation materials is expected to be driven by the high demand from the cosmetic industry. The other growth factor is personal care industry which is using personal care encapsulation materials for the manufacturing of soaps and shower gels.

By Type-Segment AnalysisLipids segment held the largest share in thepersonal care encapsulation materials marketin 2019. Lipids are finding increasing application in soap and shower gel manufacturing owing to the assortment of chemical composition they offer. Lipids are finding increasing applications in the cosmetics industry owing to their superior functional properties such as emulsification, density, texture, and hydrogenation. These factors are imperative to lipids market growth. Lipids and emulsifiers derived from lipids are the primary materials used in the manufacturing of cosmetics owing to their emulsification properties which form a barrier to protect the skin from external elements. With consumers preferring green cosmetics owing to the inclusion of natural ingredients and the health benefits associated with them, the demand for lipids derived from plants and other biotechnological origins is on the rise. Additionally, collaborative efforts for obtaining lipids specifically for use in cosmetics is expected to fuel lipids market growth.

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By Application-Segment AnalysisAromatherapy Products held the largest share in the personal care encapsulation materials market in 2019. Aromatherapy product are used as an alternative medicine therapy to treat many disorders. These medical applications include skin-related problems, pain management, insomnia, cardiovascular and respiratory disorders, and digestion problems, cold and cough, immune system functioning, anxiety, and wound healing. The rising demand for unconventional and natural treatment procedures has influenced the growth of aromatherapy products all around the globe. The growth of the aromatherapy products market can be attributed to usage of essential oils in various applications such as flavor & fragrance and others. Moreover, healing benefits of aromatherapy products are expected to be instrumental in governing peak sales paving the way for aromatherapy products sector growth. Furthermore, wide scale adoption of aromatherapy products in industrial, commercial, and household applications also drive the global market in forecast period.

Soaps segment is the second largest segment in terms of application in the personal care encapsulation materials market. The growing concern for personal grooming and rising hygiene-consciousness among consumers has encouraged them to opt for skin-friendly bath soaps, thereby driving the market growth across the globe. Apart from this, manufacturers are introducing products with exotic fragrances and vibrant colors to expand their consumer-base and diversify their market operations. They are also launching eco-friendly bath soaps containing natural or organic ingredients which are safe for both humans and the environment. Besides this, with the growing environment concerns, the leading soap companies are offering products in biodegradable and refill packaging. Furthermore, the adoption of aggressive marketing schemes such as celebrity endorsements by manufacturers, along with value addition, are some of the other factors contributing to the market growth.

By End Use-Segment AnalysisPersonal care segment has been the primary market for the personal care encapsulation materials in 2019 growing at CAGR of 8%. The personal care industry is the one which produces consumer products that are used for beautification and personal hygiene. The subsectors of personal care comprise cosmetics and personal hygiene. Some of the products that are included in personal care wet wipes, toothpaste, toilet paper, talcum and others. The global market for personal care is extremely diversified and can be bifurcated. The global market for personal care is expected to witness substantial growth over the coming years owing to the growing disposable income of consumers, thus enabling them to spend on luxury personal care products. In order to cater to specific customer needs, manufacturers have flooded the market with specific hair and skin products. The market is also expected to be benefitted by the promotional offers, advertising, and media penetration. In emerging economies, facets such as growing spending power of consumers, abundance of international brands, and rapid urbanization is likely to help in the growth of the market in the forecast period.

Geography-Segment AnalysisAPAC dominates the personal care encapsulation materials market with a share of 40% followed by North America and Europe. The economy of APAC is mainly influenced by the economic dynamics of countries such as China and India, but with growing foreign direct investment for economic development of South East Asia, the current scenario is changing. Countries in South East Asia are witnessing high growth in the cosmetic sector. The growth in global economies, changing lifestyles, rising demands of skin and sun care products due to varying climatic conditions encourages the growth of the market for cosmetics. A shift of preference towards natural and organic beauty products, particularly in U.S. and European countries, drive the growth of the cosmetics market. Rising demand for natural, herbal and organic beauty products creates potential opportunities for manufacturers to innovate and develop new products in accordance to consumer preferences.

The coronavirus pandemic has had far-reaching consequences beyond the spread of the disease and efforts to quarantine it. As the pandemic has spread around the globe, concerns have shifted from supply-side manufacturing issues to decreased business therefore, it hinder the growth of personal care encapsulation materials market in the year 2020. But after the situation became normal it will grow with steady rate in the forecast period.

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Drivers- Personal Care Encapsulation Materials MarketRise in the demand of essential oils will drive the growth of the market in forecast periodRising awareness regarding health benefits of naturally sourced oils along with increasing number of people showing inclination towards aromatherapy is estimated to drive the market. Aromatherapy is gaining prominence, especially among urban population, due to changing lifestyles and rising media influence. Shifting preference of consumers in developed countries towards natural products manufactured through environmentally sustainable processes is stirring up the demand for essential oil. In addition, rising consumption of premium products and upgraded standard of living of consumers, especially in developing countries, are creating ample growth opportunities for essential oil manufactures which derive the market of personal care encapsulation materials in the forecast period.

Emerging e-commerce companies and ease of available products will drive the marketRise of prospective population which coupled with the factors which are inducing the growth of the market such as rising personal disposable income and increasing internet penetration in the region. Further, distribution of personal care encapsulation materials market has a huge role in the success of a company as it directly impacts the demand and supply in the market and hence the revenue. With the rising penetration of internet and e-commerce across the globe, the reach of personal care products companies has increased. The perks of e-commerce have not only benefitted the companies but also the consumers in terms of pricing and a vast range of options available to them. Moreover, new customers have also been attracted by the online distribution route.

Challenges- Personal Care Encapsulation Materials MarketHigh price of raw materials will hinder the growth of marketVolatility in raw material prices could restrain the personal care encapsulation materials market. Raw materials required for the manufacturing of encapsulates are derived from petroleum-based resins. Therefore, fluctuation in crude oil prices could act as a major restraint for the personal care encapsulation materials market. In the global scenario, OPEC counties and Russia are fluctuating the price of crude oil. And recent US sanctions on Iran is a major factor that will increase per barrel of crude oil price. These are the restraints which will affect the global personal care encapsulation materials market near future.

Market LandscapeTechnology launches, acquisitions and R&D activities are key strategies adopted by players in the personal care encapsulation materials market. Major players in personal care encapsulation materials market are Biogenoci Co Ltd, Chongqing Pellet, Durae Corporation, Korea Particle Technology, Sumitomo And Subsidiary Persperse Corp and others.

Acquisitions/Technology Launches/ Product LaunchesIn July 2016, Crodda International Plc, based in England, today announced the total acquisition of the company Inventiva Ltd, from Porto Alegre, Southern Brazil. The transaction, completed by Croda Brazil, increase its portfolio of ingredients for the personal care industry with the encapsulation technology and delivery system of Inventiva. Croda will use technologies of Inventiva to innovate in other markets.

In September 2019, International Flavors & Fragrances (IFF), a leading innovator of scent, taste, and nutrition, and its affiliate, IFF-Lucas Meyer Cosmetics (IFF-LMC), announced that it has completed the acquisition of Speximo AB, a Swedish technology company focused in developing next generation stabilization and encapsulation products. This will support IFFs strategy to develop sustainable personal care and cosmetic products, along with other potential commercial application areas.

Key TakeawaysAsia-Pacific dominates the personal care encapsulation materials owing to increasing demand from personal care industry.

Rising demand from products such as anti-aging creams, shower gels and others are driving the growth of market in the forecast period.

High price of raw material will hinder the growth of the market in the forecast period.

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Active Ingredients in Personal Care Market

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Keywords:Personal Care Encapsulation Materials Market, Personal Care Encapsulation Materials Market size, Personal Care Encapsulation Materials Market industry, Personal Care Encapsulation Materials Market share, Kresoxim Methyl top 10 companies, Personal Care Encapsulation Materials Market report, Personal Care Encapsulation Materials Market industry outlook

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Personal Care Encapsulation Materials Market Size Forecast to Reach $8.7 Billion by 2025 Wall Street Call - Reported Times

Tough on Anti-Vaxx Nonsense, Tough on the Causes of Anti-Vaxx Nonsense – Jacobin magazine

Democratic vice-presidential candidate Kamala Harris may have given an unwitting boost to the anti-vaccination movement during her debate with Vice President Mike Pence. When asked, she said that she would refuse to take a COVID-19 vaccine if it were approved by the Trump administration.

Harris is entirely correct to be horrified at how Trump and Pence have overseen Operation Warp Speed, the administrations effort to accelerate development of a COVID-19 vaccine through funding of clinical trials and the pre-manufacturing of doses of candidate vaccines so that if they are shown to be safe and effective, distribution can begin straight away.

The overall fast-track framework of the program is supported by public health officials, but they have real concerns that President Trump has been meddling in the approval process for vaccines, pressuring the Food and Drug Administration to give the green light before the November election without safety and efficacy trials and constantly calling pharmaceutical CEOs to press them to speed up their work.

The Trump administration is not the only government that has appeared to be fiddling with vaccine safety for political gain. In August, Russia announced that its health regulator was the first in the world to approve a COVID-19 vaccine, but without testing safety and efficacy via crucially important Phase Three clinical trials in which thousands of subjects are given either the vaccine or a placebo then tracked to see if the vaccine provides any protection as compared to the placebo. If something goes wrong as a result, the danger is not just to those receiving the vaccine, but it will almost certainly radically undermine faith in COVID-19 immunization worldwide.

