As Ugandans celebrated Christmas and New Year, most people in the northern parts of the country were seeking answers about a mysterious disease that has mainly affected children.

The head nodding disease which mostly attacks children aged between five and 15 has killed over 50 children in the last three months alone.

"The major symptom of the disease is the continuous nodding of the head" said community officer Jacob Okello.



"Over 2400 children in the districts of northern Uganda are suffering from the disease.

"Some of the victims faint after several minutes from the continuous head nodding".



There are fears that the little known disease might escalate into an outbreak amid admissions by authorities that they have no knowledge of the ailment.

Well the Food and Drug Administration has really made a name for themselves this time. In response to claims by a company named Diamond Foods that walnuts possess health benefits, the FDA sent the company a letter informing them of their wrongdoing. What did Diamond Foods do wrong? According to the FDA, claims made by Diamond Foods that omega-3′s found in walnuts produce health benefits make their walnuts "drugs". As far as the FDA is concerned, these "drugs" can not be legally marketed in the United States without an approved new drug application.

FDA Actions Portray Government Lunacy at its Best

It seems bureaucratic tyranny is really taking shape in America. Despite 35 peer-reviewed published papers showing that walnuts improve vascular health and promote heart function being held in the US National Library of Medicine database, the FDA refuses to allow Diamond Foods to make such claims. The evidence revolving around the benefits of walnuts evidently must be authorized by the FDA before those benefits can even be marketed. A letter sent to the company from the FDA states:

"We have determined that your walnut products are promoted for conditions that cause them to be drugs because these products are intended for use in the prevention, mitigation, and treatment of disease."

The FDA goes on to say that the products are also "misbranded" because they "are offered for conditions that are not amenable to self-diagnosis and treatment by individuals who are not medical practitioners; therefore, adequate directions for use cannot be written so that a layperson can use these drugs safely for their intended purposes."

A growing body of clinical research now indicates that the cholesterol-lowering class of drugs known as statins, are associated with over 300 adverse health effects -- research boldly flying in the face of national health policy, medical insurance premium guidelines, statin drug manufacturer advertising claims, and the general sentiment of the public, with approximately 1 in every 4 adult Americans over 45 currently using these drugs to "prevent heart disease."

The Cholesterol Myth

For well over 40 years, statin drugs have successfully concretized a century old myth about the primary cause of heart disease: namely, that cholesterol "causes" plaque build up in the arteries, ultimately leading to obstruction of blood flow, and subsequent morbidity and mortality.

Indeed, the medical establishment and drug companies have been singing the praises of this "cholesterol myth," to the tune of 25 billion dollars in statin drug sales, annually.

While it is true that oxidized low-density lipoprotein is found within the atheromatous plaque that is found in damaged arteries, it is less likely a cause than an effect of heart disease. The underlying damage to the lining of the artery, which could be infectious, chemical, stress and/or nutritionally-related, comes before the immune response that results in plaque buildup there. Blaming LDL cholesterol for causing heart disease, is like blaming the scab for the injury that caused it to form, or, like blaming the band-aid for the scab it is covering -- this is, after all, the inborn and fatal flaw of allopathic medicine which focuses only on symptoms of disease, which it then -- fool-heartedly -- attempts to suppress by any chemical means necessary.

As any bodybuilder can attest, muscles grow when we make them do more work. Now, new research explains how muscle cells translate weight-lifting overload into bulk.

The secret lies with a chemical factor produced by muscle cells during work (such as during weight lifting) that signals muscle stem cells to multiply and take on the load. The substance, serum response factor (Srf), apparently triggers muscle stem cells - dormant cells capable of differentiating into muscle cells - to proliferate and become muscle fibers. More muscle fibers means bigger overall muscles and more strength.

The findings may lead to new ways to combat muscle atrophy associated with age and illness, according to study researcher Athanassia Sotiropoulos, of the medical research institute Inserm in France.

Two ingredients in marijuana have opposite effects on certain regions of the brain, according to a new study.

One chemical, called tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), increases the brain processes that can lead to symptoms of psychosis, while another compound, called cannabidiol, may negate such symptoms, according to the study.

Moreover, the findings are the first to use images of the brain to demonstrate that the reason symptoms of psychosis arise in marijuana users may be because THC interferes with the brain's ability to distinguish between stimuli that are important, and those that aren't, according to the study.

The results are detailed today (Jan. 2) in the journal Archives of General Psychiatry.

Not only does it rot your teeth and add inches to your waistline, but now researchers have discovered that junk food actually hurts your brain.

By consuming trans fats, found often in fried or processed food, the chemicals send mixed and damaging signals to the brain and lessens its ability to control appetite.

Essentially, by eating junk food, your brain becomes less and less able to tell what you have eaten and continues to make you feel as if you are hungry so that you proceed to eat more.

It's clear that trans fats are bad -- both for your heart and now, we see, for your brain,' said Dr Gene Bowman of Oregon Health & Science University.

