Actress Angelina Jolie is the latest to surgically remove her breasts and partake in a concerning new trend that encourages healthy women to remove their body parts in order to 'prevent cancer'.

I've talked about this trend in the past, with cancer-free Sharon Osbourne and even a Miss America contender deciding to remove their breasts because they carry a mutation of the BRCA1 gene.

In fact, some doctors have gone much farther than just encouraging breast removal for those with 'at risk' genes. As I discussed back in 2012, some doctors are now making blanket recommendations to remove your limbs in order to 'prevent' cancer.

Paying no mind to nutrition or lifestyle, these doctors (who medical professionals I speak to all believe are truly off their rocker) are advocating self-mutilation in the highest degree and advocating it as something courageous. The simple reality is that we know we can alter our health through nutritional and lifestyle changes that directly impact the development of cancer and our overall immunity.

The 'prophylactic' removal of women's breasts due to BRCA1/BRCA2 status has become a disturbingly popular trend, and increasingly it is being celebrated in the mainstream media and medical establishments as a reasonable choice. But does the scientific evidence itself refute this approach?

Angelina Jolie's recent announcement in a New York Times op-ed that she had a 'prophylactic' double mastectomy due to her BRCA1/BRCA2 status has disturbing implications, some of which we covered late last year in connection with Allyn Rose, the 24-year old Miss America contestant who announced she would be undergoing a double mastectomy to "prevent" breast cancer.

Beyond the fact that as high-profile celebrities their decisions will affect millions of women's perception of the procedure, likely making them more accepting of the concept, their decisions also reflect profound misconceptions about gene-mediated disease risk embedded deeply within popular consciousness, from which prevailing medical opinion is hardly immune.

First, there is a common misconception about the role that the so-called breast cancer susceptibility genes, BRCA1 and BRCA2, play in breast cancer disease risk and prognosis. BRCA mutations vary widely by ethnicity and are exceedingly rare in the general population, which is why, as NBCNews.com recently reported, "The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force recommends that only women with a strong family history even think about getting a BRCA genetic test - which is only 2 percent of U.S. women." But even in those in which a BRCA mutation is identified, the genes, in and of themselves, do not alone make the disease.

In a report that undercuts years of public health warnings, a prestigious group convened by the government says there is no good reason based on health outcomes for many Americans to drive their sodium consumption down to the very low levels recommended in national dietary guidelines.

Those levels, 1,500 milligrams of sodium a day, or a little more than half a teaspoon of salt, were supposed to prevent heart attacks and strokes in people at risk, including anyone older than 50, blacks and people with high blood pressure, diabetes or chronic kidney disease - groups that make up more than half of the American population.

Some influential organizations, including the American Heart Association, have said that everyone, not just those at risk, should aim for that very low sodium level. The heart association reaffirmed that position in an interview with its spokesman on Monday, even in light of the new report.

But the new expert committee, commissioned by the Institute of Medicine at the behest of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said there was no rationale for anyone to aim for sodium levels below 2,300 milligrams a day. The group examined new evidence that had emerged since the last such report was issued, in 2005.

The human brain is the most complex object in the universe.

It is also the organ that consumes by far the most energy, compared to its weight.

The brain is only about 2% of our body weight, but uses 20% of the energy.

This remarkable organ has evolved over millions of years. During this time, humans were omnivores. We ate both meat and plants.

There are many nutrients in these foods that are absolutely critical for the proper function of this very delicate system.

Unless proper care is taken to supplement, going vegan and eschewing animal foods may lead to a deficiency in some of these important substances.

Here are 5 nutrients that are very important for the brain and only found in animal foods.

No matter what type of food we eat, we can't avoid lectins as they are in absolutely everything we consume on a daily basis. Lectins are proteins which are found in animals, plants and our very own bodies and they have a number of functions which offer a means of protection to us. They can help to control the protein levels in humans but are also protective for plants as well. It is also thought that the right lectins can also be beneficial in acting as a defense mechanism against serious illnesses, such as cancer.

Lectins can be useful for the body, but they can also be damaging, depending on the type of lectin. There are many different types of lectins found in different foods, so it is important to ensure we are taking in the right ones which offer the best benefits to our bodies. The function of lectins also depend a lot of the individual and how sensitive their digestive system is as to how they will react to specific types of lectins. The foods which contain particularly harmful lectins include grains and legumes, which is why they are forbidden on the Paleo diet. These foods have the potential to destroy all of the good nutrients and vitamins in your body which makes you more susceptible to suffering from serious illnesses, such as heart disease and obesity.

If you consume the wrong lectins and your body rejects these, it will also start rejecting all the good foods you eat, which means they will be of no benefit to you whatsoever. In order for the body to function effectively, it is essential that we absorb the right minerals and nutrients, which is why it is important to avoid legumes and grains on the Paleo diet. There are plenty of foods which contain lectins which are good for our body and act as a way of protecting it, so it is important to be aware of the right foods to eat in order to get the most out of our bodies and feel as healthy as we can.

Western drug companies tested pharmaceuticals on more than 50,000 people in the former communist East Germany, often without the knowledge of patients, several of whom died, the Spiegel news weekly reported Sunday.