Public health officials are frightened that such interference is already hindering support not just for a COVID-19 vaccine, but also for vaccines in general. A comprehensive poll performed in September showed that only 51 percent of Americans would be willing to get a vaccine, down from 72 percent in May. A similar drop in confidence has occurred in the United Kingdom, especially amongst young people.

In May, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that among children aged five months in Michigan (using the state as a proxy for the country), up-to-date status for all recommended vaccinations had declined from around two-thirds of children from over the previous three years to under half.

These declines could leave children vulnerable to diseases such as the measles because if vaccination coverage for this highly infectious disease drops below around 90 percent, outbreaks can occur. The World Health Organization and Unicef report similar global declines.

There has been a substantial drop worldwide in the number of children completing the three vaccine doses against diphtheria, tetanus, and pertussis, the first time in almost three decades that there has been any reduction in coverage at all.

Most of this decline will have been the result of the lockdowns, as well as fear of contracting COVID-19, keeping families away from health service providers. But this is all the more reason why trust in vaccination needs to be enhanced, not undermined.

In the last few days in order to restore that trust, the Food and Drug Administration has resisted Trumps efforts to block release of stricter rules governing the emergency authorization of a COVID-19 vaccine. These include a requirement that companies producing vaccines gather data on at least 50 percent of subjects in their clinical trial for two months following a second dose of the vaccine (if the vaccine requires two doses).

This latter development automatically pushes an emergency authorization application for even the earliest likely candidate vaccine, from the firms Pfizer and BioNTech, back to mid-November as that will be the earliest time they will have been able to gather such data and, crucially, after the election. Hopefully this will be sufficient to turn the tide on vaccine trust.

Harris was absolutely right to denounce Trumps meddling, but it would have been preferable for Harris to say that Trump must halt his partisan interference in vaccine development so that there will not be a loss of confidence in vaccines at the height of a global pandemic.

Instead, she gave a gift to anti-vaccination campaigners everywhere, and, in effect, told anyone hesitant about any vaccines that their fears are warranted. She said would happily take a vaccine recommended by Anthony Fauci, the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, but not one developed by Trump.

Immediately online, anti-vaxx activists were cheering her comments, or asking why is it okay for her not to trust Trump, but not okay for them to trust Big Pharma with respect to other vaccines. As Australian anti-vaxx campaigner Toby Rogers tweeted, Harris believes she has a right to refuse a vaccine because she doesnt like the current president. Parents should have the same right of refusal for their kids.

The interference by Trump, prior to his election explicitly anti-vaccination himself, plainly makes him the primary villain here along with Vladimir Putin but Harris has not helped the pro-vaccine cause. Perhaps worst of all would be if Harris has unwittingly helped turn vaccination into a partisan issue akin to the mask debate, but inverted, where mask-wearing Democrats refuse to be vaccinated, while mask-refusenik Republicans demonstrate their partisan commitment by being first in line to get a Trump jab.

And this is where we are even prior to rollout of vaccination, for which governments have generally not explained well to citizens especially how even a vaccine demonstrated and widely trusted to be safe and effective may not be a silver bullet that allows us to return to normal.

They have not really gotten across the message that the first vaccines may not provide complete immunity, and how even existing vaccines are not binaries but provide a sliding scale of protection. And few vaccines provide lifelong protection from a single dose. Some vaccine candidates require additional doses perhaps over multiple years.

It is also increasingly clear that COVID-19 reinfection, while rare, does occur. The first case of reinfection in the United States was confirmed this week, a twenty-five-year-old Nevada man with no known history of immune disorders, and whose second infection was more severe, requiring hospitalization with oxygen support.

As of the time of writing, four other cases of reinfection have been confirmed in Belgium, Ecuador, Hong Kong, and the Netherlands. Reinfection cases mean it will be ineffective to attempt to achieve herd immunity acquired by natural infection. We do not yet know what this means for achieving herd immunity via vaccination.

So even in a world where trust in vaccination were not an issue, the situation would still be extremely messy.

But its already such a mess. Vaccines are one of the greatest advances in the history of our species, yet we are at great risk of losing the protection they offer at the moment of our greatest need.

This appalling situation is more or less what the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicines Heidi Larson predicted two years ago: A politically degenerate and digitally enabled emotional contagion that destroys trust in vaccines will be what results in our failure to halt the spread of the next outbreak.

While the pandemic she had in mind when writing a caustic commentary published online in the journal Nature on the deluge of anti-vaccination misinformation was a highly deadly influenza on the scale of the 1918 Spanish Flu, not a coronavirus, her prophecy appears to be coming true.

She is the head of the Vaccine Confidence Project (VCP), an international team of epidemiologists, statisticians, anthropologists, and political scientists that monitors public attitudes toward vaccines around the world. This week in the Lancet medical journal, the project published the first truly global estimate tracking levels of support for vaccination, an assessment based on interviews of more than 284,000 people across 149 countries from 2015 to 2019.

The results are not heartening. Though there has been a modest uptick in confidence in vaccines in Europe and North America over the period investigated, its an uptick from startlingly low levels, particularly in some EU states such as France and the Netherlands.

In France, just 9 percent of people believed vaccines to be safe in 2015 tied with Japan for the lowest rate in the world that year and four years later, that had jumped up to a still-appalling smidge under 30 percent. The Netherlands was around 30 percent last year, up from 20 percent in 2015. South Korea has also seen a significant drop in confidence as a result of online anti-vaxx campaigning by ANAKI the Korean abbreviation of raising children without medication.

The developed countries with the highest levels of trust in vaccines are places like Australia (72% strongly agree that they are safe in 2019), Canada (67%), and Finland (66%). But before you go off thinking: Oh there they are again, those insufferable Scando-Antipodean-Canuck goody-two-shoes that top the international league tables of just about everything, from math scores to life expectancy to people who have reached adulthood without cavities, these vaccine confidence rates are far below rates seen in much of the Global South. The three countries with the largest proportion of the population believing vaccines to be safe as of 2019 are Uganda (87%), Bangladesh (85%), and Liberia (83%).

In fact, not a single developed nation sits in the top ten, the top twenty or even the top thirty. The highest ranking wealthier state, Australia, clocks in at thirty-third place. We can see clearly from a map produced by the researchers that the safety of vaccines is questioned most strongly in the Global North, particularly in Japan and Europe.

The orange and yellow colors show lower numbers of people who agree that vaccines are safe, while the light and darker blue shades indicate higher numbers of people who believe this to be true.

Clinicians and researchers say the reason for this is straightforward: in the developed world, most of the common infectious diseases that have ravaged human society throughout history had all but been defeated by the twentieth-century marvels of vaccines, antibiotics, and modern sanitation and hygiene.

The memory of what it was like to live in constant fear of infectious disease has, until the COVID-19 pandemic, been almost entirely lost in the West outside of those communities affected by HIV/AIDS. Most people are unaware that they prevent two-three million deaths each year. We have forgotten what a wonder vaccines are.

Meanwhile in the developing world, with the exception of global efforts to eradicate smallpox (and soon, hopefully, polio), many such diseases never really went away. In these countries, people often line up for hours to get their jabs because they are all too familiar with the horror of infectious disease.

Of course, this is the overall trend. Human affairs are never clear cut. There is great variation in levels of confidence and resistance in the West, and there are developing states that have seen substantial declines in confidence. The paper in Lancet describes how while the EU as a whole suffers from particularly low vaccine confidence, public trust in vaccine safety has turned a corner in recent years, enjoying a modest uptick in the UK, Finland, Ireland, France, and Italy, albeit up from very low levels in the latter two countries.

This is particularly good news out of Italy, as the hard-right Lega and the left-right-green mlange of the Five Star Movement, both recently in coalition government together, had made anti-vaccination a signature issue. As Jacobins Europe editor, David Broder, has reported, the countrys no vax movement produced a six-fold rise in the number of individuals with measles in 2017, rising to 2,718 cases, and resulted in twelve deaths.

Though the news from most of Europe is good, Poland meanwhile has experienced a sharp drop in confidence over the period surveyed the result of a local highly organized anti-vaccine movement.

And in places with higher levels of political instability or religious extremism such as Afghanistan, Indonesia, Nigeria, and Pakistan, there has been a small increase in the numbers of those strongly disagreeing that vaccines are safe, again albeit up from a very low level.

A polio eradication initiative in Nigeria has been defeated due to attacks from terrorists in Boko Haram targeting and killing polio workers, disrupting the polio immunization campaign, and vandalizing or destroying clinics.

Indonesia has experienced one of the steepest declines in public trust anywhere over the 201519 period, likely the result of a fatwa issued by Muslim leaders. It claimed that the vaccine contained ingredients derived from pigs and so was haram, a misinformation campaign exacerbated by local healers pushing natural alternatives to vaccines, much like alternative medicine hucksters in the West.

In the Philippines, confidence in the safety of vaccines has sharply dropped from 2015 to 2019 as a result of a very real issue with a vaccine for dengue fever, Dengvaxia, which is produced by French pharmaceutical firm Sanofi Pasteur.

Dengue fever has an unusual profile in that a first infection typically does not kill, but a second infection by a different type of dengue is made much worse because the immune systems response to the first infection actually aggravates the reaction to the second. Some dengue specialists warned at the time that this particular vaccine might have a similar effect on any children who had never had a first infection in that any subsequent exposure to the virus in the wild would act as this second infection, amplifying rather than preventing the disease.

