Mitochondrial DNA Mutations Cause Degenerative Disease - NewsGrabs 17 February 2008

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NewsGrabs

Health Supreme's NewsGrabs - a selection of contrary and underprivileged news in health and related sectors. Find what you may have missed - watch out for NewsGrabs.

Here is this week's selection:

New Way to Kill Viruses: Shake Them to Death
Scientists may one day be able to destroy viruses in the same way that opera singers presumably shatter wine glasses. New research mathematically determined the frequencies at which simple viruses could be shaken to death.

"The capsid of a virus is something like the shell of a turtle," said physicist Otto Sankey of Arizona State University. "If the shell can be compromised [by mechanical vibrations], the virus can be inactivated."

Recent experimental evidence has shown that laser pulses tuned to the right frequency can kill certain viruses. However, locating these so-called resonant frequencies is a bit of trial and error.

Where have I heard this before? Oh yes, there was Royal Raymond Rife, who developed a technology that could make any virus visible by using certain frequency light and he also developed the technology to destroy these microorganisms by tuning to a frequency that was deadly for them. His work was sabotaged, publications refused his papers, as happened to many others.

"Rife ignored the debate, preferring to concentrate on refining his method of destroying these tiny killer viruses. He used the same principle to kill them, which made them visible: resonance.

This principle can be illustrated by using an intense musical note to shatter a wine glass: the molecules of the glass are already oscillating at some harmonic (multiple) of that musical note; they are in resonance with it. Because everything else has a different resonant frequency, nothing but the glass is destroyed. There are literally hundreds of trillions of different resonant frequencies, and every species and molecule has its very own.

It took Rife many years, working 48 hours at a time, until he discovered the frequencies which specifically destroyed herpes, polio, spinal meningitis, tetanus, influenza, and an immense number of other dangerous disease organisms."

From: Royal Raymond Rife (by Jeff Rense)

So what else is new?

EU stakeholder group aims for ‘syncing’ of nutrient levels
The European Commission has established a group called EURRECA (which stands for European micronutrient recommendations Aligned) to set standards and procedures on how to determine nutrient intake recommendations. The goal is to align the divergent recommendations for consumption of vitamins and minerals that exist in the different EU member states. Website: www.eurreca.org

Fatigue may be caused by calcium leak
A Columbia University team found fatigue following exercise is caused by calcium leaking inside muscle cells.

This is interesting in that it may be applicable to fatigue that is not connected with exercise, such as increasingly common 'chronic fatigue'. Finding what causes a leak of calcium from the cells in those cases might lead to an effective preventive strategy.

Mitochondrial DNA mutations can cause degenerative heart and muscle disease
A single change in the DNA of mitochondria – the cellular power plants that generate energy in all human cells – has been found to cause degenerative heart and muscle disease, according to University of California, Irvine researchers.

“While these diseases traditionally have been assumed to result from mutations in the genes encoded by DNA in the cell’s nucleus,” he said, “most common degenerative diseases frequently do not exhibit inheritance patterns wholly consistent with our understanding of these nuclear DNA genetics. Our demonstration that mutations in the mitochondrial DNA can also cause the same diseases means that both nuclear and mitochondrial DNA genes that affect mitochondrial function can contribute to disease risk.”

As the mitochondrial DNA of our cells accumulates damage with age, the blueprints required to sustain energy production are lost, the body’s equivalent of a brownout. The resulting age-related decline in cellular energy production ultimately leads to tissue and organ failure and the development of clinical disease or illness. Thus the accumulation of mtDNA damage may explain aging and the delayed-onset and progressive course of age-related diseases and aging.

This is another piece of corroborating evidence for the emerging view, advanced by Heinrich Kremer, that cancer is connected with a functional breakdown of ATP synthesis in the mitochondria of our cells.

Natural Hormone Group Protests FDA Crackdown
Last week, the HOME (Hands Off My Estrogens!) Coalition, a group based in Edinburg, Va., placed a full-page ad in five newspapers, including USA Today and the Wall Street Journal, accusing the agency of being hostile to “natural” hormonal medicines made according to a doctor’s prescription by a compounding pharmacy. The ads urge women and their physicians to e-mail the White House and members of Congress asking them to protect patient access to meds they claim are “bio-identical” to those found in the body, the Post reports.

Hot Flash? Wyeth And A Vexing HRT Ingredient
The FDA explained that the drugs made by the compounding pharmacies contain hormones such as estrogen, progesterone and estriol, which the agency made a point of noting isn’t a component of any approved drug and hasn’t been proven safe and effective for any use. And this makes for a little bit of irony. In its petition, Wyeth harps on the presence of estriol in these BHRTs as a prime reason the FDA ought to yank the compounded drugs from the market.

At the same time the petition was filed, however, Wyeth was selling Cyclo-Menorette, a menopausal drug in four European countries - Estonia, Germany, Latvia and Poland - that contained, yes, estriol.

Legislators consider aspartame ban
Proponents of the bill were told after a public hearing last week that a ban would be hard to push through. Those who want aspartame taken out of Hawai'i's food supply call it a neurotoxin, a carcinogen and the source of headaches, heart spasms and a host of other ills.

Artificial Sweeteners Increase Weight Gain Odds
A Purdue University study released Sunday in the journal Behavioral Neuroscience reported that rats on diets containing the artificial sweetener saccharin gained more weight than rats given sugary food, casting doubt on the benefits of low-calorie sweeteners. "There's something about diet foods that changes your metabolic limit, your brain chemistry," said ABC News' medical contributor Dr. Marie Savard.

Prenatal Exposure to Household Pesticides May Increase Cancer Risk in Children
Researchers conducted the study in France in 2004 and 2005. They found that when mothers and fathers used pesticides during the mother’s pregnancy, children were at significantly greater risk of developing acute leukemia, non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, and certain types of Hodgkin’s lymphoma. The association was especially strong with household insecticides.

ACLU Launches Campaign to Decriminalize Marijuana
Travel writer Rick Steves and the American Civil Liberties Union of Washington have formed a partnership to tackle a topic they call the equivalent of the prohibition of alcohol in the 1920s: the criminalization of marijuana. Steves, the Edmonds-based travel guru who five years ago openly acknowledged that he uses marijuana while visiting Europe, says he's not "pro-marijuana," but in favor of discussing the laws that affect the 830,000 Americans who are arrested annually under existing marijuana laws.

Legal drugs aren't necessarily safe drugs
"Heath Ledger had six prescriptions, but no illegal drugs" proclaimed the Appeal (1/14/2008) reporting on the death of the young actor. When are people going to wake up to the "other" drug problem washing over America, that of prescription drugs? Because they are legal, they are believed to be safe. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Time To End Profit Driven Mandatory Vaccination Racket
The push to keep adding more vaccines to the mandatory schedules comes directly from a purely profit motivated industry and a recent investor report estimates that the world-wide market will quadruple from about $4.3 billion in 2006 to more than $16 billion in 2016, with the biggest boost coming from kids in the US.

The crucial factor for success in the pediatric market, the report notes, is the introduction of a product into national vaccination schedules. "Along with reimbursement, this virtually guarantees the rapid uptake and continuously high coverage rates in the target population..."

Datamonitor sees a huge commercial opportunity in HPV vaccines, with annual sales of $1.4 billion in teenage girls for the seven major markets by 2016 and a cumulative catch-up opportunity in women aged 13-26 that could add up to over $17 billio