Systemic sclerosis or SSc is a disease that causes fibrosis and vascular disorder along with autoimmune changes. This disease involves fibroblast activity that causes abnormal growth of the connective tissues. SSc gives birth to a number of skin problems including ulcers, itchy skin, and many other complexities. It is difficult to conclude what actually causes systemic sclerosis. It can be considered as a multisystem disease of an unknown cause. The term “autoimmune” (mentioned above) implies that the immune system is responding against the associated tissues. Pathogenesis brings both activated B cells and activated T lymphocytes together. As an outcome, autoantibodies and cytokines affect the cells that channel the blood vessels leading to vasoconstriction and fibroblasts. Fibroblasts produce excessive collagen, a medical complexity that is called fibrosis. Fibrosis is the reason behind Digital ulcers.
Symptoms of SSc
Raynaud phenomenon is the first indication of SSc. Affected patients may find their fingers and toes white and numb. This is the primary and main indication of this disease. Following this indication, other complexities (in most of the cases skin problem) will take place.
SSc and Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy (HBOT)
Digital and leg ulcers are really hard to handle. Many treatments have been introduced to combat these complications among which hyperbaric oxygen therapy is the most preferred one. A case series has claimed that hyperbaric oxygen therapy or HBOT is really beneficial for SSc ulcers. Bengusu Mirasoglu, from Istanbul University, and his colleagues conducted an experiment on six SSc patients suffering badly from SSc ulcers. Three out of six patients had digital ulcer while the other three had leg ulcers. All of the six patients were given hyperbaric oxygen therapy. After taking the HBOT therapy, four among the six patients had completely recovered while other two patients got near-complete healing. They did not require amputation to cure their ulcers.
A Brief History of HBOT
Hyperbaric oxygen therapy is not a new invention. It has a long history. The origin of hyperbaric therapy dates back nearly 350 years. In its infancy, HBOT treatment was conducted only to treat decompression sickness. During the late 1900s, several studies started shedding light to those indications that can be treated by HBOT. Still, the studies are going on. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has already approved some indications including:
Air or Gas Embolism
Carbon Monoxide Poisoning
Gas Gangrene
Crush Injury
Decompression Sickness
Wound/ulcer Healing
Abnormal Blood Loss
Intracranial abscess
Necrotizing soft tissue infections
Radiation injury
Skin Grafts and Flaps
Thermal Burns
There are many other indications that are not approved by FDA yet, but several studies have established that they can also be effectively treated by hyperbaric oxygen therapy.
How does Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy Combat SSc Ulcers?
In order to receive this treatment, you need to enter into a hyperbaric chamber. 100% pure oxygen is supplied to a hyperbaric chamber. Whenever the patients breathe normally inside the chamber, their bloodstream absorbs the pressurized oxygen with the help of the lungs. Eventually, the oxygen is carried throughout the body by the circulatory system. Overall, the patients receive up to 15 times the amount of the oxygen in comparison to inhaling air at the sea level.
Ulcers affect the blood vessels which are responsible for leaking into the tissue. It causes swelling. HBOT supplies oxygen to the affected tissues to reduce swelling. In this way, hyperbaric oxygen therapy energizes the ulcer-affected tissues and protects them from death.
Mono or Multiplace – Which Hyperbaric Oxygen Chamber is Good for SSc Ulcer?
There are two types of hyperbaric chamber – monoplace and multiplace hyperbaric chamber. In a monoplace chamber, only one person can be treated at a single sitting. Multiplace chamber is much like a submarine. In this hyperbaric chamber, multiple patients can be treated at the same time. For systemic Sclerosis ulcers, you can choose any one type of hyperbaric chamber. Both serve the same function. Choose a chamber that is comfortable to you.
Final Overview
Don’t ignore systemic sclerosis ulcers if you love your life. It can take worst form if you overlook it. Consult your doctor and take hyperbaric oxygen therapy under his/her supervision. It would be better if you start the treatment at an earlier stage.
Feel free to write to us if you have any confusion about hyperbaric oxygen therapy. Lead a healthy life and be happy.
Chloe Paltrow, MD, is a psychiatrist with more than 20 years of experience. She is also a researcher in the field of neurology. Dr. Paltrow sees patients with different neurodevelopmental disorders and intellectual disabilities. She has shared her knowledge in various websites and blogs like Collective Evolution, PsychCentral and Pick The Brain. Currently, she is studying how brain injury and brain disorders can be treated with hyperbaric chamber, of which OxyHealth is a leading provider.
There was dancing to the Jailhouse Rock when a community choir formed in a prison in Northern Ireland was named overall winner of annual awards for therapists and health scientists.
Organisers, supporters and past members of the Voice of Release choir burst into an impromptu chorus of Elvis Presley’s hit in celebration of their success at the 2017 Advancing Healthcare Awards, held at Chelsea Harbour in London.
The awards, for which the Guardian was media partner, aim to highlight the achievements around the UK of allied health professionals and others who work with them outside the medical and nursing professions.
The Voice of Release was founded in 2014 by occupational therapists at Hydebank Wood women’s prison in south Belfast as a way of trying to engage prisoners who were vulnerable or at risk of suicide or self-harm.
Women who stepped forward to take part led development of the venture, winning a Dragons’ Den-style pitch for initial funding. The choir has since gone on to make a CD, put on paid performances – with some members being allowed out of prison to do so – and involve prisoners from a men’s jail without incident. A follow-on project has been set up for choir members to continue singing after release.
Regular monitoring of those taking part has shown a decrease in stress levels, improvement of mood and a greater sense of hope thanks to the “choral cure”.
The scheme, run jointly with The Right Key, a Lisburn-based community interest company, won the mental health category of the awards before scooping the overall prize. This new category, sponsored by the Guardian, attracted a record number of entries for the awards, which were in their 11th year.
The NetPark Wellbeing Project, an arts therapy scheme developed by the Metal Arts Organisation and Southend council, using digital technology in the setting of a public park, was highly commended in the same category.
Full list of winners
Overall winner and Guardian award for innovation in mental health services – Lynsey Grierson and Sheila Smyth, South Eastern health and social care trust and The Right Key; highly commended Emma Mills, Metal Arts Organisation
Faculty of Public Health and Public Health England award for contribution to public health – Gillian Rawlinson and Helen Slee, Salford Royal hospitals NHS foundation trust; highly commended Ruth Crabtree and Tom Heywood, Yorkshire ambulance service NHS trust
Health Education England and National Institute for Health Research award research champions – Lisa Roberts, University of Southampton and Southampton hospitals NHS foundation trust
Chamberlain Dunn award for entrepreneurship – Jo Godsall and Daniel Thomas, Chroma Arts Therapies
Macmillan award for leadership and innovation in cancer rehabilitation – Laura Caley and Jervoise Andreyev, Royal Marsden NHS foundation trust
Scottish government award for improving quality: measuring and demonstrating impact – Fraser Ferguson, NHS 24
Academy for Healthcare Science award for innovation – Mark Bowtell and Lorna Tasker, Abertawe Bro Morgannwg university (ABMU) health board
Welsh government award for prudently advancing practice – Anita Smith, East Sussex healthcare NHS trust
NHS Employers award for outstanding achievement by an apprentice, support worker or technician working alongside an AHP or healthcare scientist – Jennifer Hopton, Newcastle upon Tyne hospitals NHS foundation trust
Northern Ireland award for maximising resources for success – Fiona Talbot and Janey Milligan, South Eastern health and social care trust
Scottish government award for driving improvement, delivering results – Fiona McMillan and Catrina MacGregor, NHS Ayrshire and Arran
Health Service Laboratories’ award for rising stars – Dimitra Verra, Central London community healthcare NHS trust; Rachel Ball, University hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire; Mark Edwards, ABMU health board; Fiona Brannan, Warwickshire Music; Erin Wilson, Warrington and Halton hospitals NHS trust; Ruth Louise Poole, Cedar, Cardiff and Vale university health board
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“Secret plans to change our NHS”: This is the allegation levelled at sustainability and transformation plans (STPs) – the government’s latest NHS reform initiative – by campaigning group 38 Degrees. Some politicians seem to agree, with former shadow health secretary Diane Abbott calling them “a dagger pointed at the heart of the NHS”.
