Ginkgo helps memory, raises stroke

'By David Liu, Ph. D.Mar 2, 2008 - 10:17:50 PM

SUNDAY MARCH 2, 2008 (Foodconsumer.org) -- A study published online Wednesday Feb 27 in the journal Neurology suggests taking a ginkgo biloba extract may help maintain memory in elderly people.But the same study also showed that the users of ginkgo biloba extract were at higher risk of mini-strokes or mild strokes.

Ginkgo biloba extracts are sold as dietary supplements to enhance memory as some studies found that it may help improve memory and other mental functions in people with dementia.Dr. Hiroko H. Dodge at the Oregon State University in Corvallis and colleagues followed 118 people aged 85, half taking ginkgo biloba and half taking a placebo, for three years during which 21 of them developed mild memory problems or signs of dementia.Among those who had the memory problems, 14 took a placebo while only 7 took the ginkgo biloba extract. The researchers said although there was a trend showing that taking the ginkgo biloba extract seemed to reduce the risk for memory loss, the effect was not statistically significant.Among those who strictly followed the supplementation regimen, the risk for memory problems for those who took the ginkgo biloba extract was only 32 % of that for those who did not.However, a higher risk of strokes or mini strokes in the ginkgo biloba group was observed. What is interesting is that the type of stroke observed was vessel blockages, not bleeding, a finding that contradicts early studies."Further studies are needed to determine whether ginkgo biloba has any benefits in preventing cognitive decline and whether it is safe," Dodge said."

Ginkgo: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ginkgo

Florida’s Democratic Delegates

The elites loitering at the DNC are making an immense mistake in denying Florida the right to seat its 2008 Presidential primary delegates. The DEMS have traditional been the party of the people. Such a regression from this basic principle may further cause schisms. Like Governor Dean rose to be the chief donkey DEMS locally are discussing action to replace him along with rules committee members. The donkey elites are advised to respect the Florida voters, seat or delegates and mind the business of Washington.

Telecom Immunity Threatens the Constitution

George W. Bush and other Republican leaders have admitted that they oppose the extension of the "Protect America Act" passed by the House of Representatives because it does not give immunity to those telecommunications companies who willingly handed over the personal data of US citizens based on nothing more than a request from the Administration. Their reason? They claim that those telecommunications companies might not cooperate next time.

More than one blogger has pointed out that, if telecommunications companies were given warrants and subpoenas, they would have to cooperate next time, or suffer severe consequences. But I haven't seen anyone else make this point: we citizens don't want those telecommunications companies giving up our private data based on nothing more than a request from the government.

In appealing to one fear, the fear of terrorists, Bush and his enablers overlook a greater fear woven into the US Constitution: An authoritarian government represents a greater potential threat to its citizens than any potential terrorist. That's why the Fourth Amendment to the US Constitution says:

"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

The "Founding Fathers" knew from experience that a government's powers are so vast, the potential for abuse so real, and the possible damage so grave, that restrictions on the government's powers had to be established. And one of those "safety clauses" was a requirement that the government be forced to show "probable cause" before searching and seizing our effects. I submit that this would include our electronic "effects".

Alex Budarin http://jeffersonsparlor.blogspot.com

A Gospel According to Yoda

"Daniel Jones noticed, as did many other people, that more than 390,000 people across England and Wales had claimed "Jedi" as their religion on the U.K.'s 2001 census. An Internet campaign may have driven up those numbers, but the results held a deeper meaning for Daniel and his brother Barney. That census report became their impetus to start the U.K. Church of the Jedi.

Daniel took on the name Master Morda Hehol and opened the main chapter in Anglesey, Wales, where he lives. Another is open in Surrey, England, and they've had calls from would-be Jedis in Washington and Colorado, people hoping to open chapters stateside. It's no joke to Daniel, who was atheist before adopting Jediism.

"We don't have a deity, we have the Force," says Daniel. "It's more like self-belief. If you believe in yourself, and you manipulate the Force, you can achieve great things."
Services have been held in his backyard garden, with plans to move to a building soon.
"The first part of the sermons we do 'Theory of the Force.'" The group then moves on to classes. "It may be lightsaber training, one month. The next month it may be technology and mind control."

Yes, that includes Jedi Mind Tricks."

Companies Use Fees to Counter Bargains

"From hotels to cell phone bills, companies attach a barrage of hidden, extra charges. One reason is the Internet. Online shopping permits consumers to comparison shop for bargains. So companies are countering low prices with hefty fees. So if a $99 room is snagged at a nice hotel via Priceline.com, then the hotel tends to attach a "resort fee" for towels at the pool or removing something from the mini-bar – even it put back 60 seconds later.

