WEEKLY HEALTH UPDATE       

                     3/16/2009               

           Presented by Dr. Larry Cimperman and Dr. Agnes Gallagher

Quote of the week: "The best health care is free; be proactive and take care of yourself before you have symptoms." Marcus Strutz, D.C.

Wellness and Prevention: Fiber and Bowel Cancer. People who ate 5 or more portions of fruits and vegetables a day plus the equivalent of 5 slices of whole meal bread had a 40% lower rate of developing bowel cancer. Reuters, May 2003.

Chiropractic: Headache Help. A study in the Journal of Manipulative & Physiological Therapeutics noted that spinal manipulative therapy is effective treatment for tension headaches. Four weeks after treatment, patients experienced a sustained therapeutic benefit as compared to the patients that received drug therapy.

Health Alert: The US is 38^th in the world in life expectancy!

Here are the top five countries: 1. Japan, 2. Iceland, 3. Switzerland, 4. Australia, 5. Spain.

Why is the US so low? 1. Native Americans, rural African Americans and inner city poor have extremely poor health, more akin to a poor developing country, rather than a rich, industrialized one. 2. HIV (AIDS virus): there is a higher rate of death and disability to US young and middles-aged than most advanced countries. 3. High cancer rate from tobacco use. 4. High coronary heart disease rate. 5. High number of homicides. World Health Organization, 2005.

Diet: NutraSweet Shown to Cause Cancer. In a 7-year study on aspartame, rats given the equivalent of 4-5 bottles of diet soda per day experienced high rates of lymphoma, leukemia and other cancers. The carcinogenic (cancer causing) effects of aspartame occurred at levels as low as 20 milligrams a day in humans. The Recommended Daily Allowance is 50 milligrams. Environmental Health Perspectives, March 2006.