Simon Stevens, the chief executive of NHS England, sees it differently: “Now is quite obviously the time to confront … the big local choices needed to improve health and care across England.” For him, STPs are a way of delivering the reforms he set out in the NHS Five Year Forward View (pdf) and the £22bn of efficiency savings he promised to the government, while maintaining or improving the quality of care.
As details of the STPs have been made public and the extent of the winter crisis in the NHS has become apparent, the debate about their role in the health service has become dangerously polarised. The question is whether these controversial plans will prove to be kill or cure. Based on a detailed analysis of all 44 plans, we at IPPR think the reality is probably more nuanced and complex than either side let on.
The IPPR’s STP finder tool gives a breakdown of the scale of the financial challenge facing each area, and outlines the changes each plan is expected to bring about.
On the one hand, it’s clear that some elements of the argument made by campaigning groups – for example, that the government is knowingly underfunding the health and care service – stack up. Our analysis shows that every STP area is forecast to be in deficit by 2020-21, and these deficits total more than £24bn. For Theresa May and (somewhat more reluctantly) Simon Stevens to suggest that this financial gap can be closed through reform alone is disingenuous to say the least.
On the other hand, campaigners are wrong to argue that the reform agenda is simply about delivering dangerous cuts. The NHS cannot stand still as the world transforms around it. Instead, it must respond to growing demographic pressures; new evidence about what works and what doesn’t; and cutting edge technologies that can transform health and care.
Hospital reconfigurations are a perfect example of the need for a more balanced discussion. Campaigning groups have raced to uncover “secret” plans to close local hospitals, arguing that these changes are evidence of the government’s deceit. And, they are right to highlight that these changes are afoot: our research finds that up to 44% of STPs include hospital closures or reconfigurations.
However, the potential benefits of these changes have gone largely unnoticed. There is strong evidence for some services, in particular A&E and specialist surgery (pdf), concentrating care in fewer locations. This can save lives by ensuring people have access to the most highly trained doctors and the best equipment. Likewise, there are many examples where treatment could be moved out of hospital all together, saving money but also improving outcomes: for example, only 7% of people say they would prefer to die in hospital with the vast majority opting for home.
This doesn’t mean that all the planned changes are justified, some are likely to be driven by the need to cut costs but many are not and should end up improving health outcomes over the coming years.
Likewise, the wider health and care reform agenda is yet to get a fair hearing, with a number of initiatives likely to result in better care, for example new “community care hubs”, which will bring together GPs, mental health services and social care at a local level; “a truly seven-day health service” with GPs opening on evenings and weekdays; and the adoption of new technology that allows people to receive support remotely.
STPs are an opportunity to deliver these reforms – which will help to transform the quality of care delivered up and down the country – ensuring that the NHS is fit for the 21st century. However, there is no doubt that the NHS will struggle to seize these opportunities without three key changes.
First, the government must recognise that the health and care system needs more funding both to manage the immediate pressures of the winter crisis but also to properly fund the reform agenda. A good start would be a rise in national insurance. This could raise up to a further £16bn over the next five years, dramatically closing the funding gap.
Second, the government – in particular Theresa May and Jeremy Hunt – must start supporting NHS leaders in making the case for reform, in particular controversial and little understood hospital reconfigurations. This will give local NHS leaders the political leadership they need to argue for their proposals locally.
Finally, once central government has helped local leaders win support for their reform plans, they must be given the tools to deliver these changes and allowed to get on with it. This may well mean giving NHS leaders real powers to intervene in their local area, as well as devolving functions currently undertaken by central government as has happened in Greater Manchester.
STPs are an opportunity rather than a risk for the NHS, but without these fundamental changes, it seems inevitable the NHS will remain a 20th century system in a 21st century world.
Harry Quilter-Pinner is a research fellow on public services at the IPPR thinktank. This is an edited version of an article on the IPPR blog and is part of a wider project on STPs.
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Ben Dunkle died at the age of 20, abandoned in a carpark by panicked friends who had no idea how to save his life as he overdosed on heroin.
“I’m certain that if they had been carrying naloxone, they wouldn’t have run away,” said his mother, Aimee Dunkle.
After Ben’s death, Aimee made it a mission to get naloxone, an antidote that can bring overdosing opioid users back from the brink of death within minutes, into the hands of as many people as she could. In February she founded the Solace Foundation in southern California to distribute the naloxone among addicts, many of them homeless, their relatives and friends. She says the group has saved at least 365 lives.
But Dunkle said she could have saved more if it were not for the surging cost of the drug which has prompted accusations of pharmaceutical companies profiteering from the US’s opioid epidemic. Costs for pre-filled syringes doubled in 2014 and are three times the price of 15 years ago, while injectors used to administer the spray have increased to more than five times the price in two years.
“More people are dead now than would have been otherwise,” said Dan Bigg, director of the Chicago Recovery Alliance, an important distributor of naloxone in the city. “How many is hard to count, but programmes that would have started didn’t because of the cost of naloxone. Programmes that would have expanded didn’t because of the price of naloxone. To the extent pricing is an impediment, it will prevent this being used as a lifesaving medicine.”
Deaths from opioid overdoses surged again last year to more than 30,000, driven by a sharp increase in the use of heroin and fentanyl.
Heroin deaths were up 23% on the previous year to 12,989, more than the number of lives claimed by guns used in murders, according to data released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Thursday. The sharpest increase came from lives claimed by even more powerful synthetic opioids, such as fentanyl, the drug that killed Prince, which were up 73% to 9,580 deaths, although some of those deaths were in combination with heroin. But prescription opioid painkillers, containing drugs such as oxycodone, remained the biggest killers, taking 17,536 lives.
Medical studies say that most heroin users first become addicted to prescription drugs. It is how Ben Dunkle came to die.
Ben Dunkle in 2012. Photograph: Courtesy of the Dunkle family
Overdoses are so widespread that the National Center for Vital Statistics found drug-related deaths are dragging down life expectancy for white adults.
After 15 years of steadily rising deaths from opioids, what the CDC has called an epidemic has finally forced its way on to the political stage with $ 1bn in treatment and prevention legislation passed by Congress. It has also resulted in ever-widening access to naloxone as more police forces carry it and states liberalise access by making it available without a prescription. But increased demand for the antidote has coincided with a sharp rise in cost.
