Health & WellnessS


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McDonald's Threatened with Lawsuit Over Toys in Happy Meals

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© NaturalNews
The Los Angeles Times recently reported that the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) is planning to sue fast-food giant McDonald's if the company does not comply with its demands to remove toys from "Happy Meals". CSPI claims that marketing unhealthy food with toys is contributing to the childhood obesity epidemic and should be stopped immediately.

The announcement by CSPI comes just weeks after a California county banned not only toys but all other promotions aimed at children that involve McDonald's Happy Meals. By doing this, the county believes that children will be less attracted to fatty foods that are high in salt and calories.

According to the same article, back in April, Santa Clara County, California, also banned toy promotions from fast food meals sold in unincorporated parts of the county.

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The Hundred Years' War over Toxic Chemicals

In America, chemicals are innocent until proven guilty. It's a rule that's been in place for one hundred years and still applies to compounds used every day in industry and in your home.

This may be changing at last. In April Congressman Henry Waxman, chair of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, made regulation of toxic chemicals a priority by proposing the Safe Chemicals Act of 2010. A companion bill was introduced in the Senate by Frank Lautenberg.

Under Waxman's legislation, the Environmental Protection Agency would at last gain some real powers to control the chemical soup we live in. Manufacturers would be required to test their chemical products. Procedural obstacles that have hobbled regulators would be swept away. Vital safety information could no longer be kept secret. Testing of especially dangerous products would be required within eighteen months.

Info

What's For Dinner? (You Don't Want to Know)

Seen a fly in your soup lately? Well, that's nothing compared with what you don't see in your strawberry yogurt or the sprinkles on your doughnut.

Crushed bugs. You've been eating them for years. You just didn't know it.

That's right. The "color added" ingredient in some red, pink and purple foods is carmine, the dried and crushed bodies of the female cochineal insect. The cactus-loving insect is used to color ice cream, yogurt, fruit juices and more.

"They're harvested in Mexico, processed in large plants. I've seen them," said Gary Reineccius, professor of food science at the University of Minnesota.

You may not have known, because they were hiding under the "color added" listing on the label, but you soon will. Starting in January, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is requiring manufacturers to switch from the "color added" label listing to "carmine" or "cochineal extract."

Consumers should know what's going into their food "to promote safe, healthy diets," said Michael Jacobson, executive director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) and part of the effort to require manufacturers to change their product labels.

Ingredients such as carmine have come under fire because they have been known to cause severe allergic reactions in some people. Those allergic reactions, along with a few subsequent lawsuits, have led some manufacturers to stop using carmine.

Other people with dietary restrictions, such as Jews and Muslims, may not consider some products kosher if these ingredients are included. But even those without restrictions might be a little squeamish if they knew just what was going into some of their food. The CSPI wants the FDA to go even further, labeling carmine as insects on packaging. After all, few people recognize carmine or cochineal as something that comes from insects, and even fewer would be curious enough to look it up online or in a dictionary to find out exactly what they're eating.

Bad Guys

AstraZeneca's Crestor Trial May Have Been Biased, Report Says

A trial showing that AstraZeneca Plc's Crestor cholesterol pill prevented heart disease in seemingly healthy people was flawed and may have been biased because of the company's role in the research, according to an article in the Archives of Internal Medicine.

Nine of the 14 researchers who conducted the study, dubbed Jupiter, had financial ties to London-based AstraZeneca that may have influenced the way they did their job, doctors led by Michel de Lorgeril wrote in the report published today. The lead Jupiter researcher is a co-holder of a patent on a protein marker of inflammation that would potentially boost royalties from wider use of Crestor, the authors said.

"The possibility that bias entered the study is particularly concerning because of the strong commercial interest in the study," wrote de Lorgeril of the Universite Joseph Fourier and National Center for Scientific Research in Grenoble, France.

Over five years, using Crestor in people with normal cholesterol may prevent 250,000 heart complications in the U.S., AstraZeneca's researchers said when presenting Jupiter findings at the American Heart Association meeting in 2008. AstraZeneca in March 2008 stopped the study early because of "unequivocal" evidence that the pill cut deaths better than a placebo in people who had no evidence of existing heart disease.

U.S. and European regulators this year allowed the drugmaker to broaden Crestor's use to anyone at an increased risk for heart disease, even if so-called bad cholesterol levels are normal. Crestor belongs to a family of drugs known as statins that work by blocking an enzyme in the liver involved in cholesterol production.

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To Save America's Health, We Must End Nutritional Illiteracy Among Doctors, Patients

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© NaturalNews
An obese doctor comes home to his wife at dinner time carrying yet another bag full of drive-through junk food from a local restaurant.

