Natural Health For Christians

Editor’s note: Tune in to “Dr. Drew” on HLN next week at 9 ET/6 PT for the latest on the investigation into this strange illness that’s causing 15 teens to suffer uncontrollable twitching and outbursts.

(CNN) — In the tiny New York town of LeRoy, one thing is for sure; since October, 16 people suddenly have developed uncontrollable twitching and verbal tics.

Three months later, they — and the rest of the town — are still wondering why.

Doctors have diagnosed most of them with conversion disorder, saying that stress is the likely root of their physical problems.

“What happens is there traditionally some kind of stress or multiple stressors that provoke a physical reaction within the body,” said Dr. Jennifer McVige, a neurologist who has evaluated several of the teens. “This is unconscious, it is not done purposefully and it’s almost like … the stress wells up in your body has to come out in some way shape or form.”

Case of N.Y. teens’ tics makes psychological sense

But the diagnosis has done nothing to explain why so many people from the same small town — 14 teenage girls, a teenage boy and a 36-year-old woman — started displaying these symptoms within the same time period.

All of the teens attend LeRoy Junior-Senior High School, so the attention has turned there. School officials say everything is safe, but environmental organizations and some parents aren’t so sure.

The medical mystery in LeRoy has attracted the attention of activist and investigator Erin Brockovich, who came to the village of 8,000 people in western New York after learning about a 41-year-old toxic spill a few miles from the school.

Brockovich and her longtime associate Bob Bowcock, an engineer who has been in the water treatment and testing business for more than 30 years, arrived in LeRoy after receiving an email note from a parent of one of the affected teens. The two suspect that the illnesses are related to the cyanide and trichloroethylene (TCE) that was spilled during the December 1970 train wreck.

Could toxic chemical be source of tics in NY town?

Brockovich and Bowcock are conducting their own environmental tests to determine whether the chemicals were cleaned up properly.

The school along with the Environmental Protection Agency and the New York departments of health and environmental conservation said they already tested the area, and there is no evidence that the site is to blame for this mystery ailment in the students.

“All of these agencies and professionals from these agencies have assured us that our school is safe,” LeRoy school district Superintendent Kim M. Cox wrote in a letter to the community this week. “There is no evidence of an environmental or infectious cause. Environmental causes would not discriminate (regarding who becomes infected).”

She said the school hired an independent firm in December to test for volatile compounds, and the report found nothing dangerous. An air quality test also was normal, she wrote.

Still parents are worried and upset.

“They say that they are out there looking out for our girls, and are sympathetic to our girls but what is it? Actions speak louder than words.” Lana Clark, whose daughter has tics, told HLN TV. ” And I don’t see a lot of action,”

Check out HLNTV.com’s full coverage

Concerns about toxic site, fracking

Erin Brockovich gained fame after the 2000 movie bearing her name told the story of how she, as a file clerk at a law firm, established that a toxic chemical from a power company compressor station leaked into the groundwater of a nearby town, compromising the health of hundreds.

HLNTV.com: Who is Erin Brockovich?

According to a 1999 report from the EPA, about 30,000 gallons of trichloroethylene (TCE), a potentially harmful chemical used primarily as a cleaning solvent, and 1 ton of cyanide crystals spilled from ruptured tank cars.

The report said the railroad company, Lehigh Valley Railroad, tried to get rid of chemical odors at the site by using 1,000,000 gallons of water to flush the chemical into trenches, for four months beginning in March 1971.

The EPA and the New York Department of Health found TCE in 50 wells east or southeast of the site when they ran tests between 1990 and 1994. They installed water treatment systems at 37 of the wells where the levels of TCE were above the maximum standard.

Amid pressure from the students’ parents and Brockovich, the EPA announced Tuesday that it is going to test soil that sits in barrels near the site of the spill that observers, including Bowcock, have said are leaking dirt. The dirt and rock was extracted from the ground when the New York Department of Environmental Conservation drilled monitoring wells in the 1990s.

“Having found it in the condition that we found it in, having looked at the fact that EPA has been absent from this process for at least four years that we know of, I think it’s … time to start over and test. Test, get some independent folks in there, and get this done,” Bowcock said.

