Health & WellnessS


Health

Best of the Web: Unsafe at any dose: Hormone therapy boosts cancer death risk

Martha Rosenberg
FoodConsumer
Sun, 24 Oct 2010 17:29 UTC
pink cancer ribbon, breast
© elements4health.com

Want to increase your chances of getting node-positive breast cancer and dying from it? Take hormone therapy.

Pharma's lucrative estrogen plus progestin combo is already known to increase the chance of getting breast cancer by 26 percent. But an article in this week's Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) shows hormone therapy also increases the chance of dying from breast cancer, as follow-ups are conducted on women who took it.

In fact hormone therapy, already indicted for causing delays in breast cancer diagnosis by increasing breast density (and increasing lung cancer deaths) is now so dangerous Dr. Peter B. Bach from the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, who wrote an accompanying JAMA editorial, told the New York Times the very advice of "taking the lowest possible doses for the shortest possible time" is now questionable. Perhaps like prescribing the fewest and lowest tar cigarettes as possible.

Comment: While discussing the danger of hormone therapy, this article takes a few swipes at smoking. Let us point out that contrary to hormone therapy, which is harmful and promoted by Big Pharma, smoking is beneficial by boosting the acetylcholine level in your brain and thereby promoting learning, thinking and reducing stress. For more information on the anti-smoking scam, read our Focus article below:

Let's All Light Up!

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Bulb

Is Atheism a Belief?

Greta Christina
Greta Christina's Blog
Sun, 24 Oct 2010 20:06 UTC
Image

I really wish I could just leave it at that. Maybe post a funny story about Einstein instead, or show you some cute pictures of our cats.

But I suppose I can't just leave it at that.

Here's the thing. One of the most common accusations aimed at atheists is that atheism is an article of faith, a belief just like religion. Because atheism can't be proven with absolute 100-percent certainty, the accusation goes, therefore not believing in God means taking a leap of faith -- a leap of faith that's every bit as irrational and unjustified as religion.

It's a little odd to have this accusation hurled in such an accusatory manner by people who supposedly respect and value faith. But that's a puzzle for another time. Today, I want to talk about a different puzzle -- the puzzle of what atheism really is, and how it gets so misunderstood.
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Syringe

UK: Patients' anger after they are unable to opt out of swine flu vaccine despite fears of side effects

Jo Macfarlane
DailyMail
Sun, 24 Oct 2010 02:41 UTC
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© DailyMailThe H1N1 'swine flu' vaccine will be included in this years seasonal flu jab meaning millions of elderly and vulnerable patients will get it automatically
Patients' groups have expressed anger over this year's seasonal flu jab programme because people are unable to opt out of having the swine flu vaccine.

The H1N1 vaccine will be the dominant of three flu strains included in the shot, meaning millions of elderly and vulnerable patients will get it automatically.

Yet many people refused to have the swine flu vaccine when it was offered last year because of fears it may cause serious side effects.
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Bad Guys

The Doctors on Pharma's Payroll

Christopher Lane, Ph.D.
Psychology Today
Sat, 23 Oct 2010 01:34 UTC
Earlier this week, investigative journalists at ProPublica released a devastating report on the number of American doctors with spotty records who are shilling for drug companies. The report makes for depressing - yet eye-popping - reading.

Compiling its database from disclosures made by seven major drug companies, including Lilly, AstraZeneca, Merck, GlaxoSmithKline, and Johnson & Johnson, the investigative agency found that these and other companies had spent "$257.8 million in payouts since 2009 for [doctors'] speaking, consulting and other duties."

Yet many of the hired shills had been disciplined by state boards for serious professional misconduct. In some cases, the doctors' licenses had even been revoked. Regardless, they were still being paid tens of thousands of dollars aggressively to push drugs such as the painkiller Bextra and the diabetes drug Avandia that the FDA has since yanked because of their alarming side effects.

Most of the disclosures were the result of legal settlements compelling the drug makers to air their dirty laundry. The response and outcry, including by PhRMA - Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America - which posted a defensive mini-essay trying to change the subject and avoid the facts, was almost instantaneous, and I'll get to that in a moment.
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Family

Study: Paying Cash, Not Credit, Leads to Healthier Food Choices

Meredith Melnick
Time
Thu, 21 Oct 2010 14:02 UTC
supermarket
© Noel Hendrickson/Getty
Paying with cash instead of plastic at the grocery store leads to more careful spending and healthier food choices, a study in the Journal of Consumer Research finds.

The idea is that shelling out actual money is psychologically more difficult than swiping a credit card, which takes away from the joy of spending.

Researchers followed the grocery shopping habits of 1,000 households over six months, tracking what they bought and how they paid for it.

