Health & WellnessS


Attention

U.S. Airways Flight Attendant Says: Toxic Airplane Cabin Air Sickening Flight Crews

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© knowabouthealth.comToxic airplane cabin air, some say, can lead to an illness known as Aerotoxic Syndrome.
A flight attendant for U.S. Airways claims toxic airplane cabin air is making flight crews sick. The toxic airplane cabin air, which some say can lead to an illness known as Aerotoxic Syndrome, has been linked to problems with the bleed air systems used on most aircraft to recirculate cabin air during flight.

Most commercial planes are designed to make cabin air by drawing in a compressed supply of it from plane engines. Typically, this "bleed air" is mixed with existing cabin air and recirculated throughout the flight. Unfortunately, this system does not always remove fumes or vapors from the engine. If it malfunctions, these chemical contaminants - including fumes from the oil that lubricates the engine - can result in toxic airplane cabin air.

Comment:
"One curious and unintended consequence of the aeroplane ban [on smoking] was that airlines began to save money by changing the air in the cabin less frequently. Traditionally, this was done every two minutes and old air was never recirculated, but with no tobacco smoke to draw attention to the quality of air, the carriers reduced air changes to once every twenty minutes. This led to a musty aroma on board and, according to a report in The Lancet, contributed to the appearance of Deep Vein Thrombosis, a disease unknown in airline passengers until the 1990s."
Christopher Snowdon - Velvet Glove, Iron Fist: A History of Anti-Smoking


Fish

Study Shows Extent of Plastics in Ocean Fish

Lanternfish
© Emma Kissling / WikipediaLanternfish, Myctophum punctatum

Washington -- A study related to plastic marine debris found that 35 percent of ocean fish had plastic in their stomachs.

Of the fish that ate plastic, the average had two pieces of plastic. Some had as many as 83 pieces.

Most of the fish that ate plastic were deepwater lanternfish, which may come to the ocean surface after dark to feast on plankton.

"As the larger pieces of plastic break down, they mimic the size, shape and texture of natural food," said Charles Moore, founder of the Algalita Marine Research Foundation in Costa Mesa., California, and an author of the study. "What we're seeing is the entire food web being contaminated by plastic."

Lanternfish are a food source for mahi-mahi, tuna, whales, dolphins, sharks, penguins and seabirds.

Steve Russell, vice president of plastics for the American Chemistry Council in Washington, said ACC has not had an opportunity to review the study.

But Russell was quick to add that "We certainly agree that plastics don't belong in our oceans and waterways."

Magnify

Most "Natural" Cereals Likely to Contain GMOs

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© malt-o-meal.com
Does "natural" mean non-GMO? Not likely. Many breakfast cereals labeled natural are likely to contain ingredients from genetically modified corn, soy, canola, and sugar beets.

This was a key finding from a survey of natural cereal manufacturers conducted by The Organic & Non-GMO Report. Several natural cereal manufacturers admitted that their products may contain GM ingredients, one manufacturer refused to comment, and three are putting their products through a non-GMO verification program to avoid the use of GMOs.

While GM ingredients are prohibited in certified organic food products such as cereals, "natural" products have no such requirements.

Health

SOTT Focus: Gabriela Segura, M.D.: Detoxing After the Gulf Oil Disaster

On 3/11/11, Sott.net's Gabriela Segura, M.D. was a special guest on WVP Radio show 'Gulf Blue Plague' with host Michael Edward. Dr. Segura's article "The Day the Water Died: Detoxing After the Gulf Oil Spill" brought attention to how mainstream Western medicine doesn't recognize diseases caused by environmental toxicity. Dr. Segura is a heart surgeon with extensive experience and interest in alternative health, research, psychology and the human condition. Her internet sites are at http://health-matrix.net and http://sott.net

Also on the show was Jessica, a brilliant student and aspiring saxophonist from Grand Isle, Louisiana, who spoke about her and her classmates' experiences and health challenges living directly on the Gulf.


Beaker

A Perfect Storm of GMOs, Chemicals and Cancer

Idiot Cycle cover
© Emmanuelle Schick Garcia
Several books, including Seeds of Destruction and Corrupt to the Core, along with the film, The Idiot Cycle, lay out the framework for and evidence of a concerted effort to sicken and then treat humanity, while earning obscene profits. When we factor in other recent actions taken by transnational corporations and lawmakers, the conspiracy adopts a more ominous tone.

Authors William Engdahl and Shiv Chopra appear in Emmanuelle Schick Garcia's powerful film, The Idiot Cycle: What You Aren't Being Told About Cancer. Both writers provide detailed evidence of a corporate-government conspiracy to adulterate the food and water supply with dangerous substances linked to a host of illnesses. The Case Against Fluoride, a book using hundreds of peer-reviewed studies, provides more evidence. In David Gumpert's Raw Milk Revolution, we get a peek at the US government's war on the natural dairy industry.

Looking at six companies, Dow Chemical, BASF, Bayer, Dupont, Astrazeneca (Syngenta), and Monsanto, Idiot Cycle exposes corporate-government collusion in the release of carcinogenic chemicals, but also reveals how some of the same chemical companies then profit from treating cancer. It's a cycle only an idiot would tolerate. Going further, much of the film then addresses genetically modified food and its potentially disastrous effect on health and the environment.

