The name, of course, lends itself to all kinds of plays on the word, which reminded me of a story in January 2007 where a woman died from a water overdose when trying to compete to win a Wii system.  A quick search on Google lead me to the article on the guardian.co.uk site entitled, “Water overdose kills woman in Wii challenge.”  If you hadn’t heard this story before, you should probably file it under your “strange but true” trivia that you can recite at dinner parties.  Jennifer Strange, 28 years old, was taking part in a competition sponsored by a local radio station called “hold your wee for a Wii,” for which the grand prize was a Wii gaming system.  The mother-of-three, with her fellow contestants, started off by drinking an eight-ounce bottle of water every 15 minutes.  As the competition wore on, the bottles grew larger, but the sponsors encouraged contestants to drop out if they felt they were putting their health at risk.

Strange, trying to win the system for her kids, complained of a severe headache at the end of the contest.  Unbeknownst to hear, she was suffering from water intoxication, a condition in which sodium in the blood is diluted by an excess of water in the system.  Symptoms include nausea, vomiting and headache.  The most severe cases involve brain swelling that can lead to confusion, seizures and even, in Strange’s case, death.

I am a pretty healthy individual, and have always been of the opinion that water was good for me, but I had no idea such a condition existed.  I remember easily downing a half-gallon of water after some basketball games in intense heat in my youth, but usually not more than that.  Needless to say, since I’ve read the article it’s always stuck in the back of my mind as something of which I should be aware when my exercise gets that demanding on my body.

And given that this was such a highly-publicized death, I was surprised to see that, yet again, someone has recently died of water intoxication, as reported on the BBC web site on December 11, 2008.  Jackie Henson, another mother of three, was attempting to lose some weight and read that drinking more water would help along her weight loss and allow her to look good more quickly.  Though the program she was following did warn of the dangers of drinking too much water, she did just that and paid the ultimate price for it.

I don’t think there should necessarily be a global “water intoxication” campaign, as this kind of problem just isn’t something that happens all that often yet, but I’m definitely more of an advocate now of telling people to pay attention to the signals their bodies are giving them when there’s too much of something they’re using.  We know when we’re eating too much food, and generally we know when we’re having too much alcohol, but too much water?  Who ever thought there was such a thing?

Hydration is one of the most important things we can do for ourselves, and it is far more important to us than any food we can put in our system (I’ve heard we can survive for many more days without food than we can without water).  But, like with anything, there is a balance we must maintain to ensure optimal health.  Our bodies are amazing in that that balance isn’t so delicate, and it can generally adapt quickly when we have too much or too little of something.  But we should work hard to educate ourselves, pay attention to the messages that our body is sending us, and make sure that we never accidentally push that balance to the point of no return.

McDonald’s has never been a staple of my diet.  Sure, when I was a kid we would go there for parties and for special treats, and as a teenager we would go after a day at the beach, but never with any kind of regularity.  Growing up in an Italian family, it would be blasphemy to consider a meal prepared in a few minutes and usually eaten in even less.  However, I can understand its appeal to people and especially to parents of young children: it’s fast, cheap, and convenient.

Of course, the downside to the speed at which you get your meal is the wide variety of junk that’s present in it.  As Morgan Spurlock demonstrated in his documentary film, “Super Size Me,” switching to an exclusive McDonald’s diet and Super Sizing his meals whenever he was asked resulted in significant health issues that were even deemed life-threatening by the doctors that were monitoring him.  Though I find his experiment a bit extreme, it does point out the shortcomings of making your life easier through fast food.

In addition, eating regularly at such establishments may result in higher risk of Alzheimer’s disease, a new Swedish study found.  According to papers published by the Karolinska Institutet and reported on Boston.com, mice showed signs of developing the abnormal brain tangles strongly associated with Alzheimer’s disease when fed a diet mimicking the nutritional content of fast food, rich in fat, sugar and cholesterol over the course of nine months.  The study focused on a particular gene variant called apoE4, which is involved in the transport of cholesterol in the body and a known predictor for risk of Alzheimer’s.  It can be found in 15 to 20 percent of people.

Mice were genetically engineered to mimic the gene variant and then fed their fast food concoction.  They showed chemical changes including a build-up of the protein tau, which is one of the components responsible for stabilizing the structure of neurons, and reduced levels of the protein Arc, involved in memory storage.

