Health & WellnessS


Cow Skull

South Dakota prairie dog plague spreading

A disease that can devastate prairie dog colonies has been confirmed on the Fort Pierre National Grassland in South Dakota.

The bacteria that causes sylvatic plague was found in fleas collected from prairie dog colonies, according to District Ranger Ruben Leal.

Sylvatic plague was first detected in South Dakota in 2004. The disease has been migrating north and west. It also has been detected on the Buffalo Gap National Grasslands, in Badlands National Park and on the Lower Brule Indian Reservation.

There have not been any confirmed cases of the plague in people in South Dakota.

Source: Associated Press

Donut

SOTT Focus: Everyone knows artificial sweeteners aren't good for you, so why are people still eating them?

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"Gives plants (and people) what they crave: electrolytes!" From the movie Idiocracy.
I imagine I probably shot myself in the foot with the title of this piece. Over the years, health-related journalism has beaten the artificial sweetener horse so beyond dead that I doubt anyone even pays attention to the words anymore. I know that when I see the words 'Artificial Sweetener' in the title of an article, I'm thinking, "Oh good, another article about artificial sweeteners! I wonder if it will give me the exact same information as the last six articles I read about artificial sweeteners along with some sweet alternatives at the end like stevia and xylitol?" Sometimes I'll skim them to see if the author passes the acid test by not recommending honey or agave syrup (i.e., sugar and sugar).

Well this article is going to be a little different, and it's not because I'm going to annoyingly refer to sucralose by its chemical name 1,6-dichloro-1,6-dideoxy-BETA-D-fructofuranosyl-4-chloro-4-deoxy-alpha-D-galactopyranoside (does that sound delicious, or what?). What I'm more interested in exploring here is not whether these things are bad for you, since it's abundantly clear that they are, but the question of why. Why is it that, despite all the information about artificial sweeteners, the sheer number of 'health news' articles floating around the interwebs, and the total chemical shitstorm these abominations of nourishment inflict on your insides, people continue to guzzle this stuff like it's water?

Pills

Pharma giant GSK fine upheld by French court for Parkinson's drug that turned man into 'gay sex and gambling addict'

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© news.ph.msn.comDidier Jambart
A French appeals court Wednesday upheld a ruling ordering pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline to pay 197,000 euros to a man who claimed that its drug to treat Parkinson's turned him into a gay sex and gambling addict.

The court in the northern city of Rennes said father-of-two Didier Jambart had suffered side effects after being administered the drug Requip in 2003 for the illness, which causes tremors, slows movement and disrupts speech.

A court in the western city of Nantes had previously ordered the British drug company to pay 117,000 euros ($151,000) in compensation in March.

Jambart, who was accompanied by his wife, burst into tears after the ruling.

"It's a great day," he said. "It's been a seven-year battle with our limited means for recognition of the fact that GSK lied to us and shattered our lives."

Comment: This is encouraging but will not stop Big Pharma's greed:
Big Pharma Crimes: Record $11 bln Fines No Deterrence - Psychopaths Consider it Just a Cost of Doing Business!
Big Pharma: Getting Away With Murder
Big Pharma's Deadly Experiments
Big Pharma Continues Drug Experiments in Underdeveloped Nations for Profit


Health

Codex: Separating Fact from Fiction

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Next week, ANH-USA will travel to Germany to represent YOU at the next Codex meeting. Here's what to expect.

The Alliance for Natural Health USA has been selected to represent US consumers at the international Codex Committee on Nutrition and Foods for Special Dietary Uses (CCNFSDU), which will meet December 3 - 7 in Germany.

The Codex Alimentarius (Latin for "Food Code") is a collection of internationally adopted food standards, guidelines, codes of practice, and other recommendations which supporters hope will become a global standard and also facilitate international trade. The CCNFSDU studies specific nutritional problems and advises the Codex Commission on general nutrition issues. They also develop guidelines for foods and supplements for special dietary uses, so having a seat at the table and being able to directly convey your concerns is a significant step forward for our consumer advocacy organization.

The Codex Commission's decisions are far-reaching, and generally work to the advantage of the world's most powerful countries and powerful industry members. Smaller countries and companies can easily get shut out of the process. We represent only the interests of the consumer, particularly the natural health community.

The Commission, through their various committees, addresses acceptable levels of pesticide residues, the amount of gluten allowed in gluten-free foods, GMOs and GMO labeling, infant formula, supplements, and contaminants in food. Regular Pulse readers will recall that we have some major concerns with the US adopting an international standard, particularly since the Commission usually follows the European Union, and the EU has adopted absurd limits on supplements - either banning them or allowing for sale only dosage strengths so low as to be completely ineffective.

Comment: For more information on Codex Alimentarius read:
Codex Threatens Health of Billions


Sherlock

Consumer Reports finds most pork contaminated with Yersinia

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In a new study of raw pork chops and ground pork, Consumer Reports found 69 percent of samples were contaminated with Yersinia enterocolitica, according to a report published by the group today.

A lesser-known foodborne pathogen, Yersinia enterocolitica can cause fever, abdominal pain and diarrhea, lasting one to three weeks, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. There is approximately one confirmed infection per 100,000 people reported each year, but since these cases are severely under-reported, CDC estimates there are actually around 100,000 infections in the United States annually.