Naloxone is most commonly administered by injection or spray. Kaléo, a Virginia company, has increased the price of its naloxone auto-injectors, sold as Evzio, from $ 690 for a kit of two to $ 4,500 in less than two years. Amphastar of California nearly tripled the price of syringes pre-filled with naloxone.
“When we started in 1996, a 10cc vial of naloxone was $ 1.63. Now that 10cc vial is almost $ 300 at Walgreens here,” said Bigg. “Has the price been raised well beyond what it costs to make in an obscene way for such an important lifesaving drug? Yes.”
Robert Childs, director of the North Carolina Harm Reduction Coalition, one of the largest non-profit distributors of naloxone in the US, said his organisation has spent about $ 220,000 this year giving out more than 13,000 naloxone kits to police officers and others working with those at risk of overdose.
“If naloxone wasn’t the price it is, we would be able to buy a lot more and get a lot more out there to high-risk populations,” he said. “There’s a public health crisis with opiate and opioid-based drug overdoses, and the response has often been to increase the price which is probably the worst response you can do.”
The increased demand and rising prices has resulted in a surge in income from naloxone for drug companies, up 400% since 2011 to $ 82m last year.
“It’s one thing to charge more for snow shovels when there’s a blizzard, but this is a public health emergency,” said Dr Andrew Kolodny, co-director for opioid policy research at Brandeis University. “When you have an epidemic of people dying of opioid overdoses, [this] should be readily available. We shouldn’t have pharmaceutical companies profiteering.”
Doctors writing in the New England Journal of Medicine called for government intervention to control the price of the drug, saying that cost is discouraging use of naloxone. They said that legislation has greatly expanded access to the antidote but that the price remains an obstacle.
“We believe that such policies should explicitly call on manufacturers to reduce the price of naloxone and increase transparency regarding their costs, particularly those related to the development of new formulations,” it said.
“The message to lawmakers is drug prices are an increasingly important problem for patients,” said one of the article’s coauthors, Dr Joseph Ross, an associate professor of public health at Yale University and a primary care physician.
•••
Aimee Dunkle took one look at the young man slumped on a bench in a Santa Ana carpark three weeks ago and knew she had only minutes to act.
“The giveaway for me was he was drooling. He was breathing very shallowly. I recognised him and called his name. There was no response,” she said.
The man was overdosing on heroin and benzodiazepines, a lethal combination. Dunkle pumped a shot of naloxone – also known by the trade name Narcan – into him.
“I gave him the first shot of Narcan and no response. I gave him the second shot and he woke up. He was groggy, but he was up almost immediately. Someone had dialed 911 but before law enforcement arrived he was walking away,” she said. “It was exhilarating to save a life for the first time but then I realised this is how Ben died, sitting in a car, slumped over.”
Most of the manufacturers distribute a limited amount of free supplies to community groups and emergency services like Dunkle’s or sell naloxone at a discount.Dunkle said her group received free auto-injectors from Kaléo, but when they ran out she could not afford to buy more even at the discounted price for non-profits.
“There’s no way I can even contemplate buying it,” she said. “We sometimes get some financial donations. One time I had about $ 1,500 that had been donated and I bought $ 1,500 of Narcan. Then I had to select who to give it to. Not who was at most risk but who was most likely to witness an overdose. For a mother that’s lost a child, that’s a hellish decision to have to make: who gets the kits and who doesn’t.”
Supplies dried up for three weeks in September. Dunkle said that inevitably meant lives were lost.
“Our waitlist was over 70 people and that meant people died because we didn’t have it,” she said.
But financial donations mean she now has supplies to see her through the first half of 2017 distributing 70 naloxone kits a week. Still, that falls well short of demand.
“There’s never enough,” she said.
naloxone
The rising costs have drawn scrutiny in Congress. Senators Susan Collins and Claire McCaskill wrote to five pharmaceutical companies in June asking them to explain their pricing of naloxone.
A spokesman for McCaskill said that in meetings the companies defended the increases as necessary to cover the cost of new delivery systems. Naloxone, which has been on the market since 1971, is no longer covered by a patent and is cheap to produce. But pharmaceutical companies do have patents on how the drug is administered, such as by spray or auto-injectors, a spring-loaded syringe.
“In meetings, generally speaking the companies have argued that the price increases are due to new and more efficient delivery systems,” he said. “The question is, are these new bells and whistles effective?”
Manufacturers said the introductions of nasal sprays and auto-injectors are easier and safer to use than regular syringes. But Bigg questions whether those modifications justify the cost given that both means of delivery were already commonly used with other drugs.
An Irish company, Adapt Pharma, which makes a widely used naloxone nasal spray with a trade name of Narcan, denied that the patent was a means to price gouge. It said the spray “is designed, tested and approved so that anyone in the community can deliver a proper dose in non-medical conditions”.
“It’s not as simple as just putting naloxone into the device and selling it,” said Mike Kelly, president of Adapt’s US operations. “To obtain Food and Drug Administration approval, we must consistently meet the standards set by the FDA.”
The list price for the spray is $ 150 for the two shots typically administered to someone who overdoses on opioids which Adapt notes is considerably cheaper than a rival, the Ezvio auto-injector, with a retail price of $ 4,500 for a pack of two.
Kelly said the company discounts the cost for community groups and the police by 40% and that a majority of patients using a prescription can obtain it through health insurance for $ 10.
“We have made it our mission to provide more access and availability than ever before – including donating more than 50,000 doses of Narcan nasal spray to increase awareness and experience with the product and naloxone generally,” he said.
Mark Herzog, vice-president of corporate affairs at Kaléo said the six-fold increase in the list price of Ezvio was made in order to cover the cost of ensuring anyone with insurance and a prescription can obtain the drug cheap or free. The company responded to the senators’ letter by claiming that the real barrier to naloxone access is “lack of insurance coverage or unreasonable coverage restrictions”.
The company said it has donated more than 150,000 auto-injectors to public agencies and community groups. Other drug manufacturers did not respond to requests for comment including one of the largest naloxone sellers, Hospira, which has raised the cost of a vial of the drug by 1,700%.
A drug being touted and prescribed as a cure for alcoholism may not work any better than counselling, Dutch researchers have said.
Without proof of its efficacy, prescribing high doses of the drug known as baclofen may be irresponsible, they warned.
“Prescribing baclofen widely as it currently happens in France might be premature and should be reconsidered,” a Dutch research team wrote in the journal European Neuropsychopharmacology.
Two years ago French health authorities approved use of the drug for treating alcoholism. It was originally designed and widely used to treat muscle spasms.
Many people in other countries are thought to use the drug without a prescription for alcoholism.
Interest was sparked in 2008 by a book, Le Dernier Verre (The Last Drink), by French-American cardiologist Olivier Ameisen, who claimed to have self-treated his alcoholism with high doses of baclofen.
A subsequent French trial said high doses of the drug caused a significant percentage of heavy drinkers to give up or moderate their intake.
Several trials since then have come up with contradictory findings.
The latest study was the largest randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial – widely considered the gold standard for drug trials, said the researchers.
Volunteers were randomly divided into groups – some receiving the drug and others a dummy “placebo” pill without the participants or the researchers knowing who was getting what.
The study enrolled 151 people from alcohol treatment centres in the Netherlands. They were divided into high, low and no-dose groups, and all received psychological counselling throughout.
