Health & WellnessS


Bacon

Confessions of a former vegetarian

Meat
© Unknown
Guys, I have a confession: I was a vegetarian for 17 years, but I didn't do it for the animals. In fact, the Wilburs, Bessies, Babes, and all the other adorably long-lashed barnyard denizens were the furthest thing from my mind. Nope, I became vegetarian for one man, and one man only - Morrissey.

At 15, I was deep, deep in the throes of my love for the high priest of misery. I bought Morrissey glasses, which was harder to do in the pre-Warby early '90s, when the only specs you could find were the bookish wire frames that are big in Bushwick these days. I talked like Morrissey, convinced I wielded his Wildean wit whenever I hurled "vulgar" at the popular girls' backs. I listened to Patti Smith and Sparks records (let's just say I wasn't really ready for Patti at 15). So, the first time I heard The Smiths' queasy ode to anti-vivisection "Meat Is Murder," I was instantly changed. "If Morrissey's a vegetarian, I'll be a vegetarian, too," I thought. And so it was - I'd accepted the Word of Moz into my heart, chapter and verse. And I vowed to never eat meat again.

Books

Teen night owls likely to perform worse academically, emotionally

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© iStockphotoTeenagers who go to bed late during the school year were found to be struggling academically
Teenagers who go to bed late during the school year are more prone to academic and emotional difficulties in the long run, compared to their earlier-to-bed counterparts, according to a new study from UC Berkeley.

Berkeley researchers analyzed longitudinal data from a nationally representative cohort of 2,700 U.S. adolescents of whom 30 percent reported bedtimes later than 11:30 p.m. on school days and 1:30 a.m. in the summer in their middle and high school years.

By the time they graduated from high school, the school-year night owls had lower GPA scores, and were more vulnerable to emotional problems than teens with earlier bedtimes, according to the study published online Nov.10 in the Journal of Adolescent Health.

The results present a compelling argument in favor of later middle and high school start times in the face of intense academic, social and technological pressures, researchers said.

"Academic pressures, busy after-school schedules, and the desire to finally have free time at the end of the day to connect with friends on the phone or online make this problem even more challenging," said Lauren Asarnow, lead author of the study and a graduate student in UC Berkeley's Golden Bear Sleep and Mood Research Clinic.

Cheeseburger

Study reveals what really makes up fast food chicken nuggets

Chicken Nuggets
© NPR. OrgChicken Nuggets, from artist Banksy’s 2008 installation “The Village Pet Store and Charcoal Grill” in New York City.
Recently, a study made waves when it revealed fast food chicken nuggets are a whole lot less chicken meat and much more "other" in construction.

But the research shouldn't come as a surprise. The fast food industry is able to offer gut-busting meals at rock-bottom prices and you better believe it isn't because they are cutting into their profits. It's because they are using cheap, and sometimes toxic ingredients.

The latest study came from some the University of Mississippi Medical Center.

Study author and professor of pediatrics and medicine Dr. Richard deShazo and his team selected two fast food restaurants in their town and ordered chicken nuggets off the menu.

Then, they randomly selected one nugget from each bag and dissected it to determine what it was actually made of.

Sample one was only 40% skeletal muscle, what we think of when we think of "meat". The other sample was 50% meat. What made up the rest of the nuggets? Bones, blood vessels, connective tissue, nerves, and fat - "the stuff that usually ends up in dog food," as NPR so aptly put it.

People 2

How love can warm you up: Feeling affection and even holding a heated object boost brain activity

  • Declarations of support and affection actually leave us feeling physically warmer, claim scientists
  • The findings suggest closeness to others create feelings of contentment as it triggers the same physical responses involved when keeping warm
Feeling loved really can give you a warm glow inside.

Declarations of support and affection actually leave us feeling physically warmer, claim scientists.

They also discovered that holding a heated object can boost our closeness to others. Using MRI scans, they found feelings of social and physical warmth both result in increased activity in the same part of the brain.
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Warming: Researchers found that receiving affectionate messages triggered the physical responses involved in keeping warm

USA

Veterans routinely given psychiatric drugs even without diagnosis of mental disorder

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© thecheapplace.com
A major indicator of the deteriorating quality of conventional medical care in the U.S. is its growing reliance on pharmaceutical drugs as a catch-all for pain and disease management. And a new study published in the American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry shows that this dire situation is only worsening, as many conventional doctors are no longer even properly diagnosing patients but instead just handing out medications willy-nilly in order to get patients out the door.

This is definitely true for millions of American veterans currently taking psychiatric drugs, many of whom have alleged mental conditions that were never clinically diagnosed. According to a new report out of Yale University, roughly one-third of all U.S. veterans between the ages of 65 and 85 currently taking psych drugs never received any sort of mental health diagnosis. As it turns out, less than 40 percent of those taking such drugs but not getting mental health treatment from a specialist have a legitimate mental illness diagnosis.