Bob Sullivan, author of Gotcha Capitalism, talks with Steve Inskeep about deceptive fees and why U.S. businesses are so dependent on them."

News web sites draw record viewers

"NEW YORK (Reuters) - A record number of readers visited U.S. online newspaper sites last year, according to figures released on Thursday, confirming the Web as one of the few bright spots for the struggling newspaper industry.

The Newspaper Association of America reported the number of unique visitors to newspaper Web sites last year rose more than 6 percent to a monthly average of 60 million. Monthly visits climbed 9 percent in the fourth quarter from a year ago."

American Express Hit by Slowing Economy

"One of the country's biggest credit card companies says the slowing economy is hurting its business. American Express says credit card charges began to tail off in December. It's also warning Wall Street that its profits will be lower as more cardholders fail to repay their debts. The CEO of American Express says card spending is still strong, but he pointed to problems among consumers in California, Florida and other parts of the country most affected by the downturn in housing."

Iraqi Death Toll at 151,000

"by Brenda Wilson
A study conducted by the World Health Organization and the Iraq Health Ministry estimates that more than 150,000 Iraqis suffered violent deaths in the first three years after the U.S. invasion.

That's about a fourth of the number of deaths found in an earlier controversial study.
The World Health Organization's study of violent deaths is based on visits to more than 10,000 households throughout Iraq. Ties Boerma, WHO's director of Measurements and Health Information, says the results include the deaths of civilians and soldiers who were part of those households.

"They don't include car accidents and they don't include unintentional injuries," says Boerma. "They just include intentional injuries and armed conflict. In fact, the armed conflict deaths are more than 80 percent of the deaths we got reported."

Researchers left it up to the respondents to define the cause of death.
"If they said someone died while trying to avoid a bomb blast, (you) could define it as an armed conflict death, but that was up to the respondents," says Boerma.
Boerma and his team looked at the period between March 2003 and June 2006, and estimated 151,000 violent deaths in Iraq.

That's a fraction of the more than 600,000 violent deaths reported for the same period by researchers at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health in 2006, a survey that continues to be debated in the press and political circles.

Both studies counted civilian and combatant fatalities. Boerma thinks the difference in their findings is that the earlier Hopkins study visited far fewer neighborhoods and villages. Researchers working with Hopkins visited 47 so-called clusters; researchers with WHO visited more than 1,000 clusters.

"Because we are talking about a survey that is much larger, we have a little bit more confidence in that method than in a very small cluster survey," says Boerma.
Boerma admits that even the bigger survey missed areas that were too violent to get into and so they made adjustments for that.

Les Roberts was the co-author of the Johns Hopkins study. He says that they can produce a death certificate for every violent death in their tally and he doubts the surveyors working for Iraq's Ministry of Health can produce the same.

"Every graveyard tally, every morgue description I've seen suggests the majority of deaths are from violence," Roberts says. "There are two possibilities. Our estimate has too many. Theirs has too few." Roberts says he thinks in the case of the WHO study, families were reluctant to admit a family member died a violent death.
However, there are other reports on increases in violent deaths whose trends are closer to those reported by WHO.

It is unlikely that this latest research will settle the question of the exact magnitude of death the Iraq conflict has caused."

Nation's Health Care Bill Hits All-Time High

" by Joanne Silberner"

"For the first time ever, the total spent on health care topped $2 trillion in 2006, according to a government analysis. The details are in the current issue of the journal Health Affairs.
Fortunately, the rate of growth is slowing down.

But that news may not be as good as it sounds.
The analysis was headed by Aaron Catlin, an economist with the Department of Health and Human Services.

"Health spending in the U.S. accelerated slightly," he says. "It picked up in growth to 6.7 percent in 2006. That's up two-tenths of a percentage point from 2005."
That's not much of an increase in growth if you're an economist, especially when you consider it's been twice that rate in previous years.

But in one area, there was a pretty dramatic increase. Spending on prescription drugs went up 8.5 percent. That's $16 billion.

"We attribute about 50 percent of the increase in spending to increase in use," Catlin says. "Some of that increased use came from beneficiaries under Part D."
The Part D beneficiaries are people who have bought prescription drug insurance through Medicare. Some of them didn't have drug insurance until they purchased it through Medicare and were unable to afford certain prescription medications before the plan went into effect.

Where is the health care economy going? The government won't come out with its projections for the next decade until the end of February. But some other health experts say there are big problems ahead: Health care inflation is far from solved.

Health care consultant Bob Lasziewski says it's like a ship sinking at a reduced rate from how it was sinking before.
"Health care is still increasing at twice the rate of inflation," he says. "Five years ago, it was four times the rate of inflation."
But twice the rate of inflation is still unsustainable, he says, especially given what he sees for the future: Doctors and hospitals joining together to resist insurers' cost cutting, and baby boomers continuing to age.