So the vaccination program was suspended in 2017, and later restarted once protocols had been established ensuring that it was only given to children who have already been exposed to the disease. As dengue is widespread in the Philippines, most children were not at risk of such complications, but the public relations damage from the premature implementation of an otherwise safe vaccine had already been done.

Trust plummeted not only in the Dengvaxia vaccine, but in vaccines in general. This has been a disaster in the country, which had managed to achieve a reduction in child mortality of two-thirds over the course of twenty-five years thanks to a series of government immunization campaigns. What is locally called the Dengvaxia Mess has been messy indeed, with vaccination rates nosediving against all diseases.

The progress of the last two and a half decades has essentially been reversed and the nation experienced a crisis of infectious disease, not just of dengue, resulting in over 1,400 deaths from dengue as of November, but also diphtheria (47 deaths), measles (560 deaths), and polio. The latter outcome is particularly tragic as the Philippines had otherwise been polio-free since 2000. The Dengvaxia Mess, whether the result of a mistake or negligence, directly caused a reported six hundred deaths. But the drop in trust in vaccines resulted in far greater mortality.

The Vaccine Confidence Project concludes that the reasons for the drop in confidence in vaccination comes from a combination of the rapid and global spread of misinformation online, a general distrust in government and scientific elites, and the exploitation of these two phenomena by some groups for financial or political gain.

The VCP survey does offer some hope however about how to turn this around. The researchers found that most people, regardless of location, do not necessarily reject the importance of vaccines even if they question their safety.

The public seem to generally understand the value of vaccines, says Clarissa Simas, one of the researchers involved in the study, but the scientific and public health community needs to do much better at building public trust in the safety of vaccination, particularly with the hope of a COVID-19 vaccine.

In addition, the determinants most associated with vaccine uptake were trust in health-care workers over non-medical sources of health advice such as from family or friends, higher levels of science education, and sex women are more likely than men to report having their children vaccinated.

What this suggests is that scientific and medical literacy campaigns and improved communications strategies by public health organizations should work to produce some improvement in vaccination rates.

This seems to be backed up by the improvements seen in regions in Europe where high-profile vaccine awareness campaigns have achieved modest improvements. The researchers give the examples of how both Denmark and Ireland turned around declining human papillomavirus vaccination (HPV) uptake rates through smart campaigns combatting misinformation online.

But such campaigns need to be funded at the appropriate levels. Larson laments there has been no shortage of strategic plans to improve vaccine communication infrastructure from the United States Department of Health and Human Services as far back as 1999, its National Vaccine Advisory Committee in 2011, and the WHO in 2012. Unfortunately, these plans were never fully funded or implemented.

The WHO is preparing to launch yet another such effort, the Global Vaccine Safety Blueprint 2.0, that covers not just vaccine communications but also issues surrounding governance, surveillance, and how to deal with fragile states and emergencies such as COVID or Ebola. This is yet another reason why it is essential that the United States end its financial and diplomatic war on the global health body. Without American support, this effort is not likely to do much better than previous efforts.

But even with improved scientific literacy and vaccine awareness campaigns, the underlying problem of lack of trust in scientific and political elites remains unresolved.

This question, which is ultimately one of political economy, is obviously something that scientists understandably feel uncomfortable making any pronouncements about. However, if we do not tackle it, even the most well-funded vaccine comms campaign will fail.

The most immediate concern is the spread of vaccine misinformation through social media, and also by legacy media. Fear, outrage, and partisanship are superior drivers of user activity for companies like Facebook, and, in a vicious cycle, the algorithm will deliver up anything similar to that which enjoys greater engagement.

This is what allows a, well, pandemic of COVID-19 falsehoods such as those found in Plandemic, an anti-vaxx conspiracy theory video claiming the pandemic is a ploy to coerce mass vaccinations to spread faster and more widely than accurate public health guidance, which tends to provoke little emotional response.

Yet it would be wrong to only consider social media. Following the collapse of print advertising revenues, legacy newspapers and magazines are similarly driven by emotional headline and content packaging, which drives the greatest number of clicks.

Understaffed and abjectly paid newsrooms are required to pump out content as fast as possible with insufficient time to go into much depth or find additional sources to confirm their findings, while the bullpens historical complement of copy editors, specialist editors, and fact-checkers has been gutted. The Berlin Wall between opinion and news, which was never particularly inviolable to begin with, has now tumbled.

Censorship or even flagging of fake news on social media will not work because it runs up against the profit-maximization incentive built into any enterprise in a market. Moreover, much of the current flurry of crackdowns on misinformation by social media firms are efforts to ward off state regulation.

Censorship, in any case, is counterproductive because the goal is to win people away from vaccine hesitancy rather than to drive it underground. Anti-trust break up of the social media giants is no solution either, for the emotional hijacking driven by the profit motive is there whether performed by one giant Face-amaz-oogle, or a dozen medium-sized ones.

Instead, the response in the immediate term will have to be regulation, although decommodification of the sector should be the long-term goal. Alongside this, levies placed upon the media giants and telecommunication firms could recycle revenues back to journalists and their publications to revive the institution of journalism.

But even fixing the media landscape, a colossal task in itself, is insufficient, and the breakdown of journalism is only a symptom of a wider malaise.

The Italian case is illustrative here. Broder in his Jacobin essay on the situation there describes a battle between virologist Roberto Burioni, who has become a household name for his work promoting vaccination, and the anti-vaxx pseudoscience promoted by the former coalition government of the hard-right Lega and the Five Star Movement (M5S), a party that is hard to place on the left-right spectrum but mashes together left-populist anti-globalization rhetoric, localist green politics, and anti-immigrant sentiment.

It is hard to disagree with Burionis advocacy for evidence-based policy and defense of science. But any endorsement of Burionis battle against the death of expertise has to come with a qualification.

Broder describes how Burioni insists science is not a democracy and that only those who have studied these matters should speak on issues of life and death. One can interpret these statements as saying that decisions on vaccination should be removed from democratic debate. M5S voters certainly do.

Broder writes that such statements are symptomatic of the political centers contempt for ordinary people as functional illiterates. Akin to how Hillary Clinton dismissed Trump voters in the deindustrialized heartland of America as a basket of deplorables, and centrist opponents of the UK exit from the European Union derided Brexit voters (in particular from impoverished former Labour-voting heartlands) as elderly mouth-breathing racists whom they wish would just die already, former centrist prime minister Matteo Renzi and his associates regularly sneer at M5S voters as undereducated and lazy.

One does not have to agree with these voters, or for that matter with vaccine skeptics, to recognize that dismissing ones opponents as too stupid to make decisions only feeds greater resentment.

But one should certainly be able to sympathize with how these voters feel let down by centrist governance led by experts, with policy area after policy area removed from sovereign accountability via trade agreements and treaties whose closed-door tribunals overrule domestic legislation that protects workers or the environment, and central banks (especially in Europe) that remove monetary policy from the realm of democratic debate while enforcing privatization and wage cuts.

Such austerity may not have been performed by scientific experts but they were certainly imposed by self-styled financial experts. While working in Brussels during the Eurozone crisis, I remember a senior European Commission official telling me that there was no way voters should be able to decide even fiscal policy, as they were too stupid to know what was best for them, and would constantly vote themselves into greater and greater debt if the experts did not make such decisions instead.

And how well have these experts that rule us faired in their predictions anyway? It really is no wonder that there has been a loss of faith in expertise after the 2008 economic crisis, the Eurozone debacle, and the accompanying soaring inequality across the West.

There is a pearl-clutching response in the political center and sometimes on the Left as well to the global rise over the last decade of what is sloppily called populism, that doubles down on this post-democratic, technocratic rule by experts. They feel that the people have voted the wrong way, and so these nostalgists for Before Trump advocate or work to achieve a recourse to unelected bodies such as courts, civil servants, and, in the case of Trump, even the so-called deep state of the military or intelligence services, to do the right thing and block what the people have voted for.

Science can only tell us what is, not what ought to be. Science only describes the world. Burioni is correct about science not being democratic insofar as we do not vote on what the facts are, on what is. But we do not live in science. We live in democracy. And in any democracy, it is up to the voters to decide what ought to be.

Now, given a democratically decided course of action of what ought to be, science can absolutely assist us in telling us how best to get there. If we decide democratically that we want to build a bridge, engineers can tell us how to do so. This is why expertise is essential! But engineering does not tell us we must build a bridge. There is no objectively, scientifically correct set of policies outside of democratic debate.

Thinking otherwise is pure scientism, the belief that science is the best or only way to determine our values, and what we should do. Ironically, scientism works extremely well to undermine trust in expertise because it places experts in the role of a ruler who, like an absolute monarch, can never be kicked out of office.

Put another way, scientistic technocracy undermines popular sovereignty. And any time there is an absolute ruler extinguishing popular sovereignty, eventually there will be a revolt against them. But where any democrat wishes to be rid entirely of a monarch, we do not wish an end to expertise.

We only want the experts to know their place as advisors to the true sovereign: us. In the absence of any articulation of a defense of the expert as advisor to the voters and the voters representatives, there will only be a desire to overthrow the expert as ruler. Thus expansion of democratic rule, whose purpose is self-government, not correct government, is the only solution here.

And understanding democracy as the salve to the irritation of vaccine hesitancy leads us to a comprehension of why there is mistrust of pharmaceutical firms in the first place.

