healthbriefs
Medical Errors Cause 250,000 Deaths a Year A
new study from the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine reports that preventable medical errors are killing far more people than previously thought. The research estimates that a quarter-million Americans die every year as a result of medical errors, constituting the third-leading cause of death in the U.S. This is a substantial increase from the 98,000 deaths from medical errors reported in a 1999 study from the Institute of Medicine, now the National Academy of Medicine.
Lead researcher and Professor of Surgery at Johns Hopkins Dr. Martin Makary clarifies that medical errors include mistakes by doctors, along with systemic problems related to communication breakdowns when patients are passed between departments. “It boils down to people dying from the care that they receive, rather than the disease for which they are seeking care,” he observes. One of the problems highlighted is a lack of public reporting. The U.S. Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) does not require hospital-error report- ing in deaths, which makes it difficult to accumulate related statistics. “The CDC should update reporting requirements for vital statistics so that physicians report whether there was any error that led to a preventable death,” says Makary. “We all know how common it is and how infrequently it’s openly discussed.” Dr. Frederick van Pelt, with the healthcare consultancy Chartis Group, says
that severe injuries resulting from medical errors are also often overlooked. “Some estimates would put this number at 40 times the death rate.” He indicates that this gets buried in the milieu of expected suffering and pain that care providers are daily exposed to following any surgical procedure.
Vitamin D3 R
Boosts Gut Health
esearch from Austria’s University of Graz has found that high-dose vitamin D3
alters the gut’s microbiome for the better. The researchers tested 16 healthy people for eight weeks, giving them a dose of 980 international units (IU) per kilogram (2.2 pounds) of body weight. At this rate, a 150-pound person would take more than 66,000 IU per day. The scientists took samples from the stom-
of the upper gastrointestinal tract, which might explain its positive influence on gastrointestinal diseases such as inflammatory bowel disease or bacterial infections,” the researchers explain.
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ach, small intestines, colon and stool before and after the testing period. They also tested for bacteria species using gene sequencing and measured T-cell counts. Afterward, the subjects showed reductions in disease- producing bacteria and increased diversity among their gut probiotics. The research also discovered that the high-dose vitamin D3 increased immunity in the gut. “Vitamin D3
modulates the gut microbiome significantly
Diabetics Improve Using Sesame and Rice Bran Oils R
esearch published in the American Journal of Medicine found that treat- ing people with a blend of cold-pressed sesame oil and rice bran oil significantly normalizes blood glucose levels. Testing involved 400 men and women for eight weeks, including 300 that had been diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes, by replacing cooking oils in their diet with a blend of sesame and rice bran oil. The researchers, from Japan’s Fu-
supplementation
kuoka University and India’s Council of Medical Research, divided the pa- tients into four groups. For two months, 100 healthy people and 100 Type 2 diabetes patients replaced their cooking oils with the sesame/rice bran blend, another 100 Type 2 diabetes patients were treated with five milligrams per day of the diabetes drug glibenclamide (glynase in the U.S.) and the remain- ing 100 Type 2 diabetes patients were treated with a combination of the same dosage of glibenclamide, along with consuming the sesame/rice bran oil blend over the two-month period. After four weeks and eight weeks, the researchers found the diabetes patients that consumed the oil blend had significant reductions in fasting and post-meal blood glucose levels. They also had lower levels of glycated hemoglobin, triglycerides, low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (“bad” cholesterol) and improved high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (“good” cholesterol). Those treated with the diabetes drug without con- suming the oil blend showed none of the same improvements.
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