Eat drink and be

the associations of moderate alcohol drinking and bone health are also seen in early postmenopausal Scottish women, with 1-2 alcoholic drinks/d being associated with less bone loss (5). Those who drink alcohol in moderation may have healthier lifestyles and this may confound the relation between bone health and alcohol intake (6). However, this does not explain why for postmenopausal women there is a consistent dose-response relation.

Beer contains silicon (7), small quantities of B vitamins (8), and bioactive polyphenols. Silicon has been reported to be essential for bone growth, and B-complex vitamins (vitamin B-6, vitamin B-12, and folate) are known to reduce circulating homocysteine, which has been associated with increased fracture risk. Wine, particularly red wine, contains a range of phytochemicals, many of which could plausibly influence bone metabolism, including resveratrol, which has estrogenic activity (9). White wine contains fewer bioactive components than red wine, but consumption of different wine types was not given in the Tucker et al study. If nonalcoholic constituents explain the positive associations between bone health and alcohol consumption, it can be argued that they can be obtained from other sources besides alcoholic drinks. The possible estrogenic effect of alcohol in relation to bone deserves further consideration in women. There is recent evidence that estradiol attenuates the effects of ethanol in osteoblasts but that ethanol impairs estrogen receptor signaling (10).

Remembering the Day the World Wide Web Was Born: Scientific American

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Features - March 12, 2009
Remembering the Day the World Wide Web Was Born
What drove Tim Berners-Lee to imagine this game-changing model for information sharing, and will its openness be its undoing?

By Larry Greenemeier

Twenty years ago this month, a software consultant named Tim Berners-Lee at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (better known as CERN) hatched a plan for an open computer network to keep track of research at the particle physics laboratory in the suburbs of Geneva, Switzerland. Berners-Lee\'s modestly titled \"Information Management: A Proposal,\" which he submitted to get a CERN grant, would become the blueprint for the World Wide Web.

The Web was not an overnight success. In fact, it took nearly two years before Berners-Lee—with help from CERN computer scientist Robert Cailliau and others—on Christmas Day 1990 set up the first successful communication between a Web browser and server via the Internet. This demonstration was followed by several more years of tireless lobbying by Berners-Lee, now 53, to convince professors, students, programmers and Internet enthusiasts to create more Web browsers and servers that would soon forever change the world of human communication.

On Friday March 13, Berners-Lee, Cailliau and other Web pioneers will gather at CERN to celebrate the 20th anniversary of that original proposal. To get the inside story on how the Web came to be, not to mention the man behind the idea, SciAm.com spoke with Scientific American editor Mark Fischetti, who in 1999 collaborated with Berners-Lee to write Weaving the Web: The Past, Present and Future of the World Wide Web by its Inventor, a seminal work that analyzed and commemorated Berners-Lee\'s achievement a decade after the Web\'s birth.

[An edited transcript of the interview follows.]


Why was the Web invented at CERN?
Tim Berners-Lee was a software consultant at CERN in the 1980s when he began writing Tangle, an application to help him keep track of CERN\'s many scientists, projects and incompatible computers. Thousands of researchers would travel to CERN, do their experiments using their own computers (which they brought with them), and then go home to crunch the data. It was a major pain at CERN to accommodate the many incompatible computers, which also had to work with the CERN mainframe that actually ran the mammoth particle accelerators. Tim was responsible for helping everything and everyone work together. He thought it would be a whole lot simpler if the computers could swap their information directly, even though, at that time, computers didn\'t communicate with one another.

March 2009 marks 20 years since Tim Berners-Lee first proposed a project that would become the World Wide Web. What inspired the larger vision?
He made the proposal to CERN management in March 1989 for funding and an official okay to use some of his time to work on this project. But in thinking about solving the incompatibility problem, he realized that it would be even more cool if the scientists, after they went back to their labs, could still share their data. They might even be able to run some of their experiments at CERN over a network from wherever they were located, if the distant CERN computers could talk over the Internet. The Internet itself is just a set of wires and a protocol for sending information over those wires. The Web would be an application that ran on the Internet. It just so happens that the Web turned out to be the killer app of all time. (Other Internet applications already existed, including File Transfer Protocol, or FTP, and e-mail.)

