Health & WellnessS


Sherlock

Medicating our kids: A new perspective on ADHD

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"She has a remarkable ability to engage in a task. We use her as a model for the other kids, to show them what we want out of the journaling project," said my daughter's nursery school teachers as we sat together on diminutive, paint-splotched furniture. Rather than feeling self-satisfaction at her stellar "performance," my mind wandered to the greater issue at hand here: what is happening to children, how are we being manipulated by industry to interpret it, and how can awareness be raised around better solutions other than ADHD medications for kids.

A candid and uncharacteristically provocative piece entitled the Selling of Attention Deficit Disorder ran in the NY Times, as part of an effort to raise this awareness. The article discusses the making of an epidemic, much as Robert Whitaker, author of Anatomy of an Epidemic and host of Mad in America, has in his efforts to expose the manufacturing of a profit-driven machine into which our children are being fed. The Times article begins with a bird's eye view of the alarming statistics:
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that the diagnosis had been made in 15 percent of high school-age children, and that the number of children on medication for the disorder had soared to 3.5 million from 600,000 in 1990.
And goes on to state that,
Behind that growth has been drug company marketing that has stretched the image of classic A.D.H.D. to include relatively normal behavior like carelessness and impatience, and has often overstated the pills' benefits.

Muffin

Research: Wheat cuts off blood flow to the brain's frontal cortex

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© Unknown.
As far back as 1954, reports of the full or partial resolution of schizophrenia following a gluten free diet began to surface in the medical literature. We covered this remarkable pattern of associations in a previous article titled, "60 Years of Research Links Gluten Grains to Schizophrenia." While the explanation for this intriguing connection has remained focused on the disruption of the gut-brain axis and the presence in wheat of a wide range of pharmacologically active and mostly opioid receptor modulating polypeptides, a new and possibly more disturbing explanation is beginning to surface: wheat consumption cuts off blood flow to the brain.

Starting with a 1997 case study published in the Journal of Internal Medicine involving a 33-year-old patient, with pre-existing diagnosis of 'schizophrenic' disorder, who first came to medical attention for severe diarrhea and weight loss (classical symptoms of gluten intolerance), brain scan technology determined that cerebral hypoperfusion (decreased blood flow to the brain) was occurring within the patient's frontal cortex.[i] A gluten free diet resulted not only in the normalization of intestinal damage and autoantibodies, but the return of blood flow to the frontal cortex, and the resolution of schizophrenic symptoms.

Then, in 2004, a follow up study was performed to verify if the 1997 case study was just a fluke, or perhaps a widespread effect of untreated celiac disease. Published in the American Journal of Medicine, researchers from the Institute of Internal Medicine, Catholic University, Rome, Italy, compared 15 untreated celiac patients without neurological or psychiatric disorders other than anxiety or depression, with 15 celiac patients who were on a gluten-free diet for almost 1 year, and 24 healthy volunteers of similar sex and age. All subjects underwent cerebral single photon emission computed tomography examination.

Chess

Dutch find horse in 690 tonnes of abattoir meat

Horse Meat
© Ilvy Njiokiktjien, ANP/AFP/FileButcher cuts meat at his horse meat butchery in Haarlem on February 13, 2013.
The Dutch health watchdog said Wednesday it had halted distribution of 690 tonnes of meat from an abattoir after a probe found traces of horse in products marked as beef.

"During a criminal investigation... horse DNA was discovered in four samples of beef from the wholesaler," the food safety authority NVWA said in statement.

The investigation also found that the abattoir and wholesaler situated in the central town of Dodewaard "bought more horses than its book indicated were slaughtered."

"All meat, some 690 tonnes stored in the abattoir's fridges, has been blocked (from sale) until they can show its origin," the NVWA said.

It gave the business, named by Dutch media as Van Hattem Vlees, until next Monday to comply.

Last year, the NVWA arrested a Dutch butcher believed to be the kingpin in a Europe-wide scandal in which horse meat was passed off as beef.

