The Health Ranger challenges drug companies to a $10,000 Health and Fitness challenge.

Think prescription drugs make you healthy? In this video, the Health Ranger challenges drug companies to a $10,000 Health and Fitness challenge.

His challenge of finding someone on 8 life quality enhancing drugs over the course of a year might be hard to do. There might not be anyone out there, realistically. (but give it ten years)

But his point of healthy living as a cure for many things is not off base.

Doctors would love to find an anti-depressant as effective as exercise, for example.

Solid evidence that artificial food additives can cause ADHD-like symptoms

As reported in the medical journal the Lancet; here's the abstract:

Food additives and hyperactive behaviour in 3-year-old and 8/9-year-old children in the community: a randomised, double-blinded, placebo-controlled trial

Donna McCann PhD a, Angelina Barrett BSc a, Alison Cooper MSc a, Debbie Crumpler BSc a, Lindy Dalen PhD a, Kate Grimshaw MSc b, Elizabeth Kitchin BSc a, Kris Lok MSc a, Lucy Porteous BSc a, Emily Prince MSc a, Prof Edmund Sonuga-Barke PhD a, Prof John O Warner MD c and Prof Jim Stevenson PhD email address a Corresponding Author Information
Summary
Background

We undertook a randomised, double-blinded, placebo-controlled, crossover trial to test whether intake of artificial food colour and additives (AFCA) affected childhood behaviour.

Methods

153 3-year-old and 144 8/9-year-old children were included in the study. The challenge drink contained sodium benzoate and one of two AFCA mixes (A or B) or a placebo mix. The main outcome measure was a global hyperactivity aggregate (GHA), based on aggregated z-scores of observed behaviours and ratings by teachers and parents, plus, for 8/9-year-old children, a computerised test of attention. This clinical trial is registered with Current Controlled Trials (registration number ISRCTN74481308). Analysis was per protocol.

Findings

16 3-year-old children and 14 8/9-year-old children did not complete the study, for reasons unrelated to childhood behaviour. Mix A had a significantly adverse effect compared with placebo in GHA for all 3-year-old children (effect size 0·20 [95% CI 0·01–0·39], p=0·044) but not mix B versus placebo. This result persisted when analysis was restricted to 3-year-old children who consumed more than 85% of juice and had no missing data (0·32 [0·05–0·60], p=0·02). 8/9-year-old children showed a significantly adverse effect when given mix A (0·12 [0·02–0·23], p=0·023) or mix B (0·17 [0·07–0·28], p=0·001) when analysis was restricted to those children consuming at least 85% of drinks with no missing data.

Interpretation

Artificial colours or a sodium benzoate preservative (or both) in the diet result in increased hyperactivity in 3-year-old and 8/9-year-old children in the general population.

Affiliations

a. School of Psychology, Department of Child Health, University of Southampton, Southampton, UK
b. School of Medicine, Department of Child Health, University of Southampton, Southampton, UK
c. Department of Paediatrics, Imperial College, London, UK

Brits To Ban Food Colors Linked To ADHD In Kids

Report from the Independent, tip of the hat to Furious Seasons

Food regulators moved to ban artificial additives from hundreds of products yesterday, three decades after parents began complaining that their children suffered mood swings after consuming brightly coloured sweets, cakes and drinks.

The Food Standards Agency recommended ministers call for manufacturers to remove six artificial colours by the end of 2009 and lobby for a European Union-wide ban. The FSA's advice to parents will be strengthened to warn them about the dangers of the E-numbers tartrazine (E102), quinoline yellow (E104), sunset yellow (E110), carmoisine (E122), ponceau 4R (E124) and allura red (E129).

These colours and the preservative sodium benzoate (E211) were linked to hyperactivity in a £750,000 study by Southampton University, which found they made primary school children become distracted and fail a computer attention test.

The researchers estimated that 30 per cent of cases of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) would be prevented if companies removed the colours used in the £13bn-a-year global additives industry.

The decision means the country's biggest confectioners and supermarkets, such as Cadbury and Haribo, will have to reformulate hundreds of products including ice cream, sweets, milkshakes and fizzy drinks.

Some products for which replacements have not yet been found – mushy peas, Turkish delight, and battenberg and angel cakes – may be taken off the shelves temporarily or permanently. The Southampton researchers had warned the seven additives were as harmful as lead in petrol, which was banned after it proved to lower children's IQ by five points. Their research, in The Lancet in September, was the evidence that artificial additives worsened the behaviour of normal children as well as those diagnosed with ADHD.

