Better Breast Cancer Than Jews

Reported West Bank Village Appeals for Boycott of Settlements' Funder

Palestinian residents of the West Bank village of Jayyous Friday appealed in a letter to fashion icons and to cancer research institute not to accept donations from a known funder of illegal Jewish settlements built on Palestinian land in the West Bank, according to a press release by the rights organization Adalah-NY.

In the letter, Jayyous Land Defense Committee implored fashion icon Daphne Guinness, New York’s Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT) and the Breast Cancer Research Foundation (BCRF) not to “help Lev Leviev to whitewash his illegal settlements on Jayyous’ farmland...Nonprofit organizations in the US like the Fashion Institute of Technology and the Breast Cancer Research Foundation and individuals who care about human rights like Daphne Guinness have an obligation to support people’s right to live in dignity, and to support Jayyous’ families’ efforts to remain on their lands...

Better Arab womaen die is the message because, nesides the incorrect claims about Leviev, the land issue has been going on for over a century and would have been, literally, settled, had Arabs recognized Jewish rights, not killed Jews under the Mandate in terror attacks, continued to do so during the state years through more terror, not threatened war in 1967 and then agreed to numerous peace proposals for over the past four decades.

Arab women of Jayyous,

don't let Arab

hatred and hostility

deny you your health issues rights!!

^

Israel Can Do No Right? Ask the Hookah

Israel can't win in the media.

It tries sincerely to care for the health of not only its own citizens but those under its administrative supervision in Judea and Samaria and still the story is spun in a negative fashion, even if the moral basis is included in the story, far down the column:

Rising Tobacco Prices Cause Stir in West Bank

Mustafa Jum'a, who runs a coffee shop in Ramallah in the West Bank, began to worry about his business as the prices for hookah smoke rise due to an extra tariff imposed on tobacco.

Israeli authorities suddenly raised import tariffs on tobacco, a move the Palestinians have to follow because of the Paris Economic Protocol signed with Israel in 1994, which states the two must have bond import tariffs in the light with the unified customs framework.

The rise has caused a reduction of customers, said Jum'a, adding most of his customers are public employees that used to come to the coffee shop twice or three times a day. "(They) now come here only once, if not every other day," he said.

The hookah price in Jum'a's coffee shop has risen from seven shekels (around 1.8 U.S. dollars) to 12 shekels (3.4 dollars). He made money when hookah smokers order tea, coffee or other drink, so now he makes less profit due to the reduction of customers.

Head of the tobacco customs department in the Ministry of Finance Bandi Dahdah said the new customs tariff requires the payment of 279 shekels (73 dollars) per kilogram, compared with the previous 50 shekels (13 dollars). Since the best tobaccos are imported from Egypt and Bahrain, almost all hookah smokers are affected by the new regulation...

Sounds almost evil.

However...

the Ministry of Health welcomed the decision, Dahdah said, noting the health ministry hopes the move would encourage smokers to quit smoking. According to an official study, the number of smokers in the Palestinian territories are estimated at 800,000.

"My young children smoke hookah, even my 16-year-old child smokes behind my back. I hope this decision will help them get rid of it," said Nadia Karim, a 45-year-old mother in Bethlehem.

Go easy on the smoke.

^

I Salute My Mother

My late mother believed in this remedy:

A sore, itchy throat and respiratory congestion are some of the more common symptoms of a cold, and gargling with salt water seems to help for several reasons. A saline solution can draw excess fluid from inflamed tissues in the throat, making them hurt less, said Dr. Philip T. Hagen, editor in chief of the “Mayo Clinic Book of Home Remedies,” which is due out in October. Dr. Hagen pointed out that gargling also loosens thick mucus, which can remove irritants like allergens, bacteria and fungi from the throat.

...Other studies have also found gargling helpful against sore throats and congestion.

