Health & WellnessS


Sherlock

When 'Organic' Food Isn't Organic

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© The Register-Guard
As manufacturers change their products, labels may lag behind

Sales of organic foods have climbed for the past decade, outpacing the growth of their conventional counterparts, as consumers paid a premium for food they saw as safer, higher quality and more environmentally friendly.

But at the same time demand for organics was growing, some of the companies producing organic food were quietly reducing their use of organic ingredients. This happened for a variety of reasons, including rising commodity prices and, in some cases, new corporate parents strongly rooted in conventional food processing.

The switch from organic to non­organic ingredients hasn't always been apparent to customers - or even to the retailers selling them.

In the most recent case to come to light, many consumers across the country have been scooping Golden Temple granola from bulk bins and buying boxes of Peace Cereal thinking the products are made with mostly organic ingredients, when they haven't been for years, according to an organic foods industry watchdog group.

Heart

Stress Tips: Calm Your Mind, Heal Your Body

wellness
© Unknown
When it comes to your health, there is one factor that is more important than almost any other...

If it is missing from your life, it causes or worsens 95 percent of all illness. It has been associated with dramatic reductions in disease and increased longevity.

And it is more important than cholesterol, blood sugar, blood pressure, or any other risk factor in determining whether you will live a long and healthy life. But it doesn't come in a pill, and it can't be found in a hospital or in your doctor's office.

What is this critical factor that determines so much about how healthy or how sick you are?

Your attitude, your social networks, your community, and your spiritual beliefs.

Put another way, the health of your mind and spirit and your sense of connection to your community has an immense impact on the health of your body. In fact, aside from eating breakfast, the biggest predictor of longevity is psychological resiliency - being able to roll with the punches that life throws at us.

Comment: There is one proven technique that can assist you with reducing your stress, calming and focusing your mind, creating better links between body and mind and thus improving quality of life, increasing sense of connection with others in your community. It will help you to have improved overall health, a stronger immune system, better impulse control, reduced inflammation, etc. It will also help you to heal emotional wounds; anything that may hinder or prevent you from leading a healthy and fulfilling life.

The Éiriú Eolas technique grew out of research conducted by the Quantum Future Group under the direction of Laura Knight-Jadczyk and Gabriela Segura, M.D. The practice has been thoroughly researched and proven to work by the thousands of people who are already benefiting from this unique program. The effects are cumulative and results and benefits can be seen in only a very short time, sometimes after just one session!

There is a myriad of relaxation techniques out there, but not many of them can attest to having not only immediate effects, but also having a highly practical application. With Éiriú Eolas, there is no need to sit in special postures, or be present in a carefully prepared relaxing atmosphere. The strength of the program comes from its high adaptability to stressful conditions of the modern world. Anyone can do it, be it a student, sitting outside of a lecture hall before the exam, a mechanic needing a break from tackling problems all day, a businessman just before signing an important deal, a mother having to raise three children and worrying if she will have enough money to pay the mortgage, etc.

Visit the Éiriú Eolas site or participate on the forum to learn more about the scientific background of this program and then try it out for yourselves, free of charge.


Nuke

Effect of radiation on humans still harbors mysteries

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© UnknownOnly Chernobyl and the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki have provided definitive information on the effect of radiation.
Japan's alarm over radiation found in spinach and milk has also raised questions, given that little is known about its effect on the human body.

While some tests have been done on animals, sparse information is available on how eating contaminated food affects people in the short and long term.

The main reason is the lack of research subjects, limited to those affected by the 1945 nuclear attacks on the Japanese cities of Nagasaki and Hiroshima and the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear plant disaster in the Ukraine, then a part of the Soviet Union.

But now Japan is looking for answers, all part of the ripple effect from the March 11 mammoth earthquake and subsequent tsunami that wreaked havoc on the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant's six reactors and led to the release of unknown quantities of radioactive vapors.

On Sunday Japanese authorities slapped restrictions on milk and spinach that tested positive for radioactive cesium-137 and iodine-131 isotopes. In addition to the spinach and milk, very small amounts of radioactive iodine have been detected in tap water near the plant.

