Kim’s public health blog

In a new study, an international team of heart experts at Johns Hopkins and elsewhere report that rats fed 10 milligrams daily of folate, also known as folic acid or vitamin B9, for a week prior to heart attack had smaller infarcts than rats who took no supplements. On average, researchers say, the amount of muscle tissue exposed to damage and scarred by the arterial blockage was shrunk to less than a tenth.  The team’s findings, set for publication in the April 8 edition of the journal Circulation, come just weeks after other international studies in humans suggested that low-dose folic acid supplements may prevent dementia in the elderly and premature births.
While people are not rats, study after study has shown that folic acid, found in green leafy vegetables, is one of the few consistent findings about the human diet. Further, this naturally occurring dietary supplement continues to show its value not only during the perinatal period but throughout life.  Broccoli and other greens really are worth eating.

Congress and the media are again hounding the FDA. All drugs (medicines) are dangerous. This statement is one that the media and politicians need to learn. One cannot test a medicine in more than a few thousand people at a time, before it is released to the practicing physicains. Once it is released for use and millions are exposed to the medication rare events, a number of the including death, may occur. Some of these are coincidental but the activists want cause and do not undestand the issue of coincidence.. How many adverse events are acceptable? Should millions of people be denied use of a useful drug because one in a million has a serious adverse eevnt. How many sheets of advice must a scienitifically untrained person read before a prescription is written? How many of you read the small print of every document you sign? Not many I bet! Perhaps we need to stop advertising prescription drugs as this pressures physicians to use drugs that might not otherwise be recommended. Then when patients have adverse effects they run to a lawyer rather than accept blame for their own behavior. One more reason for the rapidly increasing cost of the health care system.