Though the results seemed to make a pretty clear link between the consumption of foods high in saturated fats, cholesterol and sugars and a higher risk for Alzheimer’s, the researchers cautioned that the information was only a preliminary finding and more research was needed before any advice could be given.

McDonald’s is an easy target for criticism because it’s so big.  With millions of customers served daily, it isn’t a surprise that people can try to capitalize on the wealth.  One man even tried to sue the chain when he lost his cell phone there, which contained nude pictures of his wife.  He asked for $3 million, claiming that McDonald’s had failed to maintain the security of his phone and that he had to move from his existing house due to embarrasment and suffering.

My question is, why are we trying to take advantage of corporate success?  Certainly, McDonald’s shares some blame in its use of less-than-healthy ingredients in its food, but don’t we all kind of know that when we step into their restaurants, we’re not exactly getting home cooking?  As I’ve mentioned on this blog before, I consider myself a food addict, yet I still seem to have the presence of mind to be able to make smart choices when I’m out, even at a McDonald’s.  And McDonald’s is certainly not the only offender, or even, I’d venture to say, the worst.  But they are the biggest, and that’s what makes it so easy to paint a bullseye on them.

We seem to have a propensity in this country to point the finger squarely in another direction when we do something wrong, so as not to highlight the flaws in our nature.  I know that I have a tendency to do this, especially when faced with the prospect of having to deal with the difficult consequences.  Eventually, however, we must face our imperfections and stop laying blame on everyone but ourselves.  I know McDonald’s isn’t the healthiest choice, and when documentaries or studies appear affirming that understanding, it reinforces my decision not to make it part of my daily routine.  But when I decide to eat there, it’s a choice, and if I decide to make a bad choice with the food I pick from their menu, I do so fully aware of the consequences to my waist and to my health if I were to make it a regular choice.  There would be no one to blame but myself.

What are your thoughts?  Would you blame a fast food chain for health problems?  Do you think it’s the responsibility of the consumer to make healthy choices?

Studies compared mice born and kept in a sterile environment with no bacteria in their gut against mice born and kept in a non-sterile environment.  Both sets of mice were fed the same amount of food.  The bacteria-free mice stayed skinny while the mice with gut bacteria gained weight.  The reason is that the bacteria in the intestines of the mice raised in a non-sterile environment were able to break down the food and turn it into calories, while the food passed right through the intestines of the bacteria-free mice undigested.

These findings beg the question: can we manipulate the bacteria in our intestines in order to control weight gain or loss?  For more information on the research and its implications, check out the printed article on the NPR website here.

The past few weeks have been rough.  I have a lot of project work going on, and I find myself staying up later and later to try to keep up with it all.  I guess it’s one of the consequences of trying to build a new company, grow a family, and keep in shape.  There just isn’t time to stare blankly into space for a few minutes and recharge the batteries.

I’ve considered trying to make a habit of drinking a glass of wine every night after dinner, but I just can’t get into it.  It is, believe it or not, because of my doctor that I’m even trying; my cholesterol is great (well, my good cholesterol is *too* low), but he feels that one glass of red wine per day is good for the heart and strikes a balance that may have escaped over the course of a hectic day.  What’s not to like about that kind of advice?

The only problem is, a recent study from Wellesley College and Boston University of more than 1800 people found that the more alcohol a person consumed the smaller their total brain volume.  Aging is another factor in decreasing a brain’s size, and it’s this shrinking that has been linked with the progression of dementia, trouble learning new things, memory and cognition.  Based on the information provided in the article published on Boston.com, this seems to be only a preliminary study with more in-depth investigation to follow, but why take a chance?

For some people it’s hard to give up that drink, but it’s even harder to give up smoking.  The same article indicates that giving up such a vice after a hospital stay is up to 65% more effective when patients are provided with anti-smoking counseling both before leaving the hospital and after they arrive home.  The biggest problem, apparently, are the cues of smoking that are much more prominent once someone returns home than while they’re in the hospital, and even those with the best of intentions are apt to fall into old habits once they’re back.  I don’t deny it’s a difficult habit to break, but if the help is there, why not use it?

