Another article about Zylfamend...

The link:

http://www.transformyourhealth.com/webnewsletters/mar08/nczyflamendarticle.htm

 The article:

Natural Cell Health with Zyflamend
By Melissa Lynn Block – Healthy Living Article

A lot of exciting research is underway at the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center at the University of Texas. The research of Robert A. Newman, Ph.D., is especially intriguing to anyone interested in herbal chemoprevention-the use of select herbs and nutrients to prevent the growth of cancer.

Dr. Newman holds a contract with the National Cancer Institute to perform assays, determine any toxicity, and assess the pharmacokinetics (the absorption, distribution through the body, and elimination from the body) of substances with promise as cancer drugs. This is a necessary step for getting an investigational drug application approved, which in turn is a necessary part of mounting a phase I clinical trial—a trial where a small number of human subjects are used in early testing of a new drug.

When those strengths are substantial and worth further investigation, the medical mainstream and the media tend to stand up and take note. This is what has been happening with a specific combination of herbs called Zyflamend (from New Chapter, Brattleboro, Vermont).

WHAT IS ZYFLAMEND?

Zyflamend is, according to alternative physician and co-founder of the Alternative Medicine Integration Group Richard L. Sarnat, M.D., the best-selling general herbal formulation in the natural products industry.

Why? First of all, Zyflamend is a unique herbal formulation designed to promote healthy inflammation levels—a factor now recognized as an important element in the health of virtually every body system, including the cardiovascular, nervous, respiratory, skeletal, and metabolic systems. Unlike most drugs prescribed for this purpose, Zyflamend causes no harm to the gastrointestinal system.

Who stands to benefit? Anyone who is at risk for excess inflammation and the conditions for which that inflammation can predispose you. Basically, this amounts to…every adult in the modern world. Because of the processed foods we consume, the amount of stress we endure, and the general imbalance of “good” to “bad” fats in the diet (more on this in a bit), virtually every person is at risk of excess inflammation. As we move into the later years of life, our bodies naturally ramp up the inflammation, which suggests that older people can benefit even more from a general blanket of protection from unhealthy inflammation.

There are two kinds of inflammation: acute and Chronic. Acute inflammation is the kind that happens when you get a splinter, injure a joint, or catch a nasty flu. Your body recognizes something as foreign and possibly dangerous; it sends out an army of immune cells and fluids that collect in the area of infection or injury, causing swelling, redness, pain, and (possibly) loss of function. It’s an aggressive approach designed to rid the body of the invader as quickly as possible and to enable the tissue to heal. Chronic inflammation is a slow-burning version that’s related to acute inflammation; in fact, it can result from incompletely resolved acute inflammation, but it involves different kinds of immune cells and sometimes lingers on for years, even decades. Allergies, asthma, eczema, psoriasis, and autoimmune diseases (like Crohn’s disease, lupus, or rheumatoid arthritis) are believed to be linked to chronic inflammation, as is heart disease. Even the growth of some cancers has been associated with inflammation, and treatments designed to reduce inflammation may help slow the growth of such cancers.

Levels of biochemicals called eicosanoids play a significant role in chronic inflammation. Enzyme families—the cyclooxygenase, or COX enzymes, and the lipoxygenase, or LO enzymes—do the job of transforming the “bad” omega-6 fats in your diet into inflammatory eicosanoids. Pro-inflammatory eicosanoids fuel the fires of inflammation, which suggests that we can reduce their levels through diet (by reducing intake of omega-6 fats, and by eating more “good” omega-3s, which are made only into anti-inflammatory eicosanoids in the body) and with compounds that inhibit specific COX and LO enzymes.

A combination of herbs (processed using New Chapter’s breakthrough supercritical technology, which uses a dense form of carbon dioxide to extract and concentrate herbal constituents by about 300-fold) is packed into each Zyflamend capsule. These herbs were carefully selected according to current research into the effect of plant extracts on markers of inflammation.