Arrow Down

Olive oil virginity questioned

Olive Oil
© Wikimedia Commons/stu_spivack

New York - The question of virginity is back in the news again after a controversial New York Times piece about extra-virgin olive oil and whether consumers are getting true value from the costly kitchen condiment.

The controversy started after a New York Times online interactive feature by Nicholas Blechman, in which he detailed the way today's olive oil is imported to Italy from countries such as Tunisia, cut with soy and other oils, mixed with beta-carotene and chlorophyll to mask taste and add color, and exported around the world to be shelved as Made-in-Italy "extra-virgin" olive oil - a label that designates the olives are pressed into oil within hours of being harvested.

Olive oil has been a valuable commodity for centuries, predating oils that are more treasured today - such as crude, which is the base for most of our energy needs. Through the centuries, olive oil has been used to cook our meals, light our paths, moisturize our skin, shine our hair, grease our machinery and it's even been traded for other things we've wanted to acquire.

How valuable is olive oil? If you were to compare today's market price of olive oil to the market price for crude, olive oil is almost five times more expensive. This could account for some producers' cutting costs by "cutting" the real stuff with less-expensive edible oils, and then passing it off as authentic in order to realize a healthy profit.

Syringe

Big Pharma and corporate media team up for Pro-Vaccine propaganda

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© theorganicprepper.ca
Every year, flu vaccine propaganda is ramped up by the pharmaceutical industry and its mouthpiece media, which then gives way to a second round (pun intended) of vaccine propaganda pushing toxic vaccinations for a variety of diseases, only then to be followed by the demonization of nutritional supplements. Around mid-January, rinse and repeat - (flu, childhood vaccine, and anti-supplement propaganda).

Thus, at the end of 2013, the American public was met with an onslaught of fear-mongering propaganda predicting flu pandemics and imminent death if vaccination was not immediately sought. We then saw the major propaganda assault regarding the safety and effectiveness of vitamins and minerals by the medical and pharmaceutical industries. Now, in early 2014, we are witnessing another propaganda assault against the "anti-vaccination" movement with claims of increased outbreaks and apocalyptic scenes of sickness.

The latest propaganda push comes not from the medical industry per se, however, but from an organization usually more focused on the spread of globalism, free trade, culture creation, and other domestic/international governmental policies, the Council on Foreign Relations.

Whistle

Gates Foundation/Council Foreign Relations propaganda against 'Anti-Vaccine' movement backfires

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"It is well known that in war, the first casualty is truth - that during any war truth is forsaken for propaganda." ~ Harry Browne
The war against so-called 'vaccine preventable' diseases has a new frontier: the internet, and most recently The Council of Foreign Relations (CFR) has entered the fray with the publication of an interactive map that it claims "visually plots global outbreaks of measles, mumps, whooping cough, polio, rubella, and other diseases that are easily preventable by inexpensive and effective vaccines." This widely referenced map generated news headlines such as: CFR's map is "made possible by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation," and is part of The Global Health Program at the Council on Foreign Relations, which it claims "provides independent, evidence-based analysis and recommendations to help policymakers, business leaders, journalists, and the general public meet the health challenges of a globalized world." The problem, however, with this map is that is not based on peer-reviewed biomedical evidence as one would expect, but largely anecdotal evidence aggregated from unconfirmed and often unverifiable news stories.

Comment: Read more about UNICEF's attack on independent health journalism: UNICEF Surveils, Defames health sites over vaccines

A stunning new report reveals that the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) has been monitoring independent health sites and their users in an attempt to identify 'anti-vaccine influencers' and their effect on lackluster vaccine uptake.
A newly fashioned United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) working paper tracking "the rise of online anti-vaccination sentiments in Central and Eastern Europe" identifies independent health websites, including GreenMedInfo.com, Mercola.com, NaturalNews.com and VacTruth.com, as contributing to lackluster vaccine uptake.