Consumer Reports tested 198 samples and found that while the vast majority were positive for Yersinia, only 3 to 7 percent were positive for the more common foodborne pathogens Salmonella, Staphylococcus aureus or Listeria monocytogenes.

Health

Kaiser Permanente advises members against GMOs

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© permaculturenews.org
Kaiser Permanente, the largest managed healthcare organization in the United States, is advising members to limit exposure to genetically modified organisms (GMOs).

In its Northwest Fall 2012 newsletter, Kaiser warns of the potential danger GMOs pose to the national food supply. According to the newsletter:
GMOs have been added to our food supply since 1994, but most people don't know it because the United States does not require labeling of GMOs. As of 2012, most corn, soybeans, canola, cotton, and sugar beets are genetically modified. Nearly 80 percent of processed food and most fast food contain GMOs.

Despite what the biotech industry might say, there is little research on the long-term effects of GMOs on human health. Independent research has found several varieties of GMO corn caused organ damage in rats. Other studies have found that GMOs may lead to an inability in animals to reproduce.

Bacon

Sorry, vegans: Eating meat and cooking food is how humans got their big brains

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© Bigstock photo
Vegetarian, vegan and raw diets can be healthful, probably far more healthful than the typical American diet. But to call these diets "natural" for humans is a bit of a stretch in terms of evolution, according to two recent studies.

Eating meat and cooking food made us human, the studies suggest, enabling the brains of our prehuman ancestors to grow dramatically over a few million years.

Although this isn't the first such assertion from archaeologists and evolutionary biologists, the new studies demonstrate that it would have been biologically implausible for humans to evolve such a large brain on a raw, vegan diet and that meat-eating was a crucial element of human evolution at least a million years before the dawn of humankind.

Comment: Despite the low-fat propaganda at the end, this article gives good evidence for why vegetarians have been found to have smaller brains than their meat-eating peers.


Alarm Clock

Is genetically modified food killing us?

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© terravim.com
Last month, a group of Australian scientists published a warning to the citizens of the country, and of the world, who collectively gobble up some $34 billion annually of its agricultural exports. The warning concerned the safety of a new type of wheat.

As Australia's number-one export, a $6-billion annual industry, and the most-consumed grain locally, wheat is of the utmost importance to the country. A serious safety risk from wheat - a mad wheat disease of sorts - would have disastrous effects for the country and for its customers.

Which is why the alarm bells are being rung over a new variety of wheat being ushered toward production by the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) of Australia. In a sense, the crop is little different than the wide variety of modern genetically modified foods. A sequence of the plant's genes has been turned off to change the wheat's natural behavior a bit, to make it more commercially viable (hardier, higher yielding, slower decaying, etc.).

What's really different this time - and what has Professor Jack Heinemann of the University of Canterbury, NZ, and Associate Professor Judy Carman, a biochemist at Flinders University in Australia, holding press conferences to garner attention to the subject - is the technique employed to effectuate the genetic change. It doesn't modify the genes of the wheat plants in question; instead, a specialized gene blocker interferes with the natural action of the genes.

Health

Grapefruit conflicts with many medications

Grapefruit
© Andrew Crowley
Eating grapefruits or drinking the juice can cause serious side effects if taking certain medicines, doctors have warned.
More than 80 common medications interact with grapefruit -- about half with serious complications, including death, Canadian researchers say.

David Bailey, a clinical pharmacologist at the Lawson Health Research Institute in London, Ontario, first discovered the interaction between grapefruit and certain medications more than 20 years ago. Since then the number of drugs with the potential to interact has jumped.

"What I've noticed over the last four years is really quite a disturbing trend and that is the increase in the number of drugs that can produce not only adverse reactions but extraordinarily serious adverse drug reactions," Bailey told the Canadian Broadcasting Corp.

Many of the drugs are common, such as some cholesterol-lowering statins, antibiotics and calcium channel blockers used to treat high blood pressure. Other medications include agents used to fight cancer or suppress the immune system in people who have received an organ transplant, Bailey said.

Health

Texas medical board's lawsuit against CAM cancer pioneer Stanislaw Burzynski dismissed!!

justice scale
© Unknown
The state's attack on Dr. Stanislaw Burzynski is finally over. And some states are even passing laws that protect integrative physicians.

As we reported last November, Stanislaw Burzynski, MD, PhD, is a physician and biochemist practicing in Texas who developed (with his own money) a nontoxic gene-targeted cancer therapy called antineoplastons. This therapy has been shown to help cure some of the most "incurable" forms of terminal cancer.

In the 1980s, the Texas Medical Board (TMB) charged this caring and pioneering doctor with breaking a law that didn't actually exist, and tried to revoke his medical license. Numerous investigations later - including an appearance before the Texas Supreme Court - found no violation of any law or standard of care.

The FDA, the pharmaceutical industry, and the National Cancer Institute, knowing how promising Dr. Burzynski's therapy was proving to be, tried to duplicate his invention, then tried to steal his patents - but failed. Despite the fact that two informal medical board settlement panels found that Dr. Burzynski was acting within the standard of care, the TMB refused to drop the case and, earlier this year, made another attempt to revoke Dr. Burzynski's medical license.