Because excess oxidation, or the production of free radicals without adequate antioxidants to neutralize them, usually goes hand-in-hand with the genesis and ill effects of inflammation, both factors should be addressed by any general inflammation support therapy, and Zyflamend’s components fit this description.

Combined as Zyflamend, these herbs have been found to regulate cancer cell proliferation, reduce cancer spread, and promote apoptosis. Test-tube studies performed at the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center find that Zyflamend reduces the activity of pro-inflammatory LO enzymes in prostate cancer cell lines. (Prostate cancer cells have been found to over-express these same enzymes, and the activity of these enzymes is strongly linked to faster growth and spread of prostate cancer.) Researchers have also found similar anti-LO activity when prostate cancer cells are exposed to Zyflamend, and see far-reaching implications for prostate cancer prevention with this herbal combination.

CURRENT CLINICAL RESEARCH STUDIES ON ZYFLAMEND

While it’s nice to know that all of these herbs potently inhibit inflammation in vitro (test-tube studies) and in studies of animals, the main thing we need to know as humans with health concerns is: When we swallow this herbal combination, will it promote our health? Will it help us feel better and live longer, and will it protect against the conditions we most dread? To answer these questions, we need solid results from clinical research studies, where actual living, breathing human beings use the supplement and actual living, breathing, advanced-degree-holding scientists track their progress and write it up in the form of a published, peer-reviewed research study. This is what’s happening with Zyflamend, particularly in the area of prostate cancer research:

• In a case report written up by Aaron Katz, M.D.—Columbia University urologist and world-renowned urologic surgeon—a patient who went through the research center’s Phase I Zyflamend trial is described. The study builds on Dr. Katz’s extensive laboratory research demonstrating that Zyflamend slows growth of prostate cancer cell lines and may reverse a pre-cancerous prostate condition called prostate intraepithelial neoplasia (PIN). In this case report, a 70-year-old African-American man had been diagnosed with high-grade PIN and had entered a study at Columbia that involved taking this herbal anti-inflammatory mixture three times a day. At the end of the trial, no PIN was detected; the patient’s follow-up biopsy revealed only healthy prostate tissue.

• In a more recent analysis of the subjects in this study, prostate specific antigen (PSA, a marker of prostate cancer cell growth) decreased in 13 of the 26 men (age 40 to 75 years) enrolled, a far higher percentage than would be expected without intervention. Twelve of those men saw their PSAs decrease by more than 10 percent, and seven of them had a decrease of over 50 percent. Of one 66-year-old patient, Dr. Katz remarked that “he was weakly staining for COX- 2 at the beginning of the trial, and at 18 months, he was cyclooxygenase-negative…he was positive for NF-kB, a molecular switch for cancer, at the beginning of the trial, and negative for NF-kB at the end.” In other words, at least two markers of high levels of dangerous inflammation were reduced. This particular patient started out with multiple areas of PIN, and by the end of the study, he had none. Dr. Katz categorized these early results as “extremely positive.”

ZYFLAMEND BENEFITS WOMEN, TOO

Women stand to benefit from this synergistic combination of anti-inflammatory, antioxidant herbal extracts as well. Anything that safely promotes healthy inflammation levels, without sending the body into imbalance as many anti-inflammatory drugs may, can be expected to protect joint, brain, breast, and cardiovascular health—body systems that are known to be adversely affected by excess inflammation. Much scientific evidence points to a role of over-expression of COX, LO, and inflammatory cytokines in heart disease and ovarian and colon cancer, all of which are very real concerns for women. Some experimental evidence of breast cancer cell inhibition is also established for Zyflamend.

Although the medical world is raving about this product, it is only now poised to enter the mainstream and be used in a complementary fashion by full-fledged medical doctors. Dr. Newman of the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center said: “It is our belief that a combination of plant-based products obtained through a unique extraction process may provide a product where multiple components interact synergistically at relatively low doses. We think that this is a strategy for control of inflammation that may be more appropriate and perhaps even safer compared to the single, targeted high-dose pharmaceutical agent."