Comparing the outcomes, the group concluded that “neither low nor high doses of baclofen were effective in the treatment of AD (alcohol dependence)”.
There was no difference in relapse speed or rate between the groups.
“We need to consider safety and side effects,” said study co-author Reinout Wiers from the University of Amsterdam.
“We are not closing the door on baclofen but we are saying that we need more research.”
According to the World Health Organization 3.3 million deaths around the globe every year are the result of harmful alcohol use – almost 6% of all people who die.
It may surprise you to know, the medical diagnosis and drugs you take for it, have only been around for about one hundred years. Prior to the rise of Western Medicine as the standard of care, and patented drugs as their treatment—for millennia-since the beginning of time—Mother Nature reigned supreme. After all, none of us would be alive if our ancestors died on the way to the drugstore.
It may also surprise you to learn that all laboratory-created patented drugs were originally taken from nature. In nature there is balance and order. Plants are living beings that have their own innate intelligence that can restore the human body to balance as well. This intelligence is why a plant can either enhance or diminish a certain condition as needed; as opposed to a laboratory created drug—which has no intelligence, and simply substitutes a pill for a function, until that function is suppressed.
Penicillin was created quite by surprise when Alexander Fleming, Professor of Bacteriology at St. Mary’s Hospital in London, returned from a holiday in 1928, to find a discarded petri dish containing colonies of Staphylococcus bacteria had grown mold while he was away. The area around the mold—later identified as a rare strain of Penicillium notatum—was clear, as if the mold had secreted something that inhibited bacterial growth. Fleming was credited with the discovery of the first antibiotic—a group of compounds capable of inhibiting and killing competing microbial species. This was hailed as the greatest discovery of our time. However, this phenomenon was known long before by ancient Egyptians—who applied poultices of moldy bread to infected wounds.
Antibiotics are naturally occurring compounds produced by bacteria and fungi. Good bacteria balances bad bacteria. Good yeast balances bad yeast. Western Medicine, by simply killing the bad bacteria—upsets the natural balance or order of things by not replenishing the good. With bacteria—it’s always a matter of numbers to keep things in balance. E Coli, for example, can be present in water, but isn’t a problem until the bacteria numbers reach a certain ppm, or parts per million. Simply killing the bacteria does not cause balance—because bacteria are intelligent, opportunistic living organisms and nature abhors a vacuum. Sooner or later, those bacteria that survive will colonize again, unless you seed the body with their competing and balancing good bacteria. Imagine the conversation between those antibiotic surviving superbugs colonizing in your small intestine:
“Dude—you’re a savage —nobody survives that many rounds of streptomycin.”
This is why antibiotics are becoming increasingly less effective. Bacteria and Fungi have the same innate intelligence that most humans do. When you denature them, you rearrange their molecular structure. This is why patented drugs, created in a laboratory, do not bring the condition into balance. Patented drugs are about creating customers who rely on these drugs to function. And because they are not natural molecules that your liver can break down into natural elements for healing—they simply add to the toxic load on your liver. This causes side effects. Which leads to more drugs to combat the side effects– which are sometimes worse than the simple solution to the original problem. All disease is a matter of balance—too little nutrients and too many toxins.
All of us have lost our connection to nature, to our origins, to the earth and plants and soil and organisms that came before us. Ron Finley said it best: “No one’s a more prolific gangster artist than Mother Nature. We should replicate what she does. Yes it’s art. It’s knowing where life comes from. It’s knowing that nothing ever dies, ever. Nothing dies—it’s the energy transfer.”
It is a warm spring day, and I am sitting in a private clinic in Surrey with a drip in my arm. I am having an infusion of intralipids, a white emulsion of soybean oil and egg: mayonnaise, basically. On top of that, I am taking a daily dose of steroids. I have signed a form declaring that I am aware intralipids are not licensed for use in pregnancy, and that there is a lack of scientific evidence for their use in my condition; and I know that the steroids have potential side-effects ranging from psychosis to liver failure. Yet here I am, watching the mayonnaise make its way into my bloodstream, hoping this unproven treatment will protect the tiny twins I am carrying.
After years of infertility and a miscarriage, I have decided to put my faith in reproductive immunology, a field of medicine that is either fantastically promising or utterly bogus, depending on whom you ask. Its critics see the treatments as bad medicine, and a cash cow for private fertility clinics. Its advocates, including women who finally have a healthy baby after four or five losses, think it could revolutionise the way we think about pregnancy. As for me, I feel I have nothing to lose. At the NHS hospital where I miscarried at the beginning of this year, I was told there was nothing I could do but go away and try again.
***
Up to one in four pregnancies end in miscarriage, and one in 20 women experience two losses. A far smaller percentage of women, about one in 100, suffer from recurrent miscarriage: three, four or even 10 failed pregnancies. It was the late American physician Dr Alan Beer who popularised the idea that a woman’s own immune system might be responsible for this, as well as for related problems such as infertility and failed IVF cycles. In his 2006 book Is Your Body Baby-Friendly?, he argued that natural killer cells, or NK cells, which usually destroy cancer cells and viruses, could get out of control and target the pregnancy. “Effectively, women become serial killers of their own babies,” he wrote.
Doctors flocked to the US to study with Beer, and brought his methods back to the UK. Beer’s followers prescribed steroids to suppress the immune system, injected women with new antibodies derived from donor blood and drip-fed them intralipids, which are thought by some to bind with the killer cells and stop them releasing toxins. Many private fertility clinics in Britain now offer immune therapy. Immune blood tests alone can cost more than £2,000; my intralipids were £300 a pop. At one fertility clinic I visited, more than half the patients were on steroids, intralipids or both.
Critics believe this is quackery. They see the whole idea of your body killing your baby as a myth that is not supported by scientific evidence. Doctors retort that such evidence is unnecessary, because their methods work in practice.
Trapped in the middle are women and their partners who do not care about medical turf wars
“The scientific field is at war with itself,” says Professor Siobhan Quenby, a leading obstetrician at Britain’s new Tommy’s National Centre For Miscarriage Research, the largest such centre in Europe for preventing early losses. “You have the scientists who say it’s got nothing to do with the NK cells, and the doctors who say, ‘I don’t really care that the scientists haven’t found a mechanism – my patients who keep miscarrying have high NK cells, I’ll just get rid of it and hope for the best.’ And the two sides actually hate each other. They have to be separated at conferences.”
Trapped in the middle are women and their partners who do not care about medical turf wars. They only want to know why they keep losing their babies, and what they can do to protect the next one.
“I feel like I don’t enjoy life any more,” says Cathy, who has suffered more than four miscarriages, some of them on immune therapy. We are talking on the phone, and her voice is cracking. The treatments have devoured her savings and left her exhausted. “Before I started, I tried to inform myself about the treatment, but there is so much information out there, so many opinions, it’s overwhelming. I heard that a lot of women had successes, so I thought, there’s no harm in trying. But once you’re on that path, it’s difficult to get off.”
My own journey started almost three years ago, when my husband and I decided to have a child. At the time I was 34. A year passed, with no luck at all. I was open to the idea of adopting, but wanted to experience pregnancy and hold a newborn, even just once. We were diagnosed with unexplained infertility: everything was fine, only we weren’t conceiving. Another year passed.
