Friday, April 12, 2013

STATINS RISKS

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Science & Environment

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'Unintended' statin side-effect risks uncovered

Statins lower cholesterol

GPs should think more carefully about prescribing cholesterol-busting drugs say researchers who highlighted a range of "unintended" side effects.

Some doses and types of statins are linked with a greater risk of adverse effects, including liver problems and kidney failure, the UK research showed.
Doctors will have access to a computer programme based on the findings to help spot those most at risk.
Millions of UK adults take the drugs to reduce heart attack and stroke risk.
The researchers, from the University of Nottingham, stressed that for many people the benefits of statins outweighed any adverse effects, but the findings would help weigh up the pros and cons in each patient.

For people with, or at high risk of heart disease, the benefits of statins far outweigh this risk

June Davison, British Heart Foundation

There are plans to prescribe statins on the NHS in around one in four adults aged over 40.
The Department of Health had predicted prescriptions for the drugs would rise by 30% a year, as GPs find more and more people eligible.
At the moment, anyone judged to have a one in five or greater risk of developing cardiovascular disease over 10 years is advised to take a statin.
But there has been much debate over side effects and the latest research set out to confirm where the problems may lie in a "real life" population.
Unintended effects
Researchers looked at data from more than two million 30-84 year-olds from GP practices in England and Wales over a six-year period.
Adverse effects identified in the study, published in the British Medical Journal, include liver problems, acute kidney failure, muscle weakness and cataracts.
For kidney failure and liver dysfunction, higher doses of the drugs seemed to be associated with greater risk.
Risks of side-effects were greatest in the first year of use.
On the positive side, the analysis also showed no significant association between the use of statins and the risk of Parkinson's disease, rheumatoid arthritis, blood clot, dementia, osteoporotic fracture, or many cancers including gastric, colon, lung, renal, breast or prostate.

RISKS OF STATINS

For every 10,000 women treated with statins:

271 fewer cases of cardiovascular disease

8 fewer cases of oesophageal cancer

23 extra patients with acute kidney failure

73 extra patients with liver dysfunction

307 extra patients with cataracts

39 extra patients with muscle weakness

Figures were similar for men, except there would be 110 extra cases of muscle weakness

Study leader Professor Julia Hippisley-Cox, who also works as a GP, said the computer programme they had devised meant GPs could work out which patients were most at risk of side-effects and whether their risk of heart disease was high enough to warrant them taking statins.
"People should be able to make an informed choice," she said.
"There are risks and benefits to all medicines, but if you have a patient at higher risk than average of something serious you might want to warn them to come back if they have problems."
June Davison, cardiac nurse at the British Heart Foundation, said: "We already know that a small number of people taking statins experience unwanted side effects.
"However, for people with, or at high risk of heart disease, the benefits of statins far outweigh this risk.
"Anybody experiencing side effects while taking statins should speak to their doctor."

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Wednesday, April 10, 2013

EVANGELISE THIS FREEDOM

“Evangelise this Freedom”

- Cardinal M. Martini

Pope Benedict XVI is at pains to show that the teaching of Vatican II is not a break from the past but is implicit in some of what had gone before. The Council did not reinvent Catholicism but renewed it. Fifty years on from the Council, the Holy Father hails its documents on religious freedom (“Dignitatis Humanae”) and on relations with other faiths (“Nostra Aetate”) as Vatican II’s greatest achievements. Their riches are still being unpacked today, even though they were considered minor documents as compared to the great pastoral constitution “Gaudium et Spes” (Church in the Modern World).

The straight forward reply of Peter and the Apostles to the Sanhedrin, “We prefer to obey God rather than men” laid down the basic claim that the state could neither decide on the truth nor prescribe any kind of worship. By its very nature, the Christian Faith demanded freedom of religious belief and practice without prejudice to the internal ordering of state. The world owes it to Christianity birthing the principle of religious freedom.

