Over a half decade ago Professor Jared Diamond, in his Pulitzer Prize-winning book Guns, Germs, and Steel, famously wrote

“The adoption of agriculture, supposedly our most decisive step toward a better life, was in many ways a catastrophe from which we have never recovered.”

Dr Diamond was referring, of course, to the devolution of human health that took place as mankind suffered the corporal transformation driven by the mismatch between hunter-gatherer genes and an agricultural diet and lifestyle. Smaller stature, decreased cortical bone thickness, obesity, increased incidence of infectious diseases, dental caries, periodontal disease, vitamin deficiencies, and even famine – all common in agriculturists – were not, for the most part, the lot of pre-agricultural man.

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Image credit: Nature Reviews Cancer

The latest newsletter from Dr. Cannell, President of the Vitamin D Council, on vitamin D and the swine flu (and influenza in general).  Well worth reading.

If you are interested in a free subscription to this newsletter, go to the Vitamin D Council site and sign up. Read more »

Since I’ve been asked about my take on the swine flu situation a few times in the comments section and numerous times by other people I know, I figured I would post on the subject.  Re the above cartoon: I agree with the President.

I don’t think the situation is nearly as bad as many people – including our esteemed Vice President – seem to think it is.  Whenever I hear reports of panic like those we’ve been bombarded with over the past week, I always think of what H.L. Mencken had to say in such circumstances:

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

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When I took my parasitology course in medical school I was exposed for the first time to all the loathsome diseases that are unheard of here but are a part of daily life in other parts of the world. Here people go nuts and rush to the emergency room if they find pin worms in their kid’s stool; there having a Loa loa worm creep across your eye is a common occurrence and only a minor bother.

I was fascinated with my study of liver flukes, roundworms, tapeworms and all the other parasites afflicting primarily those in tropical areas. The most vile yet amazing of these creatures was to me Dracunculus medinensis, the Guinea worm. This parasite causes untold misery to those it afflicts, and is now, as this BBC piece relates, on its way to extinction. For people living in areas the Guinea worm infests, I’m sure this is wonderful news.

What the BBC neglected to mention is that the eradication of the Guinea worm has been effected in large measure by none other than our former president, Jimmy Carter. Carter, in my opinion, wasn’t much of a president, but he has been a terrific ex-president when he avoids politics and sticks to humanitarian issues. This Carter Center he and his wife founded has been instrumental in educating people in areas where the Guinea worm is common to take the needed steps to intervene in the parasite’s life cycle and disrupt its ability to reproduce. The BBC reports: Read more »

An intriguing article appeared in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute showing a correlation between periodontal disease and the development of pancreatic cancer. There have been a couple of studies correlating tooth loss with pancreatic cancer, but this is the first study I’ve seen that looks at periodontal disease and cancer of the pancreas.

You don’t want to get any kind of cancer if you can help it, but you really don’t want to get cancer in your pancreas. The virulence of cancers are usually defined by their 5-year survival rates, meaning what percentage of people who are diagnosed with a particular cancer are still alive 5 years later. The lower the 5-year survival rate, the deadlier the cancer. According to the latest statistics from the American Cancer Society (ACS), breast cancer has a 5-year survival rate of 88.5 percent, which means that out of 100 patients who are diagnosed with breast cancer, 88.5 of them will still be alive 5 years later. For lung cancer, a pretty deadly cancer, the 5-year survival rate is 15 percent. The 5-year survival rate for pancreatic cancer is 5 percent, making it the most deadly of all the cancers listed in the ACS list. Pancreatic cancer is a good one to avoid.

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