According to the Mayo Clinic, for best results, dissolve half a teaspoon of salt in a full glass of warm water and gargle the solution for a few seconds before spitting it out. Adults who want a more palatable remedy against cough and sore throat can try mixing warm water with lemon and honey. No need to spit it out.

THE BOTTOM LINE Gargling with a saline solution can ease symptoms of a cold.

^

Circumcision: Healthy

I spotted a new health story on the value of circumcision, a topic I have dealt here on my blog previously - and which has drawn a lot of comments from groups who just can't tolerate the snip.

The story claims that Sex virus lasts longer in uncircumcised men as reported in the Journal of Infectious Diseases, May 1, 2010.

Details:

While uncircumcised men don't seem to be at higher risk of acquiring human papillomavirus (HPV), it takes them longer to clear the virus from their bodies, new research shows. Because HPV causes genital warts and certain cancers, the finding, say researchers, could help explain why uncircumcised men have a higher risk of such penile cancers..."Our study demonstrates that the apparent protective influence of circumcision against genital HPV infection may not involve a reduction in new infections but rather the enhanced ability to resolve existing HPV infections," Dr. Brenda Y. Hernandez of the Cancer Research Center of Hawaii in Honolulu and her colleagues write.

...There's evidence that circumcision lowers a man's likelihood of developing cancer of the penis and contracting HPV infection, as well as HIV infection, in some populations. Because partners of uncircumcised men face a higher risk of cervical cancer, it's possible that circumcision could affect the spread of the virus as well, Hernandez and her team note.

The researchers had previously found that circumcised men were less likely than their uncircumcised peers to be infected with HPV at a given point in time...Cancer of the penis most commonly develops in the glans, Hernandez and her team point out, and the fact that infection with cancer-related strains lasted longer in uncircumcised men "has clinical significance."

It's possible, they add, "that transmission of HPV to sex partners is more efficient among circumcised men because of the greater duration of their infection." However, they add, "whether circumcision is an effective means of facilitating HPV clearance has yet to be demonstrated."

Well, I guess the weight of evidence is pro-snip.

New Uplifting News from Israel

A news item informs us that

Firing shock-waves into the body could be a radical new way to boost the love lives of men with erection problems. The pain-free therapy boosts performance by stimulating the growth of new blood vessels in the genital area.

...The radical new therapy, which is on trial in Israel, uses a very mild form of lithotripsy, a technique developed more than 20 years ago for the treatment of kidney stones.

Waves of sound are beamed through the skin, and although they pass harmlessly through body tissue, they are at just the right pressure to smash up kidney stones into tiny sand-like particles that are then passed out of the body in urine.

But in recent years, several studies have also shown that this type of shock-wave therapy appears to have a healthy effect on blood vessels.

It triggers the release of an important substance called Vascular Endothelial Growth Factor, or VEGF, which sends out a signal for new blood vessels to start growing...

Some health experts are now convinced there is a close link between impotence and heart disease, and that problems in the bedroom can often signal hidden blockages in blood vessels near the heart which are reducing blood flow around the body.

Doctors at the Rambam Medical Centre in Haifa, Israel, recruited 20 men with an average age of 56 to take part in the trial.

All 20 were already on medication and had suffered mild to moderate erection problems for an average of three years...

I searched for corroborating sources at Google News but couldn't find any.

There was this from two years ago (seems the hospital's interest in the subject is intense):-

New study conducted at Haifa's Rambam hospital seeks to determine whether toxin found in spiders' venom can be used to treat erectile dysfunction, after researchers found men who had been bit by spiders suffered from unusually prolonged erections

Ah, here it is:

New research from Israel presented to the European Society of Sexual Medicine in Lyon, France in November suggests that a “shocking” new therapy might work to reinvigorate the male sexual organ in a very safe and effective manner. So far, the benefits of the treatment appear to be long lasting.

Dr. Yoram Vardi, head of the Neuro-Urology Department at the Ramban Medical center in Haifa, Israel, has found that the same device that uses shockwaves to blast kidney stones appears to have a restorative effect on the blood vessels of the penis.