Thirteen years after the Council, it was providentially relevant that Pope John Paul II hailed from Marxist Poland where freedom of religion was heartlessly trampled on, not to speak of the bitterness of Nazism that he had also tasted as a young man. It was he, together with some bishops from Communist countries, who were wary about state qualifications on the freedom of religion. The Council fathers had conceded that citizens exercising religious freedom had to pay due regard to pubic order and safety. When necessary, though, the state could constrain freedom of religion in order to safeguard the rights of all citizens and to maintain public order and decency. Hence the Council fathers had to navigate a tense middle course between those who insisted on the primacy of truth and those apprehensive of the state overstepping its competence. We return to the old problem that is ever new: what to do with our freedom? In 1993, the late Cardinal Mara Martini told Jesuit students in Rome: “More people today have the gift of freedom than ever before in history, and my task is to evangelise this freedom.”

The other document, extolled by Pope Benedict, is “Nostra Aetate” that treats about the Church’s relations with non-Christian religions. It has powerfully impacted the Church’s outlook and every department of its activity. Strongly influenced by the horrific memories of the Holocaust, the Council’s original intention was to issue a statement on the Church’s relationship with the Jews, but in the process of discussion and redaction it was realised that basic values were becoming increasingly operative. These were instigated by the contentions of the bishops of the Arabic continent. Why not make a similar statement about relations with Muslims? It also emerged that consideration was also due to Hinduism and Buddhism and to religion in general. Interestingly, there was no condemnation of atheism! Then the dynamic led to the feasibility and, indeed, the necessity of dialogue with and receptivity to the insights and values of other faith persuasions, since all inspirations are slated to the enrichment of the human condition. It was becoming increasingly apparent that the scope of all the common endeavour and responsibility was constantly expanding. Today the need for introspection is increasingly emphasised, especially in the exercise of authority and the requirements of the personal vis-à-vis the institutional, the local as confronting the universal. Listening to the Spirit is an ongoing task that calls for humility and collective meditation.

The positive scope of common endeavour began to take shape and broaden out. The Council’s bishops admitted themselves as apprentices of the Holy Spirit, supreme master of the school of reciprocal collaboration, and as witnesses to the Christian faith at the service of the Word. The Spirit was their supreme enabler not to found another Church but to deepen their understanding of their potential for the renewal of humanity.

PASCHAL MYSTERY AND THE UNBAPTISED

The Paschal Mystery and the unbaptised

“Thus by baptism men are grafted into the paschal mystery of Christ; they die with him, and buried with him, and rise with him (Rom 6, 4; Eph 2, 6; Col 3, 1)” (Sacrosanctum Concilium 4). This statement of the Vatican Council brings out the incomparably privileged condition of the baptized Christian. He is immersed in Christ at the moment he (Christ) became saviour. The process of saviourhood is an enduring one, and operates through the whole community of the baptized. The community and the individual are united in one dynamic existential and enduring simultaneity of savedness and saviourhood. Each splendid event of baptism goes back to the combined event of the kenosis of Gethsemane, the death of the cross and the ascent of the Resurrection. Every baptized personality is suspended between the moments of this paschal event so that the whole community reverberates with the tension of self-realisation in self-emptying, of rising by abasement, of victory in defeat. The baptized individual absorbs this tension, co-extensive with time itself, since he is in the community that stretches uniformly from the day of the Cross to the end of days.

What about the unbaptised? The Vatican Council answers with a most felicitous statement: “All this holds true not for Christian only but also for all men of goodwill in whose hearts grace is active invisibly. For since Christ died for all, and since all men are in fact called to one and same destiny, which is divine, we must hold that the Holy Spirit offers to all the possibility of being made partners, in a way known to God, in the paschal mystery” (G S 27). This is an incarnational approach to the explicitly unbaptised. By virtue of the assumption of total human nature, the grace of the Incarnation of Christ is the patrimony of every being claiming the name of human. Every man bears the mysteries of Christ in his heart. This is what constitutes his call to holiness within his historical situation, which he answers by a life of self-effacing charity and justice, whereby he in turn becomes a member of the community of Jesus Christ. “He (the Word of God) assures those who trust in the charity of God that the way of love is open to all men and that the effort to establish a universal brotherhood will not be in vain” (GS 38). The death of Christ is renewed in each man in terms of the struggle against sin and injustice. “Christ’s example in dying for us sinners ( cfr. Jn 3 16; Rom 4, 1 -8) teaches us that we must carry the cross, which the flesh and the world inflict on the shoulders of all who seek after peace and justice” (ibid.). Heb 11, 6: “And without faith, it is impossible to please God, for whoever would approach him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.” From God’s side a line from Vatican II says it all, “God does not deny help necessary for salvation” (LG 16).

