Health & WellnessS


Health

Coconut Oil Benefits: When Fat Is Good For You

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© virgincoconutoil.us
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, including high 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.

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

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.

Question

Just How Bad is Aspartame?

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© healingdaily.com
When I wrote about diet soda and and its health effects last week, I didn't expect much of a reaction. I guess in the back of my mind, I was thinking, people still drink that stuff?

Well, they do - by the bucketful. Overall, U.S. soda consumption is declining slowly, but Americans still drink more soda than than anyone else on the planet, by a wide margin. According to one reckoning, the average American drinks 736 "eight-ounce servings" each year (though "eight-ounce serving" seems like a quaint notion in the age of the Big Gulp). I can't find good figures on how much of that gusher is diet soda, but apparently it's a lot. According to AdBrands.net, four of the top 10 leading U.S. soda brands are diet versions of big names like Coke and Pepsi.

Comment: For more information about how the FDA suppressed studies regarding the serious health effects associated with Aspartame consumption read the following articles:

The Deadly Neurotoxin Nearly EVERYONE Uses Daily (VIDEO)
America's Deadliest Sweetener Betrays Millions, Then Hoodwinks You With Name Change
Aspartame: The Politics of Food
A Dangerous Spin On The Cancer Risks Of Sugar-Free Sweeteners
Searle, Monsanto and Ajinomoto: Three Corporate Miscreants in the Toxic Junk Food Additive and Aspartame Business
ASPARTAME - The Silent Killer
FDA Hid Research That Damned Aspartame: Fatal Studies Should Have Blocked NutraSweet Approval


Attention

NIH Links Pesticides to Parkinson's

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Warning: The risk of developing Parkinson's increases according to the level of exposure to pesticides.
The National Institutes of Health released research Friday that supported earlier research demonstrating a link between two pesticides and Parkinson's disease.

The study showed that people who used either rotenone or paraquat are about two-and-a-half times more likely to develop Parkinson's than people who never used either pesticide.

Pesticides were long suspected to be tied to Parkinson's, at least in part because of the high rate of the disease among farmworkers. Scientists have also been aware for many years that both paraquat and rotenone are neurotoxins that, when given to animals, reproduce features of Parkinson's in the brain.

Ambulance

Hugh Hefner Crystal Harris Playboy Epidemic

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Hugh Hefner might be postponing any upcoming Playboy parties due to a health epidemic at the mansion.

Hugh Hefner is preparing to marry Playboy playmate Crystal Harris but he has quite a large problem on his hands. It turns out that the Playboy Mansion is under investigation by the Health Department after a recent health epidemic began.

Earlier this month, Hugh Hefner held a party at the famous Playboy Mansion and things did not end so well. It turns out that guests at the party suffered severe respiratory problems and the Health Department is now officially investigating. The source of the epidemic is unknown at the moment but many believe it had something to do with the Grotto or a fog machine that was on site.

Hopefully this health debacle at Playboy HQ is all cleared up in time for the Hugh Hefner - Crystal Harris wedding; we wouldn't want the guests there coughing during the ceremony now would we?

Arrow Up

Singapore: Flu cases exceed epidemic levels

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Singapore- The number of flu cases in Singapore has gone higher than the epidemic levels first seen in January.

In the week after Lunar New Year, the number of patients seeking treatment for flu at polyclinics was 21,204 - the highest since the start of the year.

That's 15 per cent more than when the epidemic threshold was first crossed in the second week of January, with more than 18,377 cases.

The Health Ministry said most people with flu recover with rest and treatment.

It has advised flu vaccinations for those in the vulnerable groups, such as very young children, the elderly and patients with chronic diseases.

Comment: Eighteen Reasons Why You Should NOT Vaccinate Your Children Against The Flu This Season


Health

US: Parents blame toddler's death on tainted alcohol wipes

The parents of a 2-year-old Houston boy who died from a rare infection are suing makers of recalled alcohol prep products, claiming contaminated wipes and swabs transmitted bacteria that caused his fatal case of meningitis.

Sandra and Shanoop Kothari say their lively, dark-eyed toddler, Harrison, was recovering just fine from surgery to remove a benign cyst from near his brain and spinal cord last fall. But the day before he was set to be discharged after a week's stay, he developed a sudden and severe infection that worsened rapidly, causing multi-organ failure that led to Harrison's death on Dec. 1, 2010.


