Back in the 1950s many Jamaicans believed that drinking a tea made from the leaves of Periwinkle (Vinca major) could help control their diabetes.
Vinca major
Vinca major leaves and flower
In time a governess who wintered in Jamaica heard about the bush tea and took some leaves back to Toronto to her doctor. This doctor happened to be the brother of Dr. Noble who worked with Dr. Banting, the discoverer of insulin. Dr. Noble brewed the tea and fed it to rats. The tea killed the rats but did nothing to their blood sugar.
However the “young laboratory technologist, Halina Czajkowska, shyly confessed that she’d also counted the rats’ blood cells, even though she’d been asked only to measure sugar. Vinca had destroyed white cells and bone marrow, she reported. It might kill cancer.”
So Vinca tea turned out to be unable to control diabetes but it could stop cancer!
Now it took 15 tons of dried Periwinkle leaves to produce 1 ounce of the active ingredient, Vinblastine, so Dr. Noble ended up growing a supply in his own greenhouses.
When combined with other agents, doctors discovered that Vinblastine cures 90% of testicular cancers. Used with other drugs, the Vinca agents allow 98% of patients with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma to live 5 years.
Then they discovered another ingredient in Vinca which they called Vincristine. Vincristine along with steroids has become the treatment of choice for Leukemias in children.
Today there’s another bush tea – from Guinea hen weed – that shows promise. This time another Jamaican doctor, Dr. Williams, has taken out an international patent for dibenzyl trisulphide, (DTS), the active ingredient of Guinea hen weed.
Dr. Williams published his paper in the West Indian Medical Journal detailing the effects of DTS on different cancers. He claimed that it caused cancer cells to die (apoptosis) in lab experiments against breast, lung, bladder, prostate and brain cancer. However, he has not used it in human subjects as yet.
Question: Would you try to find out the DNA genome of a newborn child?
Before you answer, let me tell you about Alexis and Noah, twins diagnosed at age two with cerebral palsy – at least that’s what their doctors thought.
Their mother, however, refused to accept their opinion. Over the next three years, she did her own research which led doctors to change the diagnosis to DRD – Dopa-Responsive Dystonia. So they prescribed L-dopa, the same drug used for Parkinson’s disease. This miraculously stopped the twins’ limbs from twisting.
But only for a few years.
Fortunately, their father worked for a biotech company that made DNA sequencing machines and he then turned to a Baylor team of geneticists. To search for a defective gene, they ended up sequencing the genomes of the twins, an unaffected sibling and both parents.
The Baylor team discovered that the twins had not one but two mutated genes: one gene controlls the synthesis of dopamine and responds to L-dopa; the other gene controlls serotonin and responds to 5-hydroxytryptophan. So then they prescribed both L-dopa and 5-hydroxytryptophan. Within two weeks the twins improved in their school work and Alexis began competing in sports again. She and Noah are now poster children at Baylor College of Medicine.
But DNA sequencing does not come cheap – doing the five genomes cost $30,000 and interpreting them an added $40,000. However, some clinics now claim they can do it for $4,998.
So hang in there. By the time you get around to sequencing your loved one’s genome, hopefully the cost will have dropped much more.
Soon we may be able to stop more diseases dead in their tracks and not just live longer but better
An elderly lady woke one morning, stepped on her scale and found that she had put on 4 lbs.
Concerned, she made breakfast and wondered what to do.
A few minutes later the phone rang and a nurse asked her how she was doing.
The RN had been alerted by wireless that her patient, who suffered from heart failure, had put on 4 pounds overnight.
Asked to come in to the office, the patient explained that she did not have anyone to drive her that day.
“If we send a car, can you be ready in 1 hour?”
Not only did they pick her up but they treated her and prevented her from retaining any more fluid and going into congestive heart failure.
She was back home in no time, unlike another woman without this care who ended up in hospital fighting for her life.
This is a true story.
This is Medicine the way it should be practiced. And it saves $ Billions.
This company, CareMore, was acquired last year for $800 million.
Saving A Life 