And it’s apparent that more and more people are refusing the help of vaccinations for their children, especially the flu vaccine.  Another article on Boston.com explores not only the medical implications of skipping out on your flu vaccine this year, but also the social implications.  Two families known to the author had children who died as a result of complications of the flu in their children, and 83 children nationwide died of the disease.  Of those 83 children, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention estimated only about 5 or 10 had actually been vaccinated.  Overall, 36,000 people die every year, close to the same number as those who die from breast cancer.

Author Carey Goldberg describes a concept of “herd immunity,” which essentially strengthens the effect of a vaccine by allowing a group of inoculated people to, in essence, protect one another by preventing an infection from creeping its way throughout each member of the group.  The fewer members of the group that are vaccinated, the weaker the chain, thus giving the flu (or any other virus) the opportunity to break through and begin infecting multiple members of the group.

Dr. Ken Mandl of Children’s Hospital in Boston is cited in the article as saying that children are essentially “little bioterrorists,” because they can incubate and so rapidly propagate a disease among peers, parents and grandparents.  In vaccinating them, you not only protect them, but you protect yourself, your parents and the community.

I thought it was a little harsh to think of my son as a “little bioterrorist,” but thinking back I realized that I have gotten sick much more often than I ever had before I had him…and he’s not even in school yet.  It’s gotten to the point that my wife and I can almost gauge when we’ll get sick based on how he’s feeling.  We’re all even getting over a sinus infection, which he absolutely started, as I write this post.

Unfortunately, I think that parents are paralyzed into thinking that the flu vaccine (and other vaccines, for that matter) could lead to autism in their children, and they therefore don’t take the measures recommended to prevent the infection and spread of these diseases.  I’ve written several posts on this blog about this very topic, the most recent of which is here.  The problem is that the possibility that vaccinations could cause autism has been so ingrained into our public psyche, we believe that the simplest answer, ceasing vaccinations, is the best one.

Jenny McCarthy exacerbates the problem by appearing on popular Hollywood magazines such as US Weekly and telling the story of her son, who suffered from autism but now is cured.  She believes her son’s suffering began when he received his MMR vaccination and had a seizure shortly thereafter.  I feel for McCarthy — I really do — but I don’t believe her belief in the cause of her son’s illness, without being substantiated by fact, should be spread to cause concern among parents already concerned about the best course of action for their children.  A private, informed conversation should be taking place between parents and their doctors, and proper vaccinations should be discussed in great length to determine their necessity and effectiveness.

Maybe I would be less apt to dismiss McCarthy’s conclusions if one of my children were suffering from the disorder.  But then again, maybe not.  I just feel that, given the severity of the diseases against which vaccinations protect us, we put our children in greater danger by not protecting them.  It is starting to bear out with a resurgence of Measles, and based on the information provided in Carey Goldberg’s article, I’m worried influenza will be next.

I know how I feel about it; what about you?  As always, I encourage you to talk to your doctor to make a decision that’s right for you, because it’s a personal decision that involves the saftey of your child.  Decisions should not be based on this new type of McCarthyism alone, with its finger pointed squarely at the vaccinations that were intended to help.

On September 3rd, CNN posted an article which casts further doubt on Wakefield’s theory, punctuated by the fact that his co-author, Irish pathologist John O’Leary, is also a co-author on the new study. Published in the peer-reviewed journal of the Public Library of Science, PLoS ONE, the new study concludes that the MMR vaccine causes neither autism nor gastrointestinal disorders, adding to a growing body of evidence against the claim.

Wakefield’s original theory attempted to establish that in some children, the measles virus used in the MMR vaccine would grow in the intestinal tract of some children, leading to inflammation that would make the bowel porus. Toxic material would then seep from the bowel into the body, affecting the nervous system and causing symptoms of autism. John O’Leary and the rest of the new study’s team of investigators replicated Wakefield’s experiments in the same lab that was used for the original analysis, using samples from 38 children with bowel disorders, 25 of whom had autism. They found that only one child in each group had trace amounts of the measles virus in their samples.

Further, there was no evidence that there was a relationship between the children showing symptoms of autism or GI disorders and timing of the vaccine; the three events appeared to be independent of one another.

