You know..I can’t even write about this, as it’s so preposterous – so disgusting – yet so…sadly..true.

So here is the link, but of course comments welcome back here:

Baptist Church in Assault Rifle Give-Away

Now this is interesting. A new report confirms that the natural food supplement Red Yeast Rice (sometimes erroneously called “Red Rice Yeast”) lowers cholesterol because it contains lovastatin, which is one of the naturally occuring statins that is also used in manufactured statin drugs used to lower cholesterol. Red Yeast Rice is available over the counter, and even from places such as Amazon. The averge cost for a bottle of Red Yeast Rice capsules is $12.00 to $15.00; the average cost for the same number – or fewer – of Mevacor starts at $45.00 for the lowest dose, and goes up to as much as $125.00 for higher dosages.

The report on Red Yeast Rice and its lovastatin component also went on to say that levels of lovastatin in Red Yeast Rice supplements vary widely, and that some brands also contain citrinin, “a mycotoxin with possible nephrotoxicity,” (which means it’s toxic to your kidneys).

The report, from Consumer Labs, said that “Red yeast rice is made by fermenting rice with Monascus purpureus, a species of yeast; it naturally contains compounds known as monacolins, including lovastatin, which is the active compound also seen in some pharmaceutical cholesterol-lowering medications. Published studies have shown daily supplementation with red yeast rice may lower total cholesterol and triglycerides. Recently, a study out of China found people with a previous heart attack who took red yeast rice could reduce recurrent heart attack as well as reduce cholesterol levels.

ConsumerLab.com purchased 10 red yeast rice dietary supplements sold in the United States and tested them for levels of monacolins, citrinin and lead. None of the products were found to contain lead. Four products—from Solaray, Natural Balance, VegLife and Walgreens—were found to contain citrinin, a mycotoxin with possible nephrotoxicity. Those four products also were found to have the lowest levels of monacolins; levels between 3.1 mg and 10.6 mg of monacolins per pill were reported for products from 21st Century, Cholestene, Chole-sterin, Healthy America, Nature’s Plus and Schiff.”

The bottom line is that if you are going to take Red Yeast Rice supplements, you should avoid the ones with the citrinin, and take one of the four that ConsumerLab found to contain demonstrable levels of monacolins.

The Red Yeast Rice supplements which ConsumerLab found to contain monacolins but no bad citrinin include:

Nature’s Plus Red Yeast Rice supplement (you can purchase Nature’s Plus Red Yeast Rice from Amazon here)

Schiff Red Yeast Rice supplement (you can purchase Schiff Red Yeast Rice from Amazon here)

Cholestene Red Yeast Rice dietary supplement (you can order Cholestene Red Yeast Rice dietary supplement from Amazon here)

21st Century Red Yeast Rice supplement (you can purchase 21st Century Red Yeast Rice supplement from Amazon here)

You may also find these books of interest:

Got what seems like a chronic bladder infection (also known as a urinary tract infection, or “UTI” for short)? Are you a woman of, er, a certain age? Because if you are near, in, or post menopause, and experience frequent urinary tract infections – as in “I can’t believe I get a UTI every time I have sex” – it turns out that one of the top frequent urinary tract infection causes in women over a certain age is, well, having frequent sex!

That’s right – it seems that the UTI – sex link is stronger than ever in women who are of menopause age. As in, every time you have sex it could leave to a bladder infection! Good bye, birth-control, hello recurring bladder infection.

Yuck!

So if you have what seems like constantly reoccuring bladder infections after constantly reoccuring sex, well, that’s the reason!

And, it turns out, according to my doctor (not, ahem, that I am saying that I am anywhere near that age!), this is not only well known, but there is a prophylactic protocol to avoid “frequent sex = chronic bladder infection” syndrome.

Here, in my doctor’s own words, is the protocol:

“We recommend that you empty your bladder before and after intercourse, increase fluid intake for several hours after each intercourse, avoid anal intercourse, and take a single dose of an antibiotic such as Septra-DS, Cipro, Macrobid, etc. before or after each intercourse. If the problem persists, a urologist should be consulted.”

Wow. Isn’t menopause supposed to be the time of carefree sex? I mean, for the woman?

This Valentine’s Day, give a true gift of the heart by giving the gift of life – help fund heart surgery for a child. Even $5.00 will help, and you can even donate through Paypal – it doesn’t get much easier than that!

Dr. Mani Sivasubramanian – Dr. Mani to his friends and young patients – is a heart surgeon in India. Through his Dr. Mani Children’s Heart Foundation, he funds – and performs – thousands of heart surgeries, without which his young patients would die.

I personally know Dr. Mani – and many of my friends and colleagues also know, and vouch for, Dr. Mani.

We all donate to his foundation, because, well, we don’t like children dying if they don’t have to, and he saves their lives. It’s as simple as that.

What would you do if your child needed a routine, readily-performed heart surgery – without which they would die – but you couldn’t afford to pay for it?

It’s heartbreaking, isn’t it?

But you really can make a difference!

And we guarantee it!

Take our Valentine’s Day challenge – donate something, anything, to Dr. Mani’s heart surgery for children fund – and if at any time, ever, you change your mind, the Internet Patrol will personally refund your full donation – just show us your receipt.

Help us make our goal of $3000 by Valentine’s Day – enough to fund a complete surgery and actually save a child’s life! That’s only $1500 a week – that’s less than $215 per day – just a few dollars from each of our readers! Make a donation, and then drop us a line at info@theinternetpatrol.com and tell us about your donation.

Please let us know if you’d like us to list your name along with the amount of your donation, or you prefer to make it anonymous.

