Excerpt: Most people have no idea that the number of bacteria in your gut outnumber the cells in your body by about 10 to one and you have about 100 trillion bacteria in your colon. Many experts believe one of the major mechanisms of disease is related to the bacteria growing in your intestine.  This is one of the reasons why sugar really devastates your health. Not only does it disrupt your insulin and leptin levels but it is an incredible fertilizer for growing bad bacteria and yeast in your gut. It does far more than cause yeast and Candida to grow, the anaerobic bacteria it supports are probably even more dangerous than the yeast. When you eat a healthy diet that is low in sugars and processed foods one of the major benefits it produces is that it causes the good bacteria in your gut to flourish and build up a major defense against the bad bacteria getting a foothold on your health.  A high-quality probiotic is the one thing I take myself and advise all my patients, family and friends to take with them when they travel overseas. Although this recent study cited above only partly bears this out, I suspect there are reasons for this discrepancy. For one, there are many brands on the market, but many of them contain insufficient quantities of bacteria. In fact, a study a few years back found that one-third of the probiotics on the market were worthless and did not have the bacteria they claimed in the bottle.  Additionally, when treating acute infectious diarrhea, large therapeutic doses are required (typically an entire bottle over a day's time or about an eighth of a bottle every hour until the problem is resolved). Most often, the symptoms will subside within four hours.  Using a probiotic is one of the most amazingly consistent approaches to managing travelers' diarrhea I have ever seen. In addition to a lot of lousy products on the market, there are many good ones.

 

 

http://www.capmag.com/article.asp?ID=5011 - "Single-Payer" Health Care Is Anything But Free - by Paul S. Hsieh, MD  (September 17, 2007)  - Excerpt:  "Michael Moore's latest movie "SiCKO" sings the praises of the Canadian "single-payer" socialized medical system. Some Americans want a similar system implemented in the United States.  Defenders of the Canadian system frequently claim that patients don't have to worry about money when they're sick--the health care is free.  But is this really true? No. First, it is ludicrous to think the system is free. Each citizen is forced to pay for his neighbors' medical care in the form of high taxes. (As a percentage of GDP, total taxation is 28 percent higher in Canada than in the United States.) The government, rather than individuals, then decides how that money is spent."