The new imaging system combines two tests you’ve probably heard of, or had before: The high tech X-rays of computerized tomography (CT) and the scans of positron-emission tomography (PET.) CT scans detect tiny abnormalities by generating cross-section pictures of the body, like pieces of bread sliced from a loaf. PET measures concentrations of subatomic particles called positrons in living tissue to create images that highlight areas of increased metabolic activity. Individually, each procedure only catches some early tumors, so patients often must have both scans separately.

The combined technologies use a single new machine to produce state-of-the-art PET and CT scans simultaneously, then fuse them into a single 3D image using a built in computer. PET-CT scans hold great potential for detecting cancers of the breast, lung, colon and lymph nodes.

PET-CT scans could help doctors determine whether a particular tumor is malignant or benign; they could also greatly reduce the number of unnecessary biopsies. Another advantage is the ability to locate with great accuracy the abnormality in question. This aids in accurate staging and planning radiation or surgery.

A PET-CT scan usually takes about 30 minutes. Approximately 45 minutes beforehand, a person is injected with a fluid that contains a low dose radioactive compound, which completely washes out of the body a few hours later. Then the patient lies on a special bed that rolls into an opening in the machine. PET-CT is painless but some people may experience claustrophobia in this confined space.

By the end of 2001, there were around 40 of these machines in operation around the country. To find one, ask your doctor to refer you to a nuclear-medicine facility; call and ask if they use the new technology. One caveat: If you get a PET-CT scan, make sure a physician trained in both radiology and nuclear medicine reads it.

 HEALTH

No, but full body scans will become indispensable to traditional exams. Conventional tests for heart disease-cholesterol levels, treadmills, are very poor indicators. And no one likes to endure the invasiveness of a colonoscopy. 85 percent of people currently go untested. The medical and insurance companies will soon realize that a test that costs $1000 dollars can prevent a heart attack that costs tens of thousands or cancer that can cost millions.

My unbridled curiosity about what’s going on inside my body drove me to get a scan. I am happy to report that everything was normal. It’s reassuring to be able to look inside your body and check on plaque in the arteries, and on the health of vital organs. I suspect that in the future the scan will become such an integral part of being proactive about one’s health, there will be a lot more machines, which, hopefully will bring down the cost for everyone.

There are patients who get the test not because they’re displaying any symptoms or because they’re in some high-risk group, but just because they have the cash. CT scans represent significant radiation exposure. The dose you get from a mammogram is about two tenths of a rad, for a CT scan it can be 10 or 20 times greater. But technology has shown that you can run the same tests with less of a dose, so we’re leaving the door open.

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While some risk factors are beyond your control-getting older, a family history of stroke, being born with a heart or blood vessel defect, the majority of strokes are preventable.

Check your cholesterol. Up to 25 percent of people age 35-55 have elevated cholesterol, a condition that increases the risk of clot induced strokes.

Keep tabs on your blood pressure. Hypertension is the number one treatable risk factor for stroke. It affects one in four adults, promotes clogging of the arteries, and puts abnormal pressure on blood vessel walls.

Feast on fruits and veggies. Population studies consistently show that people who consume three to five servings of fruits and vegetables a day significantly reduce their stroke risk.

Watch your weight. Being overweight increases the likelihood of developing high blood pressure, heart disease, and type 2 diabetes, all of which increase the risk of stroke.

Keep moving. Thirty minutes of physical activity-walking, jogging or biking three to five times a week has been shown to reduce stroke risk, in part because it stimulates the body to develop larger and more numerous blood vessels.

If you smoke, quit! Because of the adverse effects both nicotine and carbon monoxide have on the vessels, smoking doubles the risk of stroke. For smokers on the pill, stroke risk quadruples.

University of Michigan researchers have found that female stroke sufferers were 62 percent more likely to exhibit less "traditional" stroke signs than men, resulting in delayed treatment, and higher death rates. Adapted from More

Long-term-care insurance is worthwhile for one group of people: those with assets of at least $300,000 over the equity in their home. Financial experts agree that generally, this insurance is a bad investment. It’s expensive too, many policies have restrictions that limit coverage, and provide limited benefits.

Consider that two thirds of all men and one third of all women age 65 and older will never spend a day inside a nursing facility Most people who do, don’t stay long. Only a minority, 25 percent of women and ten percent of men stay longer than a year. Adapted from FLORIDA TODAY Suggested Reading: Choose the Right Long Term Care, Home Care, Assisted Living and Nursing Homes. Fourth edition by Joseph L. Matthews

A blood test that measures inflammation inside blood vessel walls, C-reactive protein, is sweeping the country. Researchers have found that CRP levels may be better predictors of future risk for heart attacks or strokes, even when "bad" cholesterol-the type that clogs arteries, appears within a normal range.

CRP is a protein made by the liver that measures the presence and intensity of inflammation inside blood vessels. Doctors have been offering the test more of less routinely during the past year to heart patients where other factors such as obesity, or age, put them at high risk for a heart event.

But if a patient comes in with rheumatoid arthritis, a disease characterized by widespread inflammation, a CRP test won’t tell anything. CRP tests are highly sensitive, picking up inflammation anywhere in the body, not just inside artery walls.

