Over the past few years, we have periodically seen the letters 'M.M.S.' used in reference to an alternative health treatment. However, it was not until it was written about on our site, by a visiting commentator, that we did any research into M.M.S.. It is unfortunate that it has taken this long for us to notice this fraud, and we can only hope that it has not harmed anyone in the meantime. M.M.S. is an acronym for 'Miracle Mineral Solution'. (Yeah, that's what we thought too.) If you are not already cringing from the market-speak, you will be, when you find that it is simply chlorine dioxide (oxygenated chlorine).

This is the same compound which is used to bleach flour, and disinfect the municipal water supplies. Promoters of M.M.S. claim that it cures AIDS, herpes, cancer, malaria, T.B., and "many more diseases", which are unnamed. Snake oils never had it so good. The M.M.S. fraud would be amusing if it weren't so potentially dangerous. It is primarily being promoted by two people, named Jim Humble and Adam Abraham.

The F.D.A. has not made any move against these fraudsters, despite making every 'unapproved medical claim' imaginable. Yet, when colloidal silver is honestly promoted, or cherry farmers quote scientific studies in favor of their crops medicinal benefits, the F.D.A. enters high alert. This is a pattern which we have noticed, for the F.D.A. is only interested in silencing effective and legitimate alternative medicines, but it condones obvious frauds like M.M.S., because these frauds hurt alternative medicine (the competition) in the long term. In other words, alternative medicine frauds like this are actually beneficial to the pharmaceutical industry.

A chemical plant in South Australia is being used to manufacture a drug implicated in the death of a woman in Vanuatu last year. The product, likened to ''concentrated bleach'', is freely available in Australia and was responsible for at least three hospital admissions in NSW last year.

Miracle Mineral Solution, a chlorine dioxide solution claimed to treat everything from AIDS to leukaemia, is not registered for medical use in Australia and is being investigated by the Therapeutic Goods Administration over ''concerns about this product''.

But it is being produced and sold online by several Australian companies that claim variously that it is a cure for malaria, cancer, asthma and arthritis. Last year, six people suffered adverse reactions to the drug in NSW, according to the state's poisons centre. ''It's a bit like drinking concentrated bleach. They've had corrosive injuries: vomiting, stomach pains, diarrhoea,'' the medical director of the NSW Poisons Information Centre, Dr Naren Gunja, said. ''None of the people we know of have died. But if you drink enough sodium chlorite [the main chemical in MMS] and it causes problems of methemoglobinemia or kidney problems, it could cause death.''

A large, long-term study just reported in the American Heart Association journal Stroke has great news for women. Once again, a non-drug approach to avoiding one of the country's top killers has been shown to be a powerful "prescription". Harvard researchers found that women can dramatically slash their risk for both clot-caused (ischemic) strokes as well as bleeding (hemorrhagic) strokes by simply walking regularly.

"Though the exact relationship among different types of physical activity and different stroke subtypes remains unclear, the results of this specific study indicate that walking, in particular, is associated with lower risk of stroke," Jacob R. Sattelmair, M.Sc., lead author and doctoral candidate in epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health, said in a statement to the media.

The research team followed 39,315 U.S. female health professionals with an average age of 54 who were taking part in the Women's Health Study. Every two to three years, the study participants reported the physical activities they'd engaged in during the past years -- including walking or hiking, jogging, running, biking, doing aerobic exercise/aerobic dance, using exercise machines, playing tennis, swimming, or doing yoga. The women also reported how fast they tended to walk -- whether their walking pace was casual (about 2 mph), normal (2.9 mph), brisk (3.9 mph) or very brisk (4 mph).

Most people have no idea that the a large portion of the food that they eat each day has been genetically modified. In fact, over the past decade it has been nothing short of a revolution. Today 93 percent of soybeans and 80 percent of corn in the U.S. grow from seeds genetically altered according to Monsanto company patents. But is it a good revolution? Is it a positive thing for one corporation to control such a high percentage of the seeds? Are there reasons to believe that genetically modifying our food could be harmful to all of us?

The truth is that as Monsanto has gained an increasing market share in the seed market, prices for the Monsanto-patented genetically modified seeds have steadily increased. In fact, those prices have approximately doubled over the past decade.

Rats with damaged spines can walk again thanks to acupuncture. But it's not due to improvements in their energy flow or "chi". Instead, the ancient treatment seems to stop nerve cell death by reducing inflammation.