Most anti-vaxx campaigners, and even those who are not opposed to vaccines per se but are just hesitant about their safety, will in the first instance point to the depravity of Big Pharma. They will say that these corporations are corrupt, only out to make money for their shareholders, and that their lobbyists have bought our political leaders. The system is rigged.

They are not wrong as far as the wickedness of these firms goes. Ben Goldacre is a British medical doctor and author who has written widely about how the pharmaceutical industry finances clinical trials where negative data is not disclosed, never published, and often plans and even ghostwrites purportedly independent scientific papers about their drugs on behalf of academics. Goldacre believes that the pharmaceutical system is utterly broken and even a murderous disaster.

These are the same firms that are lobbying diplomats to prevent affordable access in the developing world to existing drugs that work against COVID-19, and that have hiked the price of hundreds of existing drugs used in the treatment of COVID-19, from steroids to sedatives. When Gileads Remdesivir antiviral proved to be extremely powerful against the disease, the company goosed the price by 33 percent. It is no wonder that so many people have contempt for these vampires.

But instead of fighting for the decommodification of pharmaceutical science, for taking these companies out of the private sector and turning them into agencies for the public good like the fire service, the response of far too many is to embrace the pseudoscience of alternative medicine, from naturopathy and homeopathy to acupuncture and chiropractic.

They forget that the quacks that provide these services taking advantage of the lack of medical and scientific understanding of their marks to sell them purported remedies that have in fact consistently failed the battery of scientific tests are no less profit-driven than Big Pharma.

Goldacre may be a campaigner against Big Pharma for its unethical, profit-driven distortion of medical science, but he is no less a critic of the snake-oil salesmen of the alternative medicine industry much of which, it turns out, is actually owned by the same large pharmaceutical corporations that produce conventional medicine.

This makes sense: if a pharmaceutical giant will fiddle the data on a conventional drug that they know doesnt work, why would they suddenly have qualms about selling an alternative remedy that they also know doesnt work? As Goldacre puts it: Big Pharma being shit doesnt mean that magic beans cures cancer.

And this is where we on the Left or at least parts of the academic left have to admit to our own shameful role in undermining trust in vaccines, and by extension trust in all conventional medicine and medical experts.

There is a flavor of left academic influenced by poststructuralist interpretations of philosophers of science such as Thomas Kuhn and Paul Feyerabend that argues that scientific theories are merely social constructs, that science is Eurocentric ideology, that Western medicine is ineluctably the product of structures of oppression, and that there are other ways of knowing.

Those who defend science, and hence Western medicine, are benighted fools drinking from the well of nave positivism (the materialist philosophical position that no true facts about the world can be ascertained other than through the senses as interpreted by reason).

Since the 1980s, this anti-realist philosophy has escaped the academy and has infected much wider swathes of society. It is not uncommon to hear an anti-vaxx activist campaigner assert a vulgarized version of the poststructuralist notion: Science doesnt know everything. Which of course on the face of it is true, as Irish comedian Dara Briain, who also happens to be a trained theoretical physicist, concedes, while famously adding: otherwise, itd stop. But just because science doesnt know everything doesnt mean you can fill in the gaps with whatever fairy tale most appeals to you.

The Scientific Revolution is called so precisely because the revolution in the mind that it represents was a recognition for the first time in human history that an authority should not be believed by dint of it being an authority, because human understanding of the world is inevitably incomplete and biased.

Science is the attempt we make to try to correct that bias and carry out the infinite, incompleteable process of completing our understanding. However, because scientists are themselves humans, this bias correction mechanism will itself always be biased. But the solution to this ineluctable bias is not abandonment of attempting bias-correction, but to always work to do it better.

Thus Big Pharmas dirty deeds are not yet further proof that science and medicine are indeed social constructs, but rather that the commodification of pharmaceutical research distorts the science it performs. So the solution to the problem of Big Pharma is not alternative medicine and rejection of the marvel that is vaccination, but to remove the cause of that distortion of science. Remove pharmaceutical research, development, and production from the market.

We are engaged in a complex war on multiple fronts here: against anti-vaxx and alternative medicine pseudoscience; against those in our own ranks who would abet such mumbo-jumbo; against sneering centrist post-democratic technocracy; against neoliberal underfunding of vaccine public health strategies; against the profit-motivated exploitation of behavioral science by social media; against the collapse of the institution of journalism; and, above all, against Pharmas market-driven distortion of science.

There is no one simple solution to the problem, but we cannot let up on any one of these fronts, not just to escape from the COVID-19 nightmare, but to avoid even worse should a much deadlier plague emerge, as it likely will one day.

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Tough on Anti-Vaxx Nonsense, Tough on the Causes of Anti-Vaxx Nonsense - Jacobin magazine

Alternative Medicine Industry Market COVID 19 Impacted In-Depth Analysis including key players Pure encapsulations, Thorne Research, Medigenics,…

Its very difficult times ahead for human-kind for we are fighting two pandemics simultaneously. Health & Economy. Salute to all healthcare professionals across the globe, who have dived headfirst selflessly into this tough battle to keep us breathing. We at JCMR, on the other hand, are fighting the battle to save industry sectors and companies therein from a literal meltdown. With critical supply and demand lines severely impaired, we have deployed on war-footing our research folks, industry consultants, SMEs and vertical evangelists to aid CxOs across the globe in doing whatever it takes to help them keep their lights on in this difficult hour. The battle is just starting to heat up even In this situation our research team managed to gather latest information about Global Alternative Medicine Industry Market report while evaluating the market, highlighting opportunities, risk side analysis, and leveraged with strategic and tactical decision-making support. The study provides information on market trends and development, drivers, capacities, technologies, and on the changing dynamics of Global Alternative Medicine Industry Market Report.

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Our research coverage is very vast and while evaluating the market we have analyzed 100+ key players in Global Alternative Medicine Industry Market report so we can provide you additional profiling as per your interest. Some of key competitors or manufacturers included in the study are Pure encapsulations, Thorne Research, Medigenics, Nordic Naturals, Herbal Hills, Herb Pharma, Pacific Nutritional, Deepure Plus, Helio USA

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Alternative Medicine Industry Market Analysis by Geographies from 2013 forecast till 2029:

North America

Europe

Asia Pacific

South America

Middle East

and Africa

US

Germany

China

Brazil

GCC

Canada

France

India

Argentina

South Africa

Mexico

UK

Japan

Rest of South

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Rest of MEA

Italy

Australia

Russia

Rest of

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Some of the Points cover in Global Alternative Medicine Industry Market Research Report is:

Chapter 1: Overview of Global Alternative Medicine Industry Market (2013-2029) Definition Specifications Classification Applications Regions

Chapter 2: Global Alternative Medicine Industry Market Competition by Players/Suppliers 2013 and 2020 Manufacturing Cost Structure Raw Material and Suppliers Manufacturing Process Industry Chain Structure

Chapter 3: Global Alternative Medicine Industry Market Sales (Volume) and Revenue (Value) by Region (2013-2020) Sales Revenue and market share

Chapter 4, 5 and 6: Global Alternative Medicine Industry Market by Type, Application & Players/Suppliers Profiles (2013-2020) Market Share by Type & Application Growth Rate by Type & Application Drivers and Opportunities Company Basic Information

Chapter 7, 8 and 9: Global Alternative Medicine Industry Market Manufacturing Cost, Sourcing & Marketing Strategy Analysis Key Raw Materials Analysis Upstream Raw Materials Sourcing Marketing Channel

Chapter 10 and 11: Alternative Medicine Industry Market Effect Factors Analysis and Market Size (Value and Volume) Forecast (2020-2029) Technology Progress/Risk Sales Volume, Revenue Forecast (by Type, Application & Region)

Chapter 12, 13, 14 and 15: Alternative Medicine Industry Market Research Findings and Conclusion, appendix and data source Methodology/Research Approach Data Source (Secondary Sources & Primary Sources) Market Size Estimation

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Alternative Medicine Industry Market COVID 19 Impacted In-Depth Analysis including key players Pure encapsulations, Thorne Research, Medigenics,...

Are You There God? Its Me, Menopause – Glamour

The most effective medical therapies for hot flushes are estrogen, some antidepressants, and some antiseizure medications. As a doctor, I knewdespite all the claims on social media and various wellness sitesthat diet, acupuncture, wearable magnets, and supplements were either ineffective or unproven. And on top of that, some of these so-called alternative therapies have risks. Especially supplements, which are unregulated and can sometimes contain hormones or antidepressantsmedications that shouldnt be taken without appropriate supervision.

I also practiced cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) for hot flushes. There is good evidence to support its use here given the connection between hot flushes and anxiety; there are some shared connections in the nervous system that explain the overlap in symptoms, which may be why some medications that can treat anxiety can also improve hot flushes. Some might call that complementary or alternative medicine, but if its proven to be effectivewhich CBT isthen, for me, its just medicine.

Menopause shouldnt be a mystery.

For many womenwomen like memenopause isnt just about the bothersome symptoms. I knew my family history put me at high risk for osteoporosis. My mother began developing fractures in her 50s. She was likely in menopause by her early 40s, but such was the cloak of shame at the time that I can only approximate her age based on what I remember about her seemingly constant yelling at my father for shutting the windows.