Bowcock told HLN’s Dr. Drew Pinsky that he had taken water samples in town but was prevented by authorities from getting samples at the school. It will take at least three weeks before results come in, he said.

Medical authorities have cast doubt on whether TCE could cause health effects more than 40 years later, particularly in the form of uncontrollable tics and verbal outbursts. Toxicologist Dr. LuAnn White explained that a person would have to be exposed to very high doses of TCE for an extended period or get a huge dose at one time to become sick.

“In order to relate health effects, it is necessary to know the concentration and the duration and frequency of exposure,” said White, director of the Tulane Center for Applied Environmental Public Health Sciences.

She said TCE is rapidly cleared from the body, so after a few days it would not show up in blood or urine tests. But she said any symptoms would also go away.

TCE is linked to cancer, though not a proven carcinogen, she said.

Another area of concern for environmental groups in LeRoy are natural gas wells on school property. The natural gas from the wells is used to heat school system buildings. The wells use a controversial technique called fracking, which shoots a chemical mixture into the earth to force out the gas. In July 2011, some of the tanks at the well sites leaked fluid on to athletic fields. Some trees died. The school was told to dig up the affected soil, according to documents obtained by CNN.

CNNMoney.com: New York set to lift fracking ban

Judy Braiman, the president of the Empire State Consumer Project, a nonprofit environmental advocacy group, wants more testing at the school. She said the independent tests already commissioned by the school and done by the government “just sort of skimmed the surface.”

New patient, not a typical case

Prior to this week, these strange symptoms had been confined to the teenagers from LeRoy Junior-Senior High School. That all changed on Tuesday when a 36-year-old woman told CNN that she also has been diagnosed with conversion disorder.

Taking the ‘mystery’ out of conversion disorder

CNN mental health expert Dr. Charles Raison said it is common for patients who have conversion disorder to have experienced trauma, like abuse.

Fitzsimmons believes that she has conversion disorder but she’s keeping an open mind as federal and independent investigators look into possible environmental causes.

She told CNN that as a youngster she had often swum in the waters of a large quarry within 100 yards of the toxic spill site. It was a place where teenagers used to hang out during the summer. None of the sick other patients have said they had been to the quarry.

Fitzsimmons said even if the cause is determined to be environmental, it won’t solve her main question: Will she ever get better?

“At this point I have to have faith in my doctors. All the CAT scans MRIs I have done have come back with in the normal range. So if it ends up being environmental then does that mean I don’t have hope of getting better? These are thoughts that go through my head,” she said.

‘I can’t do what I love’

Thera Sanchez was a cheerleader, an honor roll student, and planning her college future when she woke up from a nap in October. That’s when everything changed.

“I couldn’t stop stuttering,” she told CNN’s Jason Carroll.

Doctors told Sanchez that her condition was brought on by stress and she would get better. But once the stuttering ended, it soon gave way to uncontrollable twitching.

“The stuttering you know took over contorting her left side of her mouth and neck,” her mother Melisa Phillips said.

She took Sanchez to the hospital in mid-October, and that’s when a nurse told her that she wasn’t the only one who had been brought to the hospital with the condition.

“She had said, ‘Not to alarm you, but somebody needs to contact somebody because you’re the fourth girl in a week to come in with this,’ ” Phillips said.

Like most of the others, Sanchez was diagnosed with conversion disorder. The girls were from different grades; some knew each other, others did not. Sanchez doesn’t believe that stress triggered her condition, and her mother worries whether time is on their side.

“She does not have time for … guesswork or anything like that,” Phillips said. “She’s deteriorating.”

For now, Sanchez’s life is on hold while doctors try to figure out how to treat her condition.

“It’s heartbreaking to me to be honest knowing I can’t do what I love,” she said.

Whatever the cause, many experts in the medical community have expressed skepticism that these symptoms could be the result of toxins in the environment.

“What’s in our food, what’s in our water, what’s in our air, is a massive cause of disease, but probably not this kind of disease,” said mental health expert Dr. Charles Raison. “You don’t see these sudden onsets of things, especially if (toxins) have been in the environment for a long period time. It would really be a radical discovery if someone could prove to a reasonable doubt that it was something in the water or the air.”