Worried about his health, his wife asks, "Don't you realize all that junk food you keep eating is destroying your entire body?"

"That's not my concern," the doctor replies. "I'm only an ear, nose and throat specialist."

This joke illustrates an important point: That even the most brilliant scientists, doctors and researchers can seem downright clueless when it comes to their own health. And this joke isn't really a joke at all: It's a sad but true commentary about the blind spots in the knowledge of those who are among society's most intelligent thinkers.

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The Total Failure of Modern Psychiatry

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© Getty Images
Modern psychiatry went wrong when it embraced the idea that the mind should be treated with drugs, says Edward Shorter of the University of Toronto, writing in the Wall Street Journal.

Shorter studies the history of psychiatry and medicine.

Modern U.S. psychiatry has adopted a philosophy that psychological diseases arise from chemical imbalances and therefore have a very specific cluster of symptoms, he says, in spite of evidence that the difference between many so-called disorders is minimal or nonexistent. These "disorders" are then treated with expensive drugs that are no more effective than a placebo.

"Psychiatry seems to have lost its way in a forest of poorly verified diagnoses and ineffectual medications," he writes.

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Increased Risk of Birth Defects From Psychotropic Medications

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© iStockphoto
A new study shows that use of psychotropic medications during pregnancy increase the probability of birth defects. Researchers at the University of Copenhagen have published an article that documents the serious side effects that can be associated with these types of medications.

Between 1998 and 2007, psychotropic medications were associated with 429 adverse drug reactions in Danish children under the age of 17. Researchers from the University of Copenhagen's Faculty of Pharmaceutical Studies have published an article in the open access journal BMC Research Notes concluding that more than half of the 429 cases were serious and several involved birth defects, such as birth deformities and severe withdrawal syndromes.

Professors Lise Aagaard and Ebbe Holme Hansen from the University of Copenhagen studied all 4,500 paediatric adverse drug reaction reports submitted during the study period to find those which were linked to psychotropic medications. The two researchers found that 42 percent of adverse reactions were reported for psychostimulants, such as Ritalin, which treats attention deficit disorder (ADD), followed by 31 percent for antidepressants, such as Prozac, and 24 percent for antipsychotics, such as Haldol.

Attention

Supermarkets Selling Meat from Animals Fed Genetically Modified Crops

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© Paul GroverCampaigners say consumers deserve to be given the choice and knowledge of the 'indirect' GM link through clearer labeling
Supermarkets across Britain are routinely selling food from animals reared on genetically modified crops without having to declare it on labeling, it can be disclosed.

They have acknowledged that meat, fish, eggs and dairy products on their shelves could contain "indirect" GM ingredients.

Every major supermarket in the country said it was unable to provide a guarantee that it was not selling products from animals given GM feed.

Even ''high-end'' retailers said only the more expensive organic ranges were certain to have been produced without any GM involvement.

Brick Wall

UK: Doctors Call for Homeopathy Ban

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© Getty ImagesHomeopathy is based on a theory that substances which cause symptoms in a healthy person can, when vastly diluted, cure the same problems in a sick person.
Hundreds of doctors will this week call for a ban on NHS funding for homeopathic treatments.

Delegates to the British Medical Association's conference are expected to support seven motions opposing the use of public money to pay for remedies which they claim have 'no place in the modern health service.'

They are also calling for junior doctors to be exempt from being placed in homoeopathic hospitals, claiming it goes against the principles of evidence-based medicine.

The conference will also hear calls for homoeopathic remedies to be banned from chemists unless they are clearly labelled as placebos rather than medicines.

The NHS needs to make £20 billion in cuts over the next few years and doctors say the health service cannot afford 'sugar pills and placebos.'

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Jet Lag Sends Brain Ahead a Time Zone, Leaves Kidneys in Another

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© RamaUsing a drug that temporarily blocks the activity of adrenal glands, scientists have created a batch of jet lag-resistant mice like the laboratory mouse shown here.
Human beings aren't built to cross time zones. After an international flight, it takes days for the body to overcome the fatigue and nausea of jet lag, the biological price of doing business in the modern world.

That's because every organ keeps time with its own separate clock. Though the brain tries to synchronize all of these clocks on a daily basis, some are more stubborn about resetting than others when adjusting to a new time zone and sleep schedule -- according to a new study of sleep-deprived mice, which have internal clocks similar to ours.

"Jet lag is a big mess of different clocks," said Gregor Eichele of the Max Planck Institute of Biophysical Chemistry in Gottingen, Germany.