Like many women, my mothers osteoporosis was ignored. When I suggested she get screened for osteoporosis, she was told she didnt need it. When I suggested she start hormone therapy treatment, she was told she didnt want thatand that was even before the public concern surrounding estrogen. As women age their health concerns are often ignored as women themselves are expected to fade away into oblivion. After a miserable final 10 years with fracture after fracture, she died at age 86 from osteoporosis, having spent much of those final years in pain and in hospitals.

Estrogen prevents the accelerated loss of bone mass characteristic of menopause, so I knew it was the right choice for me to treat my hot flushes and protect my bones. I opted for estradiol, which is the main type of estrogen made by the ovary before menopause. While all pharmaceutical grade MHT is low-risk, transdermal estradiol is the safest option as its not associated with an increased risk of blood clots, so thats what I chose. To protect my uterus, I chose an oral form of progesterone, as it is associated with the lowest risk of breast cancer (and even then, research shows the low risk seems to only start after several years of therapy).

Also popular are bioidentical, or compounded, hormones, but I would never recommend that approach or choose it for myself. Bioidentical is a quasi-medical term of varying definitions. These products arent one step away from ground-up yams; they are synthesized in a multistep process in a lab, as are most hormones in MHT. In other words, these terms are not medicalthey are marketing and are misleading.

There are serious safety concerns with compounded hormones. They may contain more or less hormone than advertised and their absorption may be erratic, leading to increased risks of complications such as endometrial cancer. With an FDA-approved prescription, I know exactly what Im getting and how much is absorbed. There is a wide range of dosing and formulations available, so pharmaceutical MHT can be customized to suit each woman's need. And no, I dont take money from the pharmaceutical industryI just demand precision in my medications as all women should. We deserve to know exactly what were putting into our bodies.

A womans decision to start hormones should be based on her symptoms and her risk of osteoporosis, but also her personal medical history. Its important to consider a variety of risk factors and conditions that may be positively or negatively affected by MHT, such as breast cancer, heart attack, stroke, type 2 diabetes, elevated triglycerides, blood clots, and dementia.

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Are You There God? Its Me, Menopause - Glamour

COVID-19 Impact on Medical Wellness Market Analysis, Size, Trends and Forecast 2020 to 2026| Enrich Hair & Skin, VLCC Wellness Center, Guardian…

Medical Wellness Market Report Delivering Growth Analysis with Key Trends of Top Companies (2020-2026)

A comprehensive research study on the Medical Wellness Marketwas recently published by Market Report Expert. This is an up-to-date report, covering the current COVID-19 impact on the market. The Coronavirus (COVID-19) has affected every aspect of life globally and thus altering the global market scenario. The changes in the market conditions are drastic. The swiftly changing market scenario and initial and future assessment of the impact on Medical Wellness market is covered in the report.The Medical Wellness Market report is a precise and deep-dive study on the current state that aims at the major drivers, market strategies, and imposing growth of the key players. Worldwide Medical Wellness Industry also offers a granular study of the dynamics, segmentation, revenue, share forecasts, and allows you to make superior business decisions. The report serves imperative statistics on the market stature of the prominent manufacturers and is an important source of guidance and advice for companies and individuals involved in the Medical Wellness industry.

The Global Medical Wellness Market poised to grow from US$ XX million in 2020 to US$ XX million by 2026 at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of XX% during the projection period of 2020-2026.

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Enrich Hair& Skin, VLCC Wellness Center, Guardian Lifecare, Healthkart, WTS International, The Body Holiday, Bon Vital, Biologique Recherche, Mindbody, Massage Envy, ClearCost Health, Golds Gym International, World Gym, Kaya Skin Clinic

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The latest report on the Medical Wellness Market consists of an analysis of this industry and its type, application, and other segments. As per the report, the market is estimated to gain significant returns and register substantial y-o-y growth during the forecast period of 2020-2026.

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The research offers an analysis of the geographical landscape of the Medical Wellness Market, which is divided into regions such as North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, South America, and the Middle East & Africa. The segment includes data about several parameters related to the regional contribution such as market share, application share, type share, key companies in respective regions, market share of key companies in regional market, growth rate and revenue of the regional market, sales, production, and consumption of the respective Medical Wellness market.

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COVID-19 Impact on Medical Wellness Market Analysis, Size, Trends and Forecast 2020 to 2026| Enrich Hair & Skin, VLCC Wellness Center, Guardian...

Art Industry News: Banksy Confirms That a Relatively Meh New Mural in Nottingham Was His Handiwork + Other Stories – artnet News

Art Industry News is a daily digest of the most consequential developments coming out of the art world and art market. Heres what you need to know on this Monday, October 19.

A Plan to Recover the Titanic Radio Raises New Questions The company that owns the salvage rights to the iconic shipwreck wants to retrieve its radio equipment, sparking a debate over whether such anarcheological dig would be ethical. Lawyers for the US government have raised the concern in an ongoing court battle to block the expedition, suggesting that the company could stir remains of some 1,500 people who died in the wreck in 1912. The company, RMS Titanic Inc., claims that if there were human remains to be found, they likely would have been encountered in the 200 dives that preceded the planned expedition.(AP)

A Long-Running Bid for Looted Art Moves Ahead The New York Times is checking in on perhaps the longest-running Nazi-stolen art restitution dispute. The family of Hungarian banker Baron Mor Lipot Herzog first filed a claim in Budapest in 1945 seeking the return of 2,500 artworks, Renaissance furniture, and tapestries. The most recent legal case, which centers on dozens of works valued at more than $100 million, is now snaking its way through the courts in Washington, DC. (New York Times)

Banksy Claims Mural of Young Girl The elusive street artist has claimed authorship of a mural of a young girl doing thehula hoop with a bicycle tirein Lenton, Nottingham,putting an end to speculation that erupted last week. The mural appeared on Tuesday, October 13 alongside a bent bicycle with a missing back tire locked to a nearby poll. Local authorities rushed to protect the mural by placing plastic sheeting over it.Everyone is very excited and many, many people are coming to see the picture, said Surinder Kaur, who runs the hair salon next door. As for whether its presence would boost business, Kaur said it was too soon to tell. If were being honest, wed wager Banksy may have been slow to take ownership of the mural because hes done better.(Guardian)

Prados Post-Lockdown Exhibition Stirs Misogyny Debate The Prados first post-lockdown exhibition is already making waves. Uninvited Guests examineshow women were treated in the Spanish art world between 1833 and 1931, evolving from subjects and muses to artists in their own right. Yet some feel the historically grounded exhibition misses the point and instead promotes stereotypes. The show also hit a snag when it came to light last week that a work had been misattributed to a female artist, when it was in fact created by a man. (Guardian)

Talking Heads Singer Is Selling His Art David Byrne, the former frontman for the Talking Heads, is selling 50 hand-drawn illustrations created during Manhattans lockdown at Pace gallery. The works, available online, are $3,000 each. The drawings will be released in five series of 10, published every Monday and Thursday from October 15 to 29 (the first bunch has already sold out). Proceeds will go to Byrnes nonprofit, the Arbutus Foundation. (TAN)

Zo Buckman Joins Pippy Houldsworth Gallery The London gallery now represents the multidisciplinary artist known for her sculptures incorporating boxing gloves, textiles, and lingerie. Her first solo exhibition with the gallery, also her first in the UK, is scheduled to open on February 12.(Press release)

A Coveted Van Gogh Will Hit the Block in New York Vincent van Goghs Fleurs dans un verre(1890) will be offered at Sothebys livestreamed New York auction on October 28. The painting, which Hermann Gring seized from Jewish collectorAlfred Lindons bank vault during World War II, is expected to fetch between $14 million and $18 million.(TAN)

ArtRio Forges Ahead ArtRio is one of the few live art fairs taking place anywhere in the worldand it is among the first to be held in Brazil, one of the countries with the most COVID-19 cases, since lockdown began. Forty-seven galleries set up shop in the fairs pavilion in Rio de Janeiro for a reduced audience of Brazilian collectors over the weekend, while 71 galleries are promoting virtual booths for an international audience through October 25. (TAN)

Northern Ireland Museums Will Close for a Month Museums and galleries in six Northern Ireland counties will be shuttered for four weeks as authorities seek to limit the spread of the coronavirus amid a rising number of reported cases. Cultural institutions across the border in the Republic of Ireland have already been closed. (Museums Association)

Artist and Healer Marianne Wex Dies at 83 The artist, whose rephotographs of mass-media images probed the gendered nature of kinesics, has died at 83 in Germany. Her influence as an artist on conceptual photography and womens and gender studies was outsized; she stopped creating art in 1977 after being diagnosed with a serious illness and embarked on a successful career in alternative medicine. (Artforum)

Artist and Designer Enzo Mari Dies at 83 The Italian artist and designer, who worked with many famous Italian brands, died in Milan at 83. A show of his work,curated by Serpentine Galleries artistic director Hans Ulrich Obrist with Francesca Giacomelli, opened at Triennale di Milano on October 17. His archive will be donated to the city. (Dezeen)

Why Did PAMM Host Trumps Town Hall? Some were surprisedand dismayedto see that the Prez Art Museum Miami permitted a town hall with President Trump to be held on its premises last week. PAMM has said it has a responsibility to remain non-partisan, pointing to the American Alliance of Museumss official guidelines on election advocacy. The institution also noted that it hosted a similar town hall earlier this month with Democratic nominee Joe Biden. (Hyperallergic)

Jordan Casteels Vogue Cover Goes to SFMOMA The painting by Jordan Casteel that appeared on the cover of the September issue of Vogue is headed to a museum. The collectors Pamela Joyner and Alfred Giuffrida acquired the painting, Aurora (2020), which features the fashion designer Aurora James. The couple will send the work on long-term loan to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, where it will remain on view for the next year. (ARTnews)

Carrie Mae Weems Plasters Lincoln Center The American artists ongoing project to raise awareness about the risks of COVID-19 for communities of color is popping up in New York. The most recent iteration of her public-art installation Resist COVID/Take 6! is on view now outside Lincoln Center. It offers gratitude to essential workers, guidelines on social distancing, and words of encouragement. (Hyperallergic)

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Art Industry News: Banksy Confirms That a Relatively Meh New Mural in Nottingham Was His Handiwork + Other Stories - artnet News

Are you getting the most out of your Medicare plan? – The Columbian

If the year 2020 has taught us anything, its that change is one of the few constants we can count on. Your health insurance is something you should always be able to rely on, but a little-known fact that catches a lot of folks off guard is that their Medicare plans can change from year to year.

