Friday, October 31, 2008

And The October Prize Winner Is.......

Congratulations to Anilise for winning our October prize drawing! She won an 8 ounce bottle of Muscle Rescue Gel. Don't forget to enter our monthly drawing the next time you're in the pharmacy.

Tuesday, October 28, 2008

Don't Forget To Mark This On Your Calendar!

Learn the Bioidentical Hormone Secrets from the Experts:
Restore Balance, Get Back Your Energy, and Fight Disease.
Until now, this information was only available to physicians.
Now, the Experts and their Patients Speak to the Public.

Join in on this seminar from the comfort of your home!
November 10 - 25, 2008

For Details and Registration visit:
www.bhrt1.com

Wednesday, October 22, 2008

Saving your Sex Life – It’s not Viagra!

By: Dr. Jan Seibert

With life’s pressing demands, most men and women at some point of their lives will suffer from sexual dysfunction. Media coverage focuses primarily on male erectile dysfunction. Unfortunately, so little media attention is targeted at problems facing women sexual health issues. Presently, commercial products to help women “get into the mood” are not openly advertised.

By 2010, over 50 million female baby boomers will reach the age of menopause. Most of these women will struggle with sexual health problems. The two main culprits are a drop of sex hormone produced and a lack of blood flow to the vaginal region caused by vascular conditions, such as high cholesterol, nerve damage from diabetes, and high blood pressure.

Years ago, the American Psychological Association classified female sexual problems as mental disorders and prescribed antidepressants to address these problems making the condition worse from the drug’s side effects.

Today more urologists and gynecologists treat the medical conditions causing diminished blood flow and nerve damage to the pelvic/vaginal regions.

Some of the symptoms women may experience are:

* Painful sex
* Inability to achieve orgasm
* Decreased vaginal blood flow.

Vaginal dryness is the one of the most common sexual health problem facing menopausal women. Some find relief using over the counter lubricants. However, more serious issues can be present that require a medical examination. Shrinking of the vaginal wall can affect the amount of lubrication present. Untreated, the vaginal wall can tear and bleed making sex painful. Women should have annual vaginal exams to monitor vaginal dryness.

Certain drugs affect women’s sexual health. Oral birth control pills, various blood pressure medications, and antidepressants can rob a woman’s ability to experience orgasms. If you notice a decreased interest in sex or are no longer able to achieve satisfying orgasms, check with the pharmacist to see if the medications your taking may be the culprit. Then see your doctor about other medication options.

Lifestyle choices also affect women’s sexual health. Smoking and drinking too much alcohol will definitely affect healthy blood flow to the vagina. Avid bike riders may also experience a lack of vaginal blood flow. Daily stress can create a drop in sexual interest, along with bouts of anxiety and depression. Talk with your partner about these issues and seek medical treatment, if necessary.

Remember we are living longer. So don’t let old age slow your sexual enjoyment. Lubrication is the key to avoiding discomfort or pain especially if your partner is using erectile dysfunction medications. Kegel exercises can strengthen vaginal muscle tone, making sex more satisfying for you and your partner. Finally, eating right, managing stress, and getting adequate sleep can make all the difference with “getting in the mood”.

Learn the Bioidentical Hormone Secrets from the Experts!

Learn the Bioidentical Hormone Secrets from the Experts:
Restore Balance, Get Back Your Energy, and Fight Disease.
Until now, this information was only available to physicians.
Now, the Experts and their Patients Speak to the Public.

Join in on this seminar from the comfort of your home!
November 10 - 25, 2008

For Details and Registration visit:
www.bhrt1.com

Tuesday, October 14, 2008

Get Out In That Sunshine While It's Still Here

Time In The Sun Is Needed for Adequate Vitamin D Production

Heart deaths, cancers, depression, insomnia, schizophrenia, osteoporosis, rickets, muscle weakness, body aches and pains, and immune system problems have all been linked to low vitamin D levels. So, it's important to know that you are getting enough Vitamin D.

Research published in the Archives of Internal Medicine, shows that people with the lowest levels of Vitamin D are more than twice as likely to die of heart disease and other causes than are people with the highest levels of Vitamin D. One of our main sources of Vitamin D is sunshine which is one reason that people who live furthest away from the equator often have the lowest levels of Vitamin D.

Other researchers found that while skin cancer rates are higher closer to the equator, death rates from all types of cancer are lower. They wrote in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, "the benefit of moderate sun exposure seems to outweigh the risk of skin cancers."

