Health & WellnessS


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Mind-control parasites hijack immune system, too

Stephanie Pappas
LiveScience
Thu, 06 Dec 2012 16:00 UTC
T.Gondii
© Ke Hu and John Murray, PLoSThe mind-altering parasite called Toxoplasma gondii has a unique apparatus that is likely used to invade host cells and for its own replication. Shown here, the parasite is building daughter scaffolds within the mother cell.
A parasite known for its ability to influence the minds of its hosts also hijacks the immune system, a new study finds. In fact, the parasite uses cells that would normally help defeat it as transport to get around the body.

Toxoplasma gondii is a tiny parasite that infects about a quarter of the world's population. Most human infections are asymptomatic, though research has hinted the parasite might have subtle behavioral influences.

Infected individuals are more likely to attempt suicide, for example, and T. gondii infection may increase brain cancer risk.

The parasite's real interests, however, are cats and rodents. T. gondii can live in any warm-blooded creature, but it prefers to end up in the gut of a cat, where it can breed.

To do so, the parasite takes control of the minds of its rodent hosts, making the smell of cat urine sexually appealing to them rather than scary. That ups the chances a rodent will cozy up to a cat and get scarfed down, along with the parasite.
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Magic Wand

From tomb to table: Cumin's health benefits rediscovered

Sayer Ji
Activist Post
Wed, 05 Dec 2012 14:15 UTC
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© greenmedinfo.com
Traded along spice routes separating ancient cultures by vast distances, spices like cumin were once worth their weight in gold. Has modern science now revealed why, beyond their remarkable aesthetic value, they were so highly prized?

Many spices are perfectly happy living a charmed life as seasonings, peppering things generously with flavor, and without ever arousing the suspicion that they may be capable of profound acts of healing, as well.

Meet cumin, a member of the parsley family, which is to say from a well-known family of healers native to the central Mediterranean region (southern Italy, Algeria and Tunisia).

Cumin's traditional use stretches back into prehistory, as evidenced by its presence in Egyptian tombs. The Greeks actually used it much like we use pepper today, keeping cumin at the dining table in its own container, which is still practiced by Moroccans to this day. It is also been used for millennia in India as a traditional ingredient of curry.
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Health

Gluten sensitivity induces GERD (Gastroesophageal reflux disease)

Dr. Osborne
Gluten Free Warrior
Thu, 06 Dec 2012 13:57 UTC
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Gluten - A Common Cause of Acid Reflux

A recent research study linked peptic disease (heartburn, GERD, stomach ulcer) to gluten exposure in patients with gluten sensitivity.
PD (peptic disease) is not uncommon in the presentation of CD (celiac disease). It is more likely to be found in the second decade of life. CD should be included in the differential diagnosis of patients with non-HP(H pylori) PD and we suggest routine CD serology and small bowel biopsy in patients with unexplained PD.
The authors of this study recommend that all patients with non infectious peptic disease be screened for celiac disease.

Source

Scand J Gastroenterol. 2009;44(12):1424-8.
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Bullseye

A gluten for punishment: The whole grain assault on health

Nathan Daley, MD, MPH
Greenmedinfo.com
Wed, 05 Dec 2012 12:44 UTC
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© greenmedinfo.com
From Few to You

Among thoughtful and informed medical providers and public alike, there is an ongoing transition toward recognizing adverse health effects from grains as being common and normal rather than rare and abnormal. Not all medical providers, of course, support this change in perspective and some are downright hostile toward it. Likewise, a segment of the public seems to be irritated by the gluten free trend and consider it just a silly fad.

Yet, if medicine is to be science based, no credible medical provider can dismiss the possibility that a large proportion of the U.S. (and possibly world) population may be sensitive to certain molecules present in most grains. Similarly, those that belittle the gluten free movement as a fad might, in fact, be an unknowing victim of grain sensitivity.

Celiac disease may have been described by the ancient physician Aretaeus of Cappadocia in the first century CE. It was not until the 1940's, however, that the Dutch physician Willem Karel Dicke connected the disease to wheat as a result of the Dutch famine of 1944, in which wheat was scarce and those suffering from the disease seemed to dramatically improve. Since that time, modern medicine has narrowly defined the disease as an autoimmune disease resulting from the ingestion of gliadin, a component of wheat gluten.
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Beaker

Toxic scare: Yellow smog blankets Buenos Aires after chemical container explosion


RT
Thu, 06 Dec 2012 18:36 UTC
Mass evacuation ordered in Buenos Aires
© Twitter/@UnivisionNewsMass evacuation ordered in Buenos Aires after chemical container explodes
A chemical container has exploded in Buenos Aires, Argentina, blanketing the capital in a huge toxic cloud. Residents are being told to stay inside while a mass evacuation from the area surrounding the blast has been ordered, local media report.

The container filled with pesticide caught on fire after a chemical reaction between its contents and exploded. As the flames were put out, yellow smoke billowed out of it. City officials believe the container may have been transporting garbage.

"The pesticide presents a low level of danger and affects the respiratory tract," said Sergio Berni, the national Security Secretary, as quoted by C5N television channel.
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Attention

Crazy things pesticides are doing to your body

Leah Zerbe & Emily Main
Rodale.com
Sat, 01 Dec 2012 12:35 UTC
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© rodale.comPesticides aren't just on the food, the chemicals are inside food, too.
Agrochemicals, home bug sprays, and lawn treatments could be causing chronic illness in your family.