On the day I picked up my medication for my first cycle of fertility treatment, the nurse insisted I take a pregnancy test. I laughed and told her that, at this point, a positive result was pretty unlikely. At home, I did the test just to get it out of the way. Two blue lines appeared. I was pregnant.
I will never forget the rush of pure happiness. It was December and my husband and I lit the candles for Hanukah, a Jewish holiday that celebrates an ancient miracle. We honoured our own little miracle with a platter of fried potato latkes. A week or so later I experienced a very light bleed and went for a scan for reassurance. All was well, I was told. The bleeding stopped. I returned to the hospital at eight weeks, for what I thought was a routine follow-up scan. The sonographer turned to me with a concerned expression: there was no heartbeat. I had had what is known as a “silent miscarriage”: the body continues to think it is pregnant, but the embryo is dead.
I asked a nurse if the NHS offered any tests to find out why the pregnancy had failed. “Yes,” she said, her voice full of compassion. “But only after your third miscarriage.”
It was then that I looked into private options, and found out about reproductive immunology. I already knew I had Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, a condition that meant my own immune system was attacking my thyroid. Was it too much of a stretch to think it had also attacked my embryo? I went to see Dr Hassan Shehata at the Miscarriage Clinic in Epsom, Surrey. His tests showed that I had high levels of killer cells. During my first month on steroids, I naturally conceived twins.
If what you’re doing is working, there are more babies. If it’s not working, there are no babies
Quenby has spent the past 20 years trying to find out what causes miscarriage and how we can prevent it. Thank you cards from grateful new parents line the walls of her research centre at the University Hospital in Coventry, which opened earlier this year and is funded by Tommy’s, a pregnancy charity. Quenby is a warm and enthusiastic woman, passionate about science and determined to help her patients, but the controversy over killer cells frustrates her, partly because it has affected her own research.
In 2011, she published a small pilot study of 160 women with a history of miscarriages, some of whom were given steroids. For women with high levels of killer cells, steroids boosted the chances of having a baby by 20%. Quenby’s theory is more complex than Beer’s. She does not believe in his original claim of murderous cells wreaking havoc in the womb, for the simple reason that those cells are found in our bloodstream. In early pregnancy, when most miscarriages occur, there is no blood circulating in the early placenta to supply the baby.
Instead, Quenby’s most recent study showed that prematurely aged stem cells in the lining of the uterus might cause miscarriage. Steroids, Quenby thinks, may improve the lining. It’s a theory she would love to test in a large trial, but, given the level of scepticism in the scientific community, she can’t see such a trial ever being approved. “I can’t get funding for it, so we’ll never know.”
This is the strange landscape of the fertility industry: doctors are prescribing steroids to pregnant women across the country, but their opponents are too doubtful even to back a study into their effects. Meanwhile, patients are making extreme medical decisions guided only by private clinics, and online fertility forums.
“You go on these forums and see all these women who had five miscarriages and now have a baby,” says Asha, a British Asian woman in her late 30s who recently experienced her third loss. “So you think, this sounds brilliant, why isn’t the NHS doing this?”
Sitting in a cafe near her office in London, Asha talks about her pregnancies. She started taking steroids after her second loss. The drugs gave her acne and heart palpitations. At work, she could hardly concentrate because her heart was racing so fast. She fell pregnant but miscarried a third time. “It sounds silly that you pay all this money, you have these tests, and you just throw your faith at what they tell you, without actually really examining it – which is contrary to what I normally do in other parts of my life. I was just like, OK, if that’s what you say.”
Dr George Ndukwe. He says about 2,000 babies have been born under his treatments. Photograph: Lydia Goldblatt for the Guardian
Asha tells me she is now “in a sceptical place” regarding immune therapy. She feels she has nowhere to turn for advice. Her husband is supportive, but ultimately leaves it to her to do the research. They live with relatives who are unaware of her experience: there is, she thinks, still some stigma attached to miscarriage. After her dead embryo was surgically removed, she covered up the bruises from the cannulas, went home, told her family she had the flu and crawled into bed.
So is she giving the steroids another go? “I probably will, because once is not enough to see if it works. It’s a bit maddening – it feels like I’m damned if I do and damned if I don’t.”
At the Zita West Clinic near Harley Street in London, I meet Dr George Ndukwe, one of the pioneers of Beer’s methods in the UK. Like Quenby’s clinic, the walls are covered with photos of smiling babies. More than half the patients at Zita West are on immune therapy. Ndukwe still remembers the first time he went to visit Beer at his clinic in Chicago, more than 10 years ago. “I saw women who had had 14 miscarriages, 12 failed IVF cycles,” he says, shaking his head. “They were all getting pregnant. I was scanning them, I wasn’t imagining anything. So that was what opened my eyes. That’s when I thought, this is working.”
Ndukwe concedes that the underlying science is still somewhat foggy: he can’t even be sure how intralipids work: the egg-oil drip was originally used to nourish patients after surgery – but his theory is that the fats bind to the killer cells and prevent them from secreting toxic materials. He showed me data from a small study he did in 2009 on a group of patients who had suffered an average of six failed IVF cycles. Forty-six of them were given steroids; 50 were also given intralipids. The live birth rate for the first group was only 8.7%, but for the intralipids group it was 46%.
Ultimately, Ndukwe says, the proof is in the outcome. “It does not matter what people say. If what you’re doing is working, there are more babies. If it’s not working, there are no babies. There’s no half-baby, no quarter-baby, only a full baby,” he concludes, smiling broadly. By his estimate, 2,000 babies have been born under his immune treatments.
The idea that intralipids might prevent miscarriage is so ridiculous that it makes Quenby double up with laughter
This is exactly the kind of attitude that infuriates many mainstream fertility experts. They find it unfathomable that doctors would prescribe unproven drugs with such confidence. I call Professor Robert Winston, one of Britain’s leading fertility experts. He says there is no scientific evidence for immune treatments. When I tell him that some doctors argue this does not matter, because it works in practice, his reply is succinct and clear: “Doctors who say that are not practising medicine,” he says. “They are practising witchcraft.”
Even the most fervent proponents of immune therapy emphasise that it is not a miracle cure. Recurrent miscarriage can have many causes: steroids won’t help a woman who has a weak cervix, or whose eggs have deteriorated because of age. Some are concerned that the treatment has become too popular, and is prescribed when there may not be an immune issue at all.
Yet there are significant risks. Apart from the acne, the insomnia, the weight gain and the mood swings, steroids can give you plenty of extra energy while you are on them – and leave you in a slump when you withdraw. Women trying to conceive on the programme have to go on and off their medication every month until they see a positive pregnancy test, to limit the long-term side-effects. Some liken the experience to constantly driving in and out of the fast lane on a motorway. Long-term use can harm the body’s ability to produce its own natural anti-inflammatory steroids. A leaflet I was given by my clinic mentions that in animal studies, steroids were found to raise the risk of babies being born with cleft palate. The leaflet adds that this has never happened to any of the clinic’s patients.
Intralipids are generally considered safe, but one doctor I speak to says there can be a risk of infection if they are administered carelessly, because eggs and fat are good carriers for bacteria. These risks do not seem to diminish the popularity of immune therapy, though.