It is also noted that people are generally spending less time outdoors than in past years and we are also wearing sunscreens when we do go outdoors. Both of these will reduce the amount of Vitamin D we can produce from sunshine. Even if you do spend alot of time outside and don't wear sunscreen, it's impossible in the winter time to produce enough vitamin D from the sun if you live north of Atlanta, Georgia.

Deborah Kotz wrote in US News and World Report:
The government's dietary recommendations are 200 IUs a day up to age 50, 400 IUs to age 70, and 600 IUs over 70. But many experts believe that these recommendations are far too low to maintain healthful vitamin D levels. They advocate for supplementation in the winter of about 2,000 IUs per day and a dose of daily sunshine in the summer. See full article.

Chronic vitamin D deficiency can be misdiagnosed as fibromyalgia because its symptoms are very similar: muscle weakness, aches and pains.

Obese people and dark skinned people need more vitamin D.

Shocking Vitamin D deficiency statistics:
32% of doctors and med school students are vitamin D deficient.
40% of the U.S. population is vitamin D deficient.
42% of African American women of childbearing age are deficient in vitamin D.
48% of young girls (9-11 years old) are vitamin D deficient.
Up to 60% of all hospital patients are vitamin D deficient.
76% of pregnant mothers are severely vitamin D deficient, causing widespread vitamin D deficiencies in their unborn children, which predisposes them to type 1 diabetes, arthritis, multiple sclerosis and schizophrenia later in life. 81% of the children born to these mothers were deficient.
Up to 80% of nursing home patients are vitamin D deficient.

(Statistics from: The UV Advantage authored by Dr. Michael Holick)

The easiest way to get Vitamin D is sunshine, so go enjoy it while it's here!

Thursday, October 9, 2008

Thermography - or Infrared Breast Exams

Breast Cancer: Early Infrared Risk Detection and the Proactive Breast Wellness Programs

Ingrid Edstrom FNP, M.Ed

Several studies have shown that infrared imaging is a good, perhaps the best, method for risk assessment in breast cancer

Every middle-aged woman that I know is frightened about breast cancer. It does not just affect women, it affects families: our mothers, our partners, our children, our sisters and maternal aunts and grandmothers. Just think about the people you know who have been touched by this medical crisis. Many younger women worry, knowing how this cancer has struck older female relatives, and they wait, hoping they will not become a statistic themselves.

Some of the research suggests that your environment—what you eat, how you live, the chemicals & radiation received from “natural” surroundings and the built environment—may have a greater impact on your future health than being gifted with bad genetics. This information is heartening for it allows the possibility that there may be an educational process that will help to empower women to make dietary, lifestyle and environmental changes that may better their chances to avoid contracting the disease, thus altering current statistical projections.

Stats That Cause Us Fear:
According to the National Cancer Institute, breast cancer incidence rates increased by more than 40% from 1973 to 1998 in the US nationally. Oregon consistently ranks among the top five states for breast cancer incidence and was the third highest in 2001. The incidence of breast cancer in the US has risen during the past 30 years from 1 in 30 to 1 in 7 women during their lifetime. Agencies that track these statistics are concerned that in the next 10 years it may be 1 in 5. It would not be overstating the case to describe this as an epidemic!

One must wonder, what could be the cause for such an explosive statistical growth rate in so short a time? Here in Oregon I suspect a human-caused environmental linkage—the increased usage of the estrogen mimickers, or Xeno-Estrogens, found in the highly toxic herbicides containing Dioxin (Agent Orange-like compounds) that is routinely used by the timber industry and alongside county roads, and by well-meaning gardeners and husbands who collectively spray vast quantities of these chemicals (with brand names like Round Up and Cross Bow) upon the urban/suburban landscape. Though legal, these products have been linked to prostate cancer, miscarriages, infertility and a host of other arthritis-like issues, GERD and other symptoms and malaise problems. Risk to human health is exacerbated by other miracles of modern chemistry such as Parabins (used as a preservative in cosmetics, food, shampoo & sun screen), and the excessive amounts of estrogen (added to non-organic meat via conventional animal feed, and to Bovine Growth Hormone (BGH) found in some conventional cheese and dairy products) consumed by people in their diets. There are real and troubling health consequences to these compounds finding their way into the human food chain. [For instance, have you noticed that little 9 and 10-year old girls are developing breasts, 3-4 years ago the standard age was 13, which has been since the dawn of womanhood?]

Medical science has for decades been working on establishing the links between breast cancer and a woman’s genetic inheritance, as well as a woman’s environment. Yet, with all of that, the results are less than encouraging. According to Dr. John Lee’s book What Your Doctor May Not Tell You About Breast Cancer, and How Hormone Balance Can Save Your Life, “Your risk of surviving malignant breast cancer is just about the same as it was 50 years ago, when the only treatment was mastectomy, about one in three. In other words, despite billions of dollars in research and hugely expensive and risky treatments, the conventional medical approach to breast cancer isn’t working, and talk of prevention is virtually non existent.”