“Christ is now at work in the hearts of men…”(ibid.). There is a power in certain past events that no amount of temporal passage can erase. The energy released from such events continues to activate the human community and to influence the orientation of human decisions. This power is gathered up and personalised in Jesus Christ, its source and sustainer. His own event is the résumé of all events, before and after. From now on temporal life has a meaning only because it draws its significance from what is timeless, viz., the submission of the slaughtered Lamb reigning in power: his power is always now and yet coming. Those who submit with him leave their mark on the course of history and have their names writ indelible in the scroll of the Lamb!

MAN ACCORDING TO VATICAN II

Man according to Vatican II

From the pontificate of Pope Leo XIII, the Church has striven for relevancy of its message in a world that was changing, though not without a certain nostalgia for the halcyon days of popular piety. As Blessed Pope John XXIII made clear, the essentials may be eternal but they must be taught in a language as varied as the available milieu. Either this or be a stranger in one’s own surroundings. The ecclesial apparatus must serve the peace and justice of the world rather than bolster the Church’s own status. Opening the Church to the new humanism, the Council fathers recognised the autonomy of earthly affairs and modern science. This was a healthy sign of the Church’s readiness to discern the signs of the times as the ongoing manifestations of the Spirit’s concern in the events of today’s world.

The very first words of the first chapter of the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World reveal the Council’s intention of elaborating the place and role of the People of God in today’s world. The frontiers of Church and world are fluid, the life of Faith and temporal works kiss and mingle. The Introductions of four Constitutions are mutually complementary and immediately put forward the aim of the Second Vatican Council, at once positive and pastoral, and no less founded on the Word of God and the theological virtues:

Sacrosanctum Concilium (SC): on the Liturgy,

Dei Verbum (DV): on Revelation,

Lumen Gentium (LG): on the Church, and

Gaudium et Spes (GS): on the Church in the Modern World.

As if to say in epitome: “The sacred Council speaks to the world of God which is the Light of the nations in order to bring them Joy and Hope” (C. Moeller, Commentary, Vol. V, pg.84).

One will discern the Council’s desire and programme for a new world in Jesus Christ, not without the accompanying tension as a necessary condition of man’s being and growth in freedom, a fellow pilgrim to his Father’s dwelling.

The paradoxical union between human and divine, existing in time and pointing beyond history, spells out in large letters the tension milieu of man. Far from canonising the past or consecrating the present, he prepares for the future, that abiding City which is the goal of the messianic people living in and loyal to the present (LG 9). This is continuous with the Messiah who takes nothing away from temporal welfare, but rather elevates and purifies it. By their very concrete duties done in history (LG 36), men deliver creation from the slavery of corruption, and thereby cooperate to bring about the promised restoration already begun in Christ whose death and resurrection have invoked the final age upon us (LG 48). Man has to maintain his integral personality in the tenuous person-society interdependence (LG 25), and while he thirsts for a fuller life (GS 9), in trying to decipher God’s purpose (GS 15), he has to admit that his heart is the theatre of conflicting forces (GS 13). All this is part of the world’s crisis of growth (GS 4), the conflict with evil (GS 37), and the rebellion against death, instigated by the seed of immortality within him (GS 18), planted at the original creation and reinforced by the paschal mystery into which man is plunged, especially by baptism (GS 6).

The conflict is implicit in the liturgy and kergyma whereby the Church reveals to men the real truth about their condition and their total vocation (AG 8), presenting to them the Gospel which is the catalyst of their progress in human history. Like its first missionary activity, the Church’s liturgy vibrates between the first and second coming of Christ (AG 9), unfolding the mystery of Christ for each generation and maintaining in men’s hearts the hopes and future of the Lord (SC 102).