For the researchers involved in the study, along with many who have read the study itself, the evidence appears to be conclusive. Even the vice president for scientific affairs of “Autism Speaks,” an advocacy group, indicated he believed the results were indisputable. However, other organizations such as the Autism Society of America and the National Autism Association feel that further study is needed and that the PLoS ONE study may even be flawed.

What is more frightening to me, however, is the fact that all of this is causing a decline in the number of parents opting for vaccinations for their children. While I can understand one’s trepidation (just the thought of managing a child with autism is something that unnerves me) the fact is that this kind of decision is now starting to play out in statistics within the US. Measles levels are at their highest in more than a decade, with nearly half of those involving children whose parents rejected vaccinations, according to another CNN report on August 21st.

The number of cases reported this year is still relatively small at 131 through July, but doctors are worried because this is already over triple the 42 cases that were reported for all of last year. The disease is no longer endemic to the US, but is brought in from people visiting from other countries or students studying abroad. Once it gets here though, proliferation of the disease in children has been held in check, widely credited to the aggressive childhood vaccination rates.

But what happens when those vaccinations are undermined by information linking them to autism? You put parents in a very precarious situation. A decision as to whether they should defend their children against diseases that can kill by using vaccinations, or defend their children against what can be a debilitating social disorder that is autism. Unfortunately, because we’re dealing with the health and safety of children, any study is discredited by its detractors and the result is almost a political debate where the burden of proof falls not on the person presenting the evidence, but on the person listening, having to waddle through technical and medicinal jargon that they may not understand.

Ultimately, I believe it comes down to the trust that you have in your doctor, and the trust that you have in yourself as a parent. Being able to prevent your child from having to live with autism would be a wonderful thing, but I don’t personally believe that there’s enough evidence to indicate there is a way to prevent it. Vaccinations, I believe, are a red herring in this case and divert our attention from the real cause of the problem. But before we can move forward, we’ll need to find certainty in a study that will help us all move on and fish for something else.

That said, no other exercise gets me into shape more quickly. It gives me reason to hate it even more. I suppose it’s one of life’s cruel ironies that something I hate doing so much could be so good for me. I often wonder to myself (or aloud when I’m running, much to the dismay of passers-by), if there was some way I could get the benefit from my workout with less effort on my part. It is a paradoxical and unrealistic request given everything we know about exercising, but, believe it or not, there may soon be a pill for it.

A California research team doing tests on mice may have identified a method to activate compounds in the body that would increase fat burning ability and dramatically increase endurance, according to Boston.com’s White Coat Notes from Thursday, July 31st. The study, published on the same day in the journal “Cell,” shows that the PPAR-delta master gene, responsible for controlling metabolism and muscle fibers, can be reprogrammed to burn fat and increase exercise endurance using only drugs.

The study obviously has several moral and ethical implications, so much so that in anticipation of the Olympics, scientists in conjunction with the World Anti-Doping Agency have concocted a test for blood and urine that can test for even the tiniest traces of the two substances that make up the drug cocktail. The suspicion is that a lab somewhere may be able to reproduce the chemicals for competitive athletes, giving them an unfair advantage in competition. Any broken record is reason enough for suspicion, as Dara Torres is quickly discovering after she broke a US swimming record recently.

The other downside to the pill is getting the dosage right. According to the study, the month-long trial in the mice would translate to about a three-year regimen in humans. In treating diseases such as obesity, it might be too long a wait.

The process is activated through use of two drugs, AICR and GW1516, the former of which is currently licensed by Schering-Plough to help control bleeding in the human heart. It will probably be some time, however, before clinical trials of the two drugs in tandem can commence, and even longer before scientists understand the implications of changing how muscles function in the body. And I don’t know about you, but the thought of taking one or more pills for the rest of my life to maintain a svelte figure and a higher level of endurance isn’t appealing to me. Perhaps, if proven to be safe, whatever company decides to produce this drug can dangle it as a carrot to Mike Adams, sponsor of the $10,000 health challenge to big pharma.

The fundamental philosophical question is how far we’re willing to push to have something else do the work for us? We’re developing pills to make us younger, pills to make us healthier, pills to put us in better shape. What happened to eating right? Exercising? Scheduling enough time in what seems to be our infinitely busy lives to use the tools that nature gave us rather than looking for the quick fix? As time goes on, it seems more choices are developed by the pharmaceutical industry to circumvent a natural process to give us more time. As we get it, however, we lose sight the one basic principal through which appreciation of that time is developed: our patience.