Medicare Advantage and Prescription Drug plans often undergo changes from year to year, which is why its so important to review your coverage annually. Private companies that administer Medicare Advantage and Prescription Drug plans are in competition with one another to offer comprehensive benefits at low costs, so its important to compare your options. Its common to see benefits like dental coverage, alternative medicine, chiropractic and massage therapy, and wellness incentive programs appear and disappear from plans so comparing and contrasting your choices is key.

If youre on a Medicare plan, your company will send you a letter called an Annual Notice of Change. Also referred to as an ANOC, you can expect these letters to arrive by the end of September each year. Your insurance company sends these letters to tell you about the specific parts of your plan that will be changing in the next calendar year.

If youre not a fan of the changes to your Medicare plan, never fear! The Medicare Annual Enrollment Period runs from October 15th to December 7th of every year, and during that time you can sign up for or change your Medicare Advantage or Prescription Drug plan. Even if you like your plan, you should shop around and weigh your options just like you would if you were thinking of buying a new car or a new furniture set for your home. Remember to think about your doctor preferences, medications, and medical needs. The choices can be overwhelming, so it may be advantageous to have a local insurance broker guide you.

Health Insurance brokers train year-round to stay on top of important Medicare regulations and products. Independent brokers like the agents with Your Insurance Gal Agency contract with multiple companies and go through special trainings to learn about what each of their plans has to offer.Some agents are even involved with member organizations that monitor state and federal legislation regarding health insurance. These are great agents to partner with!

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Are you getting the most out of your Medicare plan? - The Columbian

How Can Liberal Democracy Respond to the Rise of QAnon? – Byline Times

CJ Werleman explores the overlap between those with hard right beliefs and people with a desire to lead alternative lifestyles via the conspiracy theory group which believes Donald Trump is saving the world from cannibals and paedophiles

The US Presidential Election will go a long way to determining whether or not democracy, liberalism, and political parties of the left are able to survive in the social media age.

If American voters re-elect Donald Trump a President who is on tape admitting that he downplayed a virus that has killed more than 200,000 people and put 30 million more on the unemployment line, while at the same time smearing dead US soldiers as losers and suckers and being credibly accused of sexual assault for the 42nd time then it will be in part because 56% of Republican Party voters steadfastly believe that he is defending the planet from a secret cabal of Satan-worshiping paedophiles and cannibals: a conspiracy theory known as QAnon, which contends that the secret end goal of liberalism is to legalise child sex.

A Trump victory in November would make evidently clear that a majority of voters are unable to discern truth from fiction, information from disinformation, and decency from vulgarity.

But the QAnon conspiracy is not confined to the US. It has now landed in the UK, in the midst of the countrys second COVID-19 wave.

This has to do with the QAnon movement, a late-middle-aged man who described himself a member of the English Democrats, told Byline TV during anti-mask protests held in London over the weekend.

We are a lot of people sitting at home while COVID-19 is going on and looking on their computers and finding out actually what is going on, he said. QAnon is giving people lots of information, and its asking you to use your mind. Its the best thing. I mean, I really didnt know what was going on for years and years. Now obviously theres an illness COVID-19 but its not to the extent it is they are giving and they are using COVID-19 to control the population. Its as simple as that. As Q would say, get on your computers, go out there and get the information for yourself.

In the real world, Q the alleged source of the conspiracy does not exist, originating instead as a poster on the far-right message board 4Chan, which has become popular among neo-Nazis, white nationalists and white supremacists.

When Q began accusing Democrats, Deep State government officials and liberal Hollywood elites of running a secret child-sex trafficking ring, QAnon conspiracy theorists began showing up at Trumps campaign rallies in 2018. Two years later, they are winning Republican Party primaries and on the verge of being elected to the US Congress.

In many ways, QAnon has become a one-stop-shop for right-wing extremists, anti-vaxxers, 5G conspiracy theorists, 9/11 truthers and anyone else seeking a simple reading of a complex world. But even more concerning is the way in which the movement seems to be evolving and is now associated with New Age hippies, Peloton mums, astrological forums and yoga communities.

It is remarkable how dramatic of a demographic shift QAnon has undergone in about two months, observes NBC investigative reporter Ben Collins. Suburban white women have completely taken over this movement.

Those following the evolution of the conspiracy movement have observed how female social media influencers, from mothering advice accounts to alternative health pages, have given QAnon a more feminine touch by softening the messages, videos and traditional imagery that would be associated with QAnon narratives, according to PhD researcher Marc Andre Argentino. This branding is the polar opposite of raw QAnon.

Slate magazines Lili Loofbourow says that, at the same time the QAnon conspiracy retains its violent roots, with subtle and not so subtle pleas for vigilante and anti-democratic retributions against its targets, its appeal is becoming more morally ambiguous, simultaneously frightening, and perfectly crafted to draw in a certain slice of suburban women.

Its worth mentioning that the FBI has identified QAnon conspiracy theorists as extremists who pose a potential domestic terrorism threat and that the EUs counter-terrorism coordinator, Giles de Kerchove, has warned about a future wave of terrorism rooted in conspiracy theories and technophobia.

We have already seen small-scale acts of violence caused by a belief in conspiracy theories for example, against telecom masts and given the amount of disinformation online, we could see more serious examples of this in the future, Kerchove told the counter-terrorism journal CTC Sentinel.

The growing nexus between the New Age movement and neo-Nazism that is forming via QAnon is especially troubling because it is undermining traditional liberal alliances the kind needed to withstand anti-democratic and pro-authoritarian movements.

Jules Evans, a fellow at the Centre for the History of the Emotions, documents how the New Age movement overlapped with far-right politics in Germany during the 1920s and 1930s. Not only did astrological organisations endorse Adolf Hitler, but the Nazis supported alternative medicine, homeopathy, natural healing and anti-vaccination conspiracy theories.

Hitler and his fellow Nazis sold the German people a simplistic, supernatural fantasy and conspiracy theory, in which all their problems were caused by a hidden global elite of monsters/vampires/demons that is, the Jews but the magical light-warriors of the Nazi Party would defeat them in a cosmic battle, ushering in a golden age of peace and love, writes Evans.

Does this sound like Q to you? she asks, rhetorically.

Gaia.com, a subscription-based platform, is not only for yoga and meditation enthusiasts but truth seekers and believers empowering an evolution of consciousness. The site, which boasts 300,000 members, also promotes David Icke, who has spoken of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories such as questioning the official narrative of Auschwitz and blaming powerful Jewish elites for the Holocaust, while also arguing that the world is being controlled by a secret group of shapeshifting reptilian humanoids.

Professor Gregory Stanton, the worlds most pre-eminent scholar of genocide, has said that QAnon is a Nazi cult but rebranded and draws comparisons between it and the anti-Semitic conspiracy that Nazi propaganda promoted that a secret Jewish cabal is taking control of the world, kidnapping and killing children to gain power from their blood, while mongrelising and curtailing the white master race.

The world has seen QAnon before, Stanton added. It was called Nazism. In QAnon, Nazism wants a comeback. The QAnon conspiracy theory has now spread to neo-Nazis in Germany, where over 200,000 German QAnon accounts infest the internet.

QAnon is flourishing at the same time as faith and trust in democratic institutions and scientific and academic expertise is declining, alongside the rise of social media algorithms trapping many in a sea of unfiltered disinformation.

Belief in conspiracy theories appears to be driven by motives that can be characterised as epistemic (understanding ones environment), existential (being safe and in control of ones environment), and social (maintaining a positive image of the self and the social group), according to a study conducted by the University of Kent.

It is reasonable to conclude that, in a world besieged by a global pandemic, climate change, terrorism, and economic decline, all three of these motives are gaining a foothold.

No democracy can survive when more than half of the voters belonging to one of the two major political parties believes its elected leader is keeping the world safe from Satan-worshipping paedophiles and cannibals and that his defeat represents a biblical Armageddon.

How will evidence-based centre-left and centre-right political parties in the US, UK and Europe withstand this intellectual onslaught?

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How Can Liberal Democracy Respond to the Rise of QAnon? - Byline Times

What Are the Health Benefits of Qi Gong? – Health Essentials from Cleveland Clinic

Its safe to say many of us are under more stress than usual these days. And sure, youd love to do something to lower your stress and improve your health. But who has time for that?

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Actually, if you have 10 minutes a day, you have enough time to do qi gong. This ancient Chinese practice can reduce stress and help your body function at its best.