Quenby suggests this could be partly because many sufferers blame themselves for their losses, and latch on to the idea that their own body is the perpetrator. “It doesn’t matter how many times you tell women it wasn’t their fault, they just look at you going, yes, it was. It’s so innately ingrained, they insist. And then you tell them they’ve got killer cells: well, that’s proven it, hasn’t it? So then, if you say, ‘You can have this intralipid and get rid of them’, it’s just what people want to hear, because you confirm their guilt.”
There may be something to this. After my miscarriage, I obsessively raked over the previous weeks, wondering what I had done wrong. The cup of caffeinated coffee? The flight? The pint of beer I had before I knew I was pregnant? When I eventually sat in the clinic with the intralipid drip in my arm, I had the opposite feeling: that I was doing everything possible to make this pregnancy a success.
Lara, 32, had four miscarriages before her current pregnancy. Photograph: Lydia Goldblatt for the Guardian
To Quenby, the idea that intralipids might prevent miscarriage is so ridiculous that it makes her double up with laughter. It is, after all, nothing but a mixture of fat and eggs. “People pay the earth – I say, if you want that, just go and have a cream cake,” she hoots.
I ask how she explains the high success rates at clinics that offer immune therapy (my miscarriage clinic has a success rate of 80%, for example). Well, Quenby says, that could be due to other factors. In fact, the success rate at her own hospital for treating women with two miscarriages is also 80%. And half of those who are treated as part of the hospital’s trials are on a placebo.
“I wouldn’t be willing to go through a pregnancy without it now,” says Lara, a 32-year-old beauty therapist, of immune therapy. We meet in a cafe in a shopping centre in Surrey. She is sipping an iced latte. When she stands up, her dress shows off her lovely bump. Lara is one of the steroid success stories. She suffered four miscarriages before her current pregnancy, which was sustained by steroids and intralipids in the critical first trimester. The drugs’ only side-effects were, she says, “insatiable hunger and a moonface”.
Lara says she understands why the NHS cannot offer experimental therapies. On the other hand, it pains her to think that women are suffering because they cannot afford private fees. She and her husband scraped together £5,000 for the tests, appointments, drugs and scans. “Steroids are a cheap drug,” she says. “For the same cost, people go through four, five rounds of failed IVF.”
At the end of the day, I don’t think any of them know. They just pile on the medication and hope for the best
Even within the NHS, a small rebellion seems to be stirring. One nurse quietly tells me that she owes her two children to private immune therapy; she never mentions this to her sceptical bosses. But sometimes, when she sees patients in great distress, she slips them a piece of paper with some relevant links. Unsurprisingly, the private doctors think this rebellion will eventually spread and the sceptics will eat their words. I hear more about this when I visit Dr Yau Thum at the Lister Fertility Clinic in west London. In the waiting area, I find the atmosphere I am so used to by now: a cluster of women looking apprehensive, silently leafing through newspapers or checking their phones as we all avoid each others’ eyes.
Thum uses immune therapy to treat IVF patients, and says it has helped many apparently hopeless cases. He argues that in Japan, Spain and the US, the field is much more accepted. “They have a lot of reproductive immunology research there. People have approached the topic with an open mind, rather than having this fixed idea about NK cells, these negative feelings.”
A couple of weeks after my intralipid infusion, I miscarry my twins. At the follow-up scan at an NHS hospital, the sonographer suddenly swivels round her monitor to show me my empty womb. Where a week before I saw two black blobs, there is now a fuzzy, grey void. The shock of the image rips away every shred of self-control. I stumble out of the room in tears, overwhelmed by feelings of emptiness and loss.
Despite the grief, I am not ready to give up. Did I not fall pregnant surprisingly quickly? Is it not worth another try? The reality is that scientists and patients have fundamentally different views on what makes a treatment worthwhile. Scientists think in terms of broad statistics, and the balance between potential harm and benefit. Patients think: if there is even the tiniest chance that this will save my baby, I’ll gladly put up with a racing heart.
On a hot day in August, I meet 38-year-old Brie and her daughter Rosa at their Buckinghamshire home. Rosa is whizzing in and out of the garden in her nappy, chatting and giggling, fetching apples and a giant plastic dinosaur from outside.
Brie, 38, and her daughter, Rosa, born after IVF accompanied by immune therapy. Photograph: Lydia Goldblatt for the Guardian
Brie and her partner began trying for a baby when she was 30. She suffered three miscarriages. Steroids failed to help. Eventually, they paid £12,000 for a private round of IVF, again accompanied by immune therapy. The result was Rosa. Does this mean Rosa owes her life to immune therapy? It’s possible, Brie thinks – or it could simply be that Rosa was the strongest embryo of them all.
“I wanted to throw everything at it,” Brie says. “At the end of the day, I don’t think any of them know. They just pile on the medication and hope for the best.”
***
It is summer, and I decide to start another round of steroids. Again, I fall pregnant straight away, and have another infusion of sterile mayonnaise. Other than that, I think about the pregnancy as little as possible. My husband and I go on a cycling tour along the Loire. I have not cycled in years, but wake up feeling fresh and strong, with not a hint of a muscle ache (no wonder steroids are so popular with cheating athletes). When I get home, I write this article before the first scan, so that the outcome won’t influence my reporting. I stop before the end, not knowing if it will be happy or sad.
Neither of us sleeps the night before the scan. I tell myself that what will be, will be. In the morning, I look at adoption sites and remind myself that there are many ways to build a family. During the scan, I ask the doctor not to show me the screen, almost certain it will be bad news again. Instead, he smiles and says the baby is looking great. Just the right size. Now, four months into the pregnancy, things seem to be going well – though like many who have had miscarriages, I am still fearful before every check-up.
I am aware that this proves nothing about the steroids. I am aware that things could still go wrong. But sitting in the doctor’s room, none of that matters. What matters is hearing the baby’s heartbeat. Such a loud, strong heartbeat for such a tiny little thing.
As the years progress, marijuana has been shying away from their known Schedule I drug category. The once tabooed plant is being accepted by many medical professionals across the country because of their studied, and proven, medical benefits. Multiple states across the United States have legalized the medical use of marijuana, while a few states have gone so far as to legalize recreational use. Along with the United States, many countries have also been accepting marijuana for medical use.
Cannabinoids, which are found in hemp and cannabis, have a great impact on rebuilding the immune system, and have been proven to reduce cancer cells. It is important to note that not all strains of cannabis carry the same effect; and that it is more effective for medicinal purposes when consumed, rather than smoked.
Listed below are several studies that suggest the benefits of cannabis use to fight against cancer.
1. Oral Cancer
According to a study done by the US National Library of Medicine, cannabinoids are shown to be highly toxic to inhibitors of cellular respiration and malignant oral tumors. It is shown that cannabinoids can inhibit cellular respiration among oral cancer cells because they contain Delta (8)-THC and Delta (9)-THC; which are known to possess antitumor activities and resulted in a rapid decline in cellular respiration when added to the cells.
2. Brain Cancer
The Journal of Neuroscience published a study that provided evidence that THC, which is the main component found in marijuana, can aid in protecting the brain against neurodegeneration. The study was done on rats and examined the biochemical events in progressive neurodegenerative diseases, as well as acute neuronal damage. It was shown that THC possessed antitumor properties and can protect the brain from neuronal injuries.
