Katonah Study Group for Integrative Medicine Newsletter

Suzanne Benton recognized for her contribution to Feminism

Congratulation to Suzanne Benton on her inclusion in the book “Feminists Who Changed America 1963-1975”, edited by Barbara Love. Suzanne has been an activist for women’s rights and a champion of women’s art. She is a founder of the Connecticut chapter of NOW, the Connecticut Feminists in the Arts and Veteran Feminists of America. As an artist, Suzanne has been incorporating elements from diverse cultures, which she has explored during her extensive travels of the world. Some of the 29 countries she has worked in include India , Ireland , East Africa , Bangladesh and Pakistan . She has also done mask work with women in Sarajevo. Suzanne is an innovative and diverse artist, who works with paintings, sculpture masks and performances. She is most famous for her masks and her story-telling performances with the masks. You can see some of work on her Web site: http://suzannemasks.com

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Suzanne Benton

Drink red wine and stay young?
New research suggests that a grape extract increases longevity in mice.

A new study that appeared last month in Nature.com suggests that Resveratrol, a compound found in the skin of red grapes and in red wine, has increased longevity in mice and reversed some of the damage caused by high-fat diets. The researchers, led by David Sinclair of Harvard Medical School in Cambridge , Massachusetts , and Rafael de Cabo of the National Institute on Aging in Baltimore , Maryland , used three groups of mice. One was fed a regular diet, the other two were fed high-calorie diets. One of the high-calorie groups was given resveratrol as a supplement. The mice on the high-calorie diet had grown fat after six months. However, after 114 weeks, 58% of the mice fed the normal

diet as well as the high-calorie plus reservatrol diet were still alive compared with only 42% of the control high-calorie mice. These results suggest that reservatrol protected the mice against the damage done by the high-calorie diet such as high cholesterol and diabetes.
In addition to living longer, the mice taking reservatrol became more agile and active as they aged.
So, should you start drinking lots of red wine? Not in the least. The amount of reservatrol that the mice ingested every day would require drinking 300 glasses of wine every day. More research is needed to determine how reservatrol affects humans and what doses would be effective. In the meantime, you can get reservatrol as a dietary supplement in health food stores.

Ref.
Wikipedia/Resveratrol http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resveratrol
Scientific American.com http://www.sciam.com/

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Iron boost may help women with ovulatory infertility

A study published in the November issue of Obstetrics & Gynecology suggests that women who took iron supplements reduced their chances of developing infertility due to ovary dysfunction. The study, conducted at Harvard, looked at 18,500 women between the years 1991 and 1999. None of the participants in the study had a previous history of infertility, and all were attempting to get pregnant. The study analyzed their diets, particularly their intake of iron both in their diets and by supplement. The study also compared intake of iron from vegetables and supplement sources (heme iron) compared to intake of nonheme iron, from animal sources. The results indicate that women

consuming nonheme iron (from animal sources) had the lowest risk of infertility. Women who took iron supplements had 62% less risk of infertility compared with women who consumed little iron.
The study makes sense because iron is an important building block of the human body.

Ref.
Yahoo Health News http://news.yahoo.com/s/hsn/20061101/hl_hsn/boostingironmayboostfemalefertility

A new study appearing in the New England Journal of Medicine suggests that early detection of lung cancer may save lives. About 140,000 people in the United States die of lung cancer every year. Lung cancer typically produces symptoms in patients in later stages, when prognosis is poor. The five-year survival rate for lung cancer is 13%.
The new study used spiral CT — Computerized Tomography — to screen healthy patients with risk factors for lung cancer such as smoking. Between 1993 and 2005, 31,567 patients were screened, with repeated screenings performed seven to 18 months after the previous screening. The screenings

Screening and early detection of lung cancer may save lives

resulted in 484 patients diagnosed with lung cancer. Of those, 85% (412) of the patients had stage I lung cancer. The 10-year survival rate for this group was estimated to be 88%. Of the diagnosed patients, 302 went through a surgical procedure within a month of diagnosis to remove the cancer. In this group, the 10-year survival rate was 92%. The eight patients who chose not to do the surgery died within five years.
The results of this study suggest that people who are at risk of developing lung cancer, such as people who have smoked for many years, should be routinely screened, the same way as women over a certain age undergo mammography. Screening can detect lung cancer at a stage when chances for a cure are very high.

Ref.
The International Early Lung Cancer Action Program Investigators. Survival of patients with stage I lung cancer detected on CT screening. The New England Journal of Medicine.
Merk.com http://www.merck.com/mmhe/sec04/ch057/ch057a.html

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