Paul Ginsburg sees other problems. He's president of the Center for Studying Health Systems Change, which has been studying health care costs in 25 communities around the country. For one thing, Ginsburg says, if the economy hits a downturn and wages slump, health care costs will take a bigger bite out of every paycheck.

Plus he expects that the nation's obesity epidemic is going to drive up health costs. And in travelling around the country he's seen marketplace changes that worry him.
"What we've seen is that the hospitals and physicians have identified which services are the most profitable," he says. "So hospitals identify cardiac procedures and physicians have identified imaging. So what's profitable, they're building."

When a new hospital wing gets built, or doctors buy fancy new machines, those new buildings and machines are going to be used. And when they're used, somebody has to pay for them."

Document Shows Army Blocked Help for Soldiers

"by Ari Shapiro

A document from the Department of Veterans Affairs contradicts an assertion made by the Army surgeon general that his office did not tell VA officials to stop helping injured soldiers with their military disability paperwork at a New York Army post.

The paperwork can help determine health care and disability benefits for wounded soldiers.
Last week, NPR first described a meeting last March between an Army team from Washington and VA officials at Fort Drum Army base in upstate New York. NPR reported that Army representatives told the VA not to review the narrative summaries of soldiers' injuries, and that the VA complied with the Army's request.

The day the NPR story aired, Army Surgeon General Eric B. Schoomaker denied parts of the report. Rep. John McHugh (R-NY), who represents the Fort Drum area, told North Country Public Radio, that "The Surgeon General of the Army told me very flatly that it was not the Army that told the VA to stop this help."

Now, NPR has obtained a four-page VA document that contradicts the surgeon general's statement to McHugh. It was written by one of the VA officials at Fort Drum on March 31, the day after the meeting. The document says Col. Becky Baker of the Army Surgeon General's office told the VA to discontinue counseling soldiers on the appropriateness of Defense Department ratings because "there exists a conflict of interest."

When contacted by NPR, Baker referred an interview request to the Army Surgeon General's spokeswoman. The spokeswoman rejected requests for interviews with Baker and Schoomaker.
The document says that before the Army team's visit, people from the Army Inspector General's office came to Fort Drum and told the VA it was providing a useful service to soldiers by reviewing their disability paperwork.

According to the document, joining Baker on the Army team at the Fort Drum meeting was Dr. Alan Janusziewicz. He retired as deputy assistant surgeon general for the Army in October.
"I was part of the team, and I was probably instrumental in the surgeon general denying that the Army had instructed the VA" to stop reviewing soldiers' Army medical documents, Janusziewicz told NPR in a phone interview.

Janusziewicz says he has no memory of Baker telling the VA to stop helping soldiers with their military paperwork. In fact, he says, he thought the VA at Fort Drum was doing the best job of any base he visited. But he also says his recollection of the meeting is spotty, since it took place almost a year ago.

"I believe that document is more likely to represent a miscommunication of intent between what Col. Baker was trying to get across and what folks on the receiving end of that communication likely heard," Janusziewicz said.
The document describing the meeting at Fort Drum says the primary purpose for the visit was to "ensure that there are no other 'Walter Reed' situations at other Army installations." That's a reference to the scandal at Walter Reed Army hospital in Washington, which detailed reports of neglect of soldiers recovering from injuries sustained in Iraq and Afghanistan.

According to the document, Rosie Taylor, who recently retired as Fort Drum's Disability Program manager, described soldiers at the base in conditions of squalor and neglect. In an interview on Wednesday, Taylor described "soldiers crawling on their bellies to go to the bathroom, or soldiers who'd had surgery who couldn't go to chow because they had no way to get there."

The document says one soldier was bedridden for three days without a change of clothes or meal. Taylor says nobody listened to her complaints until the Walter Reed scandal.
"Every time I walked into a meeting before, it was like 'Oh my God, there goes $70,000.' And after Walter Reed hit the fan, it was like I was getting phone calls, 'Rosie we're doing over a building and we need your advice on access,'" Taylor says.

Taylor says the accessibility problems have generally been solved.
She doesn't remember whether the Army told the VA to stop helping soldiers with their disability paperwork. But she will say this about Fort Drum's VA workers: "They stand on their heads for soldiers. They put their jobs on the line for soldiers. They don't care if they're not supposed to do something; if a soldier needs something done, they do it anyway."
Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) has already asked the Army to investigate the situation at Fort Drum. She called the allegations in last week's report "deeply disturbing."

Whether the situation at the Army base is a result of poor communication, poor memory or something else altogether, the result is the same: For the last year, hundreds of disabled soldiers at Fort Drum have received less help with their disability paperwork than the soldiers who came before them."