"The notion that mode of payment can curb impulsive purchase of unhealthy food products is substantially important," wrote authors, Manoj Thomas, Kalpesh Kaushik Desai and Satheeshkumar Seenivasan. "The epidemic increase in obesity suggests that regulating impulsive purchases and consumption of unhealthy food products is a steep challenge for many consumers."
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Heart

The 'Mommy Brain' Is Bigger: How Love Grows a New Mother's Brain

Maia Szalavitz
Time
Thu, 21 Oct 2010 13:56 UTC
mother and child
© Unknown
Take heart, new moms: you may be feeling overwhelmed, exhausted and distracted, but your brain is actually growing. Especially if you're the kind of mom who's been driving your friends and family mad by talking about how perfect, special and beautiful your new child is.

Despite the fact that the term "mommy brain" typically describes mindless behavior - like putting the milk away in the closet and your hat in the fridge - a new study published in Behavioral Neuroscience finds that women's brains may actually get bigger during new motherhood. The study's authors took brain scans of 19 moms two to four weeks after birth and again two to four months later, and found that their brains showed growth in midbrain regions involved with the experience of pleasure and in the prefrontal cortex, which is linked to reasoning, planning and judgment.

New mothers who seemed to take more pleasure and joy in their role as parent - selecting from a list of adjectives more positive words like "ideal" to describe their infants, and words such as "proud" and "blessed" to describe their experience of parenthood - saw greater growth in their emotion-processing regions.
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Cheeseburger

Some Africans, Poor No More, Hit by New Diseases


Associated Press
Sat, 23 Oct 2010 10:52 UTC
Johannesburg - The medical experts gathered from around Africa were here to talk about a continentwide epidemic, but it wasn't AIDS or malaria - it was diabetes, and the bad habits that often bring it on.

A growing urban middle class is defying the image of Africa as poor, underfed and under-medicated. And with the comforts of middle class life, afflictions familiar in the West are making inroads here too - obesity, diabetes, lung cancer, strokes, heart disease.

A continent that traditionally traveled on foot or by bicycle now increasingly rides cars and buses. More time is spent at desks. Elevators are replacing stairs. White-collar Africans are discovering the gym.
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Health

This Cooking Oil is a Powerful Virus-Destroyer and Antibiotic...

Dr. Mercola
Foodconsumer.org
Fri, 22 Oct 2010 09:33 UTC
Image
© b4tea.com
You've no doubt noticed that for about the last 60 years the majority of health care officials and the media have been telling you saturated fats are bad for your health and lead to a host of negative consequences, like elevated cholesterol, obesity, heart disease and Alzheimer's disease.

Meanwhile during this same 60 years the American levels of heart disease, obesity, elevated serum cholesterol and Alzheimer's have skyrocketed compared to our ancestors, and even compared to modern-day primitive societies using saturated fat as a dietary staple.

Did you know that multiple studies on Pacific Island populations who get 30-60% of their total caloric intact from fully saturated coconut oil have all shown nearly non-existent rates of cardiovascular disease?[1]

Clearly, a lot of confusion and contradictory evidence exists on the subject of saturated fats, even among health care professionals.

But I'm going to tell you something that public health officials and the media aren't telling you.

The fact is, all saturated fats are not created equal.

The operative word here is "created", because some saturated fats occur naturally, while other fats are artificially manipulated into a saturated state through the man-made process called hydrogenation.

Hydrogenation manipulates vegetable and seed oils by adding hydrogen atoms while heating the oil, producing a rancid, thickened oil that really only benefits processed food shelf life and corporate profits.

The medical and scientific communities are now fairly united in the opinion that hydrogenated vegetable and seed oils should be avoided.
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Info

Falling in love 'more scientific than you think'

Sara Miller
Syracuse University
Sat, 23 Oct 2010 05:31 UTC
A new meta-analysis study, "The Neuroimaging of Love," conducted by Syracuse University Professor Stephanie Ortigue, reveals that falling in love can elicit not only the same euphoric feeling as using cocaine, but also affects intellectual areas of the brain. Researchers also found falling in love only takes about a fifth of a second.

Ortigue is an assistant professor of psychology and an adjunct assistant professor of neurology, both in The College of Arts and Sciences at Syracuse University.

Results from Ortigue's team revealed when a person falls in love, 12 areas of the brain work in tandem to release euphoria-inducing chemicals such as dopamine, oxytocin, adrenaline and vasopression. The love feeling also affects sophisticated cognitive functions, such as mental representation, metaphors and body image.

The findings beg the question, "Does the heart fall in love, or the brain?"
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Cell Phone

DECT Cordless Phones (and WiFi) Causes Heart Irregularities


Powerwatch News
Fri, 22 Oct 2010 19:11 UTC
DECT Cordless phones (Digital Enhanced Cordless Technology) which transmit a pulsed signal have been shown to impact heart rate in new research published in the European Journal of Oncology.

The double-blind, peer reviewed provocation study of 25 people validates the condition complained of by increasing numbers of people across the globe today called 'electrosensitivity' (ES or EHS), demonstrating immediate effects on heart rate, almost doubling the heart rate in some cases. The study was led by Prof. Magda Havas of Trent University, Canada.

"What we found is what many people have said for a long time about devices that emit microwaves," stated Dr. Havas. "People don't just feel ill, their heart begins to race and this is measurable with medical heart monitoring devices."
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