Health & WellnessS


Health

7 Reasons Why I Will Never Be A Vegetarian

I love bacon. And steak. It makes me feel awesome. It gives me nutrient dense energy. Grass fed ground beef is an inexpensive superfood - you can't say that about goji berries! Fish provides me with the EPA & DHA forms of omega 3 fatty acids... not a single plant source can say that! Pastured eggs and grass fed beef gives me a little bit too.

Vitamin B12 is an essential nutrient. Guess what? The only source is animal foods.

I could end this post right there. I am thinking about it...

Wild Deer
© noelzialee / Flickr.comDeers living happy lives in the wild.
I'll elaborate. I'll explain 7 reasons why I will never be a vegetarian. I am not a nutritionist, physician, etc. I believe I am well educated in basic nutrition after reading. I read constantly. I've even read a little bit of Skinny Bitch. I'll admit that book is hilarious but it truly makes me sad that it's a #1 NY Times Bestseller. I feel like writing a primal edition of it. What do you guys think - should I?

Comment: "I don't know the details of former vegans/vegetarians who now live a primal lifestyle.

Has there ever been someone who lived a lifestyle based on the SAD and then went vegan, vegetarian or primal and saw their health improve dramatically?"

Read Lierre Keith's The Vegetarian Myth for answers to these questions and more addressing the health, moral, and political issues of vegetarianism.


Bacon

A New Food Manifesto

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© Marko MatasicFood isn’t just something we need to shovel down our gullets each day to survive. It’s far more potent: the means, more than any other, by which we humans shape our planet and ourselves.
From 100-mile diets to vertical farming, from green markets to organics, from obesity to genetically modified organisms, food is always in the news. The issues are political, social, emotional, psychological, ecological and economic. Take the current popularity of urban farming, for example. A renewed interest in what and how we eat combined with the aftershocks of the Great Recession have inspired city dwellers to cultivate whatever little plots of land they might have. The last time people were this keen on growing their own vegetables was during World War II. So what's going on?

The short answer is: another war. The new food movement is an act of popular resistance against a system hardly less harmful to life and limb than military conflict. Food isn't just something we need to shovel down our gullets each day to survive. It's far more potent: the means, more than any other, by which we humans shape our planet and ourselves. Recognition of food's true power demands we treat it in a completely different way. Rather than think of it as cheap fuel, we need to embrace food as a cultural force. We need to understand food in the way our ancestors did, before fossil fuel blurred our sense of its importance.

We need a new food manifesto - one that enables us to start thinking not just about food but through it. We need to understand how profoundly food affects every aspect of our lives, depending on the way it's produced, transported, bought and sold, cooked, eaten and wasted. Food is much too important to be left in the hands of megacorporations. We must take back control of food, and start wielding that ­control ­positively and ­collectively as a tool to shape a better world.

Comment: For more information on agriculture and its consequences, read:

The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race

Lierre Keith on 'The Vegetarian Myth - Food, Justice and Sustainability'


Beaker

Tattoo health risks - research raises concerns

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© Paul Chinn / The ChronicleVien Tang watches as proprietor Mario Delgado prepares ink for a tattoo at the Moth and Dagger studio in San Francisco.

Although sleazy "scratcher shops" with unskilled artists and dubious safety records are largely a thing of the past, scientists are growing concerned about what's going into tattooed skin, not just how it got there.

New research has turned up troubling findings about toxic chemicals in tattoo inks, including carcinogens and hormone disruptors.

Inks, which are injected into the skin with small needles, have caused allergic rashes, chronic skin reactions, infection and inflammation from sun exposure, said Elizabeth Tanzi, co-director of the Washington Institute of Dermatologic Laser Surgery in Washington, D.C. A study published in July suggested that phthalates and other chemicals may be responsible for some of those problems.

That raises questions about more serious, long-term risks such as skin cancer, scientists say.

Syringe

A New Federal Vaccine Plan - and a Bad State Bill

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© Alliance for Natural Health
The crony capitalism in vaccines just gets worse. And don't expect any help from so-called small government candidate Gov. Rick Perry.

The US Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) has unveiled a new roadmap for increased vaccination and immunization for the 21st century, the National Vaccine Plan or NVP. It calls for new vaccines, at a time when children already get far too many vaccinations, especially when given all at once and at too young an age.

Why are the vaccines piled on top of each other in one doctor visit? Because the medical establishment is afraid to ask parents to bring their children back over and over again. So for reasons of "compliance" and "convenience" the child's immune system is assaulted all at once.

Bandaid

Confusing Medical Ailments With Mental Illness

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© Wall Street Journal

An elderly woman's sudden depression turns out to be a side effect of her high blood-pressure medication.

A new mother's exhaustion and disinterest in her baby seem like postpartum depression - but actually signal a postpartum thyroid imbalance that medication can correct.

A middle-aged manager has angry outbursts at work and frequently feels "ready to explode." A brain scan reveals temporal-lobe seizures, a type of epilepsy that can be treated with surgery or medication.

More than 100 medical disorders can masquerade as psychological conditions, according to Harvard psychiatrist Barbara Schildkrout, who cited these examples among others in Unmasking Psychological Symptoms, a book aimed at helping therapists broaden their diagnostic skills.

Health

Why We Mindlessly Eat Junk Food - and How to Stop

Junk Food
© adzica | sxc.huParticipants who indicated they didn't usually eat popcorn at the movies ate much less stale popcorn than fresh popcorn, the study showed.