3. Lung Cancer
Harvard Medical School conducted a study, published by the US National Library of Medicine; that concluded that cannabinoid receptors, CB1 and CB2, inhibited lung metastasis and in vivo tumor grown in non-small cell lung cancer. CB1 and CB2 were also observed to inhibit phosphorylation of AKT; which is a molecule that controls cell migration, survival, and apoptosis. This study suggests that these cannabinoid receptors could be used as novel therapeutic targets against non-small cell lung cancer.
4. Breast Cancer
The journal, Molecular Cancer, published a study that suggests that tumor growth, and numbers, could be reduced by THC. The study determined that JWH-133, a non-psychotropic CB2, impairs tumor angiogenesis, inhibits cancer cell proliferation, and induces cancer cell apoptosis in ErbB2-positive breast cancer.
5. Pancreatic Cancer
The American Journal of Cancer published a study that apoptosis was induced by cannabinoid administration. Administration of cannabinoids also selectively increased TRB3 expression in pancreatic tumor cells, and inhibited the spreading, and growth, of tumor cells.
6. Prostate Cancer
US National Library of Medicine published multiple studies that determined that cannabidiol (CBD) inhibited cell viability, significantly. There was a decrease in prostatic cancer cells when acted through cannabinoid receptors, and was shown to have a more potent affect when BDS was in the presence of serum, versus pure cannabinoid compounds. The data produced from these studies all support the clinical testing of CBD against prostate carcinoma.
7. Liver Cancer
Because hepatocellular liver carcinoma (HCC) is the third cause of cancer-related deaths worldwide, it has been essential to search for new treatments since there are few therapeutic options available once the advanced stages of the tumor set it. A study done by the US National Library of Medicine determined that THC reduced the growth of human hepatocellular liver carcinoma cell lines, as well as reduced their viability. These findings may contribute to a new therapeutic strategy in the management of HCC.
The Cherokee and Meskwaki are Native American tribe that is indigenous to the Southeastern United States. They believe that the Creator bless them with a gift of understanding and preserving medicinal herbs. They believed and used the benefits of nature’s pharmacy. Here are some of the medicinal plants that were commonly used by the Cherokee tribe.
7 Plants Native Americans Used to Cure Disease (From Simple Pain to Deadly Cancer)
Blackberry
Blackberry is the well known remedy for stomach problem. It is good sources of vitamin A, B6, C, E, K, thiamine, riboflavin, niacin, and folate. It also contain good amount of calcium, iron, magnesium, phosphorous, potassium, and zinc. Using a strong tea from the root of blackberry helps to reduce swelling of tissue and joints. A decoction from the blackberry roots, sweetened with honey, makes a great cough syrup. Even chewing blackberry leaves can sooth bleeding gums and prevent cancer.
Big Stretch (Wild Ginger)
The Native American tribe Cherokee believed that the mild tea made from the root of wild ginger, to stimulate better digestion and treats stomach problems, colic, and intestinal gas. A strong tea from the root of wild ginger can wipe out emission from the lungs. Another Native American tribe, The Meskwaki, cured ear infections by utilizing pulverized, soaks stems of wild ginger.
Mint
Mint is extremely popular nowadays, and and is commonly consumed in tea form. It has strong antioxidant properties and also high in vitamin C, A, fiber, magnesium, calcium, potassium, and phosphorus.
It has been used by native americans tribes to improve digestion, and its leaves ointments used as cold compresses. Moreover, its leaves and stems were also used as a treatment for high blood pressure. If you are breast feeding and find your nipples cracking, try applying some mint water.
Navajo Tea (Greenthread)
Also called greenthread, Plains Tea or Coyote Plant, this plant has been used for centuries by Native Americans to quickly relieve that most brutal and irritating of infections: the UTI (urinary tract infection). It is best when made into a tea or decoction.
Jisdu Unigisdi (Wild Rose)
Wild rose fruit boost our immune system, it is a rich source of vitamin C which help us to fight common cold and the flu. The Cherokee drink mild tea out of wild rose hips to stimulate the function of the kidneys and the bladder. Wild rose petal infusion used to treat sore throat and a decoction of its root will treat diarrhea naturally.
Hummingbird Blossom (Buck Brush)
Native Americans used this medicinal plant to treat mouth and throat issues, inflammation and fibroid tumors, and it also has been used to treat high blood pressure and treat lymphatic blockages. The Cherokee boil its leave and flowers in water for 5 minutes and then consumed it warm in order to obtain best results.
Mullein
This herb has the power to soothe asthma and chest congestion. According to the Cherokee inhaling in the smoke from burning leaves and roots of this plant effectively open up our air pathways and calm our lungs. Mullein is very helpful in soothing mucous membranes. Soak your feet in a warm mullein decoction to lower joint pain and swelling. Due to its anti-inflammatory attributes it soothes painful and irritated tissue naturally.
The science fiction author William Gibson famously quipped the future is here, it’s just not evenly distributed. There is arguably no greater manifestation of our uneven world than that of healthcare. In the wealthiest countries, thousands of people in their 60s and 70s are kept alive with cardiac pacemakers that are remotely monitored over the internet, and adjusted by algorithms with no human intervention. In poorer states, three-quarters of a million children under five are dying each year because of shit in their water.
What can explain such unevenness, and what might be done about it? A scan of the proceedings at the World Health Summit in Berlin, which starts on Sunday, and where technological innovation is one of the major themes, is revealing. “Despite the exponential growth of scientific and technological development, low- and middle-income countries are still largely excluded from access to appropriate and affordable health technologies. Therefore novel technological devices need to be developed that can address health problems and improve quality of life,” reads the blurb for Monday’s keynote session.
Is this “must try harder” assessment correct? Is the solution to stark inequities in global health outcomes, and the enduring exclusion of developing countries from the benefits of innovation, to do more and better innovation?
Certainly, innovation for improved global health is arguably needed more than ever with the need to combat new and emerging diseases from Ebola to Zika and to find better ways of tackling non-communicable diseases such as cancer. But when we look at the innovations made in response to Ebola, we should pause for thought.
One stark example: in November 2014, when the Ebola outbreak was raging through west Africa, the US Food and Drug Administration went through an expedited approval process for a one-hour Ebola test, reducing the time for results by five hours from the previous fastest machines. The problem was that few west African countries had the resources to acquire the $ 40,000 machines or the skills to run them. They were, however, to be found in many US hospitals.
Or another example: Medécins Sans Frontières (MSF) helped to trial and demonstrate the effectiveness of new tests for TB in low income and humanitarian settings in 2011-12. But the price of the test made it prohibitive for many countries until a large public-private initiative emerged to subsidise the cost of the tests for 145 developing countries that were most affected by TB. Only then could this innovation benefit those who needed it most.
These are far from the only stories of how the poorest are excluded from the innovations that they need most. Once the stories start to accumulate, they turn from a trickle to a river to a flood. And one has to start wondering whether the old adage about famines is not relevant here: famines rarely result from a lack of food, rather it is lack of access to food. Similarly, the inequalities in tackling health problems are not because of a lack of innovation, but because of a lack of access to innovation. The binding constraints, I would argue, are seldom technical but instead related to the political and economic choices, which determine how innovations get funded, resourced and supported, by whom and for whom.
What to do in the face of such a system? The answer is to fight the innovation and political battles at the same time. We have to identify the gaps, and to test and trial the best new ideas that can address longstanding challenges faced by the world’s most vulnerable people, and build the evidence base that these ideas really can make a difference. Political leaders need to ensure that the scaling of new solutions includes those people who need innovation most, and who are most likely to be excluded from its benefits.