Make your donation now, via Paypal – you can use any credit card! – here:

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P.S. You can look up and confirm Dr. Mani’s background here.

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P.P.S. Dr. Mani funds much of this himself, through the proceeds of his EzineMarketingCenter.com site. That is why that is the address to which donations are sent through Paypal. But we promise (and guarantee) that your donation will get to the right place, and be used for the right purpose.

Current Donors

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In 2002 I ordered a tagine from a vendor, online. I had made a point of communicating with the vendor first, to make sure that the tagine was lead-free. They assured me that not only was it lead-free, but that it was the same tagine that they supplied to restaurants all across the country. After cooking with it twice, and serving the food to both guests and my own family (including our young son), I decided to test it, and guess what? It had lead in it. Here’s our story.

After the tagine arrived, we cooked a family meal in it. Then we had friends over, and cooked another meal for them and our own family.

Then, after using it twice, a nagging concern made me go out and get a lead test kit.

The tagine tested positive.

Great, I’d cooked and served two meals, nearly back-to-back, which had included acidic foods (like tomatoes), likely to enhance the lead’s leaching into our food.

I figured that, still, with it being just two meals, the odds were low that we’d ingested enough lead to worry about – but I was concerned for our son, who was barely 3 years old at the time.

To be safe, I called poison control.

It was then that I got really concerned, because they advised me that we needed to get the whole family tested immediately. The intellectual side of me was saying “How could two uses possibly lead to a dangerous level”, but the emotional and mom side of me was terribly worried. Especially as cooking, and acidic foods (like the tomatoes we’d cooked in the tagine, twice) exacerbate the leaching.

So, I got tested. I wanted to be tested first, because I did not want to put our son through the trauma of a blood test. I figured my test would show no lead, and so we’d be fine.

Here is something I wrote when I received those test results:

“Well, my blood lead tests results are in, and while I do have a detectable blood level above trace, and by inference so would our son (we tested me first, to try and avoid the trauma to him of a blood test), it seemed certain that any level he had, even taking into account his much smaller mass, would not be high enough that they would actually *do* anything (which level would be 10 micrograms per decileter or higher; my level was 1.4). So we’re as reassured as we can be, under the circumstances, and darned thankful that we tested the bl**dy tagine before using it any further.”

Along the way, I learned more than I cared to about lead in the body. You (well, I) sort of take for granted basic, background knowledge, such as “don’t eat lead, it’s bad for you”. But when you start having to look at “exactly why is it bad”, “how much is truly bad”, “how can you undo the effects”, etc., it’s never that simple. Some interesting tidbits:

One of the reasons that lead is so nasty is that it closely mimics
calcium, so your body’s calcium receptors snap it up. This also means that
the level of calcium in your diet can influence how readily your body
absorbs ingested lead (more actual calcium, somewhat less lead absorption).

The half-life for lead in the blood is actually relatively short (30
days, if I recall correctly – much of what I gleaned was from hours of
phone calls to many state/local/federal/medical authorities). This is why
chronic exposure is so much worse than an isolated exposure – which will
work its way out of the system.

Lead is also stored in the bones, as it readily crosses the blood/bone
barrier. The bones and blood work to achieve equilibrium, so that as the
lead leaves your blood system, the lead stored in your bones will be
released into your blood stream until the levels again achieve equilibrium
(same levels in blood and bones) – I actually found this fascinating. Our
pediatrician told us that this is generally true, not just for things such
as lead – this principle is actually fairly well-known to anyone who has
taken some level of X sciences, but I hadn’t, so I found it fascinating.

Lead does not readily cross the blood/brain barrier, and so once it
gets into the brain, it is believed that it will never leave the brain
(absent chelation, which may, or may not, work, and which is by most
accounts horribly difficult to endure – which is why they will only
consider it if you have a level of 10 or greater). It is also believed
that it only gets into the brain at higher levels.

Mind you, I am a layperson to the extreme here, so do NOT take any of the
above as gospel – it is just what one person learned/was told in the course
of trying to find out what we could/should do about our own lead exposure.

I of course called the merchant from whom we had purchased the tagine; I
was fortunate enough to have the owner answer the phone when I called, so I
was able to drop my little bombshell on her directly (“there’s lead in them
thar tagines”). She seemed genuinely concerned and surprised, and refunded
my purchase price immediately.

Still, given that they had told me directly (in a previous call) that “these are the same tagines we sell to restaurants all over the country”, I felt it was serious enough that I tried to report it to the FDA, and local (to NYC, where the merchant is) health authorities.

It took me 2 days to get through to anyone who seemed to care at either agency, and to be honest, even though I finally reached someone at both levels who seemed concerned, and took the details, I still wasn’t convinced that there wouild be any follow-up. Which was really frustrating.

So, that’s our story. You can be sure that we are much more aware of lead now!

Searches that led to this article: parini cookware,  

This is true because it happened to our son. If anybody else has had this happen we’d like to know. In May of 2007 our son had a package of Lik-M-Aid (also known as Fun Dip) by Wonka. We never let him have this kind of junk, but he had gone to a store with a friend and returned with it. Within a couple of hours his entire mouth was ringed by an acid burn. That was in May …seven months ago, and despite numerous dermotologist appointments, and two topical prescriptions later, it still hasn’t gone away. It will seem to start getting better for a few days, then come right back.

For the better part of a year, our son has had an ongoing injury around his mouth that won’t heal due to this Wonka candy. Now he has a small mole on the edge of the injury area, with a hair growing out of it. We will be going back to a dermatologist soon, and hope for the best. Sigh.

If anybody has had any similar experience with this sort of acid burn from candy, please let us know.

Anne