In an initial study of 20 middle-aged men with erectile dysfunction – an inability to maintain an erection – for more than three years, researchers conducted a series of treatments that comprised three weeks of shockwave therapy administered in two 20-minute sessions each week.

The patients were allowed to rest for three weeks and then an additional course of low-dose shockwave treatments, with about 100 bars of pressure per shockwave, was administered over another three-week period, using a device that resembles a computer mouse.

Vardi found mostly consistent results in all 15 of the 20 men who benefited from the therapy. All the men noted a return of erectile functioning around the seven-week mark, and a six-month follow-up found that for 13 of the men, the effects were long lasting, while two will require additional treatments.

“There was no pain or additional side effects within six months,” Vardi tells ISRAEL21c. “There was an improvement [in erectile function]. A huge improvement.”

Israel, land of promise?

Future Olympic Stars from Gaza?

Remember Caster Semenya?

Meet Nadir and Ahmed:

Nadir Mohammed Saleh and Ahmed Fayiz Abed Rabo are cousins and next-door neighbors. With their gelled hair, buttoned-down shirts and jeans, they look much like any other 16-year-old Palestinian boy. But looks, Ahmed says, can be deceiving.

"Only my appearance, my haircut and clothing, makes me look like a boy," Ahmed says, gesturing with his hands across his face. "Inside, I am like a female. I am a girl."

Until last summer, both Nadir and Ahmed were -- for all intents and purposes -- girls. They wore female headscarves, attended girls' school and even answered to the female first names Navin and Ola.

Both Nadir and Ahmed were born with a rare birth defect called male pseudohermaphrodism.

...There are an unusually high number of male pseudohermaphrodite births in the Gaza neighborhood of Jabalya, where Nadir and Ahmed live.

Dr. Jehad Abudaia, a Canadian-Palestinian pediatrician and urologist practicing in Gaza, says he has diagnosed nearly 80 cases like Nadir's and Ahmed's in the last seven years.

"It is astonishing that we have [so] many cases with this defect, which is very rare all over the world," Abudaia says. He attributes the high frequency of this birth defect to "consanguinity," or in-breeding.

"If you want to go to the root of the problem, this problem runs in families in the genes." Abudaia says. "They want to get married to cousins... they don't go to another family. This is a problem."

Well, that's one problem Israel is not responsible for.



(Kippah tip: Protexia)

The Rabbi, The Bishop and...the Swine Flu

Some tried to make fun of the Gerer Rebbe

The swine flu scare has recently prompted one of the leading spiritual figures of the ultra-Orthodox world to change one of Judaism's time-honored traditions - that of drinking wine together from the same glass.

Yaakov Aryeh Alter, seventh and current rabbi of the Hasidic dynasty of Ger, instructed his disciples in Jerusalem a few weeks ago to toast with individual and disposable plastic cups containing a few drops of wine from the rabbi's own glass.

Hasidic Jews have toasted from the same cup at events and meals for at least 200 years.

The rabbi, who heads the largest Hasidic group in Israel, is known for his sensitivity to health issues. A few years ago, when Israel was gripped by the avian flu scare, he refrained from eating eggs until he received ones specially-imported from abroad.

But it seems religious liquids are seen as problematic:

A bishop has advised that holy water be removed from churches in a bid to halt the spread of swine flu. The Bishop of Chelmsford, the Right Reverend John Gladwin, said at some churches people were invited make a sign of the cross using holy water.

"The water in stoups can easily become a source of infection and a means of rapidly spreading the virus," he said.

Pork Gets Porked

Despite this (and this), we're going to use "pork" as a verb, meaning: to take advantage of.

You all laughed when you read this, yes?

Israeli Health Minister Yakov Litzman has been updating a nervous public on the swine flu epidemic - and he started by renaming it for religious reasons.