Comment: We doubt little is known about the effects of radiation. Radiation affected Japan in WWII. Radioactive materials have been used in the form of Depleted Uranium in Kosovo, Iraq and Afghanistan to name a few. The following articles are helpful in reference to detoxifying and decontamination:

Detoxify or Die: Natural Radiation Protection Therapies for Coping With the Fallout of the Fukushima Nuclear Meltdown

Gabriela Segura, M.D.: Detoxing After the Gulf Oil Disaster

The Day the Water Died: Detoxing after the Gulf Oil Spill

Also helpful are the following Signs of the Times podcasts: GMO Frankenfoods and What You Can Do to Improve Your Health &/or Toxic World, Toxic Bodies


Info

Why high fat diets are not fattening

Because it's called fat, it makes sense and is intuitive to believe that fat is fattening. It's also rich in calories compared to carbohydrate or protein. The thing is, though, the evidence does not strongly link fat-eating with obesity, and eating low-fat diets are, on the whole, spectacularly ineffective for the purposes of weight loss. Never mind what common sense may dictate, taken as a whole the evidence suggests fat is not particularly fattening after all.

To understand how this can be it helps to understand a little about what influences the accumulation of fat in the fat cells. One key player here is the hormone insulin. This hormone predisposes the body to fatty accumulation through a variety of mechanisms, including enhanced uptake of fat into the fat cells (through activation of the enzyme lipoprotein lipase) and suppression of fat release (by inhibiting the enzyme hormone-sensitive lipase). Here's the thing: fat does not stimulate insulin secretion directly. Is it possibly then that someone could eat a diet of nothing but fat and lose weight, even if they were not in calorie deficit?

This concept may sound far-fetched to some, but there is some evidence for it. One piece of evidence comes in the form of a study in which individuals, on separate occasions, were allowed no food or fed with fat into a vein.

Syringe

Drug Resistance Hampers Fight Against Tuberculosis

Rising rates of multi-drug resistant tuberculosis (TB) are hampering world health programs aimed at tackling TB and threaten to wipe out progress made against the disease, scientists said on Friday.

Experts from the World Health Organization and the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) said they were concerned about spreading multidrug-resistant TB, known as MDR TB, in Europe, and the persistence of TB among children.

A second report, in The Lancet medical journal, said sub-Saharan Africa was disproportionately affected and accounted for four of every five cases of tuberculosis linked to HIV, the human immunodeficiency virus that causes AIDS.

"Increasing rates of drug-resistant TB in eastern Europe, Asia, and sub-Saharan Africa now threaten to undermine the gains made by worldwide tuberculosis control programs," said researchers in The Lancet.

TB kills an estimated 1.7 million people each year and the worldwide number of new cases -- more than 9 million -- is higher than at any other time in history, they said.

According to data from the WHO's European office, reported rates of TB have been falling in Europe since 2005 with a regional average of 36.8 notifications per 100,000 population in 2009. But notification rates of newly detected and relapsed TB cases in 18 high-priority countries remain almost eight times higher than in the rest of the region, the WHO data show.

Comment: Low levels of Vitamin D have been found to correspond to the progression of tuberculosis according to the CDC.

Vitamin D has also been shown to play a critical role in the human body's response to tuberculosis.


Life Preserver

Healing Japan: Psychological Fallout Could Last Years

Distress, Nuclear Anxiety, PTSD in the Years to Come

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© Toshiyuki Tsunenari/APA woman reacts amidst debris caused by Friday's massive earthquake and the ensuing tsunami, in Natori, northern Japan.
The trauma doesn't seem to end for Japan: First earthquake, then tsunami, now a country with more than 4,000 known dead and nearly 10,000 more missing must cope with the threat of nuclear contamination.

Although officials are still struggling to meet the immediate, physical needs of survivors, the psychological wounds of this disaster, for those directly impacted and the nation as a whole, will leave their imprint for years, even decades, to come, psychologists say.

Beyond the practical aspects of rebuilding, how does a devastated nation restore the minds and hearts of its people and stave off long-term psychological distress? Even as relief efforts fight to get food, baby formula, water, and oil to the affected region, post-trauma mental health care has already begun.