Getting into the habit of eating a certain snack while watching TV or some other activity could lead to mindless eating even when a person is full and even if the junk food tastes bad, a new study suggests.

The good news is the researchers have also found a way to override these eating habits.

"When we've repeatedly eaten a particular food in a particular environment, our brain comes to associate the food with that environment and make us keep eating as long as those environmental cues are present," study researcher David Neal, a psychology professor at University of Southern California, said in a statement.

In one experiment, scientists at the university handed out popcorn to people who were about to enter a movie theater. Participants either received a bucket of just-popped, fresh popcorn or stale, week-old popcorn.

The findings showed that participants who indicated they typically ate popcorn at the movies consumed about the same amount of popcorn, whether it was fresh or stale.

Syringe

Chickenpox vaccine: doctors' group says Canadian kids should get 2 shots

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© The Canadian Press / Sidney Daily News, Anna NorrisMarcus Gent, 5, yells as he gets his chicken pox vaccination at the Sidney-Shelby County Health Department in Sidney, Ohio, Wednesday, June 6, 2007. Two shots are better than one to ward off chickenpox, the Canadian Paediatric Society said Tuesday as it recommended a new regimen for protecting the population from the highly contagious disease.
Two shots are better than one to ward off chickenpox, the Canadian Paediatric Society said Tuesday as it recommended a new regimen for protecting the population from the highly contagious disease.

There's evidence that without a second dose of vaccine, some children will lose immunity as they get older and they might come down with chickenpox as adults, the organization said in a position statement.

"It's being brought in now because we have good surveillance and monitoring of our vaccine programs and we are keeping up to date also with things that are going on in the world," the principal author of the statement, Dr. Marina Salvadori, said in an interview from London, Ont.

"It's becoming obvious that one dose is unlikely to give lifetime protection, and is unlikely to prevent all outbreaks of chickenpox."

The statement puts the society in step with the National Advisory Committee on Immunization, which recommended a two-dose schedule for varicella vaccination a year ago.

The American Academy of Pediatrics called for a two-step immunization process in the United States in 2007.

Nuke

Contamination Outside Fukushima

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© Natural News
The extent of radioactive contamination in Fukushima Prefecture is at the center of important debates as some scientists, NGOs, and citizen's groups argue that the Japanese government has not gone far enough in dealing with the fallout from the Fukushima Daiichi accident and has deliberately downplayed the potential health effects of radiation. With so much attention focused on Fukushima, however, there has been less consideration of the impact of the crisis, ongoing since March 11, on other parts of Japan. The August 22 issue of AERA magazine, published by Japan's major progressive newspaper Asahi Shimbun, ran a feature on contamination in the Kanto region entitled Kanto no ko kara hoshano (Radiation Detected from Kanto Children), which broadens discussions of the Fukushima Daiichi crisis' potential impact. Below is a summary of the AERA article, published under the byline of editor Yamane Yusaku.

The Kanto region is a large area of central Japan that includes Tokyo and nearly 1/3 of Japan's population including Tokyo. The Japanese government has taken the position that no one outside of the vicinity of the Fukushima Daiichi plant is likely to suffer health effects from the radiation that has been released since March. Many Japanese, especially parents of young children, are doubtful. The article begins by reiterating a point that has been made frequently by critics of the Japanese government - that we simply do not know what effects low levels of radiation and the presence of isotopes in the human body will have on long-term health. The piece tells the story of a mother in Saitama Prefecture who, in the absence of direct government support, arranged to have a sample of her daughter's urine tested. The test indicated that despite stringent efforts to protect her fifth grader from exposure to contaminated food and airborne radiation, the result was 0.4 Bq of Cesium 137 per kilogram of urine. Cesium 137, with a half-life of just over 30 years, is one of main radioactive isotopes released from the Fukushima Daiichi plant. "I felt a mixture of shock and a feeling that of course this is the case", laments the girl's mother.

Family

Best of the Web: Gut Biota Never Recover from Antibiotic Use: Loss Extends to Future Generations

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© Gina TylerPainting by talented artist and homeopath,
Gina Tyler.
(Words Added by Gaia Health.)
Evidence shows the mass antibiotics experiment is devastating our children's health. It may be the reason so many struggle for breath and can't assimilate food properly.

Emerging research shows that the harmful effects of antibiotics go much further than the development of drug resistant diseases. The beneficial bacteria lost to antibiotics, along with disease-inducing bacteria, do not recover fully. Worse, flora lost by a mother is also lost to her babies. The missing beneficial gut bacteria are likely a major factor behind much of the chronic disease experienced today. The continuous use of antibiotics is resulting in each generation experiencing worse health than their parents.

Martin Blaser, the author of a report in the prestigious journal Nature writes:
Antibiotics kill the bacteria we do want, as well as those we don't. These long-term changes to the beneficial bacteria within people's bodies may even increase our susceptibility to infections and disease.

Overuse of antibiotics could be fuelling the dramatic increase in conditions such as obesity, type 1 diabetes, inflammatory bowel disease, allergies and asthma, which have more than doubled in many populations.

Magic Wand

Moles tell a lot more about health, slow ageing

A recent study by researchers from Kings' college, London reveal that people with more than 100 moles on their body have less chance of osteoporosis or brittle bones.

The study conducted among 1,200 identical and non-identical twins aged between 17-89 shows that the cells in people with large number of moles have an inherent ability to repair itself because it has longer telomeres which controls cell division.

High mole numbers are directly connected with longer telomeres and longer telomeres protect skin, bones, muscles, heart and eyes from the effects of ageing.