In doing so, it is worth looking to the work of organisations such as MSF, which do an admirable job of balancing the scientific and political aspects of advocacy in their Access to Medicines campaign. But we should also remember the work of pioneers, from Florence Nightingale to John Snow, who worked tirelessly to ensure their ideas benefited those in society who needed them the most.
The speakers and delegates at the World Health Summit should remember this pioneering spirit, which fused the spirit of medical discovery with political advocacy. And they should ensure that any statement calling for more and better medical technologies is quickly followed by a statement recognising that technology should at best be seen as a complement to, but never a substitute for, political action.
This is a real story. Linda Faulkner, a woman who was suffering from arthritis, tried countless treatments since 2006, but the results were not good, as the treatments could not help her for a long term. She still suffered from the pain in wrists, neck, and back.
A miracle happened when she decided to try apple cider vinegar, actually she drunk a mixture of apple cider vinegar and honey. A tablespoon of apple cider vinegar and a tablespoon of raw honey with a cup of hot water, she kept drinking a cup every morning and evening. She felt the differences after 2 weeks, she was totally pain-free the first time since 2006.
Related reading about this natural ingredient –1TB of Apple Cider Vinegar A Day – Will Keep The Doctor Away!
This simple home remedy helped her, Linda felt shocked about the effective effects of this drink.
How Does Apple Cider Vinegar Relieve Arthritis Pain?
Joint pains and arthritis are normally caused by mineral deficiency, and apple cider vinegar is a good source of many essential minerals, such ad calcium, magnesium, potassium, and phosphorus.
Apple cider vinegar strengthens the bone as it contains a good amount of magnesium, which helps bones absorb calcium.
Apple cider vinegar is packed with antioxidants and acetic acid, which help block the damaging effects of free radicals and prevent some conditions including arthritis.
Apple cider vinegar also aids in digestion and promotes the nutrients absorption, which is essential to healthy joints.
Acetic acid and mallic acid in apple cider vinegar help flush the toxins out of the body, this is also an important process for relieving the symptoms of arthritis.
There are several other recipes you can try to relieve arthritis with apple cider vinegar:
Add 1 teaspoon apple cider vinegar to a cup of cherry juice, drink it to get a relief. Cherry is a good source of anthocyanins, which battle inflammation effectively.
Simply mixed 2-3 teaspoons apple cider vinegar into a cup water also makes an effective remedy for arthritis.
Massage a solution of 2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar with 1 tablespoon coconut oil into the painful joints to get a relief.
Mix 1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar, 1 teaspoon cinnamon and 1 teaspoon raw honey into a glass of peppermint tea. This drink is anti-bacterial, anti-fungal and also with other medicinal benefits. Drink once everyday to relieve the arthritis pain.
Now you know that apple cider vinegar is an amazing agent in relieving arthritis pain, do you know it provides several other health benefits too:
There is ambition and there is Silicon Valley ambition. For where else on a map could a pin be placed when asked to guess where billionaire philanthropists had declared their intention to cure, prevent or manage all human disease before the end of the century?
It was clear from the start that the announcement from Priscilla Chan and her husband, Mark Zuckerberg, nudged at the boundaries of belief. Writing in praise in the US journal, Science, David Baltimore, a Nobel laureate at California Institute of Technology concedes the goal “may raise eyebrows”. Even Cori Bargmann, the renowned neurobiologist who will lead the charge, is aware how it might be perceived. It is “ambitious”, she says, “but not completely ridiculous”.
It is tempting to dismiss the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative as hubris. But the best part of a century is a long time in medicine. Most babies born in 1900 did not live to see the age of 50. Medicine has not been the only reason for the dramatic rise in life expectancy since, but it was a crucial factor. “By 2100 we’ll be shocked by how much we’ve achieved, and we’ll be more shocked with initiatives like this,” says Jim Smith, chief of strategy at the UK’s Medical Research Council.
If not hubris, then what about one-upmanship? Bill Gates wants to eradicate malaria in a generation. Elon Musk wants a Mars colony in a decade. Yuri Milner has set his sights on sending a spacecraft to a star at one-fifth the speed of light. How better to leave your mark higher on the wall than to make every human disease obsolete within your child’s lifetime? Or at least find a way to manage awful conditions, so they no longer mar people’s lives?
But audacious goals are precisely what are needed. “We have to be bold about the scale of the challenge we face in improving human health,” says Steve Craddick, professor of chemical biology at University College London and director of innovation at the Wellcome Trust, the world’s largest biomedical research charity. “What is truly important about this kind of approach is that it creates the hope you need to go from exploratory science to making the world a better place.” He goes on: “Aspiration is essential. This idea that if we put our minds to it, almost anything is possible – that is what can sustain people through the peaks and troughs of decades of research.”
Chan and Zuckerberg will stump up at least $ 3bn (£2.3bn) for the effort over the next 10 years. That is not a vast sum for the task ahead. The new Francis Crick Institute in London, now filling with 1,400 scientists, could be built and run for 10 years on that. The Wellcome Trust itself will spend £5bn on biomedical research in the next five years alone. But part of Chan and Zuckerberg’s hope is to grow a movement to fund science: where they have led, they want other wealthy individuals to follow. An audacious, long-term goal backed by world-class scientists is the way to make that happen.
As Chan and Zuckerberg state, four types of diseases cause most of the deaths in the world: heart disease, cancer, neurological diseases and infectious diseases. The research kicked off by the initiative will focus on the basic science underlying them. The rationale is sound: it takes fundamental breakthroughs to make a real difference in medicine.
The first step is a $ 600m “Biohub” that will draw scientists and engineers from the Bay Area’s leading institutions: Stanford, the University of California, San Francisco and the University of California, Berkeley. The hub has two major projects lined up already. The Human Cell Atlas will map out the internal workings of every cell type in the body, a mammoth task that is bound to open up new avenues in medicine. The Infectious Disease Initiative aims to bring fresh thinking to drug design, diagnostic tests and vaccines. According to Tom Solomon, a neurologist and director of the Institute of Infection and Global Health at Liverpool University, such radical new approaches could be as important as the money itself.
And yet in Silicon Valley, it seems the only solutions are hi-tech solutions. This is one area where Chan and Zuckerberg may fall short in their aim to leave the world a better place for children. Only 10% of health research funds are spent in developing countries, where 90% of preventable deaths occur. The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative will apparently direct three-quarters of its efforts towards heart disease, cancer and neurological disease, the chronic conditions of the west. That may leave too little emphasis on infectious diseases.
A recent report from the World Health Organisation made clear that unless developing countries have the means to gather and study their own medical data, public health is unlikely to improve. It is the old adage about teaching a man to fish. Childbirth still kills hundreds of thousands of mothers and babies in low-income countries. To prevent those deaths does not require a scientific breakthrough. It takes know-how and facilities.
“It is not as sexy as saying you are going to develop a drug or a vaccine, but what is needed is research capacity development,” says Trudie Lang, director of the global health network at Oxford University. “Nurses, midwives and community health workers need to be trained and supported. It’s hard to get funding for it, because you can’t show how many lives you have saved, but it is absolutely vital,” she says. “It’s a slow win, but it’s what they should be doing.”