Given the somewhat complicated nature of trans fats, it is harder for shoppers to spot goods that contain loads of the molecule. Trans fat is the common name for unsaturated fats which are harder for the body to digest given its double carbon-carbon bond.

Brain injury comes as the latest addition to a long list of health problems that stem from the consumption of unsaturated fat. Coronary heart disease, high cholesterol, obesity and diabetes.

The battle against trans fats is not a new one.

In a disturbing new study published last month (Dec. 2011) in the Journal of Toxicology in Vitro, researchers found that Monsanto's popular "weed killer" known as Roundup, which has already been linked to over 25 adverse health effects, is also capable of interfering with and/or harming the male reproductive system.

Researchers tested Roundup, a glyphosate-based herbicide, on mature rat testicular cells at a concentration range between 1 and 10,000 ppm, which they described as "the range in some human urine and in environment to agricultural levels." They found that within 1 to 48 hours of Roundup exposure testicular (Leydig) cells were damaged or killed.

What is more disturbing is that even at a lower, presumably "non toxic" concentration of 1 ppm of Roundup, or glyphosate by itself, testosterone concentrations were observed to decrease by 35%.

Keep in mind that 1 ppm of Roundup is an infinitesimal concentration. Distilled water, as a reference point, contains between 5-10 ppm of dissolved solids. How can such a small concentration of Roundup/glyphosate cause such a profound disruption of biological activity in testicular cells? The phenomenon is known as endocrine disruption.

Is it possible to thrive without antipsychotics, high-powered painkillers, and statin drugs?

More importantly, are natural alternatives really as 'dangerous' as mainstream health officials claim?

Sure, there have been some great advancements in the field of medical science, but profit mongering and a blatant disregard for public health has driven big pharma giants to throw science to the wind and unleash a variety of harmful yet profitable pharmaceuticals.

It is thanks to this motive that pharmaceuticals have now led to more deaths than traffic fatalities in the United States.

Killing at least 37,485 people nationwide in 2009, the mainstream medical structure continues to not only ignore natural alternatives but actually goes as far as to label them 'dangerous' and completely deny their effectiveness. Vitamin D, which can be obtained by simply stepping outside, has been found to slash your risk of cancer, obesity, and the flu. Of course, unless you are supplementing thousands of times over the safe limit of vitamin D, there are virtually zero side effects to accompany these benefits.

Over the course of the past few years we have uncovered a remarkable body of research on the medicinal properties of mushrooms. In fact, when it comes to natural cancer research, no other category has been the subject of more human clinical research than AHCC and Lentinan, both unique preparations of shiitake mushroom.

AHCC stands for active hexose correlated compound, and is classified as a functional food made from hybridized mycelia of shiitake (and sometimes other mushrooms) in rice bran. It contains both alpha- and beta-glucan polysaccharides, well-known modulators of host immunity. Lentinan, also from shiitake (Lentinula edodes), is exclusively beta-glucan. What is so unique about these compounds is that they are "host-mediated" anti-cancer agents, helping the cancer-afflicted body combat cancer by boosting immune function. This is a radically different approach versus conventional chemotherapy, which poisons rapidly dividing cells, indiscriminately, killing both cancer and immune cells (among other healthy cell types).

How can edible mushrooms like shiitake protect us against cancer, perhaps the most widely feared disease that presently afflicts our species? Could the reason be that we co-evolved with fungi, and that the essential polysaccharides they contain were present in our diet for so long that the genetic/epigenetic infrastructure of our bodies now depends on them? Beta-glucan, after all, is found widely distributed in whole grains, nutritional yeast, as well as fungi. The friendly bacteria, in and outside of our gut, produce the beta-glucan fraction through the biotransformative processes of digestive fermentation and, in the case of food, culturing. Could it be that, failing to consume (or produce) adequate quantities, our body fails in its cancer immunosurveillance -- not unlike the well-established role that vitamin D deficiency has in maintaining proper immune function, and therefore reducing cancer risk.

But perhaps there is an even deeper reason to why fungi keep us alive and well, even when faced with the most terrible of health challenges: we share a common, unique evolutionary origin, and our fates may still be intimately interwoven.

It appears that for the vast majority of vegetarians, abstaining from meat is only a phase rather than a permanent life choice.

According to Psychology Today, roughly 75% of vegetarians eventually return to eating meat with 9 years being the average length of time of abstinence.

The most common reason former vegetarians cited as the reason they returned to meat was declining health. One vegetarian turned omnivore put it very succinctly:

"I'll take a dead cow over anemia any time."

Other former vegetarians cited persistent physical weakness despite eating a whole foods, PETA recommended diet while others returned to meat at the recommendation of their doctor.

Another big reason that vegetarians returned to meat was due to irresistable cravings. This occurred even among long term vegetarians. Respondents talked about their protein cravings or how the smell of cooking bacon drove them crazy.

One survey participant wrote:

"I just felt hungry all the time and that hunger would not be satisfied unless I ate meat."

Another put it more humorously:

Starving college student + First night back home with the folks + Fifty or so blazin' buffalo wings waiting in the kitchen = Surrender.