I think I’ll take that run now.

According to the FDA, in order to be considered a “botanical” product, a drug must have the following characteristics:

• A botanical drug product consists of vegetable materials, which may include plant materials, algae, macroscopic fungi, or combinations thereof.
• A botanical drug product may be available as (but not limited to) a solution (e.g., tea), powder, tablet, capsule, elixir, topical, or injection.
• Botanical drug products often have unique features, for example, complex mixtures, lack of a distinct active ingredient, and substantial prior human use. Fermentation products and highly purified or chemically modified botanical substances are not considered botanical drug product. (1)

Headquartered in Jamesburg, NJ, Phytomedics was launched in 1996 to focus on such botanical drug products and has partnered with the Biotech Center at Rutgers University for its research and development, allowing it to function as a private company with access to cutting-edge research facilities while keeping its costs low. Those costs are being covered by several investment firms including Inventages Venture Capital GmbH (life ventures by Nestle), Burrill & Company, Polar Investments Ltd and Biotech M.A.H. Plant Genomic Fund.

The company currently has 2 drugs in development. The first, which has already commenced its Phase III clicnical trial development, is a new, oral drug for treatment of auto-immune diseases. In its Phase II, double-blind clinical trial, PMI-001 was given to 120 patients with moderate to severe rheumatoid arthritis. The results showed significant efficacy of the drug, with rapid pain reduction in as little as 2 weeks and a halt in joint erosion in 6 months. PMI-002 is the second botanical drug under development and shows promise in the treatment of cancerous cells as well as the possible prevention of neurological and opthalamic degenerative disorders.

Other drugs are also in their pipeline, but have not yet received the same focus as their other products (it seems due to lack of funding). These products include:

• A botanical bioactive that acts as a COX-2 inhibitor but with less risk than a Vioxx, Celebrex or other synthetic chemical entity.
• A botanical appetite suppressant that could be leveraged for weight loss, and a counterpart derived from an agricultural waste processing stream that could block fat absorption.
• A plant-derived agent that could be used to limit the impact of aging on muscle cells.

It seems that these drugs, along with the proprietary methodologies the company is using to develop them, could usher in a new wave of drugs that will be prescribed by doctors in the future. As you may know if you’ve read a few of my posts, I’m very interested in keeping an excessive amount of “artifical” stuff out of my body, and the research here shows promise for drugs that may be headed in that direction. I am hopeful that companies like Wellgen and Phytomedics can provide breakthroughs in this area of research and demonstrate the safety and efficacy of these drugs because of their origins as completely natural substances.

However, until an actual product has been released and clinical trials can demonstrate the safety of the product and its interaction in the human body can be better understood, I remain cautious of drugs developed within this emerging field.

Your thoughts?

(1) See “What is a Botanical Drug?“, FDA web site.

Nutrigenomics, according to the Wellgen web site, is the study of how foods and their bioactives, components we more commonly know as vitamins and minerals, interact with genes in the human body to affect health. The concept is that the more we know about this interaction, the better able we’ll be to create customized regiments in human eating habits to promote optimal health based on gene makeup. The first application of this concept has been developed in their first product, WG0401, which is a patented extraction process that takes the beneficial phytonutrients (nutrients of plant origin) found in black tea and applies them to the human body to reduce inflammation in the muscles and provide other benefits to patients. Their second, still unreleased product involves pairing weight management with the phytonutrients found in citrus fruits.(1)

I am admittedly curious about this new product and its implications for the Pharmaceutical and Biotechnology industries. I mean, could WellGen be considered a Pharmaceutical if its products are chemically identical to the same substances we find in natural foods? And, what differentiates these products from the supplements we find in health food stores? It reminded me of the product that Sirtris Pharmaceuticals is developing based on the key ingredient in wine, resveratrol, that has been linked to longevity and endurance in lab tests on mice (see my original article here). How will these products be regulated by the FDA — will it require the development of a new set of rules to review unique products coming on the market?