Integrative medicine specialist Yufang Lin, MD, talks about this age-old practice. It requires no special training or equipment and has some amazing potential health benefits.

Qi gong originated in China about 4,000 years ago. It is based on traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) principles, which state that qi, or energy, is present in everyones body.

According to TCM principles, a persons qi must flow throughout the body in order for people to feel their best, Dr. Lin explains. If qi becomes stagnant in a certain area, health problems can occur.

Qi gong uses simple poses and breathing patterns to promote a healthy flow and reduce stagnation of qi. Proper flow of qi can help the body engage its own healing processes. The literal translation of qi gong is to work with qi.

Qi gong is not a form of yoga. Yogas poses tend to require more strength, balance and stretching than qi gong. Yoga also originated in ancient India and is not rooted in TCM.

As a child in Taiwan, I would see people doing qi gong in the park on my way to school, Dr. Lin recalls. A lot of them were older people. The slow, purposeful movements of qi gong are less challenging to your balance. These movements are easy for most people to do and you can modify them. People can also do chair-based qi gong if they cant stand.

Dr. Lin says many smaller studies have shown that qi gong offers a variety of benefits. However, more large, controlled studies are needed to prove that qi gong can treat or even prevent health problems. Still, Dr. Lin says, qi gongs potential benefits make it well worth the effort. Its generally safe and easy for nearly anyone to try. Heres what the research says about qi gong:

One study found that qi gong could reduce symptoms of depression. In this study, those who practiced qi gong also experienced less anxiety and better moods as compared to those who didnt. Qi gong was also shown to have positive effects on bone and cardiovascular health and improve balance.

Chronic fatigue syndrome is a common disorder that causes extreme tiredness. There is no known cause, and it doesnt go away with rest. It can be difficult or nearly impossible for someone with chronic fatigue to function in their daily life.

In a study, 64 people with chronic fatigue experienced improvements in their symptoms after four months of practicing qi gong. They had better mental functioning and less fatigue than those who didnt. If youre tired all the time, and your doctor has ruled out any medical conditions, qi gong could help.

Your immune systems job is to fend off unwanted guests like viruses, bacteria and diseases. Thats an important responsibility. And qi gong may give your immune system a little extra help.

A review of several studies found that qi gong had a noticeable impact on immune functioning. It increased levels of certain immune cells in people who practiced it regularly.

Many people who are undergoing cancer treatment need relief from side effects and the stress of treatment. Often, they turn to alternative medicine practices like acupuncture, yoga or massage. Qi gong may have a place on this list, too.

Some evidence suggests that using qi gong can help patients with cancer fight fatigue and mood disturbances. This boost may be a welcome relief.

Keep in mind that qi gong is not an overnight fix. Like any exercise, you need time to master it to get the full benefits.

While taking a class is helpful, Dr. Lin says this isnt necessary. Many people learn qi gong from online videos and instructions. Pay attention to the form and learn it properly. Then you can focus on breathing and being present, Dr. Lin says.

Qi gong can help you feel your best plus, its free, easy and doesnt require much time. Not many other wellness activities can make those claims.

Regular exercise such as 30 minutes of walking a day is also an effective way to improve your health, reduce stress and help you sleep better. If you exercise regularly or plan to start, qi gong is a great addition to your routine. Working it in could be the healthy one-two punch you need during stressful times.

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What Are the Health Benefits of Qi Gong? - Health Essentials from Cleveland Clinic

The German Sleep Society (DGSM) Recognizes PAT based Technology in its New Sleep-Related Breathing Disorders Guidelines, Further Benefitting Itamar…

Updated guidelines represent a significant milestone in the adoption of Itamars Peripheral Arterial Tonometry (PAT) based Home Sleep Apnea Testing (HSAT) in Europe, following adoption in the UK, Holland, and Sweden

CAESAREA, Israel, Sept. 21, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Itamar Medical Ltd. (NASDAQ and TASE: ITMR), a leading medical device and digital health company focused on the diagnosis of sleep apnea and other respiratory sleep disorders, is pleased to report that The German Sleep Society (DGSM) has released an update to its clinical guidelines for Sleep-Related Breathing Disorders (SRBD) recognizing Peripheral Arterial Tonometry (PAT) technology as an equivalent alternative to polygraphy-based Home Sleep Apnea Testing (HSAT) systems. The new guidelines were published in Somnologie Magazine on September 9th, 2020.

These guidelines set the specifications for accepted technologies and practices to be used in the diagnosis and treatment of SRBD, marking another major achievement in the recognition and adoption of PAT technology and PAT-based HSAT systems in Europe. Accreditation by the foremost medical society clinical guidelines, in any market, serves as a fundamental first step in the pathway towards full reimbursement. As such, these updated guidelines may assist in paving the way for the reimbursement of the companys WatchPAT devices in Germany.

We are very pleased to see the recognition of PAT technology by the German Sleep Society, said Eilon Livne, Vice President of Sales and Channels Development EMEA at Itamar Medical. This is an important landmark as we are committed to removing obstacles in sleep medicine markets worldwide and specifically expanding our reach within the European market. We are excited to begin delivering a comprehensive solution to aid the diagnosis and treatment of sleep apnea patients in Germany and continue filling the substantial gap in the current clinical pathway which leaves the vast majority of Sleep Apnea patients undiagnosed.

Sleep apnea, which affects approximately 1 Billion people worldwide, is a sleep disorder in which breathing repeatedly stops and starts, and is also often associated with other serious health problems, especially cardiovascular disease. Itamar Medicals PAT technology, based on a physiological signal acquired non-invasively from the finger, allows for the simple and accurate diagnosis of this disorder, supporting the companys efforts to provide an easy access solution to address the estimated 80% undiagnosed Sleep Apnea patient population.

To date, PAT is the only alternative technology to airflow-based systems, that is accredited and endorsed by U.S, Dutch, UK, and Swedish sleep-related clinical guidelines.

The PAT technology provides sleep physicians with unprecedented access to information regarding sleep and sleep disturbance in comparison to standard outpatient recording, said Prof. Dr. med. Boris A. Stuck, Professor and chair of the Department of Otorhinolaryngology, Head and Neck Surgery, University Hospital Marburg, Germany. In this context, sleep duration, sleep architecture and sympathetic arousals are of particular interest. Moreover, the technology is easy to handle for both physician and patient.

About WatchPAT

WatchPAT, the FDA-approved flagship product developed by Itamar Medical, is used for diagnosing Sleep Apnea in the home environment. The WatchPAT is an easy-to-use patient-led alternative with unique abilities to interpret test results automatically, as well as produce a full sleep report. It provides a variety of respiratory indices, distinguishes between sleep and wakefulness, and provides a complete sleep architecture that includes the analysis of sleep stages such as light sleep, deep sleep and REM sleep. The WatchPAT also records snoring volume and body position information throughout the night. The FDA-cleared Central PLUS Module also enables specific identification of Central Sleep Apnea (CSA).

About Itamar Medical Ltd.

Itamar Medical is a medical technology company focused on the development and commercialization of non-invasive medical devices and solutions to aid in the diagnosis of respiratory sleep disorders. Itamar Medical commercializes a digital healthcare platform to facilitate the continuum of care for effective sleep apnea management with a focus on the core sleep, cardiology and direct to consumer markets. Itamar Medical offers a Total Sleep Solution to help physicians provide comprehensive sleep apnea management in a variety of clinical environments to optimize patient care and reduce healthcare system costs. The Companys key product, WatchPAT, is commercially available within major markets including the US, Japan, and Europe. Itamar Medical is a public company traded on the Nasdaq and on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchanges, and is based in Caesarea, Israel with U.S. headquarters based in Atlanta, GA. For additional information visit http://www.itamar-medical.com.

Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the "safe harbor" provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 and other applicable securities laws. Statements preceded by, followed by, or that otherwise include the words "believes", "expects", "anticipates", "intends", "estimates", "plans", and similar expressions or future or conditional verbs such as "will", "should", "would", "may" and "could" are generally forward-looking in nature and not historical facts. For example, when we discuss obtaining reimbursement for our products, we are using forward-looking statements. Because such statements deal with future events, they are subject to various risks, uncertainties and assumptions, including events and circumstances out of Itamar Medical's control and actual results, expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements, could differ materially from Itamar Medical's current expectations. Factors that could cause or contribute to such differences include, but are not limited to, risks, uncertainties and assumptions discussed from time to time by us in reports filed with, or furnished to, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Israel Securities Authority (ISA), including our latest Annual Report on Form 20-F which is on file with the SEC and the ISA. Except as otherwise required by law, we undertake no obligation to publicly release any revisions to these forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances after the date hereof or to reflect the occurrence of unanticipated events.

Itamar Medical Company ContactItamar Medical Ltd.Shy BassonChief Financial OfficerPhone: +972-4-617-7700bshy@itamar-medical.com

Itamar Medical Investor Relations Contact (U.S.)Leigh Salvo or Caroline PaulGilmartin GroupPhone: +1-415-937-5412investors@itamar-medical.com

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The German Sleep Society (DGSM) Recognizes PAT based Technology in its New Sleep-Related Breathing Disorders Guidelines, Further Benefitting Itamar...

Want to Take Turmeric for Arthritis Pain? Here’s What to Know – Healthline

Arthritis is the most common joint disorder in the United States, and knees are often the first joints affected by the condition.

One study found that in people above age 60, more than 10 percent of men and 13 percent of women had symptoms of arthritis in their knees.

