Health & WellnessS


Beaker

U.S. Minnesota: Wafting poison makes fertile ground for suit

Crop Spraying
Crop Spraying
Court rules pesticide drifting onto organic farm constitutes trespass.

Oluf Johnson's 12,000-acre farm in Stearns County is an organic island in a sea of chemically treated corn and soybeans.

Improperly applied pesticides repeatedly drift over from neighboring farms, often with dire consequences for Johnson. But now, thanks to a new court ruling, he and other farmers can sue to recover their losses.

Letting damaging chemicals cross property lines is trespassing, the Minnesota Court of Appeals ruled on Monday. Moreover, since those pesticides made his crop unsalable in the organic market, Johnson is entitled to damages from the company that applied it, the Paynesville Farmers Union Cooperative Oil Co., the court said.

"Whenever this happens it will give people with overspray a legal avenue to pursue," said Doug Spanier, an attorney with the Minnesota Department of Agriculture, which administers pesticide enforcement regulations in the state. And that could go for any farmer whose crop is made inedible by someone else's chemical spray and even homeowners whose property has been damaged by a neighbor's overuse of RoundUp, legal experts said.

Cow

Paleo Diet: Smart Eating or Latest Fad?

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© Getty Images
In the quest for optimum health and weight, should humans consider looking back at what their ancestors consumed? That's the theory proposed by the "Paleo Diet" (aka, Caveman Diet), which recommends taking cues from the age of hunters and gatherers and leaving some of our modern food groups behind.

The idea is simple: You eat a diet that's gluten-free, but rich in lean, organic meats, fish, poultry, eggs, vegetables, fruit and nuts. As much as possible should be sourced locally. You exclude grains, legumes, dairy products, salt, refined sugar and processed oils.

All of this measures up to a eating regimen that, according to Loren Cordain, professor of health and exercise at Colorado State University, is a "powerful way to normalize health and well-being.

Comment: What additional evidence is needed?? Humans have been eating a Paleolithic diet for most of our history and it was only with the advent of agriculture that the diseases of civilization began to plague mankind. See: Agriculture: The Worst Mistake In The History Of The Human Race

For more information on ways to improve health through correct nutrition, visit our Diet and Health Forum.


Attention

Low Salt Diet Increases Cardiovascular Mortality

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© Wikimedia CommonsHarvesting sea salt
The Low Salt Diet Revisited

A recent study on the effect of a low salt diet made headlines, finding that a low salt diet increases mortality for patients with congestive heart failure.(1-6) The study concluded there was not enough evidence to advise a low-salt diet for the rest of us. They doubted a low salt diet would benefit the population.(6) In this article we will re-examine the low salt diet, clear away the confusion, and make recommendations about salt intake, hypertension, and health.

Health Benefits of Salt

We know from many years of published studies that increasing salt intake increases blood volume and also blood pressure. Salt is essential for maintaining blood volume, blood pressure, and overall health. The salt content of blood is similar to ocean water. Both have sodium chloride, also known as salt.

Importance of Salt

One example of the importance of salt is the common practice of starting an intravenous solution of salt and water as the first line treatment for the trauma patient upon arrival to the hospital Emergency Room.

Family

Brain scans find similarities between children with autism and their siblings

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Children with autism and their siblings share similar patterns of reduced activity in brain regions linked to empathy, according to new research carried out at the University of Cambridge, UK. The researchers believe these findings could lead to a greater understanding of the role of genes in autism and the development of techniques for predicting the risk of developing autism in the future.

The study, which was carried out by a team of researchers led by Dr Michael Spencer with the backing of the Medical Research Council's Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, used functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) to detect active areas of the brain in response to images of different human expressions.

The researchers initially compared the brains of autistic children to children with no family history of autism and found those with autism displayed reduced brain activity in regions involved in responding to other people's emotions. This is not a new finding - a known feature of autism is a difficulty in detecting emotional signals such as body language and facial expressions. However, when the researchers went on to look at the unaffected siblings of the children with autism, they found a very similar pattern of reduced activity in the same brain regions.

Magic Wand

Epigenetic 'Memory' Key to Nature Versus Nurture

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© Unknown
Researchers funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) at the John Innes Centre have made a discovery, reported this evening (24 July) in Nature, that explains how an organism can create a biological memory of some variable condition, such as quality of nutrition or temperature. The discovery explains the mechanism of this memory - a sort of biological switch - and how it can also be inherited by offspring.

The work was led by Professor Martin Howard and Professor Caroline Dean at the John Innes Centre, which receives strategic funding from BBSRC. Funding for the project came from BBSRC, the European Research Council, and The Royal Society.