One Woman’s Solution:
As a Nurse Practitioner and Health Educator, I am passionate about directing my career towards making a difference in these dreadful statistics, because these stats only represent the sanitized mask of real people’ extreme suffering. Is this preventable? Is there a way to empower women to create a more proactive approach to prevention?

For long have I been in that place of concern and worry with all my other women-sisters. More recently, I became one of those frightened women with a thickened area in my own breast and a “hot” infrared scan. I was at once terrified and energized to take action. Since I have a more Holistic approach to healthcare than most, I sought out an Infrared camera in Connecticut (two hours drive from where I lived in Western Massachusetts two years ago). I worked with a very skilled Naturopath and also did a lot of my own research. I started what I now refer to as a Proactive Breast Wellness Program (PBWP) that included an Anti-Estrogen Diet, supplements to help take the extra estrogen out of the system, more supplements to balance my hormones, and finally a course of bio-identical Progesterone. Additionally, I made a number of dietary and lifestyle changes. Thankfully, results were almost immediate. I was able to eliminate the thickened area in one month and reversed the inflammation in the course of just four months!

Following the ordeal, I felt that, if I were able to reverse these conditions once I knew I had the problem, then other women might also benefit. Since breast cancer is an inflammatory problem and breast cancers take 10-12 years to grow, it follows that the sooner one discovers a thermal shift (evidence of early inflammation), the better are the chances for survival. In other words, thermal assessment may well offer the best risk assessment tool possible, giving a woman the most time possible to alter the situation through her own PBWP. To put it another way, racing for “The Cure” is great but I am more interested in a preventive approach to this problem.
What is Infrared all about?

The 2003 article by Len Saputo, MD entitled, Beyond Mammography states: “The most devastating loss of life from breast cancer occurs between the ages of 30 to 50. Fortunately, women today have more options available to them to help in the detection of breast cancer than in past decades. Unfortunately, education and awareness of these options and their effectiveness in detecting breast cancer at different stages in life are woefully deficient.”

Breast thermography, which involves using a heat-sensing scanner to detect variations in the temperature of breast tissue, has been around since the 1960s. However, early infrared scanners were not very sensitive and were insufficiently tested before being put into clinical practice, resulting in misdiagnosed cases.

Modern-day breast thermography boasts vastly improved technology and more extensive clinical scientific research. The technology has been FDA approved since 1982 and is 100% safe with no compression or radiation. In fact, the article references data from major peer review journals and research on more than 300,000 women who have been tested using the technology, mostly in Europe. Combined with the successes in detecting breast cancer with greater accuracy than other methods, the technology is slowly gaining ground among more progressive practitioners.

Beyond Mammography concludes that “breast thermography needs to be embraced more widely by the medical community and awareness increased among women. Not only has it demonstrated a higher degree of success in identifying women with breast cancer under the age of 55 in comparison to other technologies, but it is also an effective adjunct to clinical breast exams and mammography for women over 55. Finally, it provides a non-invasive and safe detection method, and if introduced at age 25, provides a benchmark that future scans can be compared with for even greater detection accuracy.”

Infrared scans have the potential to pick up inflammatory changes months to possibly eight years prior to detectable lump formation detected by mammogram. All breast cancer is an inflammatory process and may take 10 to 12 years for a mass to develop. The research that I am currently involved in appears to show that the inflammation may be able to be reversed, if changes are detected early, when there is still time for women to balance their hormones and make dietary and lifestyle changes. In short, it is possible to alter the inflammatory process from progressing to breast disease. Recent technological advances in software and camera systems during the past four years have greatly improved the data from this functional test.

A 2002 study detailed in IEEE Engineering in Medicine & Biology, and from the Gautherie article published in the journal Cancer 1980 bears this out: Of 58,000 women imaged, 1,245 had borderline scans (all of these borderline results women had normal physical exams, mammograms, and ultrasounds and a biopsy) who showed abnormal asymmetrical infrared image of their breasts. Of this group 44% were diagnosed with breast cancer within four years. 90% of the very abnormal scans, TH4 and TH5s, were diagnosed on their first visit.

Infrared Thermography has numerous clinically proven applications, including: Risk Evaluation Screening, Adjunctive Diagnostics that work alongside x-ray mammography, MRI and ultrasound for targeting and following fast-growing cancers.

