Health & WellnessS


Health

Adorable beagle diagnoses deadly infections by sniffing you

Dan Nosowitz
PopSci
Fri, 14 Dec 2012 14:00 UTC
Cliff the Beagle
© BMJCliff the dog.
In hospitals, a nasty little bacterium called Clostridium difficile causes problems for patients--it's highly infectious and can cause diarrhea among people who are already sick. Diagnosing whether a patient has C. diff, as it's called, requires a stool sample, which can take days to analyze.

So scientists at the VU University Medical Centre in Amsterdam trained a beagle named Cliff to sniff out the nasty bacterium. The craziest part? Cliff doesn't need to sniff stool samples--he can tell just by walking up to a patient as the patient lies in bed.


You can read the full study over at BMJ.
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Syringe

Australian minister orders anti-vaccination group to change its name

Andy Burns
Herald Sun
Fri, 14 Dec 2012 12:16 UTC
Anti Vaccination
© Herald SunAn anti-vaccination lobby group has been slapped with an order to change its name.
A controversial anti-vaccination lobby group has been slapped with an order to change its misleading name or be shut down.

The NSW Office of Fair Trading doorstopped the home of Australian Vaccination Network president Meryl Dorey yesterday with a letter of action, labelling the network's name misleading and a detriment to the community.

NSW Fair Trading Minister Anthony Roberts fired a broadside at the AVN, saying the information it provided was a public safety issue of "life and death".

"This is not a victimless issue, it's about the ability to stop pain and suffering," he said.

Mr Roberts likened the AVN's message to sanctioning speeding.

"People do not have the freedom of choice when it comes to endangering others ... it's the equivalent of saying a bloke can speed down the road and endanger others," he said.
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Question

Two-Inch feather emerges from baby's neck

Christina Ng
ABC News
Thu, 13 Dec 2012 16:06 UTC
Feather from Baby's Neck
© ABC News
No one knew what was bothering 7-month-old Mya Whittington. Her discomfort stumped her parents and doctors. She was finally hospitalized - and a 2-inch feather eventually poked its way out of her neck, shocking everyone.

"We were just pretty much in disbelief," Mya's dad, Aaron Whittington, 26, told ABCNews.com.

The mystery of Mya's pain started on Saturday.

"I was at work and my wife noticed that the left side of her neck had started to swell, and she called me at work and asked if we should take her to the emergency room," Whittington said.

The couple decided to wait, thinking that Mya just had a swollen gland. They changed their minds the next morning.

"Sunday morning, when we woke up, it had doubled in size and there was a pimple-looking thing on the end of it," he said. "We're looking at it and going, 'There's no way this is a swollen gland.'"
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Health

A sick world: We live longer, with more pain and illness

Kate Kelland
Medical Daily
Thu, 13 Dec 2012 15:15 UTC
Patient
© Medical Daily
The world has made huge progress fighting killer infectious diseases, but as a result we now lead longer and sicker lives, with health problems that cause us years of pain, disability and mental distress.

This "devastating irony", as researchers describe it, is the main conclusion of a five-year study that forms the most comprehensive assessment of global health in the history of medicine, according to the journal publishing the research.

The Global Burden of Disease study, led by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at Washington University, finds that countries face a wave of financial and social costs from rising numbers of people living with disease and injury.

Among other findings are that while malnutrition has dropped down the rankings as a cause of death and illness, the effects of excessive eating are taking its place. Smoking and alcohol use have also overtaken child hunger to become the second and third leading health risks, behind high blood pressure.

Over three million deaths globally were attributable in 2010 to excess body weight, more than three times as many as malnutrition.
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Light Saber

Peru bans genetically modified foods for ten years minimum

Stephanie Whiteside
Current.com
Wed, 28 Nov 2012 15:57 UTC
Image
More brains between them than all Western government officials put together
Genetically modified foods are foods made from genetically modified organisms. A few weeks ago, California voters turned down Proposition 37, which would have required that GMO foods be labeled as such. Chemical companies and processed-food manufacturers heavily - and successfully - backed a campaign opposing the proposition. Nationwide, GMO crops are prevalent and efforts to label GMO foods have yet to get off the ground.

But outside the U.S., you can find a different approach.

Peru has said "no" to genetically modified foods - a 10-year ban on GMO foods takes effect this week. Peru's ban on GMO foods prohibits the import, production and use of genetically modified foods. The law is aimed at safeguarding the country's agricultural diversity and preventing cross-pollination with non-GMO crops. It will also help protect Peruvian exports of organic products.
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Robot

Eating Nano: Nanotechnology is thriving along entire food chain

Brita Belli
The Environmental Magazine
Thu, 01 Nov 2012 15:18 UTC
Processed Foods and Food Packaging Already Contain Nanoparticles - Some of Which Could Be Harmful to Our Health

Our food supply is not nearly as safety-tested as we would like to believe. True, things are not as dire as they were in the early 20th century when Upton Sinclair's The Jungle exposed the filth of the meatpacking industry, leading to reforms that included the founding of an agency that would become the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). But there are still unsettling gaps in what we know about the food and food packaging that is already sitting on supermarket shelves.