Cookie

The Many Heads of Gluten Sensitivity

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Unfortunately, today most people do not understand the difference between gluten sensitivity and celiac disease. As a matter of fact, this is one of the reasons why so many patients fail to get properly diagnosed. Lab tests have traditionally focused on diagnosing celiac disease. This has created a proverbial No Man's Land for those patients who react to gluten differently. Because the labs come back negative for them, they are told to continue the consumption of grains, and they are told not to worry about gluten because they don't have celiac disease.

Until last year, most doctors and celiac disease researchers ignored or denied the existence of gluten sensitivity. The general thought was - if you don't have celiac disease, you don't have to worry about avoiding grains.

A new study published this week attempted to elucidate the differences between Celiac Disease and Gluten Sensitivity

As much as I love the work being done by Dr. Fasano at the University of Maryland, I have to take offense at the following quote from from Fox News' interpretation of the study:

Cow

Milk and calcium good for the bones? Don't think so

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If I were to try and condense what I regard as good nutritional advice into a soundbite, I'd say 'Eat like a caveman (or cavewoman)'. The idea here being to emulate the diet we as a species evolved on, and are best adapted to. There is, I think, abundant research that strongly supports this as being, in the main, the way to go. Though I appreciate there will be some who reject the notion of primal eating based on (I think) faulty paradigms such as saturated fat is bad and grains are good.

Another supposed anomaly here is dairy products. They do seem to be quite a recent addition to the diet (5000 years or so), so in theory not so important for health. Many nutritional commentators tell us, though, they are almost essential for our bones. Yet, the bony record from before about 10,000 years ago shows good bone health. How did we manage for more than 2 millions years without cow's milk and now suddenly need it? Maybe, just maybe, we don't need it at all.

I decided to revisit some of the science in this area recently. I found a quite-recent meta-analysis (amassing of similar studies) which looked at the relationship between milk consumption and risk of hip fracture [1]. I think fracture risk, by the way, is a much better judge of the value of dairy products than bone density. The whole point, supposedly, of having dense bones is to prevent fracture, so it makes sense to look at this (not density).

Comment: For more information on this topic, see also Why Milk Is So Evil


Syringe

Vaccinate against killer flu virus now, say experts

patient injection

Governments must start to vaccinate children and young adults against a strain of the influenza virus that killed several million people in the 1960s, a leading expert has warned.

The last outbreak of the H2N2 flu occurred in 1968 but the virus is now circulating in birds and pigs and could easily cross into the human population where most people under the age of 50 have little or no immunity, according to Gary Nabel, a vaccine researcher at the US National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland.

A pre-emptive vaccination campaign targeted at children and young people could help to avert a major pandemic. The last epidemics of H2N2 occurred between 1957 and 1968 and are estimated to have killed between one million and four million people.

Alarm Clock

US: Colorado hospital blew whistle on contaminated wipes

Dr. Christine Nyquist, medical director of infection prevention at The Children's Hospital in Aurora, Colo
© JoNel AlecciaDr. Christine Nyquist, medical director of infection prevention at The Children's Hospital in Aurora, Colo., holds a sample of the bacteria Bacillus cereus in the microbiology lab at the research hospital just outside of Denver.
Spate of serious infections caused by rare bacteria sparked massive recall, investigation

It took fast-acting doctors at a Colorado hospital to flag problems with tainted alcohol wipes now tied to a massive recall and growing reports of potentially deadly infections, including the case of a 10-year-old boy already battling leukemia.

Medical experts at The Children's Hospital in Aurora said they became alarmed last fall when a few youngsters developed bloodstream infections caused by the rare bacteria Bacillus cereus.

"It just didn't make sense," said Dr. Christine Nyquist, the hospital's medical director of infection prevention. "Based on the kind of patients they were, the organism, the bacteria, didn't make sense."

They included Peyton Armstrong, 10, of Glenwood Springs, Colo., who developed a high fever and intense pain last October within 12 hours of placement of an IV line and a medical port to start chemotherapy treatment for leukemia.

"He was on the brink of death," said Jessica Armstrong, 40, Peyton's mother. "The cancer didn't even matter at that point."

Within weeks, hospital officials were stunned to confirm that Peyton's infection - along with what Nyquist would describe only as "a couple"of others - was caused by contaminated alcohol wipes produced by the hospital's sole supplier: the Triad Group of Hartland, Wis.

Health

The Coming Cancer Epidemic from Overuse of CT Scans

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© Unknown
The medical community is waking up to an enormous problem with radiation - mainly X-rays and CT scans - used to diagnose disease and injury. Patients are getting too much radiation, and the excess itself causes injuries, many years down the road, in a big uptick in the risk of cancer.

Even a "routine" CT scan of the abdomen, ordered thousands of times every day in the United States for patients with belly pain, carries a large risk of downstream cancer, just from that single scan.

Dr. Rebecca Smith-Bindman, MD, of the University of California San Francisco, estimates a 20-year-old woman who undergoes a CT scan of the abdomen and pelvis has a one in 250 chance over her lifetime of getting cancer just from that single dose of radiation. This number was in a talk she gave recently at UCSF, as reported by her colleague Bob Wachter, MD, a patient safety expert at UCSF.