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Shelly Stuart

If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.
-Joseph Goebbels(pictured left), Reich Minister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda

The history of our race, and each individual's experience, are sown thick with evidence that a truth is not hard to kill and that a lie told well is immortal.
-Mark Twain, Advice to Youth

I've always loved the above two quotes because their sentiments are so on the money. It is sad but true that the bigger the lie, the more people are willing to unquestioningly accept it. And the greater the mass of people who accept the lie, the easier it is to persuade others to join the growing crowd. In such a way does a great lie snowball into a great 'truth.'

Nutritionally I can't think of a bigger lie than the one claiming that fats in general and saturated fats in particular are bad for us. This lie is so deeply embedded in the minds of most that you couldn't blow it out with a stick of dynamite. Especially in the minds of academics, and more especially in the minds of most dietitians. Not all, but most. Nutritionally, it is truly the Big Lie.

Despite the fact that they all tenaciously cling to the Big Lie, the evidence disputes it. But, "a lie told well is immortal." Over at Whole Health Source Stephen Guyenet wrote a post recently looking at the observational data about saturated fat and cholesterol levels and heart disease. Most of the Big Lie devotees worry obsessively about saturated fat intake while the great mass of observational data shows little, if any, correlation. A couple of years ago, I wrote a long post about the invalidity of observational studies as proof of much anything, but in that post I neglected to mention that although observational studies can't show that correlation equals causation, they probably are valid in demonstrating the opposite: if there is no correlation, there probably isn't much of a case for causation. So, if there isn't a lot of correlation between saturated fat intake and elevated cholesterol and/or heart disease, is doubtful that saturated fat intake is causal.

Today marks nine months since the BP Deepwater Horizon offshore oil rig exploded, killing 11 workers and sending millions of gallons of crude oil pouring into the Gulf of Mexico.

Though the gushing well was capped last July, oil continues to wash ashore along the Gulf Coast. BP's oil is also washing up in people's bodies, raising concerns about long-term health effects.

This month the Louisiana Environmental Action Network released the results of tests performed on blood samples collected from Gulf residents. Whole blood samples were collected from 12 people between the ages of 10 and 66 in September, November and December and analyzed by a professional lab in Georgia, with the findings interpreted by environmental chemist and LEAN technical adviser Wilma Subra.

The individuals tested were two boys ages 10 and 11, four men and six women. They included cleanup workers on Orange Beach, Ala., crabbers from the Biloxi, Miss. area and people living on Perdido Key, Ala.

Four of the people tested -- including three adults and the 10-year-old -- showed unusually high levels of benzene, a particularly toxic component of crude oil. Subra compared the levels found in the test subjects to the levels found in subjects in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), a research program conducted by the National Center for Health Statistics.

Generally in practice we're able to make significant headway with all sorts of people with all sorts of health issues be they a 57 year-old man with type 2 diabetes or a 23 year-old woman with irritable bowel syndrome. And yet, I do inevitably come across patients I don't seem to be able to help in any meaningful way, and this includes a handful of patients I've known over the years that suffer from a chronic, dry, tickly cough. These are individuals for whom conventional causes of cough, such as asthma, have been investigated and excluded.

I have, with these individuals, tried the sorts of approaches that one might expect from a naturally oriented doctor (e.g. identification and elimination of foods that might be triggering the problem, immune support if there's any suspicion of compromise here, herbals approaches to soothe the throat and surrounding regions). But I have to say, hand on heart, that the results have generally not been good. Reading a study published yesterday on-line in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, I feel I may have found a missing piece in the puzzle regarding the causes of, and potential cure for, a persistent dry cough.

This study focused on vitamin B12, and the fact that a deficiency in this nutrient can lead to nerve damage. Could B12 deficiency lead to enhanced reactivity in and around the throat? And if so, might B12 supplementation help reduce this as well as the symptoms of chronic cough? [1].

In 2008, the possible health risks of the Bisphenol A (BPA) - a common chemical in plastic - made headlines. Parents were alarmed, pediatricians inundated with questions, and stores sold-out of BPA-free bottles and sippy cups.

Where do things stand now? Have plastic manufacturers changed their practices? How careful does a parent need to be when it comes to plastics and BPA? Here's the latest information we have about possible BPA risks.

BPA Basics

BPA is a chemical that has been used to harden plastics for more than 40 years. It's everywhere. It's in medical devices, compact discs, dental sealants, water bottles, the lining of canned foods and drinks, and many other products.

More than 90% of us have BPA in our bodies right now. We get most of it by eating foods that have been in containers made with BPA. It's also possible to pick up BPA through air, dust, and water.

