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American Morning
Broccoli Good for You; Drugs in Post-9/11 New York
Aired May 28, 2002 - 08:39 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: Dr. Sanjay Gupta is here for this morning's "House Call." And we've been saying all morning that broccoli really is good for you, despite the famous complaint of the first President Bush.
But we're not going to start with broccoli this morning, we're going to start off by talking about a new type of drug that seems to be able to reverse one of the causes of high blood pressure.
And the doctor is here. He's in house for a change.
DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, nice to be here.
ZAHN: Nice of you to make this "House Call" in person.
GUPTA: Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.
ZAHN: Good morning.
GUPTA: Hypertension, it's a real problem: 50 million people in the United States alone have it. And here's a sort of an alarming statistic: Only 25 percent of them are actually adequately treated, perhaps until now.
There's a new drug. It's not FDA approved yet, Paula, but it's a new drug that works in a very unique way. To best understand it, you need to think about the body sort of in a state of balance. There are continuously hormones floating through the body that have all sorts of effects on actually dilating the blood vessels and effects on actually constricting the blood vessels. Here are the hormones actually floating through. So you think about the body actually dilating like that sometimes, that lowers blood pressure, and then constricting and that will actually raise blood pressure.
The new drug that is coming out actually acts on both those hormones. So it decreases the amount of hormone that actually constricts the blood vessel, that actually lowers blood pressure, and it actually improves the good kind of hormone, so that actually lowers blood pressure as well. That's different than a lot of the older medications out there that just act on one of those pathways. So this has sort of a dual-action purpose.
ZAHN: Why are so few people with high blood pressure treated in the first place?
GUPTA: The biggest problem -- I actually asked that same question, because there are good treatments out there currently. The biggest problem really is that people aren't going and getting diagnosed in the first place. They're not -- they don't figure they have high blood pressure. People...
ZAHN: So the symptoms aren't that obvious when you have high blood pressure?
GUPTA: Right, and some of the later systems of high blood pressure -- kidney disease, difficulty with your eyes, cardiac disease -- all those things develop late. That's often a late consequence of high blood pressure. You got to get it treated early, so go get the blood pressure checked. A lot of people forget to do that, even at routine physical exams.
ZAHN: Time to talk about President Bush 41 and his least favorite thing, broccoli, this morning. OK, so all of our mothers were right, it actually is good for us?
GUPTA: It is -- it is a good food, and broccoli is good for a lot of different reasons. But the reason that we're talking about now is because of a component of broccoli -- a chemical component known as sulforaphane. The name is not that important, but basically what his sulforaphane does, it actually acts like an antibiotic. Most ulcers, incidentally, Paula, are caused by a bacterial infection. That's what actually causes most ulcers and causes a lot of stomach cancers.
Luckily there's good treatment out there. You can take antibiotics, and they work pretty well most of the time. But surprisingly, what researchers found working in a lab is that broccoli works pretty well as well. It actually kills the bugs and decreases the risk of ulcers in the long run.
ZAHN: Don't tell me that means we have to eat it for breakfast, lunch, and dinner?
GUPTA: Eat as much as you can.
ZAHN: How much?
GUPTA: Well, eat as much as you can, but...
ZAHN: Oh, come on.
GUPTA: And the greener the better.
ZAHN: I mean I like it, but -- I mean it's fine at dinner, but I'm not going to stare it down at breakfast.
GUPTA: Yes, well, eat as much as you can. Don't steam it too much, and the greener the better.
ZAHN: OK, I'll remember that the next time I'm looking at really bad broccoli at the supermarket. Talk a little bit about this other study that talks about the rise in substance abuse here in New York post-September 11.
GUPTA: Right. You know, after September 11, there were definitely a lot of survivors, luckily. But what we're starting to see now is a lot of mental health issues, and I guess not surprising. And one of the ways they've manifested themselves is actually in substance abuse.
A recent survey actually looked at residents of Lower Manhattan. They found that a third of the folks actually turned to substances in the first place, people who were nonusers becoming users, or people who were users actually turning to substances, alcohol 25 percent of the time, cigarettes 10 percent, marijuana 3 percent. Perhaps the most concerning about that, though, is what that translates to. Those people who are increasing cigarette use and marijuana use also had a higher incidence, four to five times higher, incidence of posttraumatic stress disorder.
ZAHN: Wow!
GUPTA: And anybody who was taking any of those substances, alcohol, cigarettes, or marijuana, had a 2 to 2.5 times increased depression rate.
ZAHN: Really?
GUPTA: Yes, so you know, and it's like one of those things, it's hard to say that it's a cause-link sort of thing -- you know, does the fact that you smoke more cause posttraumatic stress disorder or depression? Probably not, but it's those same people who turn to substances. Those are the same people that are also more likely to be vulnerable to those problems.
ZAHN: And then you've got to wonder what the impact is of these never-ending alerts that we're all being exposed to.
GUPTA: Oh, absolutely. I mean there's no question. And people are thinking about that all the time as well. But there is -- there is some help along the way. There is some application money that this grant actually funded, so there should be more access to some of the psychiatric health and mental health.
ZAHN: Well, a lot of us used to turn to water in our time of need around here, until you and your staff ruined it last week telling us we didn't have to drink eight glasses of water after all.
GUPTA: Right. Eat the broccoli instead.
ZAHN: Yes, exactly. Go, broccoli, go.
Oh, wait until you see my broccoli juice tomorrow, Bill Hemmer. Going to die. It's going to be worse than the breakfast you had to look at of mine this morning.
See you tomorrow, Sanjay. GUPTA: All right, thanks.
ZAHN: Thanks for the "House Call."
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