In This Issue:

This Week on PeoplesPharmacy.com
Featured Q&A
Featured Home Remedy
New Warnings About Sleeping Pills
New Drug Against Breast Cancer
Danger for Desk Jockeys
Beware Weekend Heart Attacks
Green Tea and Celebrex Fight Prostate Cancer

Best Choices from The People's Pharmacy

We are pleased to announce our new book, Best Choices from The People's Pharmacy. Best Choices From the People's Pharmacy is a how-to for consumers trying to work out which treatments, including diet, home remedies, dietary supplements and drugs, are best for what ails them. Click the link below to purchase a copy at a discount of $21.95 plus $5 shipping and handling!

Note: We are shipping single book orders Media Mail with an expected transit time of 3-9 days from shipment, and orders for two or more books by FedEx Ground. Shipping and handling is $5 per book. We also include a FREE copy of Chocolate without Guilt, regularly $14.95, autographed by Terry, with orders for three of more copies of Best Choices shipped to the same address.

http://secure.peoplespharmacy.com/PPcart.asp?pg=products&specific=joppfog0

This Week on PeoplesPharmacy.com:

According to the CDC, as many as 1 million Americans have chronic fatigue syndrome. Experts estimate that more than 3 million people have fibromyalgia. Their suffering is real. What can be done to alleviate it?
Read a short excerpt of the program or order it on CD by clicking the link below:

http://www.peoplespharmacy.com/archives/radio_shows/625_fighting_fibromyalgia_and_chronic_fatigue.asp

Our newspaper columns this week address a new way to kill lice, taking care when microwaving your sponges and the importance of verifing your medications:

http://www.peoplespharmacy.com/archives/editorial/trust_but_verify_your_medicine.asp

http://www.peoplespharmacy.com/archives/pharmacy_qa/dont_burn_sponges_in_the_microwave.asp

http://www.peoplespharmacy.com/archives/herb_home_remedy_qa/kill_lice_by_shrinkwrapping_the_scalp.asp

Featured Q & A

Q. My daughter has just gotten braces, and her mouth is rather tender. The orthodontist gave her a little packet of wax, floss and other supplies, including a small supply of aspirin.

I have read many times that you shouldn't give aspirin to children and teenagers for fear of Reye's syndrome. Is it safe for my thirteen year old to take the aspirin the orthodontist gave out?

A. As long as your daughter is healthy, with no symptoms of flu or chickenpox, there should be no danger in giving her aspirin.

Featured Home Remedy

Some time ago you had a question from a person who wanted to know how to use flax seed to relieve constipation. I purchase it in bulk at a health food store for about $1.50 per pound. I put three quarts of water on to boil, add two tablespoons of flax seed and simmer for fifteen minutes. Then I cool it and strain it into containers. (It makes just over two quarts.)

With two ounces in my orange juice every morning, I am more than satisfied.

You can read more home remedies on our website:
http://www.peoplespharmacy.org/archives/home_remedies/index.asp

Health Headlines:

New Warnings About Sleeping Pills
The Food and Drug Administration is issuing new warnings about prescription sleeping pills. Medications like Ambien and Lunesta will now have to alert physicians and patients to rare but troubling side effects such as sleep walking, sleep talking and even sleep driving. There have been reports that some people have taken a sleeping pill, then arisen in the middle of the night, started their cars and driven quite a distance. Some have had accidents and not realized what happened until they awoke in a police station or a hospital. Others have reported eating food, making calls or even having sex under the influence of the medication with no memory of these events the next day. There have also been cases of severe allergic reactions that have made it hard for people to breathe. The FDA will require manufacturers of drugs like Ambien, Lunesta, Restoril and Rozerem to strengthen the warnings about such side effects so that patients and their families can be alert to these unusual and troubling complications.
http://www.fda.gov/bbs/topics/NEWS/2007/NEW01587.html

New Drug Against Breast Cancer
On a more positive note, the FDA has just approved Tykerb, a new drug to treat aggressive breast cancer. Tumors with the HER2 genetic marker are susceptible to this medication. When standard therapies such as Herceptin fail, Tykerb may prolong survival. It has another advantage over Herceptin in that it is available in an oral pill form and doesn't have to be injected intravenously.

Danger for Desk Jockeys
Physicians have been warning people about the dangers of deep vein thrombosis, or DVT, for years. This happens when a blood clot occurs deep in a vein in the legs. If it breaks loose and lodges in the lungs, it can trigger a life-threatening condition called pulmonary embolism. Until recently most of the concerns about DVT have centered on long airplane flight. That's because when someone has to sit still for long periods of time there appears to be an increased risk for blood clot formation. Now researchers in New Zealand report that DVT is also associated with long periods of time behind a desk. In fact, there may be a greater risk of blood clots for people who spend long hours at a desk staring at a computer screen than for airplane travelers. The moral of this story seems to be that we should all be moving around rather than sitting still for hours on end. Even on an airplane we can exercise our feet and walk the aisles. Other ways to reduce the risk of deep vein thrombosis is to stay well hydrated by drinking plenty of water and to wear elastic support stockings to enhance blood flow in the legs.
[2007 Annual Meeting of the Thoracic Society of Australia and New Zealand]

Beware Weekend Heart Attacks
If you're going to have a heart attack it would be better to have it on a weekday than on a weekend. That's because you may get better, faster, more aggressive treatment during the week when there are lots of skilled interventional cardiologists on duty. Investigators analyzed data on more than 230,000 heart attack patients between 1987 and 2002. Heart attack deaths were roughly one percent higher for patients admitted to New Jersey hospitals on weekends. One possible explanation was that angioplasty, a procedure to open clogged coronary arteries, was performed on about 10 percent of weekday heart attacks but only 6.7 percent of weekend heart attacks. Angioplasty can sometimes reverse the damaging effects of a heart attack before it has a chance to destroy large areas of heart tissue. Another possibility for the discrepancy in heart attack survival is that weekend heart attack patients may be different than weekday patients. On weekends patients may wait longer to go to the hospital with chest pain and may arrive sicker than on weekdays. Regardless of the reasons for the discrepancy between weekend and weekday mortality statistics, people should never delay a trip to the emergency department if they suspect they are experiencing a heart attack.
[New England Journal of Medicine, March 15, 2007]
http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/abstract/356/11/1099

Green Tea and Celebrex Fight Prostate Cancer
A combination of green tea with an anti-inflammatory pain reliever seems to slow the development of prostate cancer. The researchers compared the effects of Celebrex and green tea extract on tissue cultures and on mice implanted with human prostate tumors. Green tea is rich in the polyphenol EGCG that makes prostate cancer cells die. In both the test tube and the animals, the combination of green tea and Celebrex worked much better than either compound alone.
[Clinical Cancer Research March 1, 2007]
http://clincancerres.aacrjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/13/5/1611