What were the key innovations that formed the Web? Who created them?
The three main innovations are HTTP (hypertext transfer protocol); URLs (universal resource locators, which Tim originally referred to as URIs, for universal resource indicators); and HTML (hypertext markup language). HTTP allows you to click on a link and be brought to that document or Web page. URLs serve as an address for finding that document or page. And HTML gives you the ability to put links in documents and pages so they connect. Tim created all three of these pieces of software code from October to December of 1990.

What\'s the best analogy for explaining how the Web works?
Tim likens it to a market economy: anyone can trade with anyone else without having to go to a physical market square to do it. The traders just need to know the rules. The hardest thing for people to grasp about the Web is that it has no center; any computer (or node, in mathematical terms) can link to any other computer directly, without having to go through a central connection point. They just need to know the rules for communicating.

Berners-Lee accessed the first Web page, on the first Web server, using the first Web browser on Christmas Day 1990. Why did it take until 1993 before the public became aware of the creation?
Once Tim and Robert Cailliau established that the Web worked, they wanted to spread the word. After getting CERN to buy in, Tim spent 1991 flying around the world meeting with people who were interested in hypertext and the Internet and linking to create Web browsers to access what was a growing repository of information on Tim\'s CERN computer. He also encouraged enthusiasts to start their own servers. From there, listservs helped spread the word; so did university computer science programs, which saw the coding of browsers and servers as a great way to get students to experiment. (One of the best known of these projects was headed by the University of Illinois\'s Marc Andreessen, who would later transform his creation into the Netscape Web browser.) Tim began to get concerned, though, about universities and companies like Microsoft creating their own networks that might compete with the Web, or charging for content, which would violate his core principle: that everyone should be able to communicate freely with everyone else. To stop this from happening, he got management at CERN to release all of his source code under a general license so that any programmer anywhere could use it for free. He thought that if the whole world was building the Web together, no one company could take control of it.

What caused the Web to finally take off?
Tim designed the Web to be a social medium, first, rather than a technical one—a system that would connect people through their computers, and the grassroots building [of the Web] took off because of that. However, the general public didn\'t really enter that picture until the mid-1990s, when companies like Netscape and AOL [America Online] commercialized browsers. These companies would snail mail free CDs with their browser software so people would get on the Web, hoping that once they got there, they would discover services the companies offered for a fee, such as e-mail.

Why did Berners-Lee abruptly leave CERN to begin the World Wide Web Consortium at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1994, just as the Web began to rapidly expand?
At that point, the Web was clearly becoming a juggernaut, and commercial forces did indeed threaten those core principles. CERN was not in the business of overseeing Internet systems or applications—it existed to do high-energy physics experiments. Tim couldn\'t be the caretaker and stay there, so he moved on to M.I.T.\'s Laboratory for Computer Science, which became the host for a new World Wide Web Consortium, where Tim has been ever since.

What has most surprised him about the Web\'s evolution?
What surprised Tim most is that for years people were so much more interested in simply browsing for and reading content rather than in creating it. His very first browser—WorldWideWeb—was actually both a browser and an editor. It let you write your own pages, post them online, and edit pages posted by others. But the commercial browsers didn\'t offer editing capabilities. This frustrated him for a number of years. The whole point of the Web, to him, was not to just see information but to publish it, too. This didn\'t really happen until blogs emerged, followed by sites like Facebook, where people can easily post content.

What does the future hold for the Web, given that the openness that Berners-Lee built into it is continually exploited by miscreants?
It\'s hard to implement controls on the Web—because it was created in the ethos of the Internet—in that it\'s totally open. But for Tim, confronting issues like privacy and protection of intellectual property is not a matter of a technical fix. First, you need a social fix. If the Web is open to good people, it\'s open to bad people, too. The way you deal with security and other problems on the Web is the same way you deal with it in society: You need laws and social conventions that guide people\'s behavior. Once those are developed, then the technical ways to implement them can be created.

Does the fountain of youth lie in the naked mole rat?: Scientific American Blog

Does the fountain of youth lie in the naked mole rat?: Scientific American Blog

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Tagemet To Treat Herpes And Shingles

Herpes simplex and herpes zoster are viral diseases that can be kept in remission by a healthy immune system. Direct evidence for this can be seen in cancer patients who undergo immune-suppressing chemotherapy and experience severe herpes outbreaks as a result.1 Similar herpes flare-ups occur in other immune-comprising situations such as normal aging, where a latent herpes zoster virus can reemerge to cause painful shingles.