Still, he cautioned that whenever there is a cluster of cases, it is necessary to thoroughly test for environmental or infectious causes.

Until doctors can figure out what exactly is triggering the symptoms and how to treat the disorder, Sanchez and the others can only hope that one day they will wake up and be themselves again.

CNN’s Danielle Dellorto, Jason Carroll, and Liz Flynn contributed to this report.

Source: http://rss.cnn.com/~r/rss/cnn_health/~3/JOqgRpSN0GE/index.html

In the wake of the CNN story, the group that oversees 24 medical specialties issued a statement condemning the use of the recalls.

The American Board of Medical Specialties said on its website that, “It should be made abundantly clear that recalling and sharing questions from exams violates exam security, professional ethics and patient trust in the medical profession. When it happens, the practice should be addressed swiftly and decisively. Whether someone is providing or using test questions, ABMS Member Boards enforce sanctions that may include permanent barring from certification, and/or prosecution for copyright violation.”

CNN has confirmed the practice also exists with dermatology, where the recalls are known as “airplane notes,” because residents write down as much as they can remember on the plane after taking the test.

In an anonymous e-mail to the American Board of Dermatology in 2008, a resident wrote: “The board needs to know that there is an organized effort year after year to, by verbatim, reproduce each and every question of the official ABD certifying examination minutes after its completion. So-called “airplane notes”…are well known to dermatology residents and are compiled, typed up and quietly distributed among residency programs across the country.”

The resident, now a practicing dermatologist, wrote, “Each year, minutes after the certifying exam is complete, there is an almost ceremonial meeting of examinees at a local hotel or restaurant there in Chicago. A feverish and collective effort is made by examinees from many programs to reproduce on paper as many questions as they can — verbatim — that they had just encountered. This is then integrated into an updated “airplane notes,” which then has questions from the year before, and the year before that, etc., in an organized fashion. These are even professionally bound at Kinko’s at times.”

In a response to the e-mail, the board’s executive director, Dr. Antoinette Hood, wrote: “The board takes every precaution to discourage this practice amongst graduating residents: maintaining strict security of items, minimizing the number of previously used questions, and requiring an honor code statement (signed two separate times) declaring that information will not be shared. Unfortunately we have no mechanism for enforcing the honor code or controlling interpersonal communications that occur after an examination. The real issue is how do we police professionalism and how do we identify the offenders?”

Hood said she has addressed this issue for several years during the board’s annual meeting by telling dermatology residents the practice is not allowed.

“I’ve never seen airplane notes, but I’ve heard about it,” Hood said.

“We really try to do something to prevent it from happening,” Hood said. “It’s a high stakes examination and people are naturally very anxious about it and that brings out the potential worst in people.”

Asked if she considered this cheating, Hood said, “Yes, but I can’t prove it – period.”

The board has warned residents that using airplane notes is illegal, because test questions are copyrighted.

“There are legal consequences to this practice, as the questions of the American Board of Dermatology are protected by copyright laws, and any reproduction, not approved by the board, illegal. But, of much greater importance, this practice is unethical and violates our professionalism and ethical standards, which are the basis for the trust given us by our patients,” one board newsletter obtained by CNN reads.

Dermatology residents confirm the practice has been widespread, but the value of the actual airplane notes varies depending on the accuracy of the memorization.

The dermatology board scrambles the approximately 300 questions from test to test to make it more difficult to memorize them. About 20% of the questions each year are recycled from old tests, compared with about 50% for the written exam in radiology.

“We scramble the questions so that discourages the rote memorization,” Hood said.

After a phone interview, Hood agreed to an an on-camera interview with CNN to discuss the recalls. But she abruptly canceled the interview two days beforehand, saying she had changed her mind.

While the use of airplane notes and recalls has been discussed for years in dermatology and radiology, they are not widely known outside those professions.

Dr. Gary Becker, executive director of the American Board of Radiology, said using recalls was cheating.

“I am saying it’s cheating. It’s a violation of our policy,” Becker said.

Dr. James Borgstede, the radiology board’s president-elect, said said the test-taking culture has changed since he took the exam in 1978.