BPA was common in baby bottles, sippy cups, baby formula cans, and other products for babies and young children. Controversy changed that. Now, the six major companies that make baby bottles and cups for infants have stopped using BPA in the products they sell in the U.S. Many manufacturers of infant formula have stopped using BPA in their cans as well.

According to the U.S. Department of Health, toys generally don't contain BPA. While the hard outer shield of some pacifiers do have BPA, the nipple that the baby sucks on does not.

Massachusetts General-led study shows changes over time in areas associated with awareness, empathy, stress

Participating in an 8-week mindfulness meditation program appears to make measurable changes in brain regions associated with memory, sense of self, empathy and stress. In a study that will appear in the January 30 issue of Psychiatry Research: Neuroimaging, a team led by Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) researchers report the results of their study, the first to document meditation-produced changes over time in the brain's grey matter.

"Although the practice of meditation is associated with a sense of peacefulness and physical relaxation, practitioners have long claimed that meditation also provides cognitive and psychological benefits that persist throughout the day," says Sara Lazar, PhD, of the MGH Psychiatric Neuroimaging Research Program, the study's senior author. "This study demonstrates that changes in brain structure may underlie some of these reported improvements and that people are not just feeling better because they are spending time relaxing."

Roughly 1 in 10 children who play video games are at risk of becoming pathologically addicted to them, found a new study published in the journal Pediatrics.

That means for every classroom of 30 kids, three of them could develop a hardcore digital addiction that boosts the risk of depression, social phobia and poor school performance, the study found.

Why sleep is essential and how to establish good sleeping habits.

If you woke up this morning feeling less than well rested, you're not alone. No one is sure exactly how many of us spend our nights tossing and turning, but scientists estimate that somewhere between 10 percent to 34 percent of Americans suffer from insomnia. Our national lack of sleep amounts to big business for pharmaceutical companies, which spent more than $329 million in 2005 advertising prescription sleep aids. And those efforts have a big payoff - Americans spend approximately $2 billion each year on sleeping drugs, and $20 billion on other sleep-related products.

More than 60 percent of people in a 2005 survey conducted by the National Sleep Foundation admitted to driving while sleepy. But fatigue is not only dangerous in the short term - it also can have lasting impacts on our health. Studies show that sleep deprivation can contribute to everything from hypertension to depression to obesity.

If you share your bed with someone, chances are your inability to snooze disrupts your partner's rest as well: In a recent Harris poll, 25 percent of people said that their partner's sleeping habits kept them awake, costing them three or more hours of sleep each week. (Rest easy - most still said that they slept better with their partner than without.)

Given the statistics, it may be tempting to seek relief in a bottle of sleeping pills, but most of us can go a long way toward getting the rest we need by making a few basic lifestyle changes. Even for those with more serious sleep disorders, there's a simple behavior modification plan to help you get reacquainted with your pillow.

When I first met her, Janet couldn't stop sobbing. She'd just been through her 10th heart catheterization in two years.

It started with chest pains at age 56, prompting her first heart catheterization that uncovered severe atherosclerotic blockages in all three coronary arteries. Her cardiologist advised a bypass operation.

Six months after the bypass operation, Janet was back with more chest pains, just as bad as before. Another heart catherization showed that two of the three bypass grafts had failed. The third bypass graft contained a severe blockage that required a stent, along with multiple stents in the two now unbypassed arteries.

In the ensuing 18 months, Janet returned for 8 additional catheterizations, each time leaving the hospital with one or more stents.

Janet's doctor was puzzled as to why her disease was progressing so aggressively despite Lipitor and the low-fat diet provided by the hospital dietitian. So he had Janet undergo lipoprotein testing (NMR):

LDL particle number: 3363 nmol/L
Small LDL particle number: 2865 nmol/L
HDL cholesterol: 32 mg/dl
Triglycerides: 344 mg/dl
Fasting blood glucose 118 mg/dl
HbA1c 5.8%

Unfortunately, Janet's doctor didn't understand what these values meant. He pretty much threw his arms up in frustration. That's when I met Janet.

A mother-of-three told today how she has faced almost 20 years of ill health since she tended to wounded soldiers during the first Gulf War.

Lorrie Brown was an Army health care assistant based at a field hospital in Saudi Arabia during the conflict two decades ago.

She said before she went, she was given a range of vaccinations, including two for anthrax and one for plague, because of concerns that the Iraqis would use chemical or biological weapons.

She was also given nerve agent pre-treatment sets (NAPS) while out there and a huge arms dump not far from her field hospital was destroyed, causing a huge plume of smoke to billow out over the area.

The 41-year-old, of Thirsk, said that several months later she started getting severe headaches and, over subsequent months and years, gradually suffered a worsening range of symptoms including:

- Dizziness

- Painful joints

- Chronic fatigue.