While pharmaceutical companies promote expensive and only partially effective anti-viral drugs, there is evidence dating back more than 20 years that the drug cimetidine (sold over-the-counter as Tagamet) is highly effective in shortening the duration or preventing the outbreaks of herpes and shingles. The problem is that virtually no physicians are prescribing cimetidine to their herpes (or shingles) patients, despite persuasive findings in peer-reviewed scientific journals.

When it comes to treating herpes infections, conventional doctors seem to only pay attention to drug company propaganda, while failing to recommend lower cost drugs (like cimetidine) that have been shown to work especially well in herpes patients.

In 1988, The Life Extension Foundation recommended that certain cancer patients take the drug cimetidine (Tagamet) for the purpose of enhancing immune function. Cimetidine favorably modulates immune function via several mechanisms, but its best documented property is its inhibitory effect on T-suppressor cell function. The immune system is weakened when T-suppressor cells prematurely shut down immune function. Since cimetidine inhibits T-suppressor cell function, it can significantly enhance immune surveillance in some people.

by William Faloon and Kate Kitchen

Herpes simplex outbreaks have been shown to go into remission in response to the proper dose of cimetidine. In cases of herpes zoster (shingles) which targets the older population, cimetidine has been successfully used to lessen the debilitating pain and intensity of the skin rash and eruptions

Cimetidine (Tagamet) is a histamine2 (H2) receptor antagonist and, as such, can contribute to the enhancement of immune function. Various studies indicate cimetidine's effectiveness in suppressing herpes infections.

The first case observation occurred in August 1977 when a patient developed shingles just before commencing a course of cimetidine for a chronic stomach ulcer. The patient experienced dramatic relief of the shingles pain and rapid disappearance of the eruption. On the basis of this observation, cimetidine was prescribed to 21 patients with herpes zoster (shingles). The results were encouraging in 18 out of these 21 patients. The trial was then extended to other herpes virus infections. In six out of seven patients with herpes labialis (lip), the blisters were aborted, and in one patient with herpes keratitis the result was also encouraging, with the attacks being markedly shortened in duration and reduced in frequency. The results of these preliminary trials showed the potential role of cimetidine in the treatment of herpes virus infection.(2)

In 1996, a clinical trial was conducted on 221 patients with herpes zoster who were treated daily with cimetidine at 3 x 200 mg during the day and 1 x 400 mg at night. The results showed that cimetidine shortened the period of disease duration. The authors suggested using cimetidine in the treatment of shingles during the earliest stages of the disease.(3)

A case reported in Canada resulted in the statement that cimetidine therapy appeared to reduce the expected length of the active phase of herpes zoster from 35 days or more to just 10 days.(4)

At the Golda Medical Center in Israel, in 1994, a double-blind placebo-control study of cimetidine treatment versus placebo was conducted for one week in 22 patients with herpes zoster (shingles). Those who were treated with cimetidine were found to recover much more quickly from skin rash and pain than those who were given the placebo.(5)

At the Department of Neurology at Lady Davis Carmel Hospital in Israel, a randomized study evaluated the effect of cimetidine in the treatment of herpes zoster virus. The conclusion was that cimetidine treatment “shortened the median interval until the first decrease in pain, shortened the median interval until the complete resolution of pain and promoted faster complete healing of skin lesions….”(6)

A paper presented by a researcher at Michigan State University in the Department of Pediatrics and Human Development (1990) stated:(7) “Suppressor T lymphocytes possess histamine2 (H2) receptors and contribute significantly to the function of the immune system. Cimetidine has been shown to enhance a variety of immunologic functions both in vivo and in vitro because of its inhibitory effects on suppressor-cell function. Successful tumor immunotherapy has been reported in experimental animals. Patients who received cimetidine were shown to exhibit enhanced cell-mediated immunity as evaluated by increased response to skin-test antigens, restoration of sensitivity following development of acquired tolerance, and increased responses of lymphocytes to mitogen stimulation. Patients also demonstrated that patients with herpes zoster and herpes simplex who were given cimetidine may have benefitted therapeutically from the drug.”

The consensus from these studies is that when cimetidine is administered to those with herpes simplex or shingles, the result is a dramatic relief of the herpetic pain as well as rapid disappearance of the blisters.