Comment: It is obvious that War causes mental illness in soldiers, are prescription drugs really helping to remedy the problem? Read more to learn how soldiers are guinea pigs for big pharma:

25 disturbing facts about psych drugs, soldiers and suicides
Military suicides hit epidemic levels - is it stress or the drugs used to treat it?
Are US Soldiers Being Prescribed Drugs That May Make Them Kill Themselves?
VA testing drugs on war veterans - Experiments raise ethical questions
Pain Killers Carry Risks For Veterans With Post-Traumatic Stress
Whistleblower accuses government of neglecting suicidal veterans and suppressing science


Cheeseburger

Food companies spend $10 Million to keep junk food covered by SNAP

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© Lauren Wade
With one in seven Americans receiving federal food assistance, the food stamp market is big business.

In South Texas, not far from the Rio Grande, the area known as Little Mexico could easily be mistaken for an impoverished village on the south side of the border. Eli Saslow of the Washington Post describes the slapdash homes, chickens wandering through the streets, a mule munching on trash in the middle of an intersection.

Except, as the immigrant parents of Blanca, a diabetic single mother of two who relies on food stamps, told their daughter about the border, "On one side you're skinny. On the other you're fat."

Heart - Black

UK hospital caught falsifying records to meet government cancer treatment targets

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© Nick Ansell/PAAt least 6,000 patients at Colchester general hospital may have had their records falsified to meet treatment targets.
At least 6,000 patients could be affected in scandal at Colchester general hospital as inquiry looks at CEO's role in bullying

The scandal over cancer treatment at a leading hospital has widened after it emerged that its own officials now fear that at least 6,000 patients may have had their records falsified to meet treatment targets.

Investigations by the Observer into the crisis at Colchester general hospital have also established that inquiries into whether staff were bullied into changing records will include the questioning of the hospital's chief executive, Gordon Coutts.

It emerged last week that the hospital's cancer unit is being investigated by police after staff said they had been "pressured or bullied" into changing data relating to patients in order to meet targets for cancer treatment. The healthcare watchdog, the Care Quality Commission (CQC), said the records of 22 patients, out of a sample of 61 that were examined, had been altered to conceal the fact that they had faced "extensive" delays for treatment, which in some cases could have put their lives at risk.

Data was changed to make it appear that the hospital was meeting national cancer targets, which demand that patients wait no more than 62 days from urgent GP referral to completion of the first phase of treatment.

Initially it was reported that the records of the 22 patients appeared to have been changed and that 30 patients or next of kin had been written to, offering to review their treatment. However, sources close to the investigation now say that 6,000 or more patients referred to the Essex hospital between 2010 and 2013 may be caught up in the scandal.

Life Preserver

"Hidden caves" in the brain open up during sleep to wash away toxins

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© HaoJan Chang“Hidden caves” that open up in the brain may help explain sleep’s amazing restorative powers.
A new study published in the prestigious journal, Science, has found that the brain may wash away toxins built up over the day during sleep.

The research discovered "hidden caves" inside the brain, which open up during sleep, allowing cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) to flush out potential neurotoxins, like β-amyloid, which has been associated with Alzheimer's disease.

To reach their discovery, researchers injected mice's brains with a dye and monitored the flow while they were awake, asleep and anaesthetised (Xie et al., 2013).

One of the study's authors, Dr Maiken Nedergaard, explained the results:
"We were surprised by how little flow there was into the brain when the mice were awake. It suggested that the space between brain cells changed greatly between conscious and unconscious states."
For a long time the real physiological purpose of sleep has remained a mystery.

We know that lack of sleep causes all kinds of psychological problems like poor learning, decision-making and so on.

Syringe

Rise in Autism rates go hand-in-hand with increased vaccinations

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Another effort to discount vaccinations as a source of autism has gone into research to prove defective genes as the major culprit. Some epidemiological studies based on twins with autism spectrum disorders was done as early as the mid-1970s. Since then, autism has increased 40-fold. All this from a sudden case of bad genes? This rapid autism rise has coincided with a dramatic increase of early childhood vaccination schedules over the same period, which has been an almost four-fold increase.

The gene theory does not explain how healthy babies suddenly became autistic after undergoing part of an intense series of vaccinations, some shots with multiple-vaccines, at newly born or toddler age.

As a matter of fact, there is very little effort to objectively pursue the autism-vaccination connection. Gene research opposition to the gene theories of autism, or gene theories of many diseases, comes from those who consider environmental causes as primary causal factors, not vaccinations.

Comment: How Safe Are Vaccines? Read the following SOTT articles to learn more:


Monkey Wrench

USDA 'Organic-Washing': Another way to mislead the U.S. consumer?

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USDA organic certification affords the U.S. consumer one of the only food quality protections available today, but does it really guarantee a product is chemical free?

What's a consumer to do today? Between cause - and patently false-marketing, looking beneath the surface appearances of product packaging and advertising becomes a necessity, lest we harm ourselves or the environment unknowingly, or support industries that don't have our best interests in mind.

You may already know about green-washing, pink-washing and so-called gene-washing (i.e. 'natural' labeled products containing GMOs), but prepare yourself for the next level of @%@#!% with "organic-washing."

We hit upon this topic recently in our exposé on USDA organic baby formula containing a chemical ingredient used as a pesticide, but the problem extends to many other "certified organic" products and brands on the market.