Health & WellnessS


Alarm Clock

Vitamins are the New Satan as Poisoned Junk Food Branded Healthy

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In today's Irish Independent an article asks the question 'Are your vitamins actually killing you?' in which it tries to convince the reader that they shouldn't be taking supplementary vitamins because all our nutrition should come from our food.

I agree wholeheartedly that all our nutrition should come from our food but as I'm sure the author of this ridiculous piece knows, the vitamins and minerals our bodies require to maintain a healthy lifestyle are at best minimal and in many cases absent completely from our food. We are led to believe that if we eat a certain quantity of vegetables, fruit, fish etc then we should be supremely healthy.

Attention

Illnesses Linked to Eggs Will Likely Grow

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© blog.cleveland.com
Washington - A salmonella outbreak that sickened hundreds and led to the recall of hundreds of millions of eggs from one Iowa firm will likely grow, federal health officials said Thursday.

That's because illnesses occurring after mid-July may not be reported yet, said Dr. Christopher Braden, an epidemiologist with the federal Centers for Disease Control.

Almost 2,000 illnesses from the strain of salmonella linked to the eggs were reported between May and July, about 1,300 more than usual, he added. No deaths have been reported. The CDC is continuing to receive information from state health departments as people report their illnesses.

Red Flag

Researchers: Pregnant Women Should Avoid 'Diet' Soft Drinks

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© Katie Collins/PA Research has suggested that artificially sweetened drinks may be linked to premature birth in pregnant women.
Pregnant women should avoid 'diet' soft drinks that have been artificially sweetened, experts have said, after a study linked them with premature birth.

Research carried out on almost 60,000 pregnant women in Denmark found that those who drank artificially sweetened soft drinks, whether fizzy or still, were more likely to give birth early.

It was found that those who drank one serving per day of artificially sweetened fizzy drink were 38 per cent more likely to give birth before 37 weeks gestation and those who consumed four servings a day were 78 per cent more likely to have their baby prematurely.

Health

Women With Osteoporosis Suffer More If They Have Previously Broken a Bone, Say Scientists

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© UnknownHip fracture
Osteoporosis is more common in women who have fractured bones when they were younger -- and they experience a similar loss in health-related quality of life as those with arthritis, lung disease, diabetes and other chronic diseases.

In an international study, led in the UK by scientists from the universities of Southampton and Cambridge, 60,000 women over the age of 55 were interviewed, 4079 of them British. The team found that 90 per cent of women with fractures suffered more mobility problems, pain, anxiety or depression.

Cyrus Cooper, professor of rheumatology at the Medical Research Council Lifecourse Epidemiology Unit, University of Southampton's Faculty of Medicine, comments: "Our study shows that the effects of fractures result in significant reductions in quality of life that are as lasting and as disabling as other chronic conditions. As important, the greater the number of fractures, the greater the disability. More needs to be done to more to identify and treat individuals at the highest risk of fractures."

Health

Stress in Middle Age Could Contribute to Late-Life Dementia

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© UnknownStress
Psychological stress in middle age could lead to the development of dementia later in life, especially Alzheimer's disease, reveals research from the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. Based on data from a study which followed women for 35 years, this is the first research in Sweden to indicate a link between stress and dementia.

The research, published in scientific journal Brain, is based on a major population study of women from Gothenburg. A representative sample of women were examined for the first time in 1968 when aged between 38 and 60, and then re-examined in 1974, 1980, 1992 and 2000.

A question about psychological stress was included in the 1968, 1974 and 1980 surveys and was answered by 1,415 women.

Health

Overweight American Children and Adolescents Becoming Fatter

Overweight American children and adolescents have become fatter over the last decade, according to researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and National Institute on Aging (NIA). They examined adiposity shifts across socio-demographic groups over time and found U.S. children and adolescents had significantly increased adiposity measures such as body mass index (BMI), waist circumference (WC) and triceps skinfold thickness (TST).

The increases in adiposity were more pronounced in some sex-ethnic groups such as black girls. In addition, these groups gained more abdominal fat over time, which was indicated by waist size and posed greater health risks than elevated BMI. Their results are featured in the August 2010 issue of the International Journal of Pediatric Obesity.

Smiley

The Hidden Cost of Smiling - Smiles Brighten Our Lives, But What's Lost in the Glare?

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© Unknown
Psychologically-informed reflections on how we interact

Americans are over-socialized to smile. They smile upon introduction, smile at work, smile when their eyes meet accidentally on the street, and smile when they run for office. This seems a small matter, but it may help illustrate issues of greater importance.

First, humans at their core are not designed to deal with empty expressions. We are wired biologically to produce and interpret facial gestures as representations of certain internal states. All around the world, basic emotions such as fear, anger, and happiness are represented by--and readily inferred from--the same corresponding facial expressions. This is why we find it hard to comprehend the behavior of a psychopath. For the psychopath, by definition, gestures are severed from their natural underlying meaning. The psychopath doesn't smile to convey emotion, but merely to further his agenda.

Attention

Antibiotics on the Verge of Becoming Completely Useless

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© binalshah.wordpress.com
The journal Lancet Infectious Diseases recently published a sobering piece about how antibiotics are becoming wholly ineffective as treatments for infection. According to the report, even the most powerful antibiotics available are largely inadequate at tackling the emerging forms of new and powerful "super" bacteria.

Antibiotic overuse has become a pandemic problem. They are used in animal feed to make animals grow more quickly and they are handed out like candy by many doctors to people with almost any ailment. And they are simply not working anymore to fight infection.

Cow

How Would You Fancy Cloned Beef?

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© Alamy Beef cattle in Britain
The news that modified meat has entered the food chain has left consumers with a nasty aftertaste, says Joanna Blythman.

The men in white coats are out in force, assuring us that milk and meat from cloned cattle presents no risk to human health. It's just food like any other food, they say. However, the Food Standards Agency seems startled, as though it has been roused from its bed in the middle of the night. It agrees that cloned food is safe to eat - or, rather, it prefers to hedge its bets, saying that there is no evidence to the contrary. Its only objection to the cloned milk and meat that has slipped silently into our food appears to be bureaucratic: the necessary forms have not been filled in nor permissions sought.

Consumers, on the other hand, can't get rid of the persistent, queasy feeling that there is something disturbing about food from clones. This isn't a uniquely British attitude, another expression of our dewy-eyed fondness for cuddly pets. Only last month, the European Parliament voted to ban cloned meat and milk. In the US, the Food and Drug Administration has been attacked by consumer and environmental groups for approving cloned food without adequate safety checks.

Red Flag

Drug Recalls Way Up In 2009

In 2008, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) reported that 426 prescription and over-the-counter drugs were recalled. In 2009, that number surged to 1,742, according to a report on NJ.com, which cited the Gold Sheet. The Gold Sheet is a trade publication analyzes FDA data.

Drug repackager Advantage Dose - which has since closed down - was linked to over 1,000 of 2009's recalls, said NJ.com. But even taking Advantage Dose out of the analysis, recalls increased by a massive 50 percent last year. And, there is no slow down in sight, noted NJ.com.

From January to June of this year, 296 drugs have been recalled, said Bowman Cox, managing editor of the Gold Sheet, wrote NJ.com. "If we continue at this same rate, we could get 600 or more recalls by the end of the year," Cox said. "That's still a very high rate of recalls," quoted NJ.com. "We've seen a trend where the last four years are among the top five for the most number of drug recalls since we began tallying recalls in 1988," said Cox, quoted NJ.com "That's a meaningful development," added Cox.