Novel approach overlooked

Cimetidine is the generic equivalent of the popular OTC drug better known by the brand name Tagamet. It is used primarily to relieve symptoms of esophageal reflux such as heartburn. Tagamet functions as a histamine (H2) receptor antagonist. What most doctors don't know is that T-lymphocyte suppressor cells have the H2 receptor. By blocking this receptor (using an H2 receptor antagonist such as Tagamet), the immune system can be temporarily turned up to help combat certain cancers and herpes viral infections.

Tagamet is manufactured by SmithKline Pharmaceuticals, headquartered in Philadelphia. When Life Extension asked about Tagamet's potential use in herpes treatment and quizzed about the lack of promotion for same, Carl Friedman from SmithKline's Research and Development Department said, “It [cimetidine] went off patent in 1994. We aren't vested in it anymore, so there's nothing to gain from it.” Echoing his sentiments, Deborah Frutos, from the pharmaceutical company's Corporate Finance and Administration Department said, “There's no incentive for us to promote our less expensive generic [cimetidine]. If we were to do any study for that, it would take lots of time and money. Even if it proved to be a good study, most physicians have other products they'd rather prescribe.” She added, “A grant guarantees that if we prove the drug is indicated for that [treating herpes], the generic would be manufactured and once the patent is protected, anyone can manufacture it. Let's just say we're not going to do it.”

The unwillingness of drug companies to promote their own products unless a patent guarantees them a fat profit margin is one reason why many promising therapies are overlooked. A person suffering from a herpes simplex or shingles outbreak can obtain Tagamet (cimetidine) over-the-counter for $38 a month as opposed to over $200 a month for the new anti-viral drugs being promoted to doctors. While there are no side-by-side comparisons, published studies indicate that Tagamet (cimetidine) may be more effective than FDA-approved anti-viral drugs.

Here we have cimetidine right under our noses and offered at a fraction of the cost of anti-viral drug therapy. Why is the majority of the medical community ignoring it? When we asked three practicing pharmacists if physicians ever recommend cimetidine to herpes patients, all three responded in the negative: 1) “rarely,” 2) “not much” and 3) “uh…sometimes, but not very often.” Asking the same question of three physicians, the answers were equally noncommittal and nondescript.

Cimetidine functions as an immunomodulator. In a collaborative study by several universities worldwide, 125 patients who were scheduled to undergo surgical procedures for colon or rectal cancer were randomized to receive either placebo or cimetidine preoperatively during a five day regimen. The conclusion was that a short course of cimetidine appeared to effect patient survival.8 Their hypothesis was based on their knowledge of previous studies that showed cimetidine to be effective as an immunostimulant.

Herpes simplex

The herpes simplex (HSV) is sexually transmitted by direct contact. HSV1 causes fever blisters on the mouth, sometimes on the face. HSV2 affects the genital area and is more commonly known as genital herpes. Once a person is infected with herpes simplex, they can spend a lifetime waiting for an outbreak, or they may experience several outbreaks a year. There is no known cure. The virus may lie dormant for months or years. Some people don't even know they have it until they have their first outbreak that manifests itself by an itchy and painful irritating rash, which then erupts as unsightly blisters.

The Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta recently reported that 45 million adolescents (age 12-plus) and adults in the United States are infected with genital herpes. Slightly more prevalent in women, this disease lays its claim on one of every four women and one of every five men in the U.S.

In the past 20 years, the number of Americans with genital herpes has increased 30%, especially among white adolescents.

The infection becomes more pronounced in severity in people whose immune systems are compromised, e.g., in patients who have AIDS, cancer or other diseases, or who have undergone an organ transplant. HSV2 can be fatal to infants born to mothers who test positive for the disease and are experiencing an outbreak during delivery. (Physicians who are informed ahead of time normally perform a Caesarian section to prevent the mother from shedding the virus onto her baby.)

Herpes zoster (shingles)

The most common neurologic condition known is herpes zoster, usually referred to as shingles. The CDC says that up to one million people in the United States contract herpes zoster each year. David Cooper, M.D., a contributing editor to JAMA, stated in 1998 that shingles afflicts more than one million people every year.

Herpes zoster is a reactivation of the virus that causes chicken pox. Once a person has recovered from chicken pox, the virus (varicella) remains dormant, hiding among the connective nerve tissue in the body. No one seems to know why it occurs, although stress and/or a compromised immune system is thought to exacerbate the condition, but it usually activates in people over the age of 50. Traveling through the ganglia, it causes a tingling, stinging or burning sensation. A couple days later, once the virus has completed its journey to the skin, an irritating and painful rash and accompanying blisters may erupt. The resulting condition can be so painful, the patient may be unable to tolerate clothing or anything that touches the affected area.

