Health & WellnessS


Cow Skull

British environment minister: Every restaurant steak comes from cattle given GM feed

Sean Poulter
Daily Mail, UK
Thu, 13 Dec 2012 13:28 UTC
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If you eat food in British restaurants, you're almost certainly eating frankenfoods
Environment Secretary Owen Paterson said there are 'real environmental benefits' to GM technology

Mr Paterson claimed public concerns about genetically modified food were unfounded

Fears over Frankenstein Foods are 'humbug', the new farming minister insisted yesterday, arguing that many Britons happily eat beef from cattle fed on GM crops.

Addressing public concern about the genetically modified food industry's increasing influence, Owen Paterson said: 'There isn't a single piece of meat being served [in a typical London restaurant] where a bullock hasn't eaten some GM feed. So it's a complete nonsense.'

But the Environment Secretary's dismissive response angered campaigners, who pointed out that consumers' apparent willingness to eat GM-raised beef was simply a result of the food not being labelled as such.

Comment: According to Arpad Pusztai, PhD, one of the world's leading experts in GM food safety assessments, when an animal eats genetically modified feed, that animal's DNA is changed such that it is no longer 'beef' or 'chicken' or fish...

This scenario, where the entire food supply is genetically altered by the covert introduction of GMOs, is a success for the bio-engineers who have now 'created facts on the ground'. The British government minister's message is: "The whole 'debate' about GMOs was just a ruse. We've gone ahead and done it anyway. What are you going to do about it?"

While the West continues its downward descent, Peru, Kenya, Syria and Russia recently moved to ban GMOs:

Peru bans genetically modified foods for ten years minimum

Kenya bans all GMO Monsanto foods!

Syrian People's Assembly bans GMOs to protect people and planet

Russia Bans Genetically Modified Corn From US Due To Breast Cancer Fears

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Health

Why sleep is more difficult for women

Anne Angelone, L.Ac.
Primal Docs
Wed, 12 Dec 2012 12:35 UTC
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Is there a torture worse than hitting the sack exhausted from a long day only to toss and turn for hours, unable to fall asleep? Or perhaps you fall asleep but later bolt awake and can't fall back asleep?

By the time women hit their mid 30s or early 40s, many struggle with sleep. Either it's difficult to fall asleep, difficult to stay asleep, or both. Although sleep difficulties can have many causes, fluctuations of female hormone prior to and during the transition to menopause can steal many hours of precious sleep.

Female hormone imbalances and sleep problems

When a woman enters perimenopause, her production of estrogen and progesterone begins to decline. Ideally the adrenal glands, which produce stress hormones, take over production of these hormones to ensure a smooth transition into menopause. Unfortunately, most women today enter perimenopause (pre-menopause) in a state of chronic stress and their adrenals glands are either producing too much or too little of stress hormones. To take on the added job of producing sex hormones is simply more than they can handle. That's when sleep issues can kick in, as balanced levels of estrogen and progesterone are necessary for healthy sleep. Other symptoms may include hot flashes, night sweats, depression, anxiety, fatigue, and more.

Women may also experience sleep issues during certain times of the menstrual cycle when hormone levels fluctuate.

Comment: Check out our health forum for vital information on how to change your diet and balance your hormones, and don't forget to breathe your way out of stress with our Éiriú Eolas Stress Control, Healing and Rejuvenation Program.

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Ambulance

Fecal transplant - cure of the future?

Chris Kresser
Medicine for the 21st Century
Fri, 07 Dec 2012 00:00 UTC
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Poop has been all over the news lately. (And no, I'm not talking about the recent election.) I'm referring to fecal transplant, the process of transferring a healthy person's stool into a sick person's colon in order to restore the bacterial balance. It sounds bizarre, and even a little crazy, but doctors and scientists all over the country are discovering just how effective fecal transplants can be.

Just last week, the Chicago Tribune wrote a story predicting that stool banks may one day be just as common as blood banks. Human stool transplants have been found to consistently cure up to 90 percent of patients who have had multiple episodes of C. difficile, an infection which causes serious diarrhea and affects about 3 million people per year. Typically, these infections are treated with antibiotics such as vancomycin, which can actually make the infection worse by killing off beneficial bacteria and allowing the resistant C diff. to survive. This recurring infection can be fatal, killing an average of 14,000 Americans every year. It's especially dangerous for young children and the elderly who are more susceptible to the bacteria that causes the colonic inflammation and diarrhea.
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Video

The 'Holy Grail' of primal health: Benefits of a fat-based caloric intake for body and brain