Unbeknownst to just about everyone, nanoparticles made a quiet entrance into the nation's food supply at least a decade ago. Nanoparticles are materials that are microscopic - significantly smaller than a red blood cell; and tens of thousands of times smaller than the width of a human hair. These particles can help deliver nutrients, ensure longer freshness of food, act as thickening agents or enhance taste or flavor. The problem is, scientists are still determining the health and environmental impact of these tiny particles, even as industry is forging ahead.

Image
© E Magazine
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Cow Skull

British environment minister: Every restaurant steak comes from cattle given GM feed

Sean Poulter
Daily Mail, UK
Thu, 13 Dec 2012 13:28 UTC
Image
If you eat food in British restaurants, you're almost certainly eating frankenfoods
Environment Secretary Owen Paterson said there are 'real environmental benefits' to GM technology

Mr Paterson claimed public concerns about genetically modified food were unfounded

Fears over Frankenstein Foods are 'humbug', the new farming minister insisted yesterday, arguing that many Britons happily eat beef from cattle fed on GM crops.

Addressing public concern about the genetically modified food industry's increasing influence, Owen Paterson said: 'There isn't a single piece of meat being served [in a typical London restaurant] where a bullock hasn't eaten some GM feed. So it's a complete nonsense.'

But the Environment Secretary's dismissive response angered campaigners, who pointed out that consumers' apparent willingness to eat GM-raised beef was simply a result of the food not being labelled as such.

Comment: According to Arpad Pusztai, PhD, one of the world's leading experts in GM food safety assessments, when an animal eats genetically modified feed, that animal's DNA is changed such that it is no longer 'beef' or 'chicken' or fish...

This scenario, where the entire food supply is genetically altered by the covert introduction of GMOs, is a success for the bio-engineers who have now 'created facts on the ground'. The British government minister's message is: "The whole 'debate' about GMOs was just a ruse. We've gone ahead and done it anyway. What are you going to do about it?"

While the West continues its downward descent, Peru, Kenya, Syria and Russia recently moved to ban GMOs:

Peru bans genetically modified foods for ten years minimum

Kenya bans all GMO Monsanto foods!

Syrian People's Assembly bans GMOs to protect people and planet

Russia Bans Genetically Modified Corn From US Due To Breast Cancer Fears

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Health

Why sleep is more difficult for women

Anne Angelone, L.Ac.
Primal Docs
Wed, 12 Dec 2012 12:35 UTC
Image
Is there a torture worse than hitting the sack exhausted from a long day only to toss and turn for hours, unable to fall asleep? Or perhaps you fall asleep but later bolt awake and can't fall back asleep?

By the time women hit their mid 30s or early 40s, many struggle with sleep. Either it's difficult to fall asleep, difficult to stay asleep, or both. Although sleep difficulties can have many causes, fluctuations of female hormone prior to and during the transition to menopause can steal many hours of precious sleep.

Female hormone imbalances and sleep problems

When a woman enters perimenopause, her production of estrogen and progesterone begins to decline. Ideally the adrenal glands, which produce stress hormones, take over production of these hormones to ensure a smooth transition into menopause. Unfortunately, most women today enter perimenopause (pre-menopause) in a state of chronic stress and their adrenals glands are either producing too much or too little of stress hormones. To take on the added job of producing sex hormones is simply more than they can handle. That's when sleep issues can kick in, as balanced levels of estrogen and progesterone are necessary for healthy sleep. Other symptoms may include hot flashes, night sweats, depression, anxiety, fatigue, and more.

Women may also experience sleep issues during certain times of the menstrual cycle when hormone levels fluctuate.

Comment: Check out our health forum for vital information on how to change your diet and balance your hormones, and don't forget to breathe your way out of stress with our Éiriú Eolas Stress Control, Healing and Rejuvenation Program.

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Ambulance

Fecal transplant - cure of the future?

Chris Kresser
Medicine for the 21st Century
Fri, 07 Dec 2012 00:00 UTC
Image
Poop has been all over the news lately. (And no, I'm not talking about the recent election.) I'm referring to fecal transplant, the process of transferring a healthy person's stool into a sick person's colon in order to restore the bacterial balance. It sounds bizarre, and even a little crazy, but doctors and scientists all over the country are discovering just how effective fecal transplants can be.

Just last week, the Chicago Tribune wrote a story predicting that stool banks may one day be just as common as blood banks. Human stool transplants have been found to consistently cure up to 90 percent of patients who have had multiple episodes of C. difficile, an infection which causes serious diarrhea and affects about 3 million people per year. Typically, these infections are treated with antibiotics such as vancomycin, which can actually make the infection worse by killing off beneficial bacteria and allowing the resistant C diff. to survive. This recurring infection can be fatal, killing an average of 14,000 Americans every year. It's especially dangerous for young children and the elderly who are more susceptible to the bacteria that causes the colonic inflammation and diarrhea.
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Video

The 'Holy Grail' of primal health: Benefits of a fat-based caloric intake for body and brain

Nora Gedgaudas
Ancestral Health Society
Mon, 12 Nov 2012 15:25 UTC
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