Free Republic

My Jewish father was an old country lawyer who believed deeply in fairness and justice for all living people, so I was curious what he thought about the Nazis. It was spring of 1977, and the American Nazi Party had announced their intention to hold a July 4th rally in the town of Skokie, a predominantly Jewish community in Illinois. Not surprisingly, the town of Skokie had sought an injunction to ban the rally, and the Nazis had, ironically, sought the help of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) to fight the injunction. The subject at the family dinner table...

Amino acids: Key to a healthier heart? Could taking a few B vitamins cut your risk of a heart attack or a stroke? That's the suggestion from a study published last week in the British Medical Journal (BMJ).  The key is an amino acid called homocysteine, a substance made when the protein we eat is digested — already there is growing evidence to link it with cardiovascular disease, and even stroke. Homocysteine — with the help of the B vitamins including B12 and folate — is rapidly turned into other useful compounds such as the amino acids cysteine and...

Associated Press Study Says New Blood Tests Are No Better Than the Old Methods for Predicting Heart Attacks (AP)—New blood tests that doctors hoped would more accurately predict which patients are headed for a heart attack or stroke are no better than cholesterol levels, blood pressure and other conventional measurements, a study found. Doctors in recent years had become excited over substances in the blood that appeared to be powerful new predictors of a heart attack. These substances included C-reactive protein, or CRP; homocysteine; and BNP, or B-type natriuretic peptide. An increasing number of family doctors have been ordering expensive...

WASHINGTON - B vitamin deficiencies can cause a range of serious health effects, including spinal defects in children born to women with below-normal levels of folic acid and anemia in people not getting enough B12. That‘s why a two-step method of diagnosing those deficiencies that three medical school doctors patented in 1990 has become so widely used. It‘s performed tens of millions of times a year, at a cost of just a dollar or two, by laboratory testing companies nationwide. Even more surprising is that the Supreme Court may dredge up a bombshell question not asked when the lower...

Folic Acid, Vitamin B12 Decrease Risk of Hip Fracture in Stroke Patients LibrariesMedical News   KeywordsFOLATE FOLIC ACID VITAMIN B12 HIP FRACTURE STROKE PATIENTS OSTEOPOROSIS Contact InformationAvailable for logged-in reporters only DescriptionPatients who took folic acid and vitamin B12 after their stroke had a reduced risk of hip fracture compared to patients who took placebo, according to an article. Newswise — Patients who took folic acid and vitamin B12 after their stroke had a reduced risk of hip fracture compared to patients who took placebo, according to an article in the March 2 issue of JAMA.According to background information in...

A new and emerging understanding of how heart attacks occur indicates that increasingly popular aggressive treatments may be doing little or nothing to prevent them. The artery-opening methods, like bypass surgery and stents, the widely used wire cages that hold plaque against an artery wall, can alleviate crushing chest pain. Stents can also rescue someone in the midst of a heart attack by destroying an obstruction and holding the closed artery open. But the new model of heart disease shows that the vast majority of heart attacks do not originate with obstructions that narrow arteries. Instead, recent and continuing studies...