Marc Joseph Nutrition - Blog

More insight into the story behind the HPV vaccine:

A lead researcher who spent 20 years developing the vaccine for humanpapilloma virus says the HPV vaccine is not for younger girls, and that it is “silly” for states to be mandating it for them.

Not only that, she says it’s not been tested for effectiveness in younger girls, and administering the vaccine to girls as young as 9 may not even protect them at all. And, in the worst-case scenario, instead of serving to reduce the numbers of cervical cancers within 25 years, such a vaccination crusade actually could cause the numbers to go up.

“Giving it to 11-year-olds is a great big public health experiment,” said Diane M. Harper, who is a scientist, physician, professor and the director of the Gynecologic Cancer Prevention Research Group at the Norris Cotton Cancer Center at Dartmouth Medical School in New Hampshire.

“It is silly to mandate vaccination of 11- to 12-year-old girls There also is not enough evidence gathered on side effects to know that safety is not an issue.”

Internationally recognized as a pioneer in the field, Harper has been studying HPV and a possible vaccine for several of the more than 100 strains of HPV for 20 years - most of her adult life.

Harper goes on to note that all of her tests have been with women ages 15 to 25. Her recommended approach would be test women ages 18 and up for the presence of HPV and then provide the vaccine to those for whom the test result is negative.

For those who test positive for HPV?

“Then we don’t know squat, because medically we don’t know how to respond to that,” Harper said.

The rest of the story

Check out the end of the article for a succinct and useful set of facts about the vaccine.

For months Harper has been trying to get the word out and convince media outlets to report the entire story, but no one would do so. Not too surprising.

Good thing she didn’t give up trying:

“I want to be able to sleep with myself when I go to bed at night,” Harper said. “My concern is still, let’s get women’s health better. It is still a good vaccine. But let’s be honest. Don’t over-promise.”

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Marc Joseph Nutrition

It’s long been suspected that viral infections, such as those caused by Epstein-Barr virus and cytomegalovirus, play a primary role in Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.

Recently, in a small, preliminary clinical trial, researchers at Stanford University found that chronic fatigue patients treated with prescription anti-viral medications for a relatively long period of time (6 months) experienced significant improvement (21 out of 25 treated patients). Now, the same researchers are going to perform a larger, randomized study in an attempt to replicate the study’s results.

Chronic Fatigue Syndrome currently affects more than 1 million people in the U.S. alone, and results in debilitating, long-term fatigue. Other common symptoms include insomnia, digestive problems, swollen lymph nodes, memory loss, inability to concentrate, and depression.

The condition often, but not always, begins after the onset of flu-like symptoms, which suggests that infections may play a role. Interestingly, the researchers in the study above found that chronic fatigue sufferers who did not experience flu-like symptoms prior to the onset of the condition, did NOT improve significantly after the anti-viral treatment. Perhaps there are different subgroups of affected individuals.

There is also clinical evidence that suggests viral infections are involved in many cases of autism. This factor would make sense, as impaired immune function is present in that condition as well. Many parents and clinicians have seen improvement in autistic children when given prescription and over-the-counter (OTC)* anti-virals, especially in combination with other treatments, such as methyl-B12, proteolytic enzymes, and heavy metal detoxification.

* Olive leaf extract is a potent and often helpful OTC anti-viral substance.

It’s unclear exactly what is causing the immune impairment in Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and autistic cases, but heavy metal toxicity is a primary culprit. There is often significant symptom overlap in heavy metal toxicity and chronic fatigue cases.

You can learn more about treatment approaches for both Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and autism here and here.

Researchers at the Mayo Clinic’s Molecular Neuroscience Program recently published research that suggests common picornaviruses, including rhinoviruses (e.g., common cold) and enteroviruses, may infect the brain and lead to ongoing damage to areas of the brain involving memory.