Nora Gedgaudas
Ancestral Health Society
Mon, 12 Nov 2012 15:25 UTC
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Newspaper

Organic food conclusions don't tell the whole story

David C. Holzman
Environmental Health Perspectives
Mon, 03 Dec 2012 12:53 UTC
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© pakalertpress.comSo how is the mainstream media lying about this? By fudging the facts, of course. For starters, the “study” isn’t even a study. It was just a review of other studies. No new laboratory analysis was done whatsoever!
A widely reported Stanford University study1 concluding there is little difference in the healthfulness and safety of conventional and organic foods has been criticized by experts in the environmental health sciences for overlooking the growing body of evidence on the adverse effects of pesticides. Critics take to task the authors' omission of relevant studies and overinterpretation of the data.

The meta-analysis of 237 studies, published in the September 2012 Annals of Internal Medicine, largely focused on nutrient content and viral/bacterial/fungal contamination of organic versus conventionally grown foods. Nine studies reporting pesticide residues, including three of residues exceeding federal limits, were included in summary analyses.

The authors concluded that the studies reviewed do not support what they call the "widespread perception" that organic foods overall are nutritionally superior to conventional ones, although eating an organic diet may reduce exposures to pesticides and antibiotic-resistant bacteria.1 A Stanford press release quoted senior author Dena Bravata as saying, "There isn't much difference between organic and conventional foods, if you're an adult and making a decision based solely on your health."2 (According to the Stanford Medical Center press office, Bravata is no longer doing interviews about the study.)

Comment: To learn the whole story behind the controversial Standford Organic Food Study read the follwoing articles:

Controversy Erupts Over Study
Corruption of Science: 5 Ways the Stanford Study Sells Organics Short
New York Times admits Stanford organic food study flaws, apologizes
Stanford Scientists Shockingly Reckless on Health Risk and Organics
Cargill and others behind anti organic "Stanford Study
"Whoa, Is Organic Food No Healthier Than Non-Organic?

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Attention

Tamoxifen: Praised as "life saving" but still causing cancer

Sayer Ji
Greenmedinfo.com
Wed, 12 Dec 2012 12:41 UTC
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Many of the drugs used to treat breast cancer today are probable or known cancer-causing agents. Tamoxifen, for instance, is classified by the World Health Organization as a "human carcinogen," but recent news headlines praised extended use of this drug for "saving lives." It is obvious that the mainstream media has swallowed the tamoxifen-flavored Kool-Aid ... will you?

Last week, mainstream media headlines lit up like Christmas lights with exuberant news that the chemotherapy drug tamoxifen, "Cuts Breast Cancer Deaths," "Saves Lives," "Dramatically Lowers Risk of Death," ad nauseam, when extended from 5 years of use to 10 in breast cancer patients.

These mostly uncritical pronouncements followed from a newly published study in Lancet, funded by a long list of contributors, including the US Army, EU-Biomed, UK Medical Research Council, and the UK division of AstraZeneca, the company that formed after the now defunct Imperial Chemical Industry, the drug's original patent holder and manufacturer, de-merged its pharmaceutical division Zeneca Group in 1993, merging with Astra AB in 1999 to assume its present incarnation as one of the world's most powerful pharmaceutical companies.
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Attention

Flesh-eating fungal infection following natural disasters


HealthDay News)
Wed, 05 Dec 2012 12:36 UTC
After a natural disaster, doctors should be on the lookout for outbreaks of a rare but deadly "flesh-eating" fungal infection, researchers at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported Wednesday.

That's the lesson, the agency said, from 13 cases of mucormycosis skin infections that struck victims of the Joplin, Mo., tornado last year.

The May 2011 tornado was one of the deadliest in U.S. history, killing almost 160 people and injuring more than 1,000. In the aftermath, doctors found that some victims with serious injuries were developing severe infections that ate away at the skin and underlying soft tissue.

It turned out to be mucormycosis, a fungal infection caused by a group of molds found in soil and decaying matter, such as fallen leaves and rotting wood. The fungus can attack various parts of the body, but skin infections occur when the fungus contaminates a wound.

The cluster of 13 cases in Joplin was a very large one, the CDC reported in the Dec. 6 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.
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Evil Rays

Reports that backscatter machines are being removed from airports false


Alliance for Natural Health
Tue, 11 Dec 2012 11:40 UTC
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And even worse scanners may be coming.