Professor Dean said "There are quite a few examples that we now know of where the activity of genes can be affected in the long term by environmental factors. And in some cases the environment of an individual can actually affect the biology or physiology of their offspring but there is no change to the genome sequence."

For example, some studies have shown that in families where there was a severe food shortage in the grandparents' generation, the children and grandchildren have a greater risk of cardiovascular disease and diabetes, which could be explained by epigenetic memory. But until now there hasn't been a clear mechanism to explain how individuals could develop a "memory" of a variable factor, such as nutrition.

Bug

No Liability for Beetles in Baby Food

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© foodfreedom.wordpress.com
Baby formula laced with beetles and larvae does not necessarily violate its manufacturer's promises of wholesomeness and quality, a federal judge ruled, in dismissing without prejudice a class action involving Abbott Laboratories' Similac.

Lead plaintiff Chalonda Jasper, an Indiana mother, may have been grossed out by the beetle parts, but she may have no legal recourse against Abbott, even though she relied upon Abbot's ad slogans, which included,
"When it comes to the science of nutrition, Similac stands apart."
Abbott recalled more than 5 million containers of Similac in September 2010, less than a week after Jasper had bought it and began feeding it to her son.

Toys

European Union Tightens Rules on Unsafe Children's Toys

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© Molly RileyA baby doll and a pair of plastic handcuffs are seen on display at a news conference where the U.S. Public Interest Research Group (PIRG) announced its 25th annual Trouble in Toyland report, in Washington November 23, 2010.
The European Union introduced tighter safety measures for children's toys on Wednesday, a measure that could hurt Chinese imports which make up 80 percent of all EU toy imports.

The new rules specifically target toys that contain phthalates, a plastic softening chemical that has been linked to hormone disruption in children.

They also target flame retardants in some toys, which the European Commission, the EU executive, says may hinder a child's growth and permanently damage their endocrine system.

Surveillance at EU borders and within the 27 member state bloc will be tightened, and manufacturers, importers and distributors will be responsible for identifying hazards and potential exposure to children.

Magnify

Tiny Nanoparticles Could Be a Big Problem

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© Jim Thomas/ETC GroupIan Illuminato of Friends of the Earth says consumers deserve a say in nanotech regulation.
Nanotechnology was supposed to revolutionize the world, making us healthier and producing cleaner energy. But it's starting to look more like a nightmare.

Nanomaterials - tiny particles as little as 1/100,000 the width of a human hair - have quietly been used since the 1990s in hundreds of everyday products, everything from food to baby bottles, pills, beer cans, computer keyboards, skin creams, shampoo, and clothes.

But after years of virtually unregulated use, scientists are now starting to say the most commonly used nanoproducts could be harming our health and the environment.

One of the most widespread nanoproducts is titanium dioxide. More than 5,000 tonnes of it are produced worldwide each year for use in food, toothpaste, cosmetics, paint, and paper (as a coloring agent), in medication and vitamin capsules (as a nonmedicinal filler), and in most sunscreens (for its anti-UV properties).

Whistle

The Smear Campaign They Used to Try to Shut Us Up


Barbara Loe Fisher is a pioneer in vaccine education and safety, and the founder of the National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC).

In an effort to educate and offer a counterbalance to the massive amounts of traditional mass media exposure on vaccines, which rarely ever mentions the potential dangers, we co-sponsored a message that was featured on the New York Time Square's Jumbotron in March of this year. It was a 15-second spot that ran every hour, 24/7 for five weeks.

To say it caused a stir would be an understatement. Here, Fisher discusses the controversy that ensued.

Sources

Video Transcript

Ambulance

Going into hospital far riskier than flying: WHO

A surgeon washes his hands
© Reuters/Jean-Paul Pelissier
A surgeon washes his hands before enter in an operating room at a hospital in Marseille, France, April 3, 2008.

Geneva, Switzerland - Millions of people die each year from medical errors and infections linked to health care and going into hospital is far riskier than flying, the World Health Organization said on Thursday.

"If you were admitted to hospital tomorrow in any country... your chances of being subjected to an error in your care would be something like 1 in 10. Your chances of dying due to an error in health care would be 1 in 300," Liam Donaldson, the WHO's newly appointed envoy for patient safety, told a news briefing.

This compared with a risk of dying in an air crash of about 1 in 10 million passengers, according to Donaldson, formerly England's chief medical officer.

"It shows that health care generally worldwide still has a long way to go," he said.