How Breast Thermograms Work:
Breast thermography measures differences in infrared heat emission from normal breast tissue, benign breast abnormalities—such as fibrocystic disease, cysts, infections and benign tumors—and from breast cancers. It does this with a high degree of sensitivity and accuracy. Breast thermography is a non-invasive measurement of the physiology of breast tissue. This technology is not meant to replace mammography or other diagnostic tests presently used in clinical practice that measure anatomical abnormalities in breast tissue. While breast cancer can only be diagnosed by tissue biopsy, breast thermography safely eliminates the need for most unnecessary biopsies as well as their associated high cost and emotional suffering, and it does so years sooner than any other test in modern medicine.

Modern infrared scanners have a thermal sensitivity of 0.05 degrees Centigrade. Because tumor tissue does not have an intact sympathetic nervous system, it cannot regulate heat loss. When the breast is cooled in a room kept at 68-70 degrees Fahrenheit, blood vessels of normal tissue respond by constricting to conserve heat while tumor tissue remains hot. Thus, tumors emit more heat than their surrounding tissues and are usually easily detected by heat-sensing infrared scanners.

Over time, cancerous tissues stay hot or become even hotter—they do not cool down. In sharp contrast, however, other possible conditions such as fibrocystic breasts, infections, and other benign disorders cool down as they resolve.

Breast thermograms have highly specific thermal patterns in each individual woman. They provide a unique “thermal signature” that remains constant over years unless there is a change in an underlying condition. Thus, over time, it is possible to differentiate between cancers and benign conditions. Based on this ability to more accurately detect cancers over time, it becomes important to have a benchmark early on in a woman’s life. For this reason, women should have breast thermography performed beginning at age 25.

This Infrared Thermography Camera system provides a painless, radiation free, low cost approach for following high-risk women with a family history or a personal history of breast cancer. This scanning tool is also useful for dense fibrocystic breasts or for women who have breast implants or have concerns about compression of the tissues in mammogram equipment. It can also be used to help assess vascular issues in the legs with diabetic neuropathy, screening for melanoma, thyroid and pain issues using heat pattern recognition.

I am available to provide “Breast Wellness” proactive, educational programs for women’s groups to empower women to make diet and life style changes to improve their health and the health of their families. Educating the Sisterhood and helping to create a better state of health for yourself and your family helps you feel that you can “Do something” that will potentially make a difference.The Proactive Breast Wellness Program will be available nationally soon as a 4 CD set with over 2 1/2 hours of narration, a data disc and a relaxation and guided imagery DVD to reduce stress and cortisol and help sleep.

Ingrid Edstrom, founder and president of IBH, is a Family Nurse Practitioner with a Masters in Health Education. Infrared Breast Health, LLC of Oregon brought this equipment to Eugene, one of only 2 such camera systems in the State. To find out more information and research articles about Infrared Thermography and Breast Wellness Programs visit: Infrared Breast Health or call our office 9am to 5pm at 541-302-2977.

Friday, October 3, 2008

Upcoming Seminars.....

Many of you have probably attended one or more of our physician led seminars. We are getting ready to set up our winter seminar schedule and wanted to offer you the chance to let us know what topics you are most interested in learning about.

If you scroll down to the bottom of the page you will see some topics to choose from. If you would like to hear about a topic that isn't listed, please give us a call or comment to us on this blog with your suggestion. You can also email your suggestion to us at: info@pacificcompounds.com

Pacific Compounds Pharmacy Welcomes New Staff Members!

Pacific Compounds Pharmacy has taken on some new staff members to keep up with the growing demand for customized medications.

We welcome:

Nicole Felice, CPT
Margaret Kellar, Technician
Natalie Gustafson, RPh

Please feel free to come on in and meet them, they are dedicated to serving your healthcare needs along with all the familiar faces here at Pacific Compounds.

October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month

As you probably know, October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month. The National Breast Cancer Foundation estimates that each year, over 200,000 women will be diagnosed with breast cancer and over 40,000 die. One woman in eight either has or will develop breast cancer in her lifetime. Approximately 1,700 men will be diagnosed with breast cancer and 450 will die each year. If detected early, the five-year survival rate for breast cancer exceeds 96%.

A crucial part of early detection includes annual clinical breast exams. I encourage all of you women to schedule an annual exam and all of you to encourage the women in your lives to do the same. Women over 40 should have a mammogram every 1 to 2 years--if you haven't had yours, now is a good time to schedule one.

Thermography is an alternative to the mammogram. Some doctors offer thermography for breast cancer screening. ZRT Laboratory located in Beaverton, Oregon offers thermography screening several times each year. You may call ZRT Laboratory to inquire about their next scheduled screening time at 503-466-2445.