JULIE ANDREWS: "My Favourite Things"

Julie Andrews

To commemorate her 69th birthday on October 1, actress/vocalist, Julie Andrews made a special appearance at Manhattan's Radio City Music Hall for the benefit of the AARP.
One of the musical numbers she performed was “My Favourite Things" from the legendary movie, "Sound Of Music".

Here are the lyrics she used:

Maalox and nose drops and needles for knitting,
Walkers and handrails and new dental fittings,
Bundles of magazines tied up in string,
These are a few of my favourite things.

Cadillac's and cataracts, and hearing aids and glasses,
Polident and Fixodent and false teeth in glasses,
Pacemakers, golf carts and porches with swings,
These are a few of my favourite things.

When the pipes leak,
When the bones creak,
When the knees go bad,
I simply remember my favourite things,
And then I don't feel so bad.

Hot tea and crumpets and corn pads for bunions,
No spicy hot food or food cooked with onions,
Bathrobes and heating pads and hot meals they bring,
These are a few of my favourite things.

Back pains, confused brains, and no need for sinnin',
Thin bones and fractures and hair that is thinnin',
And we won't mention our short shrunken frames,
When we remember our favourite things.

When the joints ache,
When the hips break,
When the eyes grow dim,
Then I remember the great life I've had,
And then I don't feel so bad.

Ms. Andrews received a standing ovation from the crowd that lasted over four minutes and repeated encores.

THE WEAVER

The Weaver

My life is but a weaving
Between the Lord and me;
I may not choose the colours–
He knows what they should be.
For He can view the pattern
upon the upper side
while I can see it only
on this, the underside.
Sometimes He weaves in sorrow,
Which seems so strange to me;
But I will trust His judgment
And work on faithfully.
‘Tis He who fills the shuttle,
And He knows what is best;
So I shall weave in earnest,
And leave to Him the rest.
Not ’til the loom is silent
And the shuttles cease to fly
Shall God unroll the canvas
And explain the reason why.
The dark threads are as needed
In the Weaver’s skilful hand
As the threads of gold and silver
In the pattern He has planned.
~~ Author Unknown ~~

BAD ADVICE FOR PARENTS

Extremely Bad Advice for Parents

A curious way to spot parents
I'll tell you how, for free,
They're the people with photos in their wallets
Where their money used to be.

Teach children the value of money,
Remind them how much you've lost
On a very regular basis,
Tell them how much they've cost!

Give children every toy they want,
Don't let them nag you deaf,
They'll be so bored that when they grow up
They'll donate it all to UNICEF

When your kids are being quite naughty,
And playing up on you all day
Tell them they once had a brother...
The One that didn't obey!

Encourage your children's independence
They'll grow up strong women and men,
Make sure they get lost at the supermarket
Again and again and again ....

Some signs on cars say 'Mum's Taxi'
They really give me the fits,
Its wrongly worded anyway,
It's "Mum driven out of her wits"!

Another piece of advice for Mum,
When your child has a dirty face,
Water is a poor alternative to
Spit on a hanky of lace

If your child gets a question right,
Tell him "Boy, what a lucky guess!"
Then he'll always think himself LUCKY,
When he gets himself out of a mess.

I wrote this in my diary
words of wisdom straight from the heart
"The face of a child can say it all,"
Especially - the mouth part

Remember to get the family photos out
When they bring their mates around - then
Embarrass with their baby 'nudie' shots,
They'll never have friends over again.

When you're woken Sunday morning -
with another question from your kid
"Dad do you know where does rain come from?"
Tell him, "God's crying over something you did!"

If anything goes wrong with my parental advice
Remember it was given for free
I'll show you the photos in my empty wallet
I'm broke SO DON'T SUE ME!

Copyright; Lynette McCauley

Christian Theological

Friday, April 12, 2013

STATINS RISKS

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H to Le

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