Psychiatric teams have gone into the area, says Dr. Makiko Okuyama, head of the Department of Psychosocial Medicine at the National Center for Child Health Development, who is part of the relief effort now in Japan.

Wine

English booze shocker: 3-year-old treated for alcoholism

Talk about underage drinking.

Authorities in England say a 3-year-old there was recently treated for alcoholism. The unnamed child had been given alcohol regularly, a trust that runs three hospitals in central England confirmed on Tuesday.

The case highlights a new low in Britain's struggle to control a binge-drinking culture. which has seen alcohol-related deaths double in the past two decades.

Of course, England isn't the only country to struggle with an underage drinking problem.
Alcohol baby
© Credit: CBS/The Early Show

X

MOX plutonium fuel used in Fukushima's Unit 3 reactor two million times more deadly than enriched uranium

Largely absent from most mainstream media reports on the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster is the fact that a highly-dangerous "mixed-oxide" (MOX) fuel is present in six percent of the fuel rods at the plant's Unit 3 reactor. Why is MOX a big deal? According to the Nuclear Information Resource Center (NIRS), this plutonium-uranium fuel mixture is far more dangerous than typical enriched uranium -- a single milligram (mg) of MOX is as deadly as 2,000,000 mg of normal enriched uranium.

On March 14, Unit 3 of the Fukushima reactor exploded, sending a huge smoke plume into the air. This particular reactor, of course, contains the rods fueled with MOX. You can watch a clip of that explosion here:


If even a couple milligrams of MOX were released during this explosion -- or if other explosions at the plant inflict any damage on the MOX-filled rods -- then the consequences could be exponentially more devastating than the mere leakage of enriched uranium. And since nobody knows for sure exactly which rods have been damaged, and whether or not the situation can actually be contained, it is only a matter of time before the world finds out for sure.

Family

Dangers Of General Electric's Mark 1 Reactors Known For 40 Years (GE)

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© Unknown
The New York Times reported this week that the Mark 1 nuclear reactors were developed in the 1960s by General Electric (NYSE: GE).

As far back as 1972, there were warnings that, if a Mark 1 reactor's cooling system failed, the fuel rods would overheat and, as a result, the primary containment vessel surrounding the reactor would burst, spilling radiation into the environment. That warning is dangerously close to becoming a premonition, with a containment vessel damaged at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in Japan.

Soon after GE began production of the Mark 1 reactors, American regulators began identifying weaknesses. Stephen H. Hanauer, then a safety official with the Atomic Energy Commission, said in 1972 that the Mark 1 system should be discontinued because, among other concerns, the smaller containment design is more susceptible to explosion and rupture from a buildup of hydrogen, which may be the case at Fukushima Daiichi.

Also in 1972, Joseph HenGdry, who later became the chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, said that while the idea of banning Mark 1 systems was attractive, it could also spell "the end of nuclear power" due to the fact that the technology had become so widely accepted.

Family

Wholesale prices up 1.6 percent on steep rise in food

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© Associated Press/Al Behrmann this March 1, 2011 photo, a customer looks at fresh vegetables at a Kroger Co. supermarket in Cincinnati. Wholesale prices jumped last month by the most in nearly two years due to higher energy costs and the steepest rise in food prices in 36 years.
Washington -- Wholesale prices jumped last month by the most in nearly two years due to higher energy costs and the steepest rise in food prices in 36 years. Excluding those volatile categories, inflation was tame.

The Labor Department said Wednesday that the Producer Price Index rose a seasonally adjusted 1.6 percent in February -- double the 0.8 percent rise in the previous month. Outside of food and energy costs, the core index ticked up 0.2 percent, less than January's 0.5 percent rise.

Food prices soared 3.9 percent last month, the biggest gain since November 1974. Most of that increase was due to a sharp rise in vegetable costs, which increased nearly 50 percent. That was the most in almost a year. Meat and dairy products also rose.

Energy prices rose 3.3 percent last month, led by a 3.7 percent increase in gasoline costs.