The European Food Standards Agency dismissed calls for action on the additives last month but at a meeting in London yesterday, the FSA's board decided to back the most stringent of five options recommended by officials.

Dame Deirdre Hutton, who chairs the Food Standards Agency, said: "It is the agency's duty to put consumers first. These additives give colour to foods but nothing else. It would therefore be sensible, in the light of the... study, to remove them."

The board decided to take no action on sodium benzoate because it was "a preservative" rather than a colour. E211, which is linked with other potential health problems, is found in many soft drinks including Diet Coke, Irn-Bru, Lucozade and Fanta, and its removal would pose a significant technological and financial challenge to drinks companies.

The FSA stressed that its decision "does not mean there is an immediate ban".

Campaigners welcomed the first decisive move in the UK against additives, whose effect on hyperactive children were first identified in 1975. Richard Watts, of the Children's Food Campaign, said: "This decision is good news for children and parents, who have known for many years that these additives affect children's behaviour." Anna Glayzer, an Action on Additives campaigner, said the FSA had put the consumer first. "We will be keeping a close eye on the industry to see what effect the voluntary ban has."

The Food and Drink Federation said the recommendation was "bizarre", as manufacturers were already removing the additives. "[Most] products don't contain these colours," a statement said.

The six colourings facing a ban

Tartrazine (E102)

Description: Synthetic yellow dye found in sweets, biscuits, mushy peas

Products: Disney Winnie the Pooh Cake Kit, Lidl orange jelly, Bacardi Breezer tropical lime, Asda mushy peas

Health effects: causes hyperactivity, linked to allergic reactions and migraine.

Quinoline Yellow (E104)

Description: Synthetic dye in sweets, pickles, smoked fish

Products: Aero orange, Galaxy Minstrels, M&Ms, Bassett's Sherbet Lemons

Health effects: Causes hyperactivity and is linked to rashes. Banned in US.

Sunset Yellow (E110)

Description: synthetic yellowdye found in sweets, ice cream, fizzy drinks

Products: Cadbury Creme Egg, Haribo Jelly Beans, Irn-Bru

Health effects: causes hyperactivity and linked to stomach upsets and swelling of skin.

Carmoisine (E122)

Description: Synthetic red dye found in ready meals, sweets

Products: Love Hearts, Galaxy Minstrels, Cadbury Mini Eggs, various lollipops

Health effects: causes hyperactivity and is alleged to cause water retention in those allergic to aspirin. Banned in US.

Ponceau 4R (E124)

Description: synthetic red dye found in sweets, biscuits, drinks

Products: Bassett's Pear Drops, Halls Blackcurrant Soothers, Supercook Alphabet Icing

Health effects: causes hyperactivity and is believed to cause problems for asthmatics. Banned in US.

Allura red (E129)

Description: synthetic red dye found in sweets, soft drinks, Turkish delight

Products: Fry's Turkish Delight, Cadbury Mini Eggs, Maynards Wine Gums

Health effects: causes hyperactivity and may bring on allergic reactions.

Victoria MD wins prize for theories on megavitamins

From the Victoria Times Colonist

A retired Victoria psychiatrist who helped develop a mega-vitamin therapy for schizophrenia and other illnesses half a century ago was recognized with a $125,000 prize in alternative medicine this week.

"I was really quite surprised," said Dr. Abram Hoffer, 90. "It was like the Oscars. I had no idea I was going to win."

The judges of the first Dr. Rogers Prize for Excellence in Complementary and Alternative Medicine wrote: "His stubborn pursuit of non-toxic orthomolecular [megavitamin] approaches to mental and physical disorders has helped thousands of patients with conditions ranging from schizophrenia to cancer."

Hoffer, who worked with mega doses of niacin and vitamin C, attracted praise but says his relationship with the College of Physicians and Surgeons "wasn't friendly." Hoffer recalls being attacked in journals and the media by skeptical medical colleagues, although his hypothesis that mega-doses of vitamins could help treat the symptoms of schizophrenia was later advanced by Nobel Prize-winning physician Dr. Linus Pauling.

Although he no longer practises medicine, the author of about 30 books and 600 papers in medical journals says he is still busy consulting, writing and researching.

One of six children, Hoffer was born on a Saskatchewan farm in 1917 and completed his first degree in agricultural chemistry. His master's and PhD in biochemistry were based on research into the vitamin content of cereals, and his focus soon shifted to human nutrition.