“Right now, in radiology, jobs are hard to find. Board certification is very, very important. When I took the exam, you could still practice without being a board-certified radiologist. Now, that’s virtually impossible,” Borgstede said.

“So, a high-stakes examination, and the other thing is it’s a difference in culture. These individuals sort of view us as a system, and them as outside the system, and there’s this issue of sort of stick it to the man. You know, that we’re the system, and they can do this and it’s acceptable. We tell them it’s not acceptable.”

Becker said that despite the use of the recalls, the public is protected because of the overall training and an intensive oral exam that residents must undergo to become certified.

Next year, the board is rolling out a new exam for the first time in more than 10 years. Instead of two written tests and one oral exam, the first exam will be a “core exam” taken after three years of residency training, and the second certifying exam will be taken 15 months after graduation. The oral exam is being eliminated.

Meanwhile, The American College of Radiology, which does not certify radiologists, posted a statement on its website after the CNN story aired.

“The most troubling aspect of this report is the implication that all radiologists who pass these examinations are ‘cheaters.’ The allegation of cheating not only involves an unspecified and unidentified number of individuals, but smears the entire specialty with a broad and unjustified brush,” the statement said.

“Whether one considers the sharing of mentally recalled questions to be unethical, or simply a type of study aid, board certification represents significantly more than passing an exam, and should not be impugned simply on the basis of examination methodology,” it said.

Asked whether the group considered recalls cheating, a spokesman said it had no comment beyond the statement.

Other medical specialties contacted by CNN said they had not experienced that kind of systemic use of recalls.

The American Board of Family Medicine has sent investigators into test review company classes to ensure they aren’t teaching from old test questions.

“When we’ve investigated these groups and (gone) through these classes, we’ve never found old exams,” said board spokesman Robert Cattoi.

The board only re-uses “a very small number of questions” from old exams, he said. The American Board of Orthopedic Surgery re-uses about 20% of old questions each year.

“We know of no similar recall registry of questions such as was in your piece (about) the radiology residents,” said the board’s executive director, Dr. Shepard Hurwitz.

Watch Anderson Cooper 360° weeknights 10pm ET. For the latest from AC360° click here.

Source: http://rss.cnn.com/~r/rss/cnn_health/~3/zUoJar9J9Fo/index.html

Editor’s note: CNN.com is bringing you a series of interviews with innovative individuals who were at the TEDMED conference 2011. Their ideas are helping to push the health industry forward.

(CNN) — Paul Stamets was shy as a child; he couldn’t look people in the eyes, so he stared at the ground. And that, he says, is where he found mushrooms.

Today, that shyness has faded, but mushrooms are even more of a focal point.

Stamets is one of the most prominent proponents of using mushrooms for medicinal purposes. Besides traveling the world to look for exotic mushrooms, he also lectures about them and runs a mushroom supplement company with his wife called Fungi Perfecti.

When he spoke at TEDMED in October, he even wore a mushroom — his hat is made from birch polypore, which is also thought to have medicinal uses.

Why aren’t mushrooms being used more often for medicinal purposes? Despite documented use of mushrooms in other cultures (for instance, ancient Greece) thousands of years ago, Stamets says some people have a fear of mushrooms — mycophobia — because the fungi are ephemeral and powerful.

They have the power to feed you, make you high or even harm you, but they don’t last very long.

“People’s paranoia is a reflex of their not understanding something that’s so mysterious,” he said. “I was always attracted to that which was forbidden, and these were forbidden fruits.”

Stamets isn’t the only one who’s excited about mushrooms. George Hudler, a professor in Cornell University’s Department of Plant Pathology and Plant-Microbe Biology, doesn’t like the taste of them, but thinks there’s a lot of potential for mushrooms’ healing properties.

“In the next 10 years, we’ll just see an incredible expansion of our awareness of chemicals in mushrooms, hopefully even their use in conventional medicine,” says Hudler, who teaches a course on mushrooms at Cornell and once had dinner with Stamets.

You might know of only a handful of mushroom types, but there are more than 150,000 species of mushrooms, Stamets says. Still, only 14,000 have been identified, and Stamets and colleagues are still looking.