Acupuncture's scientific credentials are growing. Trials show that it improves sensory and motor functions in people with spinal cord injuries.

To find out why, Doo Choi and his colleagues at Kyung Hee University in Seoul, South Korea, damaged the spines of 75 rats. One-third were given acupuncture in two locations: Shuigou - between their snout and mouth, and Yanglingquan - in the upper hind leg. Others received no treatment or "simulated acupuncture".

After 35 days, the acupuncture group were able to stand at a steeper incline than the others and walk better. Staining their paws with ink revealed that their forelimb-hindlimb coordination was fairly consistent and that there was very little toe dragging, whereas the control groups still dragged their feet.

Youngsters in America are so hooked to cell phones, computers and social media that now it has become an addiction. A new study has revealed that college students are obsessed with social networking media and have started showing symptoms similar to drug and alcohol addiction.

Researchers at the University of Maryland conducted a study involving 200 students. They found that the youngsters want to stay connected all the time and are in the habit of having an easy access to all information around them.

Students who were engaged in some unnatural and unrealistic behaviors did some self-reporting to form the end-results of the study. The students were asked by the researchers to quit all electronic media for 24 hours, following which they were asked to pen down their experience.

The herbal supplement milk thistle may prevent liver damage in people undergoing chemotherapy, according to a new study conducted by researchers from Columbia University Medical Center and published in the journal Cancer.

Researchers conducted the study on 50 children undergoing a "maintenance" round of chemotherapy for acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL), a type of blood cancer. Approximately two-thirds of all children undergoing treatment for ALL usually develop liver toxicity during their treatment, presenting doctors with the choice between scaling back the treatment and risking a resurgence of the cancer, or continuing with treatment unaltered and risking permanent liver damage and lifelong health complications. There is currently no known way of preventing liver toxicity in chemotherapy patients.

Study participants were assigned to take either a milk thistle pill or a placebo capsule for one month. At the start of the study, all 50 children were suffering from liver inflammation due to prior rounds of chemotherapy. By the end, children taking milk thistle had significantly lower levels of two liver inflammation markers than children taking a placebo.

Those who seek answers for their health outside the realm of their own decisions are looking in the wrong place. Health is no accident. Lasting health can only appear as the result of a lifetime of informed, deliberate decisions aligned with nature's principles of health, not the distorted version of health promoted by our backward system of mainstream medicine.

And yet many people still believe that health is something that is bestowed upon them by some mysterious exterior force. The whole effort to raise money to find "the cure" for cancer, for example, is a powerful demonstration of misplaced faith in external healing. This idea that a cure for cancer must come from outside one's self rather than from within is perhaps the greatest conceptual sleight of hand that has yet been pulled off by the sick-care industry.

The cure for cancer is already programmed within. Each person is born with a highly-advanced cellular nanotechnology that already knows how to cure cancer. Activating this inner healing potential is all that's necessary to prevent and cure cancer everywhere around the world, starting right now.

Losing a parent to suicide makes children more likely to die by suicide themselves and increases their risk of developing a range of major psychiatric disorders, according to a study led by Johns Hopkins Children's Center that is believed to be the largest one to date on the subject.

A report on the findings will appear in the May issue of the Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry.

How and when the parent died strongly influenced their child's risk, the researchers report. And because the findings show that parental suicide affects children and teens more profoundly than young adults, it is likely that environmental and developmental factors, as well as genetic ones, are at work in next-generation risk, the scientists say.

"Losing a parent to suicide at an early age emerges as a catalyst for suicide and psychiatric disorders," says lead investigator Holly C. Wilcox, Ph.D., a psychiatric epidemiologist at Hopkins Children's. "However, it's likely that developmental, environmental and genetic factors all come together, most likely simultaneously, to increase risk."

Self-esteem increases as people grow older, but dips when people are in their 60s, although those who make more money and are healthier tend to retain better views of themselves, researchers have found.

In the study, published in the April issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, researchers surveyed 3,617 U.S. adults aged 25 to 104, trying to reach all of them four times between 1986 and 2002.

"Self-esteem is related to better health, less criminal behavior, lower levels of depression and, overall, greater success in life," the study's lead author, Ulrich Orth, said in a news release from the American Psychological Association. "Therefore, it's important to learn more about how the average person's self-esteem changes over time."

Young people had the lowest self-esteem, but it grew as people aged, peaking at about age 60. Women had lower self-esteem than men, on average, until they reached their 80s and 90s, the study authors found.