Having the flu, or just stubbing your toe can make CRP readings jump dramatically. But where there are no underlying reasons for an elevated CRP and the test shows abnormalities on at least two separate readings, the patient has an increased risk of heart problems. Adapted from FLORIDA TODAY

Curbing salt intake keeps hypertension at bay. A recent study published in the New England Journal of Medicine reported that whatever a person’s salt intake was, high, medium or low; cutting back lowered blood pressure levels.

Another benefit: It may strengthen your bones by preventing calcium loss. Adults should consume no more than 2400 mg. of salt daily. On average, most of us consume about twice that.

Stock up on C.

Vitamin C may keep a cold from dragging on. Take a 500 mg. supplement once or twice daily, depending on how much you get in your diet: orange juice 82. mg per 8 ounce glass; strawberries 86. mg per cup and brussels sprout 97 mg. per cup.

Another benefit: You’ll be less likely to develop cataracts, a clouding of the eye lens, and the leading cause of vision loss in adults 55 and older.

Taking aspirin prevents artery clogging blood clots. Combined data from five clinical trials showed aspirin lowers the risk of heart attack and death from heart disease by 28 per cent, according to the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force.

Another benefit: A lowered risk of colon cancer. Researchers at Dartmouth Medical School studied a group of adults at high risk for colon cancer because of polyps. Those who took an 80 mg aspirin, (a baby aspirin) daily for three years, saw a nineteen percent decrease in their risk of developing colon cancer.

Talk to your doctor before starting a regimen. Adapted from FITNESS

A cup of tea, drank daily, could be a powerful infection fighter. Researchers report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science that they have found in tea a chemical that boosts the body’s defense five-fold against disease.

They said the chemical primes immune system cells to attack bacteria, viruses and fungi. Doctors at Brigham and Woman’s Hospital in Boston and Harvard Medical School announced they have isolated the chemical in the laboratory and then proved with a group of volunteers that it did protect against germs. The results gave clear proof that five cups of tea daily sharpened the body’s defenses against disease. Penny Kris-Etherton,a nutrition specialist at Pennsylvania State University, said the results add to a growing body of evidence that tea is an effective disease fighter. In the study, researchers isolated a substance called L-theanine from ordinary black tea. The substance is also found in green and oolong tea. They said L-Theanine is broken down in the liver to ethylamine, a molecule that primes the response of an immune blood cell called the gamma delta T cell.

The T cells prompt the secretion of interferon, a key part of the body’s defense against infection. They knew from previous mouse studies that boosting this part of the immune system could protect against infection.

To further test the findings, the researchers had 11 volunteers drink 5 cups a day of tea, and 10 others drink coffee. Before the test began, they drew blood samples from all 21 test subjects. After 4 weeks, they took more blood from the tea drinkers, and then exposed that blood to the bacteria called E-coli. The immune cells in those blood specimens secreted 5 times more interferon, than did blood cells from the same subjects before the weeks of tea drinking. Blood tests and bacteria challenges showed there was no change in the interferon levels of the coffee drinkers. Adapted from FLORIDA TODAY

"MOST SIGNIFICANT" DISCOVERY?

The cover of the June, 2003 issue of Life Extension, magazine of the Life Extension Foundation, heralds "The Most Significant Anti-Aging Discovery in Medical History!" Subtitle is, "Research Funded by Life Extension Yields Drug That May Radically Extend Life Span."

As most of our readers already know, the Life Extension Foundation is a Florida company headed by Saul Kent and William Faloon (the latter, if I remember correctly, a former mortician). It sells vitamins and nutritional supplements. Kent and Faloon are also prime movers in 21st Century Medicine, a California company apparently with its focus now on vitrifying organs for transplant, and Critical Care Research, with applications for clinical medicine.

The drug called "most significant" is metformin. Metformin HCl is (N,N-dimethylimidodicarbonimidic diamide hydrochloride). There is considerable information about it on the web, and Life Extension wrote it up at least as early as the edition of September 2001, including recommended dosages. (www.lef.org)

The article discusses, among other things, the benefits of CR (caloric restriction) and the possible or probable reasons. It also says rather emphatically that CR can dramatically increase life span even when begun late in life, and holds out the same hope for metformin and related drugs. "BioMarker's research suggests it is possible that the ability of CR to extend life span in old animals occurs because it may be able to reverse aging and rejuvenate the elderly, not just slow down the aging process. If this is so, then drugs that mimic the effects of CR should be able to achieve both these objectives."

BioMarkers did not discover metformin, but has developed ways to quickly assay expression of genes so as to get a quick fix on the probable effectiveness of drugs. In general terms, this is similar to the "diagnosis on a chip" or "analysis on a chip" concept that has made waves in recent years. Being able to screen drugs at a greatly accelerated rate is indeed an important advance.

Some will be a bit discomfited by the bad fit between the brassy title of the article (written by Mr. Kent) and the content, with liberal use of "suggests" and "possible" etc. Well, we can't have everything. Mr. Kent is a salesman, and his company is in a competitive business with big claims abounding, the word "miracle" being one of the most common in the advertising of the genre. I am thankful that he and Bill Faloon have made lots of money, and directed a lot of it into both anti-aging and cryonics-related research.

Robert Ettinger