In Hudler’s view, shiitake mushrooms have the longest track record of research in health benefits. Chemicals in them may stimulate the immune system and lower cholesterol.

White button mushrooms found in salad are also high in vitamin B complex, and the antioxidant properties of mushrooms could protect against heart disease and cancer.

And even hallucinogenic mushrooms are proving to have clinical uses. Psilocybin, one of the psychedelic compounds in “magic” mushrooms, may have uses for depression, a study recently suggested. There has also been research showing that healthy people given this drug in an experimental setting report having life-changes experiences and positive effects from them that last up to 25 years.

The research on all these mushrooms is still preliminary, so there’s no way to say for sure that mushrooms are going to add years to your life.

But Stamets points to his mother as a living example of how useful mushrooms may be. Patty Stamets, 86, had stage 4 metastatic breast cancer in 2009, and doctors gave her three months to live. But after a year of turkey tail mushroom supplement in addition to the standard drugs Taxol (paclitaxel) and Herceptin (trastuzumab), she had no detectable cancer.

Still, it’s not clear that the mushrooms were the whole story. Turkey tail mushrooms may have some ability to boost the immune system, but there’s so much unpredictability about cancer that it’s hard to say how much they did on top of the standard medications, Hudler said. He thinks that trying experimental mushroom supplements to potentially help treat cancer is worth considering, but not without a physician’s consultation.

Stamets himself eats mushrooms three to four times a week, and he recommends that everyone else do the same. Always cook mushrooms to get their immune-boosting benefits, he says. Cooking also destroys any toxins that may be present, Hudler notes.

Stamets likes his mushrooms crispy brown.

“These are functional foods,” he says. “It’s a misconception to think of them as drugs.”

Source: http://rss.cnn.com/~r/rss/cnn_health/~3/Lq0Uydpnxts/index.html

Editor’s note: Roni Selig is the senior executive producer and director for CNN’s Medical Unit. Her journey to becoming a triathlete sparked the idea for Dr. Sanjay Gupta’s Fit Nation Tri Challenge.

(CNN) — It started after I suffered several personal and professional blows between 1999 and 2002.

It was one thing on top of another, setting up the perfect emotional storm. First, my 71-year-young dad died after fighting non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Then my father-in-law died of pancreatic cancer.

Following that my husband was laid off by his company after 17 years. Then I was laid off from my job after the dot-com bubble burst.

I had never been unemployed, nor was I prepared for both my husband and me to be out of work simultaneously. The physical and emotional toll this takes on one’s mind and body is unreal, especially with two children in a New York City private school.

I thought I was going to have a nervous breakdown. After two days of my husband and me staring at one another in our modest apartment, I thought, I can either start drinking heavily, or I can do something productive with this time. I decided to go with the latter.

Every morning I woke up early, dropped our kids off at school, and walked to the local Jewish Community Center pool. There, I began jumping in with a wide variety of folks — from moms who didn’t need or want to work, to those hard hit by the recession (like myself), to senior celebrity retirees such as Jerry Stiller (father of Ben Stiller).

I started with slow freestyle laps, and used this solo time to plan my back-to-work strategy. It occurred to me that the mind needed to be trained like any other muscle in order to behave. I find swimming to be extremely meditative. The repetition of every stroke and every breath gives me an opportunity to think things through without any distractions. No wireless devices, no interruptions, only the sound of my breathing and the splashing of the water to contend with. I use this time to think calmly about difficult situations and reflect on my life in progress.

From the beginning these laps were mostly for the mental benefits. It didn’t even occur to me that I was slowly becoming a potential athlete — never mind a triathlete. Growing up, I had spent all my free time in the music and theater departments. I tried out for my high school’s cross country team, but since there wasn’t a girls team (this was before Title IX), I was it. It started a short-lived running hobby, which enabled me to do a few 10K races before I went off to college and gained the freshman 15. Up until this point I was pretty much, “Red rover, red rover, don’t send Roni over.”

Fast forward almost 25 years later — it was kismet. I saw a flyer for Team In Training in a local deli in my Upper West Side NYC neighborhood. Really, what caught my eye was the leukemia/lymphoma charitable fundraising aspect of this national organization. They claim to be the largest fundraiser for research on the disease which killed my father.