Raising public awareness

Shortly before his death this year, Steve Allen appeared with his lovely wife Jayne Meadows on NBC's “The Today Show”. They wanted to bring to light this illness that many would prefer not to discuss in public. Both of their mothers had suffered with the painful virus and in 1999, Meadows had undergone a similar experience, causing her to cancel an appearance with her husband on another popular television talk show.

Following their appearance on “The Today Show” with Matt Lauer, 8,000 telephone calls were received at the Varicella Zoster Virus Research Foundation and nearly 3,000 visits were logged on the Foundation's website. Shingles had come out of the closet and the public wanted to know what to do about it.

With so much public interest in such a painfully debilitating, often embarrassing illness, you would think physicians would make every effort to inform the general public that an OTC drug is available to them. Yet cimetidine (Tagamet), a drug proven in study after study over the past 20 years to be effective in boosting the immune system, is still a common sense, low-cost medication that is virtually ignored by the medical community.

Standard treatment for herpes

Anti-viral drugs are commonly used to treat herpes simplex and herpes zoster. Due to varying intensities of pain and other symptoms associated with herpes zoster, analgesics and various other medications are prescribed. The most popular drug of choice has been Zovirax. Retail cost: Zovirax can cost $ 112 for a month's supply (150 capsules of 200 mg dosage, five times a day). A stronger dosage, 400 mg, five times a day would be $206 for a month's supply. And there is yet a stronger dose, which naturally costs even more. (Some patients may only be required to undergo a two-week course of medication while others take it chronically to prevent outbreaks). More modern versions of acyclovir, such as desciclovir, famciclovir, valaciclovir and penciclovir, cost even more.

Cimetidine may not work against warts

It is important to understand that cimetidine is not a panacea for every disease that might be helped by improving immune function.

One study used cimetidine for three months to evaluate its effects on 54 people with warts. Cure rates obtained were 32% in the cimetidine-treated group and 30.7% in the placebo-treated group. Thus, no significant difference was found between cimetidine and placebo in effectiveness in the treatment of patients with common warts.(9)

In a much smaller study, the effect of cimetidine was investigated in the management of genital and perigenital warts in children. Four had extensive condylomata acuminata of the genital and perigenital areas. They were treated with high doses (30 to 40 mg./kg of cimetidine) in an attempt to eradicate the condyloma (in two patients) and avoid recurrence in the other two. Cimetidine was administered daily in three divided doses during a three-month period. At the 24-month evaluation, all four patients were free of condyloma. The conclusion of the authors was that cimetidine is effective for primary and adjunctive treatment of condyloma in young children. It also seems to be effective as first-line therapy.(10)

Conclusion

Studies indicate that viruses like herpes simplex and herpes zoster can be put into quick remission, or the breakouts prevented altogether, when T-lymphocyte suppressor cell function is inhibited. The best way of accomplishing this is to take 200 mg of cimetidine (Tagamet) three times a day and then 400 mg at bedtime. Tagamet is available in pharmacies over-the-counter.

Herpes simplex outbreaks have been shown to go into remission in response to the proper dose of cimetidine. In cases of herpes zoster (shingles), which targets the older population, cimetidine has been successfully used to lessen the debilitating pain and intensity of the skin rash and eruptions.

Published studies indicate that viruses like herpes simplex and herpes zoster can be put into quick remission, or the breakouts prevented altogether, when T-lymphocyte suppressor cell function is inhibited. The best way of accomplishing this is to take 200 mg of cimetidine (Tagamet) three times a day and then 400 mg a bedtime. Tagamet is available in pharmacies over-the-counter. Suggested use is to initiate Tagamet as soon as symptoms of a herpes-related virus infection appear. Continue to take it for one to two weeks after all symptoms of the outbreak have abated.

One precautionary note, even though Tagamet (cimetidine) is sold over-the-counter, refer to the package insert to make sure it does not interact with prescription drugs you may already be taking.

Please note that if your doctor prescribes generic cimetidine, it may cost less to obtain it as a prescription drug (especially if you have prescription drug insurance) rather than buying the Tagamet name brand that is available without a prescription.



~ Tagemet To Treat Herpes And Shingles - References