OTC and prescription pain medication can offer relief, but are frequently associated with side effects. These side effects include kidney damage and heart problems.

Almost 20 percent of Americans report some degree of knee pain, according to figures published in 2006 by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Pain can range from mild stiffness to levels that are nearly disabling.

Recent studies have found that turmeric, a flavorful spice popular in India, may help relieve joint pain. The spice is popular in Ayurvedic medicine, but is mainly used in food in the United States and not as a medication.

Experts say that there is increasingly clear evidence that the active ingredient in turmeric may have health benefits.

It is widely believed that curcumin, which is the active ingredient in turmeric, has anti-inflammatory and antioxidant properties. And for this reason, its frequently used as a supplement by many people to help with joint symptoms, Dr. Nagendra Gupta, FACP, CPE, an internist at Texas Health Arlington Memorial Hospital, told Healthline.

A study published in the medical journal Trials compared the effectiveness of turmeric to that of an anti-inflammatory drug called diclofenac.

The randomized trial gave 139 patients with knee pain either a 500-milligram (mg) capsule of curcumin three times a day or a 50-mg diclofenac pill twice daily. Scientists found that both groups experienced significant pain relief.

Curcumin has similar efficacy to diclofenac but demonstrated better tolerance among patients with knee OA. Curcumin can be an alternative treatment option in the patients with knee OA who are intolerant to the side effects of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, the study authors wrote.

In another study, published this week in the Annals of Internal Medicine, researchers at the University of Australia in Tasmania assigned 70 participants, over age 40, with knee osteoarthritis (OA) and swelling diagnosed by ultrasound, to receive either 1000 mg per day of turmeric or a placebo.

After 12 weeks, the randomly controlled placebo trial found that an extract of turmeric was more effective than a placebo in reducing knee pain in people with knee osteoarthritis.

Those taking turmeric reported significantly less knee pain at the end of the study, according to the standardized questionnaire.

Researchers emphasized that more research is needed, and the only limiting factor of their study was the small number of participants.

This research also received funding from Natural Remedies PVT Ltd, a company that offers Ayurvedic medicines and herbs.

While this may indicate a conflict of interest, previous research also supports this spices effectiveness for pain relief.

Turmeric (Curcuma Longa) is a frequently used spice in South Asian foods like curries, and it can add a warm orange or yellow color to meats and rice dishes. It also has a long history of use in Ayurvedic medicine.

The active ingredient in turmeric is curcumin, and research finds that it has a surprisingly wide range of beneficial properties.

Curcumin, unlike some NSAIDs, has also been determined to be nontoxic. NSAIDs, such as ibuprofen, taken in excess can cause symptoms that include convulsions, coma, and acute renal (kidney) failure.

Experts say that given turmerics known health benefits, including it in meals is best.

Eating turmeric with fats or oils can improve absorption.

Turmeric however, specifically the phytonutrient curcumin, has so many health benefits, so definitely incorporating turmeric into meals would be ideal as part of an overall healthy lifestyle plan, said Reema Kanda, RD, a clinical dietitian at Hoag Orthopedic Institute.

Incorporating turmeric into meals that contain fats and oils or black pepper will enhance absorption.

Kanda emphasized that the quality of the turmeric powder can also affect bioavailability. She also said, You want to be sure the turmeric powder is free of contaminants that are often found when making powders.

She added that many studies have utilized turmeric extracts over turmeric powder, which has higher amounts of curcumin. Because of that, the studies recommended extracts for therapeutic use for health benefits such as improving in joint pain.

Theres strong evidence that eating the Mediterranean diet may provide significant knee pain relief in people with OA.

Researchers reviewing three different studies found that people with symptoms of arthritis had an improved quality of life after starting the Mediterranean diet.

According to the study, the Mediterranean diet may benefit OA because of its anti-inflammatory properties, tendency to reverse metabolic syndrome (a risk factor of diabetes), and reduce obesity.

Researchers say the diet is also rich in polyphenols (plant compounds), which can prevent inflammation and cartilage destruction, and this could also be why it shows benefit.

While there is no specific diet that works as a cure for arthritis, various studies have shown that a Mediterranean diet can help fight the inflammation associated with arthritis and slow the disease progression, said Gupta.

As always, getting the right dosage is key to staying healthy. While turmeric may help joint pain, more is not always better.

Consuming large amounts of turmeric can have side effects.

Subjects in a 2006 small dose-response study reported a range of adverse reactions from using 500 mg to 12,000 mg of curcumin daily, although the researchers found overall participants tolerated the high levels of the spice.

Of 24 participants, seven reported side effects that included headache, diarrhea, and skin rash. All but one of the people with side effects were taking over 4,000 mg of turmeric.

Turmeric is also high in oxalate, a chemical that in large doses can combine with calcium to create kidney stones.

According to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), curcumin, the active ingredient in turmeric, is generally recognized as safe. However, the FDA has previously warned that turmeric from Bangladesh contained excessive levels of lead, which can adversely affect health.

Studies have shown that turmeric can have strong anticoagulant effects, which could affect how blood-thinning drugs work in the body.

If you want to try using turmeric to treat joint pain, its always a good idea to speak with your doctor first to make sure it wont interact with medications youre already taking.

Joint pain, especially in the knee, due to arthritis affects about 1 in 10 older Americans.

Research finds that an ingredient in the spice turmeric can significantly reduce knee pain in people with osteoarthritis but it wont improve swelling or change cartilage.

Although considered safe by the FDA, there is strong evidence that turmeric can interact with blood-thinning drugs, and the agency has warned that turmeric imported from Bangladesh has shown high levels of lead.

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Want to Take Turmeric for Arthritis Pain? Here's What to Know - Healthline

Brian O’Connell Now: Where is Naturopathic Healer Today? Is He in Jail? – The Cinemaholic

Naturopathy refers to a form of alternative medicine wherein nature-based treatments are used to heal the body. Practices like acupuncture, herbal massages, and nutritional counseling fall under its purview. However, it must be noted that many of the techniques in naturopathy actually stem from colloquial and folk wisdom, and are not necessarily based on scientific evidence. This article takes a look at a self-proclaimed naturopathic doctor whose unconventional practices actually had fatal consequences.His story has been covered in Oxygens License to Kill: Death By Miracle Cure.

It all goes back to 2003. Sean Flanagan, who was suffering from Ewings sarcoma, was being treated by Brian OConnell. Chemotherapy stopped having an effect on Seans cancer, and so his parents sought alternative medicine as a last resort. OConnell was a self-proclaimed naturopathic doctor who operated out of Wheat Ridge, Colorado. Laura and Dave Flanagan, Seans parents, recalled OConnell saying, No Irish kid is going to die on my watch. However, a few days later, that is exactly what happened.

In December of 2003, OConnell began treating the 19-year-old cancer patient with photoluminescence, which was a form of energy medicine that made use of light waves to eradicate the disease. What the supposed healer did was that he exposed a vial of Seans blood to the light, mixed it with hydrogen peroxide, and injected it back into his patients body. Laura said, We thought he was a physician, a pharmacist. We thought he had all these types of degrees. Brian OConnell told us that this would help him, so we were just grasping at straws hoping this was going to be the answer.

Two days after this, Sean was rushed to the hospital due to lower oxygen levels in his system. But six days later, Brian OConnell carried out the procedure again. Sean passed away, months before his doctors said he would. These were his harrowing last words No more. God, please, no more. This was not an exclusive case by any means, unfortunately.

Another cancer patient, 45-year-old Rory Gallegos, was given a black salve by OConnell and was told to rub it on his skin. Rory was a patient of liver and colon cancer, and apparently, the salve was to bring the tumors to the surface so that they could be removed through lesions. The third case was that of Gladys, the wife of retired Denver police lieutenant, Jimmie Shoemaker.The Flanagans paid OConnell $7000 for the treatments, whereas the then 85-year-old Jimmie paid him $17,000, saying, I was losing my wife money meant nothing to me. I would have done anything.

Brian OConnell had been lying about his qualifications all this time. Firstly, he was practicing medicine without a license or a medical degree.Secondly, The Flanagans found out about OConnell through a website where he had presented misleading information about his background and experience in medicine. In fact, he even falsely referred to himself as chief of internal medicine, and provided a long list of letters, resumes, and website entries.David Flannagan said, The certification and accreditations were plastered all over his wall. There wasnt a bare spot. Everything seemed legit.Brians only training that pertained to healing was from the Herbal Healer Academy, which is a non-accredited correspondence school in Arkansas. One of the certificates on OConnells wall of credentials was from the American Naturopathic Medical Association (ANMA), which seems to be more of amail-order health-care qualification service than an actual organization.

In 2005, the Flanagan family reportedly sued the untrained holistic healer, and the case was settled for an undisclosed sum.In 2006, a 38-year-old Brian OConnell pleaded guilty to criminally negligent homicide, practicing medicine without a license, assault, theft, and perjury. Before he was sentenced, he said, When someone passes away, I take it very personally. I didnt get into natural healing for money or prestige.For the aforementioned charges, Brianwas given a 13-year sentence. District Court Judge Margie Enquist said, People came to you in the most desperate situation and you took advantage of them. According to a petition filed on Care2, he is at the Huerfano County Correctional Center in Walsenburg, Colorado.

Read More:Where Is Dr. James Jim Kauffman Now?

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Brian O'Connell Now: Where is Naturopathic Healer Today? Is He in Jail? - The Cinemaholic