http://www.healthknot.com/ Latest health news http://www.healthknot.com/hypertension_risk.html The purpose of the entire recent move to reduce salt intake at the level of population is hopeful - but unsupported by the facts - expectation of significantly reduced rate of hypertension, and related adverse health effects. Is there something in the body of evidence suggesting better options?... http://www.healthknot.com/salt_reality.html Is our present salt consumption unhealthful excess? The answer to that question is. like an open book, lying in front of our eyes. Wide range of salt intake levels in different countries and regions makes it possible to identify any significant effect of it on blood pressure and cardiovascular health, and either prove or disprove salt hypothesis... http://www.healthknot.com/salt_health.html Sodium is bio-electrolyte essential not only for maintaining optimum health, but for the very survival. No one disputes that fact. Without it, the subtle flow of electrical currents supporting life - called bio-electricity - would be irreparably interrupted... http://www.healthknot.com/salt_studies.html Why is it that after thousands of studies on the subject of salt and hypertension we don't seem to be anywhere close to consensus on whether the present salt consumption makes people sick, or not?... http://www.healthknot.com/dahl_intersalt.html Dahl's study from 1960 was groundbreaking in that it turned to human populations to look for the evidence of salt-hypertension link. Dahl's data was scarce, and of uncertain quality, but the dramatic correlation between salt and hypertension it showed made big impact on people's minds... http://www.healthknot.com/salt_hypothesis.html What is the factual basis, and the sequence of events, that made the view that dietary salt intake raises blood pressure, and so the risk of hypertension and cardiovascular disease - so called salt hypothesis - become so deeply rooted in the field of academic medicine that it became the determinant of governmental health policies?... http://www.healthknot.com/hypertension_and_salt.html It is silent, but deadly: often without warning signs, high blood pressure (hypertension) kills well over 50,000 Americans each year. Moreover, it is among causative factors in another 300,000 deaths, or so. In short, it is an enemy with long and terrifying record. Two major governmental health organizations - Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and Institute of Medicine (IOM) - decided that it warrants declaring war on salt, which is for a long time linked to high blood pressure... http://www.healthknot.com/bone_drugs.html This month, many causal readers could caught headlines reporting of a recent study "adding more evidence that bone drugs work". Articles do not elaborate on what the old evidence is, but they are quick to add that the new study not only confirms that bone drugs work, but that it is also "reassuring" of their safety. Is it really all that rosy?... http://www.healthknot.com/diabetes_drugs.html If there were any doubts about the final score of the government's decade long "landmark study" aspiring to defeat diabetes by throwing best of drugs - and lots of them - at it, there's none left. Last month, the remaining two pieces fell in, and the quick summary is: can't do it... http://www.healthknot.com/the_MMR_vaccine.html The rant against Dr. Andrew Wakefield, started in 2004 by Brian Deer's media feeds, escalated to a full-blown campaign, not only very unusual in the circles of high-level medical professionals, but seemingly vastly overgrowing factual significance of his 1998 study... http://www.healthknot.com/wakefield_proceedings.html Formal proceedings against a medical study author, such as the fiery controversy spinning around Dr. Andrew Wakefield 1998 autism study, are extremely rare. Is the general absence of professional and ethical misconduct proceedings against those involved in authoring medical studies and presenting their data a proof that the vast majority of them are up to highest professional and ethical standards?... http://www.healthknot.com/wakefield_autism_study.html Wakefield's autism study, implying causative link between "environmental triggers", including vaccination, and "developmental regression", mainly autism, has been fully retracted by Lancet at the beginning of this month, after partial retraction (conclusion section) in 2004. The first question that comes to mind is: "Why did it take so long"? The second: "What was the reason?"...