The UNICEF report, titled "Tracking anti-vaccination sentiment in Eastern European social media networks," obtained data using "state-of-the-art social medial monitoring tools," and confirmed that parents are using social media networks to decide whether to vaccinate their children...

...Ironically, UNICEF's own vaccine-based programs to combat child deaths from disease in West Africa appear to reduce survival relative to areas outside the reach of their programs. According to a 2010 BBC News report, "Unicef spent $27m (£17m) rolling out vaccinations, vitamin A pills and bed nets to protect against malaria from 2001 to 2005 in areas of 11 countries. The researchers studied parts of Ghana, Mali and Benin and said children often survived better outside the UN scheme." Indeed, the most well-known criticism of UNICEF is that it has done very little to decrease child mortality (in sub-Saharan Africa it has actually increased) underscoring why its focus on promoting vaccination, and now monitoring and perhaps targeting "anti-vaccine" organizations, is profoundly misguided.

Ultimately, UNICEF's new report is more than an objective analysis of so-called "anti-vaccine" organizations, but a concerning bit of propaganda aimed at dissuading the millions who visit alternative health sites daily from obtaining information that was not underwritten and/or ghostwritten by the very industries who stand to gain most by hiding the well-known adverse health effects of their products, and who have managed to transform many governmental health agencies - and we can see, even global ones - into their cheer leading, marketing, liability protection and now surveillance divisions.



Cow

Report says: FDA has allowed antibiotics in animal feed despite risk to human health

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© Carrie Antlfinger/APThe FDA has allowed dozens of antibiotics to be used in animal feed, despite findings that the drugs could expose humans to antibiotic-resistant bacteria, an advocacy group says in a new report.
The Food and Drug Administration has continued to allow dozens of antibiotics to be used in livestock feed, despite findings from its researchers that the drugs could expose humans to antibiotic-resistant bacteria through the food supply, an environmental advocacy group said in a report Monday.

FDA officials reviewed about 30 animal-feed additives between 2001 and 2010, rating 18 of them "high risk" in terms of contributing to health problems in humans, according to records obtained through the Freedom of Information Act by the Natural Resources Defense Council. The remaining drugs the agency examined did not have adequate data to determine whether they were safe, the report said.

According to the NRDC, at least 26 of the feed additives that FDA researchers reviewed - some of which have been in use since the 1950s - did not meet standards set by the agency in 1973 that required companies to submit scientific studies proving that the drugs were safe.

Comment: Learn more about how the agriculture industry, FDA and CAFOs/factory farms abuse of antibiotics in animal production leads to serious human health and environmental risks. In addition, how the FDA is not efficient or effective, in changing anything in the near future:

The abuse of antibiotics and the rise of 'super bugs'
The use of antibacterial drugs on healthy livestock is a common practice in the United States. The meat industry's overuse of antibiotics has become so widespread that about 29 million pounds of these drugs (or 80% of all antibiotics sold in the US) are used in industrial feedlots, with only 14% of these drugs being used for therapeutic purposes.

As a result, dangerous germs, dubbed "super bugs", capable of fighting off antibiotics, are spreading throughout our communities, not only jeopardizing our health, but also the future of healthcare.
The Secret Source of Antibiotics in Your Food
For the last several decades, doctors have been warning about the dangerous practice of routinely feeding antibiotics to healthy animals. Many farmers do this in an attempt to ward off disease in crowded conditions and to speed growth, but public-health researchers have linked the overuse of antibiotics in farming to the sharp rise in hard-to-kill - and sometimes fatal - superbugs in people.
Why Factory Farms Threaten Your Health
Actually, the scientific consensus regarding antibiotic-resistant bacteria has been conclusive for many years. In 1989, the Institute of Medicine, a division of the National Academy of Sciences, stated that the use of antibiotics in factory farms was responsible for antibiotic resistance in bacteria and was seriously undermining the ability of these agents to protect human health. Three years later, the Institute of Medicine stated that multi-drug-resistant bacteria had now become a serious medical concern. The Institute of Medicine laid the problem squarely on the doorstep of Confined Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs), also known as factory farms.