Well, read on:-

The World Health Organisation (WHO), bowing to pressure from meat industry producers and concerned governments, said on Thursday it would refer to a deadly new virus strain as influenza A (H1N1), not swine flu.

"From today, WHO will refer to the new influenza virus as 'influenza A (H1N1)'," it said on its www.who.int/en/ website.

The new strain has infected 257 people. The WHO has confirmed eight deaths although many more people are suspected to have died from the virus.

It derives from a swine influenza virus but the new strain has been found only in people. While it contains mostly swine flu genetic sequences, it also contains small amounts of human and bird flu virus genetic material.

No pigs have been confirmed to be sick with it.

WHO has consistently said the disease cannot be caught from eating pork if it is prepared properly.

"There is also no risk of infection from this virus from consumption of well-cooked pork and pork products," it said on its website on Thursday.

The name of the flu led several countries to ban imports of pork from Mexico and the United States, where the outbreak first appeared, and authorities in Egypt have ordered a cull of pigs.

So, how to defend ourselves?

CNN relates:-

...Markel was tapped by the CDC to study what worked and what didn't during the 1918 flu disaster. Markel and colleagues examined 43 cities and found that so-called nonpharmaceutical interventions -- steps such as isolating patients and school closings -- were remarkably successful in tamping down the outbreak. "They don't make the population immune, but they buy you time, either by preventing influenza from getting into the community or slowing down the spread," Markel said.

Markel describes a dramatic example in the mining town of Gunnison, Colorado. In 1918, town leaders built a veritable barricade, closing down the railroad station and blocking all roads into town. Four thousand townspeople lived on stockpiled supplies and food from hunting or fishing. For 3½ months, while influenza raged in nearly every city in America, Gunnison saw not a single case of flu -- not until the spring, when roads were reopened and a handful of residents fell sick.

You'll never know.

The real problem?

Here:

Egypt has begun forcibly slaughtering the country’s pig herds as a precaution against swine flu, a move that the United Nations described as “a real mistake” and one that is prompting anger among the country’s pig farmers.

The decision, announced Wednesday, is already adding new strains to the tense relations between Egypt’s majority Muslims and its Coptic Christians. Most of Egypt’s pig farmers are Christians, and some accuse the government of using swine flu fears to punish them economically.

According to World Health Organization officials, the decision to kill pigs has no scientific basis. “We don’t see any evidence that anyone is getting infected from pigs,” said Dr. Keiji Fukuda, the World Health Organization’s assistant director general. “This appears to be a virus which is moving from person to person.”

Israel Isn't The Jewish State For Nothing

Israeli Health Minister Yakov Litzman has been updating a nervous public on the swine flu epidemic - and he started by renaming it for religious reasons.

"We will call it Mexican flu. We won't call it swine flu," said Mr Litzman, who belongs to the ultra-religious United Torah Judaism party.

Pigs are considered unclean under Jewish dietary laws and pork is also banned for Israel's Muslim minority.

In the Pal. Interests But...

I had commented on the decision of the Pal. Authority to restrict Pals. from taking advantage of Israel's health system.

Steve Flatow, whose daughter was killed by Pal. terror and who is the secretary of American Friends of Rabin Medical Center, has a letter in today's NYTimes and I extracted this:

...How is it in the interest of Palestinians to be treated as medically second-class patients by depriving them of the best treatment?

If there is to be coexistence between Palestinians and Israelis, what better way to work toward that goal than through the trust created by the bond between doctor, nurse and patient? Given the chance to break down stereotypes held by Palestinians and Israelis about each other, why lose that opportunity?

Stephen M. Flatow
West Orange, N.J.

Quite simple and straightforward.

Viagra May Go Non-prescriptive in Israel

If the Pfizer pharmaceutical company asked for permission to market Viagra - the erectile dysfunction (anti-impotency) drug - without a doctor's prescription, the Health Ministry's pharmaceutical division will consider it, chief pharmacist Batya Haran told The Jerusalem Post on Thursday.

