Health & WellnessS


Rocket

Scientists Study Bacteria in Space for Long-Duration Missions

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© Rocky Mountain Laboratories, NIAID, NIHColor-enhanced scanning electron micrograph showing Salmonella typhimurium (red) invading cultured human cells.
With NASA's space shuttle program officially at an end, the agency is making preparations to benefit the future of spaceflight, which includes ambitious plans for long-duration human missions to Mars or an asteroid.

But to make these big missions happen, researchers are thinking small. So small, in fact, that they're focusing on the microscopic bacteria in our guts.

Syringe

Poison Alert: Long-Term, Universal Flu Shot on Horizon


A universal flu vaccine that protects against all strains may be within reach in the next five years, replacing annual shots developed for specifics flu viruses, the chief of the National Institutes of Health predicts.

Francis Collins told USA Today's Editorial Board on Tuesday that he is "guardedly optimistic" about development of a long-term shot to replace the one "you'd have to renew every year."

About 200,000 people are hospitalized with the flu every year, and an estimated 3,000 to 49,000 die, making the flu one of the chief causes of preventable death in the USA.

Comment: The reader might want to keep in mind that, as the side effects of vaccines increase, it's becoming harder to hide the fact that vaccines are causing the diseases they are professed to prevent, and are actually creating additional diseases.

For more information, read:

Young people should not take flu vaccine, watchdog says
Warning to Parents: This Vaccine Linked to Sudden Infant Death
60 Lab Studies Confirm Cancer Link to a Vaccine You Probably Had as a Child
Scientists Fear MMR Vaccine Link to Autism
H1N1 Flu - The Truth About The Vaccine
Doctor Admits Vaccine More Deadly Than Swine Flu Itself


Health

Appendix May Actually Have a Purpose

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© 2009 Nucleus Medical Art, Inc.
Researchers Say the Appendix May Be a Place Where Good Bacteria Can Live Safely

The lowly appendix may have a purpose after all.

New research suggests that the seemingly useless organ provides a safe haven for good bacteria to hang out in the gut.

Although the study stops short of providing direct proof of this proposed purpose for the appendix, researchers say there's a strong case to be made for the appendix based on new information about the role of bacteria in intestinal health.

"While there is no smoking gun, the abundance of circumstantial evidence makes a strong case for the role of the appendix as a place where the good bacteria can live safe and undisturbed until they are needed," researcher William Parker, PhD, assistant professor of experimental surgery at Duke University Medical Center, says in a news release.

The appendix is a small, 2- to 4-inch pouch located near where the large and small intestines meet. Doctors have debated the exact function of the organ for years, as removal causes no noticeable symptoms.

Not much is known about the human appendix because studies on the appendix are difficult to conduct. There are only a few animals that have the organ; an animal's appendix is very different than the human appendix.

Family

Suicide spikes among middle-aged women

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© UnknownGail Boledovich, left, and her daughter, Julie Boledovich Farhat, are all smiles at Farhat's graduation from Michigan State University in 2003. Julie's mother committed suicide just two years later, in 2005.
Experts speculate that depression, substance abuse and sleep issues may all play a part

At 23, Julie Boledovich Farhat decided to leave her boyfriend, three siblings and beloved hometown in Michigan to focus on saving her mother.

After watching her mom, Gail Boledovich, battle schizophrenia for three years and suffer from hallucinations and delusions, Julie resolved to take an engineering job in Bowling Green, Ky., and buy a house where her mom could live with her and have a beautiful garden and even an art studio to create her mosaics. Gail would be spared the stress of having to work or pay bills. Everything would work out, Julie thought.

Health

Mind-Controlling Parasite May Increase Brain Cancer Risk

Toxoplasma gondii
© Ke Hu and John Murray, PLoSThe mind-altering parasite called Toxoplasma gondii has a unique apparatus that is likely used to invade host cells and for its own replication. Shown here, the parasite is building daughter scaffolds within the mother cell.

Mind-altering parasites already linked to neurosis and schizophrenia might also be linked to brain cancer, scientists now find.

The germ, found worldwide, is known as Toxoplasma gondii. The parasites ultimately want to end up in cats, where they breed, but until then they can live in the cells of many warm-blooded creatures. In fact, it has infected about a third of all humans.

That doesn't mean that a third of humans will get brain cancer, and the scientists caution that they remain unsure of how one might cause the other.

"I do really want to emphasize we haven't definitively shown cause-and-effect, only a correlation," said researcher Kevin Lafferty, an infectious disease ecologist at the U.S. Geological Survey. "We hope our results inspire researchers to look for a link between Toxoplasma and cancer."

Also, "one shouldn't be panicking about owning cats," Lafferty added. "The risk factors for getting Toxoplasma are really hygiene and eating undercooked meat. One should be more concerned about those than pets."

Pills

Interview with Psychiatryland Author Phillip Sinaikin, MD

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Phillip Sinaikin, MD, is a Florida psychiatrist who has been in practice for 25 years. Author of Get Smart About Weight Control and co-author of Fat Madness: How to Stop the Diet Cycle and Achieve Permanent Well-Being, his new book focuses on excesses and industry influence in the field of psychiatry.