Pesticides are designed to kill, although the mode of action they use to put the stranglehold on pests varies. Whether it's nerve gas - like neurological disruption, the unbalancing of key hormones, or the stunting of a plant's ability to absorb life-sustaining trace minerals from the soil, none of the chemical interventions seems all that appetizing, especially considering that chemical residues routinely wind up on and even inside of the food we eat everyday. Pesticides are also blamed for diminishing mineral levels in foods.

Agrochemical supporters tend to fall back on a "the dose makes the poison" theory, assuming that small exposures aren't harmful. Increasingly, though, independent scientists are debunking that belief, even proving that incredibly tiny doses could set a person up for health problems later in life. Luckily, eating organic, less processed foods can cut back on your pesticide exposure.
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Blackbox

Nuclear nation? French sperm count 'falls by a third'


The Extinction Protocol
Wed, 05 Dec 2012 08:09 UTC
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The sperm count of French men fell by a third between 1989 and 2005, a study suggests. The semen of more than 26,600 French men was tested in the study, reported in the journal Human Reproduction. The number of millions of spermatozoa per milliliter fell by 32.3%, a rate of about 1.9% a year. And the percentage of normally shaped sperm fell by 33.4%. The average sperm count remained within the fertile range, but experts want to see more research into possible causes. One of the paper's authors, Dr Joelle Le Moal, an environmental health epidemiologist, said: "To our knowledge, this is the first study concluding a severe and general decrease in sperm concentration and morphology at the scale of a whole country over a substantial period.

This constitutes a serious public health warning." But Dr Allan Pacey, senior lecturer in andrology at the University of Sheffield, said: "The change in sperm concentration described, 73.6 to 49.9 million per milliliter [on average for a 35-year-old], is still well within the normal range and above the lower threshold of concern used by doctors which is suggestive of male infertility, 15 million per milliliter." There has much been much debate in the past 20 years over whether sperm quality has decreased, with research supporting both sides of the controversy. This latest research adds weight to the numerous European studies that suggest one in five young men has a sperm count low enough to impair fertility.
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Alarm Clock

If this is what fracking is doing to animals - what is it doing to people?


RT
Tue, 04 Dec 2012 19:41 UTC

Elizabeth Royte, The Nation Magazine, Author of Garbage Land: On the Secret Trail of Trash joins Thom Hartmann. Sticking to environmental horrors...Is fracking responsible for killing off an alarming number of livestock around the nation? Authors of a new report looked into 24 different case studies in six different states where hydraulic fracking is taking place, to find out why livestock is getting sick and dying. Their conclusion: it's the fracking chemicals! For example in Louisiana, the study found 17 cows that died after being exposed to spilled fracking chemicals for only one hour. In central Pennsylvania, after 140 cattle were exposed to fracking chemicals, half died. And in western Pennsylvania, after a nearby pond used by pregnant cows was contaminated with fracking chemicals, half the calves born were dead. And if this is what fracking is doing to animals, what might it be doing to people?
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Info

Nanoparticles in your food? You're already eating them

Twilight Greenaway
Grist
Mon, 03 Dec 2012 13:46 UTC
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I've been keeping my eye on the role of nanotechnology in food for a few years now, so I was interested to see a feature-length investigation called "Eating Nano" in this month's E Magazine. In it, E editor Brita Belli takes a deep dive into the growing role of nanotechnology in food and agriculture, the current lack of oversight and regulations, and the growing consensus that more information and transparency are both sorely needed in relation to this growing field.

Nanotechnology involves the engineering and manipulation of particles at a nano scale. Nanoparticles, as they're called, are measured in nanometers or billionths of one meter. Another way to put it: If a nanoparticle were the size of a football, a red blood cell would be the size of the field. Although some nanoparticles have been found to exist in nature (carbon nanoparticles exist in caramelized foods, for instance, and silverware has been shown to shed nano-sized silver particles), it's the nanoparticles that are engineered in laboratories that have environmental health advocates concerned.
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Magnify

'Junk DNA' drives embryonic development


ScienceDaily
Mon, 03 Dec 2012 15:51 UTC
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© Sanford-Burnham Medical Research InstituteDifferentiating mouse embryonic stem cells (green = mesoderm progenitor cells, red = endoderm progenitor cells). The microRNAs identified in this study block endoderm formation, while enhancing mesoderm formation.
An embryo is an amazing thing. From just one initial cell, an entire living, breathing body emerges, full of working cells and organs. It comes as no surprise that embryonic development is a very carefully orchestrated process -- everything has to fall into the right place at the right time. Developmental and cell biologists study this very thing, unraveling the molecular cues that determine how we become human.

"One of the first, and arguably most important, steps in development is the allocation of cells into three germ layers -- ectoderm, mesoderm, and endoderm -- that give rise to all tissues and organs in the body," explains Mark Mercola, Ph.D., professor and director of Sanford-Burnham's Muscle Development and Regeneration Program in the Sanford Children's Health Research Center.

In a study published November 14 in the journal Genes & Development, Mercola and his team, including postdoctoral researcher Alexandre Colas, Ph.D., and Wesley McKeithan, discovered that microRNAs play an important role in this cell- and germ layer-directing process during development.
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