By all means, I’m interested in what this kind of science could mean for the future of human health — and whether this research will lead to more preventative medicines with less risk for the human body. Still, we’re altering the quantities that we would normally consume just by the food we’re eating; does that carry with it some risks? Is too much of a good thing wonderful, as Mae West may have quipped, or do we tread softly as we move forward?

In an article by Kitta MacPherson of the Star-Ledger, “Genetics Key to New Preventative Medicine,” it seems that CEO Dr. Mullinix doesn’t think so. Scientists at her company took advantage of

20 years of fabulous molecular biology work which had identified 15 genes, including interleukins and cytokines, involved in causing the inflammation makes muscles and joints sore. In test tubes and, later, in controlled tests on mice and then people, scientists found the substance inhibited inflammation. (2)

Given the seemingly natural path this company is taking, I’d be curious to know what Mike Adams thinks about their products (if you don’t recall, he’s the nutrition expert who issued a $10,000 challenge to BigPharma that I wrote about last week). For that matter, any health expert’s opinion might be interesting to hear. As a hopefully viable replacement for COX2 inhibitors, I would certainly feel more comfortable taking a supplement derived from tea leaves for aching bones instead of a pill that, however remote, has been linked to heart attacks.

Then again, you may remember that “Dieter’s Green Tea” mentioned in my “Supplemental Health” post was the alleged cause of death for June Grell, an otherwise picture of health, at 37 years old.

Maybe, even with products derived from naturally occurring chemicals, I’ll stick to my current regimen, NUN: Nothing Unless Needed.

What do you think?

(1) See “Products” page of the WellGen web site.

(2) See “Genetics Key to New Preventative Medicine,” Kitta MacPherson, Star-Ledger, July 16, 2007 (as republished on the WellGen web site).

The premise of the challenge is that Mike Adams wants to prove that taking medications, on a preventative basis, really does not lead to optimal health. In theory, this is a great challenge to Pharmaceuticals, though I don’t think he will get much response from the major players in the industry. One of the innate problems in his campaign is the qualification that his challenger must be taking 10 different types of drugs, and must have been doing so on a preventative basis for a year. The list of the 10 types of drugs is as follows:

• COX-2 inhibitor (anti-inflammatory)
• Blood thinner drug (like Coumadin)
• Blood pressure drug (like Toprol)
• Statin drug (anti-cholesterol)
• SSRI drug (antidepressant)
• Sleep drug (like Ambien)
• Hypertension drug (like Norvasc)
• Antibiotic (like Amoxicillin)

Firstly, I doubt that there are many people under 65 who would be taking such a cocktail of drugs on a preventative basis, and given that Big Pharma is unlikely to know about any of its patients unless there is an actual adverse event reported, I’m not sure that they would even know where to find someone with such a qualification.

Secondly, I think Adams’ list sets up a Big Pharmaceutical company for failure already, because some of the drugs he lists are known to interact in the body in such a way that most doctors probably wouldn’t prescribe the two medicines together. In fact, in the article “Bad Combinations” published by Harvard Medical International in April 2004, we see that some of what Adams lists are known to interact poorly with one another and it would thus be impossible to find someone taking two. For example, Warfarin (AKA Coumadin) thins the blood by binding to albumin in the blood stream. Some antibiotics bind to the same protein, so if the two drugs are combined they could cause the amount of active and unbound Warfarin to soar in the body and with it the risk of uncontrollable bleeding. Another example is that ACE Inhibitors, which treat hypertension, would likely not be prescribed with COX-2 inhibitors like Celebrex or Bextra because the latter essentially negates the efficacy of the former.

What would make Adams’ challenge more interesting to me is if he just picked 1 or 2 drugs — any 2 on his list — and used that as its basis. Given the items he lists, I don’t think anybody taking even one of these drugs would be able to meet a physical fitness challenge. I also think Mike should amend his challenge to state that, given his background in personal health, he would help the person with a plan to eat right, exercise and get him or herself into better shape (enough that he/she no longer needs the drugs) and retake the challenge in 1 year. Make the participant compete against his/her own performance from the previous year. Strengthen the proof that your philosophy works by helping someone out who really needs it.