Rosenberg: Your new book, Psychiatryland, traces how deception, conflicts of interest, medical enabling and direct-to-consumer advertising have resulted in millions being on psychiatric drugs they don't need. One patient you describe has legitimate mourning and grief work to do after his wife leaves him for his own cousin. But his grief is pathologized into "bipolar disorder" by the system, including his own mother.

Sinaikin: By the time I saw this patient, he was on Wellbutrin and another antidepressant, the mood stabilizers Eskaltih and Keppra, the antipyschotic Abilify, the tranquilizer Klonopin and Adderall for ADD. Calling grief a psychiatric disorder deflates and dishonors the spiritual dimension of loss and grief and the sadness which is a marker of the lost love. By the time this patient came under my care (three years after the loss of his wife) his "case" had become such a jumbled, incomprehensible and irrational mess of overdiagnosis and overmedication that the only word I can use to describe it is criminal.

Attention

Pesticides in Your Toothpaste

Most people know by now that the orgy of antibacterial dish, body and laundry soaps that emerged in the 2000s do less to protect people from germs than to build new and better germs via antibiotic resistance. They also know that such bacterial overkill (soap and water work just as well) is at the basis of the "hygiene hypothesis" theory of childhood allergies that says a too clean environment with no exposure to microbes subverts the immune system.

But how many realize the antibiotic germ killers in such products are the same endocrine disrupter pesticides producing frogs with no penises in polluted streams?

One pesticide, triclosan, found in Colgate's Total toothpaste, breaks down into chloroform with tap water and dioxin in the environment, impairs thyroid function and lives in human breast milk, urine and blood, according to studies. When Dr. Sarah Janssen, a staff scientist with the Natural Resources Defense Council, spoke in Chicago about the health risks of triclosan and other endocrine disruptors in consumer products, many went home and filled garbage bags with Ajax and Palmolive antibacterial dish detergents, Colgate's Total toothpaste and other products. Yes, people are brushing their teeth with pesticides.

Cow

Best of the Web: Enjoy Saturated Fats, They're Good for You!

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This article is taken from a talk I gave at the 29th Annual Meeting of the Doctors for Disaster Preparedness in Albuquerque last week, on the controversial subject of saturated fats. Some of the slides that I used for this talk are put in here.

The medical establishment and government health authorities say that consumption of saturated animal fats is bad for us and causes heart disease. According to the lipid hypothesis - the label used for the diet-cholesterol theory of heart disease - saturated fats raise serum cholesterol levels, and high blood cholesterol causes obstructive plaques to form in arteries, called atherosclerosis. This pathologic process causes coronary heart disease and the need for coronary artery bypass surgery, which is what I do.

Types and Structure of Fats

Animals and tropical plants contain saturated fats while plants outside the tropics have mostly unsaturated fats. Saturated animal fats are in milk, meat, eggs, butter, and cheese. And tropical coconut and palm oil contain a lot of saturated fat.

The food industry makes trans fats. They do this by shooting hydrogen atoms into polyunsaturated vegetable oils. This straightens out the fatty acid molecules and packs them closer together, giving vegetable oil so treated a solid texture like lard. Trans fats are used to make margarine, with yellow bleach added so it looks like butter. They are also used prolong the shelf life of bakery products, snack chips, imitation cheese, and other processed foods.

Ambulance

Methylmercury in seafood hinders enzyme that protects against heart disease

Ayotte, P, A Carrier, N Ouellet, V Boiteau, B Abdous, EAL Sidi, ML Château-Degat and E Dewailly. 2011. Relation between methylmercury exposure and plasma paraoxonase activity in Inuit adults from Nunavik. Environmental Health Perspectives

A new study finds a reason behind why mercury exposure increases heart disease risk.

High amounts of methylmercury in a person's blood can inhibit an enzyme that helps prevent atherosclerosis, researchers report in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives.

Atherosclerosis is the buildup of plaque deposits along artery walls that can lead to vessel hardening and eventual blockage. This, in turn, can lead to heart attacks and other cardiac problems. The discovery helps explain how eating excessive amounts of mercury-containing seafood can increase the risk of cardiovascular disease.

MIB

FDA Copies the European Union and Slips In One of its Deadliest Weapons

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Are the NDI guidelines the ultimate FDA tool to freeze dietary supplement innovation? A special report by Robert Verkerk, PhD, ANH-USA Scientific Director and ANH-Europe Executive and Scientific Director.

If the US natural products industry values its ability to keep a diverse range of products available for the benefit of the American public, and believes in not exposing the public to unnecessary costs, we strongly suggest that it look very closely at the latest guidelines from the FDA - with eyes wide open. We refer to the FDA guidelines on so-called "new dietary ingredients" (NDIs) that we've been telling you about over the past several weeks. These guidelines preempt a crackdown on ingredients used in natural products, one that appears to be coordinated closely with a similar clampdown happening currently in Europe. The guidelines bear an uncanny likeness to the European Union's Novel Food Regulation.

The justification given for the new guidelines is - as is always the case when facing a tighter regulatory noose around dietary supplements - consumer safety. This of course brings about a predictable response from the natural health sector: "But where are the dead bodies?" It's actually quite a pertinent question, and one that is rarely taken seriously by the FDA or other regulators.