Can Apple’s HealthKit Avoid Health-Exploitation?

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More healthcare begets more health costs and less health.  Tests detect symptoms that trigger treatment, but more often than not fail to contribute to health.  Apple’s newly announced HealthKit promises to facilitate increased surveillance of personal health statistics and to integrate the data with the health industry.  If recent history is a guide, more data will simply mean more inappropriate interventions, greater expense and further deterioration of public health.  More public interaction and scrutiny is needed to keep the public safe from the health industry and to hold doctors to their pledge to do no harm.

Breast, Prostate and Pelvic Exams Lead to Costly, Harmful, Unnecessary Interventions

In the last two years, major studies have found that frequent breast exams, prostate tests and pelvic exams cause more harm than good.  The surgery, followup procedures and treatments that the screening tests trigger are worse than the cancers that went unnoticed under more relaxed scrutiny.  The bottom line is that the information gathered from screening was not sufficient to produce appropriate, measured treatment.  Patients were harmed without benefit and the health industry was compromised by increased profits from inappropriate tests and treatments.  Doctors routinely convinced themselves of the value of routine exams that they performed to yield excessive false positives that resulted in unnecessary biopsies or disfiguring surgery.  Those flawed exams, tests and procedures also contributed substantially to the profitability of their practices.  Patients may have inadvertently been harmed, but the doctors knew that they benefited.

The Health Industry Pursues Profitable Tests and Treatment, not Causes and Cures

I was astounded a few years ago to read an article in the biomedical literature by a researcher who bemoaned the lack of interest in understanding the causes of diseases and the pursuit of cures.  Public and private funds were only spent on patent-protected tests and treatments.  I watched as the development and testing of fecal transplants demonstrated a safe and effective treatment for numerous diseases, and yet this approach was tracked down and caged by the health industry.  I think broad use of this approach could save billions of health dollars, but there is no patent protection and minimal profit, so the approach was stiffled.  The efficacy of fecal transplants also points directly at damaged gut flora (and antibiotics) as the cause of many diseases.  Where is the public forum to discuss the use of public funds to promote approaches that are safe, effective, cheap, but without potential for proprietary exploitation?  What will happen to simple cures, such as resistant starch and probiotics with Clostridium butyricum?

Is HealthKit Personal Data for Personal or Corporate Gain?

Will there be mechanisms for individuals to contribute their HealthKit data to large scale public health experiments to determine simple lifestyle, dietary and exercise approaches that can replace expensive and destructive pharmaceutical-based health industry approaches?  HealthKit provides the potential to wrest health from the health industry.  We will see if there is an app for that.

Prostate, Prostatitis, Cancer, Causes and Cures

Prostate problems are pervasive, and progressive in the U.S. -- approximately a quarter of a million prostate cancers are diagnosed each year. Chronic inflammation due to age or diet enhances prostatitis and cancer.

Prostate Surrounds Male Urethra

The prostate is a sexual organ. It responds to sexual stimuli, both physical and hormonal, and as a consequence is vulnerable to the same hazards: infection, inflammation, cycles of elaboration and cancer. The prostate straddles the male urethra and inflammatory swelling of the prostrate can strangle the flow of urine from the bladder. The prostate contributes part of the seminal fluid and backward flow of bacteria from the urethra into the prostate can be a source of infection.

Prostate Cells Require Testosterone for Growth

The prostate tissue responds to testosterone. The ebb and flow of testosterone, associated with sexual activity, results in increased production of prostate fluid containing proteins and other components that enhance performance of sperm in the female reproductive tract. The bottom line here is that prostate tissue and derived prostate cancer, responds to testosterone. For this reason, prostate cancer treatment has been based on blocking testosterone stimulation by removal of sources of testosterone and blocking testosterone receptors.

Testosterone Starvation Is Prostate Cancer Treatment

Testosterone, estrogen and vitamin D receptors are all cytoplasmic and the hormone/receptor complexes act as transcription factors to alter nuclear gene expression. It would be expected that prostate cancer, as well as breast, cervical, ovarian, testicular, etc. will respond in a complex manner to steroid hormones, including androgens, estrogens and vitamin D.

Cancer Requires NF-kB Activation

The common biochemistry supporting all cancers is inflammation that is required for proliferation in tissue. Central to inflammation is the transcription factor NF-kB. Inhibitors that block the activation of NF-kB also stop cancer. Most of these blockers are effective against cancer cells grown in culture flasks, because the inhibitors are taken directly into the cells and make contact with NF-kB (or stabilize the NF-kB inhibitor IkB.) Curcumin from turmeric, is one of the most potent inhibitors of NF-kB activation. It is very effective in cultures, but is only modestly effective against inflammation when eaten.

It is difficult to treat secretory tissues, such as prostate, breast, uterus, etc., because much of the tissue is separated from the blood circulation. Thus, infections in these tissues are harder to treat with antibiotics.

Prostatitis Results from Urinary Infections

The prostate is prone to chronic infections. Thus, urinary tract infections (UTIs) can lead to prostate infections (prostatitis). These chronic infections can contribute to chronic systemic inflammation. One symptom of chronic inflammation is depression (treated with SSRIs, antidepressants) another symptom is premature ejaculation (also treated with SSRIs.) Prostatitis-based inflammation can also set the stage for cancer.

Transglutaminase Autoantigen

Autoimmune diseases are also associated with chronic inflammation. One of the common autoantigens in autoimmune disease is tissue transglutaminase (tTG). Celiac is a classic example of the involvement of tTG, since tTG acts on the glutamine amino acids of gluten and converts them into glutamic acid residues. In the process tTG becomes covalently attached to the gluten. The strong heparin binding domains of tTG also facilitate its uptake and processing as an immunogen under inflammatory conditions and result in antibody production to both tTG and gluten. Anti-tTG antibodies and inflammation can also lead to attack on other tissues, such as the thyroid and skin, leading to a variety of celiac-associated autoimmune conditions.

The prostate produces its own transglutaminase. I think it is likely that prostatitis in some cases progresses to an autoimmune disease and prostate transglutaminase is a likely candidate for one of the autoantigens involved. This also predicts an association with celiac and a requirement for chronic systemic infection with a likely elevation of C-reactive protein and inflammatory cytokines (IL-1, IL-6, TNF). Deficiency of vitamin D and omega-3 fatty acids are probably major contributors. Increased risk attributed to consumption of a high fat diet and meat, is probably actually due to inflammation from a high carbohydrate diet and high omega-6 vegetable oils (or perhaps corn-fed meat.)

Protect Prostate with Anti-Inflammatory Diet

Prostate problems are frequently assumed to be a natural result of advancing age, but they are actually symptoms of mismanaged chronic inflammation. Men should not just stand and wait for prostate problems.

Avoidance and treatment of prostate problems seems to be an obvious application for an anti-inflammatory diet and lifestyle.