TNT was now a gateway to what would become my saving solitude: an attitude adjustment.

TNT is known for training nonathletes like myself. Their goal is to raise funds and basically get participants across a finish line. I needed a goal too.

Timing is everything. After not finding the right working opportunity, I knew I had this other “job.” I realized I am a person who needs routine, who craves accomplishment and camaraderie. I loved chatting with all types of people, some in similar situations and others who had this triathlon “thing” on their bucket lists. I wasn’t really sure how it would all unfold, but I knew for sure, this was the kind of therapy I needed — and it came in the nick of time.

I looked forward to every single workout. I felt an overwhelming sense of accomplishment after bringing on a good sweat or muscle soreness. I had to train regularly and raise money in memory of my father. I worked hard, waking up at 4:30 a.m. several days a week for almost a year. It was exhausting and exhilarating at the same time.

I took my swimming to another level, got a bike, and started running for the first time in 20 years. Let me say it again — I was 40-something years old, and I was NOT an athlete.

My biggest obstacles resulted from pushing too hard, too soon. To this day, there is barely an injury I haven’t met. From top to bottom: a torn retina (a freaky incident), saddle sore (biking too far on an unfit saddle), a fractured ankle (overuse), and broken toes (hit by another athlete in the pool). I had to learn to train smarter, not harder, but I loved training with a group all headed toward the same goal. It was energizing.

There are so many things in life that we have zero control over — things like getting laid off or losing a loved one. This was the perfect recipe for a “control freak” like me. I cherished the process because it was the one thing I could control — no one was going to step in and take it away from me, and the only sacrifice was sleep.

Many months later, there was only one week to go before the big 2002 New York City Triathlon. I was at a swim practice when we were asked to simulate the beginning of the race in the Riverbank State Park pool in Manhattan, where I had been training all year.

As we took off from the wall, I felt a hard push against my right foot. As you may or may not know, triathlon swimming is a contact sport. You cannot be afraid of getting whacked or swum over or kicked in the face. You must keep going.

We needed to swim 32 lengths in a 50-meter pool and do it in less than 40 minutes. I was determined to pass the test so I could race the following Sunday. As I swam tempo (race speed) pace, I felt my foot begin to throb from that smack. By the time I stepped out onto the deck, I couldn’t put an ounce of pressure on my foot. I was in trouble.

The next morning I went to a sports medicine doctor, who X-rayed my foot and told me my right metatarsal was broken — along with my heart. I bawled like a baby in the doctor’s office. I couldn’t believe my dream had just died.

Yet a year of training had taught me nothing if not perseverance. I made arrangements to be pushed to a later TNT race in a nearby New York suburb. After my foot was completely healed, 10 weeks later on a sunny Sunday, I finally raced in the Westchester Triathlon.

Nervous as hell, I swam, biked and ran, and I was on the most natural high I’d ever experienced. Biking up the steepest hill — known as Claire’s Climb, named for a disabled young woman who would greet us at the top — I was in tears, knowing that I had my dad on my shoulder and I had achieved my goal.

So many good things came my way during the course of this training process. I had finally found a job and had lost three dress sizes.

I’m now in it for the long haul. I continue to train through injuries and illness to figure out what workouts will benefit a lifestyle I endorse and encourage with all my heart. Almost 10 years later, I face a new sadness — my courageous mother struggles with the final stages of a debilitating and horrible end-stage lung cancer.

Several weeks ago, she made the call herself that it’s time for hospice. That same day, I decided it was time for a new goal.

In November 2012 I will be running in the New York City Marathon, a distance I once swore I would never be able to take on. For the next 10 months, as I pile on the mileage trying to avoid injury, when my legs begin to get heavy and my lungs burn (in what will be this 53-year-young body of mine), I will channel my mother’s intense love of life, her bravery and her sense of independence and purpose.

At the end of your life, really, all you have is yourself. At the end of mine I will look back with no regrets and a long string of memories of how this one sport changed me, and so many other fortunate nonathletes, forever.

Source: http://rss.cnn.com/~r/rss/cnn_health/~3/W5-DiMROekE/index.html