Some 600 clinical trials were carried out in more than 50 hospitals until the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall, the report said, citing previously unpublished documents of the East German health ministry, pharmaceutical institute and Stasi secret police.

Many major drug companies from Germany, Switzerland and the United States took part, offering up to 800,000 West German marks (about 400,000 euros, $520,000 at today's exchange rate) per study, a boost for East Germany's underfunded health care system, Spiegel said.

Records showed that two people died in East Berlin during testing of Trental, a drug that improves blood circulation developed by then West German company Hoechst, which has since merged with Sanofi, the report said.

Technology has given us many gifts, among them dozens of new ways to grab our attention. It's hard to talk to a friend without your phone buzzing at least once. Odds are high you will check your Twitter feed or Facebook wall while reading this article. Just try to type a memo at work without having an e-mail pop up that ruins your train of thought.

But what constitutes distraction? Does the mere possibility that a phone call or e-mail will soon arrive drain your brain power? And does distraction matter - do interruptions make us dumber? Quite a bit, according to new research by Carnegie Mellon University's Human-Computer Interaction Lab.

There's a lot of debate among brain researchers about the impact of gadgets on our brains. Most discussion has focused on the deleterious effect of multitasking. Early results show what most of us know implicitly: if you do two things at once, both efforts suffer.

In fact, multitasking is a misnomer. In most situations, the person juggling e-mail, text messaging, Facebook and a meeting is really doing something called "rapid toggling between tasks," and is engaged in constant context switching.

As economics students know, switching involves costs. But how much? When a consumer switches banks, or a company switches suppliers, it's relatively easy to count the added expense of the hassle of change. When your brain is switching tasks, the cost is harder to quantify.

On April 19, 2013, GAP released "Deadly Dispersants in the Gulf: Are Public Health and Environmental Tragedies the New Norm for Oil Spill Cleanups?" The report details the devastating long-term effects on human health and the Gulf of Mexico ecosystem stemming from BP and the federal government's widespread use of the dispersant Corexit, in response to the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

GAP teamed up with the nonprofit Louisiana Environmental Action Network (LEAN) to launch this effort in August 2011 after repeatedly hearing from Gulf residents and cleanup workers that official statements from representatives of BP and the federal government were false and misleading in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon disaster. Over the next 20 months, GAP collected data and evidence from over two dozen employee and citizen whistleblowers who experienced the cleanup's effects firsthand, and GAP studied data from extensive Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. Taken together, the documents and the witnesses' testimony belie repeated corporate and government rhetoric that Corexit is not dangerous. Worse than this, evidence suggests that the cleanup effort has been more destructive to human health and the environment than the spill itself.

Conclusions from the report strongly suggest that the dispersant Corexit was widely applied in the aftermath of the Deepwater Horizon explosion because it caused the false impression that the oil disappeared. In reality, the oil/Corexit mixture became less visible, yet much more toxic than the oil alone. Nonetheless, indications are that both BP and the government were pleased with what Corexit accomplished.

The report is available here: Part One, Part Two, Part Three. You can download an Executive Summary of the report here.
Additional report exhibits are on file with GAP.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration and physicians continue to document that some patients experience fuzzy thinking and memory loss while taking statins, a class of global top-selling cholesterol-lowering drugs.

A University of Arizona research team has made a novel discovery in brain cells being treated with statin drugs: unusual swellings within neurons, which the team has termed the "beads-on-a-string" effect.

The team is not entirely sure why the beads form, said UA neuroscientist Linda L. Restifo, who leads the investigation. However, the team believes that further investigation of the beads will help inform why some people experience cognitive declines while taking statins.

"What we think we've found is a laboratory demonstration of a problem in the neuron that is a more severe version for what is happening in some peoples' brains when they take statins," said Restifo, a UA professor of neuroscience, neurology and cellular and molecular medicine, and principal investigator on the project.

Restifo and her team's co-authored study and findings recently were published in Disease Models & Mechanisms, a peer-reviewed journal. Robert Kraft, a former research associate in the department of neuroscience, is lead author on the article.

Restifo and Kraft cite clinical reports noting that statin users often are told by physicians that cognitive disturbances experienced while taking statins were likely due to aging or other effects. However, the UA team's research offers additional evidence that the cause for such declines in cognition is likely due to a negative response to statins.

The team also has found that removing statins results in a disappearance of the beads-on-a-string, and also a restoration of normal growth. With research continuing, the UA team intends to investigate how genetics may be involved in the bead formation and, thus, could cause hypersensitivity to the drugs in people. Team members believe that genetic differences could involve neurons directly, or the statin interaction with the blood-brain barrier.

"Women aren't dolphins" is a phrase often bandied about by those who question the idea of water births. Of course, they forget that we're not mountain goats or birds, but that doesn't stop us from rock climbing or hang gliding.

As more scientific evidence emerges about the benefits of water immersion in labour and birth, hospitals and birth centres are increasingly adding large baths to their delivery rooms. The New South Wales Department of Health has even given a directive that "all maternity services offer access to water immersion in labour (target 100 per cent by 2015)", in an attempt to stem the rising caesarean section rate.