Armed with a medical degree from Toronto, he became director of psychiatric research for Saskatchewan in 1950.

He'll never forget his time practising at three psychiatric hospitals in Saskatchewan. "It was absolutely awful and once you got in, you never got out," he said in a phone interview yesterday.

Half the 5,000 mental patients in Saskatchewan were schizophrenics, and at the time, experts blamed the illness on a host of causes, including homosexuality, masturbation, colon infection and more.

Hoffer was given the job of director of psychiatric research, and with a "free hand," spearheaded the use of mega-vitamin therapy.

He was joined by British-born research psychiatrist Dr. Humphrey Osmond, and the two became psychedelic pioneers -- and guinea pigs -- bent on discovering why hallucinogens created symptoms resembling schizophrenia.

The team's first breakthrough came when they developed a theory that people who undergo stress sometimes produce excess adrenaline, which oxidizes into adrenochrome. The latter chemical has psychedelic properties they suggested could induce schizophrenia.

Next, he theorized that niacin (vitamin B-3) could counteract the oxidation of adrenaline into adrenochrome, protect brain receptors and reduce adrenaline stress. B vitamins are now commonly referred to as stress-busters, but back then, the theory was revolutionary. Hoffer himself has taken three grams a day for 50 years.

"It keeps me alive, active and busy," he said, noting the amount of niacin in the average multivitamin is insignificant.

Hoffer then came up with the idea of combining niacin and the antioxidant vitamin C.

Hoffer will share a $250,000 prize pot with Dr. Alastair Cunningham of Toronto, creator of The Healing Journey, a non-profit program that helps cancer patients use relaxation and mental imagery to cope with the disease.

The two were selected from a field of 57 nominees by an independent jury of international medical experts.

While the judges had hoped to settle on a single winner, Hoffer said his prize should be shared with all the colleagues who worked with him throughout the years and the patients who allowed him "to get them well using vitamins."

Food additives may cause problems misdiagnosed as ADD/ADHD

This is a case where children's behavior deteriorates due to something they ate, something that is essentially acting as a poison. This decline in behavior is then diagnosed as a disease. This is a misdiagnosis, but the report doesn't make the connection. As seen on Reuters See also the WSJ Health Blog report

Certain artificial food colorings and other additives can worsen hyperactive behaviors in children aged 3 to 9, British researchers reported on Wednesday.

Tests on more than 300 children showed significant differences in their behavior when they drank fruit drinks spiked with a mixture of food colorings and preservatives, Jim Stevenson and colleagues at the University of Southampton said.

"These findings show that adverse effects are not just seen in children with extreme hyperactivity (such as ADHD) but can also be seen in the general population and across the range of severities of hyperactivity," the researchers wrote in their study, published in the Lancet medical journal.

Stevenson's team, which has been studying the effects of food additives in children for years, made up two mixtures to test in one group of 3-year-olds and a second group of children aged 8 and 9.

They included sunset yellow coloring, also known as E110; carmoisine, or E122; tartrazine, or E102; ponceau 4R, or E124; the preservative sodium benzoate, or E211; and other colors.

One of the two mixtures contained ingredients commonly drunk by young British children in popular drinks, they said. They did not specify what foods might include the additives.

Both mixtures significantly affected the older children. The 3-year-olds were most affected by the mixture that closely resembled the average intake for children that age, Stevenson's team reported.

"The implications of these results for the regulation of food additive use could be substantial," the researchers concluded.

ONGOING DEBATE

The issue of whether food additives can affect children's behavior has been controversial for decades.

Benjamin Feingold, an allergist, has written books arguing that not only did artificial colors, flavors and preservatives affect children but so did natural salicylate compounds found in some fruits and vegetables.

Several studies have contradicted this notion.

Stevenson's team made up several batches of fruit drinks and carefully watched the children after they drank them. Some did not contain the additives.

The children varied in their responses but in general reacted poorly to the cocktails, Stevenson's team reported.

"We have found an adverse effect of food additives on the hyperactive behavior of 3-year-old and 8/9-year-old children," they wrote.

Dr. Sue Baic, a registered dietitian at the University of Bristol, said in a statement: "This is a well designed and potentially very important study."

"It supports what dietitians have known for a long time, that feeding children on diets largely consisting of heavily processed foods which may also be high in fat, salt or sugar is not optimal for health."

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