As we reported earlier this year, the full-body x-ray scanners used in airports are so dangerous that the European Union has banned them. The backscatter machines being used by the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) emit "low" levels of ionizing radiation with an impact that is 10 to 20 times higher than the manufacturer's calculations. They are a cancer risk.

There have been press reports about these dangerous machines being removed. But you have to read the fine print. The backscatter machines are being taken out of the busier airports not because of documented safety concerns, but because they are slowing down the line! Many people opt out of a scan from the backscatter machines because of privacy concerns (the scanners display a nude image of each person scanned to TSA officers in a nearby room), choosing instead to undergo the physical screening instead. And this is causing long waits at some airports.

The machines aren't going away, however: they're merely being moved to smaller, less-busy airports. So the health risks (not to mention the invasion of privacy) will be just as great as before - but perhaps harder to avoid.
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Attention

Cholesterol lowering treatment increases the risk of death

David Evans
Healthy Diets and Science
Wed, 12 Dec 2012 09:54 UTC
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This study was published in Circulation 1990 Dec;82(6):1916-24 Study title and authors: An analysis of randomized trials evaluating the effect of cholesterol reduction on total mortality and coronary heart disease incidence. Holme I. Life Insurance Companies' Institute for Medical Statistics, Ullevaal Hospital, Oslo, Norway. This study can be accessed at: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2242517

The study investigated the relationship between cholesterol reduction and death rates by analysing the results of 19 randomized clinical cholesterol reduction intervention trials (by drugs and diet). The 19 trials included 103,598 subjects and lasted between two and ten years.

The study found that those who had the cholesterol lowering treatment had a 3.7% increased risk of death compared to those who had no cholesterol lowering treatment.

Comment: A person with low cholesterol levels is at an increased risk for infection, autoimmune diseases and the much dreaded chronic inflammation which has a role in every single disease. In fact, you'll likely die if you go through a septic blood poisoning event with low cholesterol levels.

Cholesterol drugs have the biggest drug profits in the history of the world. Profits buy a lot of propaganda (such as lobbyists), advertising and marketing to doctors, including free continual medical education. And instead of investing all the billions they earn in public education of the importance of fats, they are only seeking to demonize fats and see in what other conditions they can push cholesterol-lowering drugs too to perpetuate their top sales rankings AND the debilitation of people in general. A healthy diet is rich animal fat, but God forbid the masses would switch to their ancestral diet which made them thrive for millions of years.

There is hardly a better way to dumb down, appease the masses, and most especially profit and depopulate the world than through what we eat. As Gary Taubes, author of Why We Get Fat and Good Calories, Bad Calories has pointed out,
Indeed, the history of the national conviction that dietary fat is deadly, and its evolution from hypothesis to dogma, is one in which politicians, bureaucrats, the media, and the public have played as large a role as the scientists and the science. It's a story of what can happen when the demands of public health policy--and the demands of the public for simple advice--run up against the confusing ambiguity of real science.
Saturated animal fat and its protein are the cure to many of mankind's modern diseases that stares us in the face. For more information read Life Without Bread and Ketogenic Diet: Path to Transformation?

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Gold Coins

The truth about sleeping pills: Big Pharma's goldmine

Martha Rosenbeg
Alternet
Wed, 21 Nov 2012 18:54 UTC
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© Jon Han
Pharmaceutical industry ads convey unrealistic expectations for fall-to-sleep time. The pills they shill do not always even work.

Many first heard of the uber sleeping pill, Ambien, in 2006 when former Rhode Island representative Patrick Kennedy drove to Capitol Hill under its influence to "vote" at 2:45 a.m., crashing his car. He had also been taking Phenergan, a gastroenteritis drug that can cause drowsiness, said published reports.

Soon Ambien-induced blackouts were so common, they captured the attention of public health agencies. The FDA issued warnings in 2007 about the potential of "complex sleep-related behaviors" with Ambien and 12 other sleeping pills that included "sleep-driving, making phone calls and preparing and eating food (while asleep)." Meanwhile, law enforcement officials reported traffic accidents increasing under Ambien's popularity with some drivers not even recognizing police officers there to arrest them. Dude! Help me get my car out of this ditch.

Then, horror stories began to circulate about blackout eating. Skinny dieters were waking up horrified amid mountains of pizza, Krispy Kreme donuts, and Häagen-Dazs cartons consumed by their evil twins when they took Ambien. Blackout eating became such a lifestyle problem - hours on the treadmill shot to hell - Sanofi-Aventis, Ambien's manufacturer, was forced to publish full page newspaper ads telling people if they were going to take Ambien, to get in bed and stay there. No calling for pizza delivery either.
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