Let’s be clear: In many respects, I do not disagree with Mike. I think there are far too many doctors who have been given incentive by the pharmaceutical industry to pull out their prescription pad and give drugs to mask symptoms that won’t go away without some serious life changes. But I also believe that life is about balance, and the health that Mike has achieved may not be something that’s possible for all people — genetics, availability of health food choices, expense, they all play a partial role in the decisions that we make, and taking the time out of the day to mix a “superfoods” drink might not be possible for every person.

Take me, for example; I avoid taking drugs whenever possible, I eat lots of fruits and vegetables, I exercise, and my current state of health reflects that. My wife does the same, and we’re trying to pass that philosophy on to our son. But I’m not going to avoid taking an antibiotic if I have a bacterial infection. And sometimes a headache is just a headache and I’m going to take ibuprofen to get some relief. And given that my line of work is not focused on personal health, I cannot realistically spend my day preparing the kinds of foods I’d need to eat to be on the same level of fitness as Mike claims to be.

Not to mention, what do you tell a schizophrenic who depends on his/her medications to maintain a clear head? Or the countless people infected with HIV who have lived years beyond their original prognosis? While I agree that the Big Pharmas, like any business, are out to make money, we can’t minimize the impact they’ve had on people whose very lives depend on the drugs they’re taking.

So yes, let’s target the “preventative” medications, but make the challenge a little more serious. If one participant can see that a healthy lifestyle will give more benefits than any one pill, then the reward would be far greater than just embarrassing a person who has been led to believe his/her current drug cocktail is medically necessary.

What do you think?

Prostaglandin is produced as a result of the presence of cytokines, hormone-like chemicals produced as part of the inflammation response by the immune system, and the presence of bacterial cell-wall components in the body. Its presence is the trigger for our body to activate its next stages in its immune defense, including a fever, aches, fatigue and loss of appetite. This response evolved over time and is what has kept us alive during some of our worst illnesses, but we often feel miserable as we progress through the response, and it’s suspected by this research team that some of it might be overkill. For example, our loss of appetite might sound like a good idea because our body is attempting to reduce our blood-sugar level in order to prevent bacteria from thriving in a sugar-rich environment. But invaders that don’t replicate in the blood stream aren’t phased by this kind of defense and the body might benefit from more food.

Doctors believe they can make the body’s response more efficient by customizing it, essentially setting up a series of biochemical “switches” that can be turned on or off depending on the disease your body is trying to fight. The chronic fatigue cancer patients feel was cited as an example for which the body’s typical immune response could be suppressed. However, before this kind of targeted response can be controlled, Saper indicated there still will be much research ahead of them before anything can be implemented as a treatment.

Saper and his team is using the primary over-the-counter treatment for fever control, aspirin, as an instructive model for an understanding of how they can forge ahead with their research. Its naturally occurring precursor is willow bark, which has been leveraged for its medicinal characteristics for a thousand years before aspirin was synthesized in 1897. (1) It wasn’t until the 1970s, however, that scientists determined how aspirin is able to keep the symptoms of a typical immune response to a controlled level: by blocking the formation of prostaglandins. Using aspirin as a seed, Saper hopes that he and his team can figure out what triggers everything else as the tree of symptoms grow from one’s immune system response.

I think that this kind of ability to tailor an immune response is fascinating and will certainly give us a better understanding of the functions of our human body. In certain situations, I can see its benefit, but I am concerned that we’re not being responsible in this kind of research. Are we so arrogant to assume that just because we understand a process it means we should look for ways to tailor or circumvent it? I don’t believe we should not necessarily use what this team is learning to bypass the mechanism that’s been developed over thousands of years of evolution to defend us internally.

In addition, it strikes me that ability to suppress an immune system response doesn’t actually fix the problem of the invader that triggered it in the first place. It doesn’t make me feel comfortable that my body wouldn’t be allowed to do everything that is naturally supposed to do in order to stave off an infection. It makes it too easy to mask problems by preventing pain; though this may not be the intent of a majority of doctors that would use it, realistically, how many people would self-medicate and potentially miss a life-threatening disease before it’s too late?

There is no doubt in my mind that this research should continue, if for no other reason than to better understand the human body and our defense systems. But before I pop a pill 10 years from now that may be a result of this research being done today, I’d prefer to know why my body is causing the need for the pill in the first place.

(1) See “‘Tyrant Fever’s’ Trigger,” by Elizabeth Gdrais, Harvard Magazine, March-April 2008.