The study was an animal study that infected mice with Theiler’s encephalomyelitis virus, which is an enterovirus similar to the human polio virus. Mice were then tested using a maze test. Some mice were not affected much at all, while others had great difficulty in navigating the maze. When researchers dissected the mice, they found that the performance on the test directly correlated to the amount of viral damage to the hippocampus, which is the brain structure primarily responsible for learning and memory.

The researchers hypothesize that some cases of human cognitive impairment and memory loss may be the result of the cumulative effect of multiple viral infections over the course of one’s lifetime.

Obviously, more research remains to be done to prove this hypothesis, but the general idea of reducing one’s viral load is a good one. Both prescription drugs (e.g., Valtrex) and natural substances (e.g., olive leaf extract) can be very effective in doing just that.

Why does the flu usually only appear during the winter months and disappear during the summer? A group of researchers just published a review study that suggests vitamin D deficiency may be responsible.

You can read the abstract of the study here, and an excellent summary article (well-worth reading) discussing the study’s primary findings here.

The researchers note that vitamin D has many important effects on the immune system, including:

• Acting as an immune system modulator — preventing excess inflammation and increasing the ‘oxidative burst’ potential of macrophages, a type of immune system cell
• Stimulating the expression of anti-microbial proteins in immune system cells and in cells lining the respiratory tract

When vitamin D is deficient, as it often is during the winter months, the hypothesis is that the body is less able to develop an appropriate immune response and defend against respiratory infections.

In the summary article linked above, one of the study author’s describes how in the hospital in which he worked a flu epidemic developed in Spring 2005. However, all of the patients in his ward had been taking 2,000 IU vitamin D daily for months, and not one of them developed the flu.

Of course, those observations are not definitive proof. More research is necessary to determine cause and effect.

Yet, the authors make a good case in the paper for how vitamin D may explain observations, such as:

1. Why the flu predictably occurs in the months following the winter solstice, when vitamin D levels are at their lowest,
2. Why it disappears in the months following the summer solstice,
3. Why influenza is more common in the tropics during the rainy season,
4. Why children exposed to sunlight are less likely to get colds,
5. Why cod liver oil (which contains vitamin D) reduces the incidence of viral respiratory infections,
6. Why the elderly who live in countries with high vitamin D consumption, like Norway, are less likely to die in the winter,
7. Why the elderly are so much more likely to die from heart attacks in the winter rather than in the summer,
8. Why African Americans, with their low vitamin D blood levels, are more likely to die from influenza and pneumonia than Whites are.

Bottom-line, it’s important to maintain vitamin D at summer-time levels year-round. For people living in higher latitudes where the intensity of the sun’s UV rays are not strong enough to generate vitamin D during the winter, the only way to do that is with sun lamp exposure or supplementation. If using supplementation, it’s also important to monitor your vitamin D levels to ensure that you don’t get too much.

Here’s an interesting article discussing the potential role that microbes (bacteria, viruses, etc.) may play in helping to cause obesity.

Trying to identify any potential contributing factors to obesity is an important goal. With more than 30 percent of the U.S. population obese, and the risk of premature death from all causes 50 to 100 percent greater compared to individuals of normal weight, the stakes are high.

The article discusses the importance of a balanced gut flora (the trillions of microbes that inhabit our gastrointestinal tracts) and the many important functions that they perform, e.g.:

• producing vitamins
• digesting plant fibers
• extracting calories from carbohydrates and fats
• metabolizing cholesterol and bile acids

The authors note how different ratios of different bacteria may play a role in determining how likely someone is to gain fat.

The article goes on to discuss the potential roles of viruses. It notes that a certain virus previously thought to only infect chickens may, when it infects human, lead to greater weight gain (and, surprisingly, lower cholesterol and triglycerides). The article mentions other viruses as well, such as those that may affect the hypothalamus, the part of the brain that regulates appetite.

The research is clearly preliminary, but it’s worth checking out. Whatever the outcome, digestive health is certainly key in maintaining good overall health.