In 1997, the World Health Organization called for a ban on the routine feeding of antibiotics to livestock. A year later, the journal Science called the meat industry "the driving force behind the development of antibiotic resistance in species of bacteria that cause human disease." In 1998, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) blamed the serious emergence of Salmonella bacteria that had become resistant to no less than five different antibiotics on the routine and non-medically necessary use of antibiotics in livestock.
Got Antibiotics in Your Food? Thank the FDA
Free Antibiotics...in U.S. Food and Water
Spreading Antibiotics In The Soil Affects Microbial Ecosystems
Which is worse, germs in our food or the antibiotics that kill them?
U.S. Consumers Say 'No' to Antibiotics for Meat Production
CDC reveals disturbing truth about factory farms and superbugs
Groups Sue FDA to Stop Addition of Antibiotics in Livestock Feed


Arrow Up

Bad sleep may boost cancer

Sleep Deprivation
© Twin Design / Shutterstock
Poor quality of sleep marked by frequent waking can speed cancer growth and increase the disease's aggressiveness, according to new research.

Failing to get a good night's rest may actually have some serious health consequences.

Pills

Beta-blockers killed 800,000 in 5 years - "good medicine" as mass murder

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© UnknownEuropean doctors may have caused as many as 800,000 deaths in five years by following a guideline to use beta-blockers in non-cardiac surgery patients—a guideline based largely on discredited science. The discredited researcher, who was fired for scientific misconduct in 2011, was also the chairman of the committee that drafted the European treatment guideline.
Most people assume that scientific integrity is somehow assured; that there are safeguards along the way, preventing fraudulent research from harming patients.

Unfortunately, scientific misconduct has become a very serious and widespread problem that threatens the entire paradigm of science-based medicine - unless changes are made.

Again and again, papers assessing the prevalence of scientific fraud and/or the impact this is having shows that the situation is dire and getting worse. In short, we have lost scientific integrity, and without it, "science-based medicine" is just a term without substance.

Conflict of interest is another pervasive problem within the research field, and the featured article highlights a case that contains both.

Beta-blockers are drugs commonly used in the treatment of high blood pressure and congestive heart failure. They work primarily by blocking the neurotransmitters norepinephrine and epinephrine (adrenaline) from binding to beta receptors, thereby dilating blood vessels, which reduces your heart rate and blood pressure.

Until recently, the European Society of Cardiology (ESC) also recommended using beta-blockers in patients undergoing non-cardiac surgery.

A recent article in Forbes Magazine1 highlights how medical guidelines based on questionable science may have resulted in the death of hundreds of thousands of patients in just a few years:

Comment: More food for thought:

The Truth Wears Off


Alarm Clock

Finally, justification for taking a nap! Here is scientific proof that siestas are beneficial

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© Getty ImagesNapping for the wrong length of time could actually leave you feeling temporarily worse
Sleeping for short periods in the day helps memory and cognitive function. But napping for 30mins or an hour can leave you with a sleep hangover. This is because you wake yourself during periods of deep sleep. Instead nap for 10-20mins for a quick refresh
Or sleep 90mins for a full sleep cycle, with no grogginess when you wake

We have long known that naps have an important function in refreshing and reviving a tired mind.

Some of the greatest thinkers of recent times have been avid nappers - Winston Churchill reportedly relied on regular short naps to help him lead the country through the war.

And yet there remains a cruel stigma against those of us who wish to pop back into bed during daylight hours for a quick shut eye.

But now, in a round-up of scientific research, there is evidence not only proving the real benefits of a kip, but detailed findings that show how varying lengths of snooze have different beneficial effects on the brain.

If you want to wake up from your nap feeling immediately rested then either brief a snooze of 10-20 minutes or a longer 90 minute sleep are your best options.