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Cultures showed he succumbed to acute bacterial meningitis caused by Bacillus cereus, bacteria typically found in rare food poisoning outbreaks, but not in hospital infections.

Health

Lyme Disease: Misdiagnosed, Underreported - and Epidemic

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© Alliance for Natural Health
This is yet another example of the US medical-industrial complex run amok. Lyme is one of the most serious epidemics of our time. Yet the opinions of 2% of the medical community are dominating the beliefs and practices of the mass majority of practicing Lyme physicians!

The number of Lyme disease cases in the United States has doubled since 1991. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimate that there are nearly 325,000 new cases each year - making Lyme disease an epidemic larger than AIDS, West Nile Virus, and Avian Flu combined. Yet, only a fraction of these cases are being treated, due to inaccurate tests and under-reporting. Each year, hundreds of thousands go undiagnosed or misdiagnosed, often told that their symptoms are all in their head.

You may well ask, "If it's such a huge epidemic, why are we not hearing anything about it?" The media is silent because doctors and insurance companies alike dismiss it as being a hypochondriacal illness, just as they've done for years to sufferers of fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome. It can be expensive to treat - untold numbers have it, and there is no protocol that is completely effective for all patients, no sure-fire cure. And at the root of it all, one Lyme disease organization, in its desire for power and control, is pitting doctors against doctors, prompting health insurance companies to deny medical claims at an alarming rate, and leaving suffering patients stuck in the middle.

Lyme disease (named after the town of Lyme, Connecticut, where a number of cases were identified in 1975) is a seriously complex multi-system inflammatory disease that is triggered by the bacterial lipoproteins (BLPs) produced by spiral-shaped bacteria called Borrelia burgdorferi, also called Bb. Bb are difficult to isolate, grow, and study in the laboratory. Moreover, there are five subspecies of Bb, over 100 strains in the US, and 300 strains worldwide. This diversity is thought to contribute to its ability to evade the immune system and antibiotic therapy, leading to chronic infection.

Bomb

Now USDA Has Deregulated Genetically Engineered Bio-Fuel Corn!

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© Unknown
This threat to edible corn comes on top of GE alfalfa (a major, major threat to organic agriculture) and GE sugarbeets. Please take action on this vital issue.

Last Friday, the US Department of Agriculture announced it would deregulate a type of industrial corn genetically engineered to produce an enzyme that speeds the breakdown of starch into sugar, which would increase efficiency in making ethanol. The agency concluded the crop does not pose a plant risk.

For once, natural health advocates are voicing the same concerns as the corn industry. The Center for Food Safety says that bio-fuel corn "will inevitably contaminate food-grade corn, and could well trigger substantial rejection in our corn export markets, hurting farmers."

Five major US trade associations whose member companies process and export corn and corn products agree. They say the product - if inadvertently commingled with general commodity corn at even very low levels - will have significant adverse effects on food product quality and performance.

Family

UM Study Says Energy Drinks Pose Serious Risk to Kids Industry disputes Miami School of Medicine's findings

Read More...

Ambulance

Haitian Cholera Epidemic Slows, Spreads to Other Nations

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© UnknownCholera is easily cured but has a very short incubation period.
The Haitian cholera epidemic appears to be subsiding, just as a United Nations' fact finding mission is due to arrive in Port-au-Prince. The U.N. group is charged with investigating the origins of the outbreak and reporting to the Haitian government and the United Nations sometime in March 2011. Genetic testing of cholera from Haiti suggested a close relationship to cholera outbreaks in South Asia. The U.N. has troops from Nepal stationed in the region where the Haitian cholera epidemic originated and they have been accused of being the source of the contagion.

According to the Haitian Government's Ministère de la Santé Publique et de la Population (MSPP) as of Feb. 2 there had been 220,784 cases of cholera since the outbreak began in October 2010, and 4,334 related deaths. The number of new cases has fallen from a high of 4,000 per day in mid December to less than 1,000 per day. The number of deaths per day has fallen, as well, from over 120 per day to fewer than 10.

The United States has provided over $44 million in aid thus far for the cholera epidemic. One year after the Great Haitian Earthquake, the U.S. has provided $1.17 billion in aid for quake assistance and relief.