LINKS

• Canadian Health Network

Complementary and alternative health care (CAHC) covers a broad range of healing practices. Acupuncture, herbal medicine and chiropractic are some of the most familiar complementary or alternative approaches. Many Canadians who use complementary and alternative health practices, do so for wellness.

• Health eLine offers accurate, readable and useful medical news reports--a healthy alternative to the usually skimpy treatment in the general media.

Reuters Health (RH) is the world's leading provider of medical and healthcare news. Reuters Health news services are internationally recognized as unbiased, authoritative, timely and dependable, with the reputation for quality that one expects from a Reuters company.

• Pain

Low Intensity Laser Therapy has evolved from predecessor lasers to modern laser therapy systems.

Clinically verified Laser Therapies eliminate pain and inflammation in acute and chronic conditions. Laser therapy is drug free, pain free, non-invasive, with no known side effects.

Probably the greatest beneficiaries of this technology are individuals that suffer from back pain and arthritis. This includes athletes suffering from myofascitis, facet joint syndrome, sacroiliac joint dysfunction and disc herniations with nerve root compression. More significantly, dramatic effects are obtained by sufferers of chronic degenerative osteoarthritis accompanied by spinal/foraminal stenosis with attendant neurological complications. It promotes healing for many physiological conditions, is used by most professional sports teams to repair injuries, and is one of the most effective methods of healing available today.

With "back problems" laser therapy should be the universal treatment approach and clearly establish its role as the treatment of choice.

• Viruses

The Big Picture Book of Viruses is intended to serve as both a catalog of virus pictures on the Internet and as an educational resource to those seeking more information about viruses.

• Bacteria and Microbes

Bacterial Skin Infections

The skin is the body's first barrier against bacteria that cause infections. Even though many bacteria live on the surface of our skin, healthy skin can usually protect us from infection. However, bacterial skin infections can affect a small spot or may spread, affecting a large area. They can range from a treatable infection to a life-threatening skin condition. Any one who has a break in the skin is at risk for infection. However, certain conditions or diseases can put a person at greater risk for infection, including: * diabetes (which causes poor blood flow to the skin)

Manipulation by pathogens

The success of any pathogen is dependent on its ability to elude host immune responses. Therefore, pathogens have developed several methods that allow them to successfully infect a host, while evading immune-mediated destruction. Bacteria often overcome physical barriers by secreting enzymes that digest the barrier, for example, by using a type II secretion system. Alternatively, using a type III secretion system, they may insert a hollow tube into the host cell, which provides a direct conduit for proteins to move from the pathogen to the host; the proteins transported along the tube are often used to shut down host defenses. An evasion strategy used by several pathogens to circumvent the innate immune system is intracellular replication (also called intracellular pathogenesis). Here, a pathogen spends a majority of the its life-cycle inside host cells, where it is shielded from direct contact with immune cells, antibodies and complement. Some examples of intracellular pathogens include viruses, the food poisoning bacterium Salmonella and the eukaryotic parasites that cause malaria and leishmaniasis. Other bacteria, such as Mycobacterium tuberculosis live inside a protective capsule that prevents lysis by complement. Many pathogens secrete compounds that diminish or misdirect the host's immune response. Some bacteria form biofilms to protect themselves from the cells and proteins of the immune system. Such biofilms are present in many successful infections, e.g., the chronic Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Burkholderia cenocepacia infections characteristic of cystic fibrosis. Other bacteria generate surface proteins that bind to antibodies, rendering them ineffective; examples include Streptococcus (protein G), Staphylococcus aureus (protein A), and Peptostreptococcus magnus (protein L). The mechanisms used by viruses to evade the adaptive immune system are more complicated. The simplest approach is to rapidly change non-essential epitopes (amino acids and/or sugars) on the invader's surface, while keeping essential epitopes concealed. HIV, for example, regularly mutates the proteins on its viral envelope that are essential for entry into its host target cell. These frequent changes in antigens may explain the failures of vaccines directed at these proteins. Masking antigens with host molecules is another common strategy for avoiding detection by the immune system. In HIV, the envelope that covers the viron is formed from the outermost membrane of the host cell; such "self-cloaked" viruses make it difficult for the immune system to identify them as "non-self".

• Center For Disease Control and Prevention

Topics * Aging * Antibiotic Resistance * Birth Defects * Bone Health * Excessive Alcohol Use * Family Health Histories * Folic Acid * Genetics and Genomics * Mental Health * Nutrition * Oral Health * Overweight and Obesity * Physical Activity and Exercise * Reproductive Health * Sexual Health * Sleep and Sleep Disorders * Smoking & Tobacco Use * Vaccines and Immunizations

• Recalls, Market Withdrawals and Safety Alerts

FDA is issuing an advisory because of recently released data from controlled clinical trials showing that the COX-2 selective agents (Vioxx, Celebrex, and Bextra) may be associated with an increased risk of serious cardiovascular events (heart attack and stroke) especially when they are used for long periods of time or in very high risk settings (immediately after heart surgery). Also, as FDA announced earlier this week, preliminary results from a long-term clinical trial (up to three years) suggest that long-term use of a non-selective NSAID, naproxen (sold as Aleve, Naprosyn and other trade name and generic products), may be associated with an increased cardiovascular (CV) risk compared to placebo.

• Prescription Drug Use in America: The Startling Numbers And Their Implications

In 2002, Americans filled 3,340,000,000 outpatient prescriptions.1 That's 12 prescriptions for every man, women, and child in America. Has the American dream become 2 kids, 2 cars, and a dozen drugs in each person's medicine chest? Despite a cold economy in which most industries have seen sales drop, U.S. drug sales increased substantially in 2002, reaching $219 billion. According to NDCHealth, overall drug sales (all sources) grew 12% 2002, 18% in 2001, and 15% in 2000 (based on wholesale acquisition costs). 1 The trend of doctors writing more and more outpatient prescriptions each year continues without pause: 1,2

2002: 3,340,000,000 Rx

2001: 3,200,000,000 Rx

2000: 2,979,000,000 Rx

1999: 2,821,000,000 Rx

1998: 2,523,000,000 Rx

• Botanical Medicine

Botanical Medicine sites on the WWW are exceptionally informative and often beautifully illustrated. The following is a categorized listing of most of the main sites. It is not intended to be fully comprehensive. Many sites provide hyperlinks to other related sites so that from just a few key sites, it is possible to access many hundreds more.

• Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
• Search for Disease, Conditions and Injuries
• How Mitochondia normally works in healthy cells - A++ Animation
• Electron Transport Chain and Cell Fuel - A++ Animation"
• Vitamins Oregon State University
• Laser Research

© February 5, 2009