"On principle, we don't take such initiatives of changing conditions of sales and eliminating restrictions," she said. "But if the company comes and requests turning Viagra [or other erectile dysfunction drugs] into over-the-counter [OTC] drugs, we will discuss this."

The Post asked Haran if the ministry had a policy on changing the status of such drugs. Viagra (sildenafil citrate) is generally known to be safe, except for specific cases. These include men who already take cardiac drugs containing nitrates such as nitroglycerin for angina pectoris (chest pains due to an inadequate supply of oxygen-rich blood to the heart). Nitroglycerin works by increasing nitric oxide, so men who take nitroglycerin and Viagra together could get into trouble (heart attacks) from the additional nitric oxide.

Less seriously, Viagra can have an effect on color vision, causing men to see the world with a bluish tinge for hours. It may also trigger headaches, as it opens up arteries in the brain's lining and causes excess pressure.

Actually, they've been 'blue' for hours before swallowing the drug

Clean Cut Needed

The New York Times, reporting from Reuters, informs us that

Circumcision Training Urged

Health workers in sub-Saharan Africa need more training and better equipment to circumcise men and boys safely for H.I.V. prevention, according to a study by the World Health Organization that was published on Monday. As many as 35 percent of males circumcised by traditional practitioners in the Bungoma district of Kenya experienced bleeding, infection, excessive pain, erectile dysfunction and other complications from the procedure, researchers found. Although male circumcision is all but universal in Bungoma, the study said that many clinicians there lacked sharp and clean instruments and few were formally trained.

I have blogged previously that this Jewish religious ritual obligation does have up-to-date health benefits (here and here) as well as opposition to circumcision and even the assumed connection between Madonna and circumcision.

I know it is a sore (sorry, for the pun) point among certain people but if it works, why not?

Maybe we need to send in a mohel or two or 100 to help out.

Pomegranate Juice

Did you know that:-

Pomegranate juice with many natural substances such as vitamins, minerals and hormones are in this pomegranate juice composition. All these elements has many valuable properties essential for human being.

Pomegrante juice contains vitally important substances as proteins and hormones (eston, estradiol). Its healing and bactericidal properties can be employed in fighting on accumulation of salts, oral cavity troubles, it can be used in otolaryngology, gynaecology and internal diseases. The pomegranate juice is very effective in anaemia, diarrhoea und gynaecological diseases.

Or that:-

The pomegranate has been traditionally used as medicines in many countries.

Diarrhoea
Pomegranate juice is a mild astringent, used to treat diarrhoea, and reduces some fevers.

Anti-parasites
The root bark is used to treat intestinal parasites, mainly tapeworm. The alkaloids narcotise the tapeworms so they lose their grip to the intestinal wall and are expelled. These alkaloids are also very toxic so they should not be used for self-medication.

Antioxidant
Pomegranate contains many phytochemicals with antioxidant action, such as ellagic acid. Ellagic acid has anticarcinogenic, antiatherogenic and antifibrosis activity.

Skin Whitening
Studies have shown that ellagic acid can suppress UV-induced skin pigmentation when applied topically or when administered orally. Mineka Yoshimura and colleagues have shown in their study "Inhibitory Effect of an Ellagic Acid-Rich Pomegranate Extract on Tyrosinase Activity and UV-induced Pigmentation" (Bioscience, Biotechnology, Biochemistry, 2005) that pomegranate extract has skin-whitening property. This effect was probably caused by the inhibition of proliferation of melanocytes and melanin synthesis.

Well, now you do.

And, if you are looking for pomegranate juice, I have reproduced here the sticker of great tasting pomegranate juice made by my neighbor, Moshe Moshkowitz (Moshko).



I was at his house for the celebration for his new grandson and he served this juice that was delicious and, I learned, healthy.

So, if you want any, feel free to call up Moshko at 02-9942237 or his mobile number at 054-5649150.

L'chayim!