Health & WellnessS


Sherlock

New Documents Detail How Feds Downplayed Ground Zero Health Risks

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© Alternet
New documents show that federal officials went further than was previously known to downplay concerns about health risks from the contaminated air at ground zero.

In the dark and uncertain days after Sept. 11, 2001, the sight of thousands of shaken New Yorkers returning to their apartments, offices and schools in Lower Manhattan seemed to signal a larger return to normalcy.

Now new documents have emerged showing that federal officials in Washington and New York went further than was previously known to downplay concerns about health risks, misrepresenting or concealing information that ultimately might have protected thousands of people from the contaminated air at ground zero.

Pills

How and why melatonin is an effective cancer treatment

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© Illustration Works RM
Numerous studies have established melatonin as one of the most effective anti-cancer treatments in existence. It inhibits cancer cell growth and proliferation; it destroys cancer cells, stops angiogenesis (new tumor blood vessel growth), and prevents harmful forms of estrogen from stimulating cancer cell growth. Despite its success in clinical trials and in doctors' experiences with their patients, it has not been widely prescribed in conventional medicine, though its effects have proven to be superior to those of many chemotherapeutic drugs.

In one clinical trial, patients with glioblastoma, a type of brain cancer, were given either radiation and melatonin, or radiation alone. Twenty-three percent of the patients who took the melatonin were alive after a year, while none who had received only radiation were still alive. Similarly, in another study by oncologists in Italy, patients with non-small cell lung cancers who had failed chemotherapy were given melatonin. They were compared with other patients with non-small cell lung cancers who weren't given melatonin. A year later, 26 percent of the patients who had taken melatonin were still alive; whereas, none in the non-melatonin group remained alive.

Smoking

Flashback Why smoking may have a health benefit

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Scientists have uncovered a gene that helps protect smokers from Parkinson's disease.

The medical world recently discovered that cigarette smoke decreases the risk of getting the degenerative neurological condition - but the genes responsible were a mystery.

US geneticist Professor Jeffrey Vance, from Duke University in North Carolina, has told the International Congress of Human Genetics in Brisbane he has found a gene that helps explain the link.

The gene - known as NOS2A - is found in every cell of the body and is responsible for the production of nitric oxide.

If too much is produced brain cells can die, leading to neuro-degenerative diseases like Parkinson's and Alzheimer's.

Smoking

Flashback In China, cigarettes are a kind of miracle drug

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Guiyang, China - Here's some exciting medical news from the Chinese government: Smoking is great for your health.

Cigarettes, according to China's tobacco authorities, are an excellent way to prevent ulcers.

They also reduce the risk of Parkinson's disease, relieve schizophrenia, boost your brain cells, speed up your thinking, improve your reactions and increase your working efficiency.

And all those warnings about lung cancer? Nonsense

You're more likely to get cancer from cooking smoke than from your cigarette habit.

Welcome to the bizarre parallel universe of China's state-owned tobacco monopoly, the world's most successful cigarette-marketing agency.

With annual sales of 1.8 trillion cigarettes, the Chinese monopoly is responsible for almost one-third of all cigarettes smoked on the planet today.

Comment: Reality truly is stranger than fiction! The Communist Chinese government preaches truth to the masses while the Kafkaesque western governments go on overseas propaganda missions to peddle their falsehoods.

This was 6 years ago.

Since then, the Chinese government has folded to international pressure. We would LOVE to know what went on in those meetings.

China ban on smoking in public places comes into force


Smoking

Indonesian research clinic ignores anti-smoking fascists, seeks to cure illnesses with tobacco smoke


At a clinic in East Java, a 3-year-old boy named Satrio lies on a medical table, squirming. His father holds him and his mother looks on as a technician blows tobacco smoke through a small tube onto the boy's skin.

Satrio, whose parents say he has attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, is part of a controversial study by Sutiman Bambang Sumitro, a molecular biology professor at the University of Brawijaya in Malang, Indonesia.

Sutiman and his colleagues believe that tobacco can be manipulated to treat illnesses, including cancer.

It has been decades since anyone in the U.S. proclaimed any possible health benefits from smoking. Thousands of international studies show tobacco is addictive and harmful to health. The World Health Organization says tobacco kills about half its users, or more than 5 million people annually. Even tobacco manufacturers have admitted smoking is dangerous and addictive.

Comment: WHO statistics are not worth the paper they are printed on. But it is true that big tobacco companies produce contaminated tobacco products which are dangerous. That is why it is important to seek out toxin-free tobacco. Tobacco is only addictive for those whose genetic profiles seem to require smoking to cope with the toxic and stressful global environment we live in:

Genetic link tied to smoking addiction

The Genetics of Smoking: Fundamental Biological Differences Revealed Between Smokers and Non-Smokers

Comment: Typical hack-job against smoking - no facts, just bald assertions! This clinic may or may not be onto something with its nanotechnology research, but the evidence that smoking unadulterated tobacco is beneficial continues to pile up:

5 Health Benefits of Smoking

Does Smoking Help Protect the Joints?

Dr. Gori on the passive smoking fraud

Smoking Helps Protect Against Lung Cancer

Health Benefits of Smoking Tobacco

Don't Quit Smoking! Longtime Smokers Less Likely to Develop Parkinson's Disease

Long-Term Smoking Protects Against Parkinson's, Study Confirms

Study: Quitting smoking increases risk of developing type 2 diabetes

Smoking 'Can Improve Schizophrenic Minds'

Tobacco plant-made therapeutic thwarts West Nile virus

Modified tobacco plant may block HIV

Tobacco used as medicine

Using tobacco plants to fight cancer


Beaker

The Surprising 32-Year Scandal That's Kept This Toxic Substance in Your Head

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© news.harvard.edu
The United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA), once the world's "gold standard" for food, drug, and device regulation, has evolved from industry regulator to industry captive.

Political scientists are not surprised. The evolution from tough regulator to passive regulator to industry captive is a pattern in Washington. Unless an agency engages in a major system of re-invigoration, the spiral continues. But the FDA seems comfortable being the hand-maiden for industry; it has brought big bucks to the agency and lucrative jobs after time at the FDA.

The big bucks are in the FDA's pay-to-play approval system. Drug companies pay seven-figure amounts into FDA coffers to gain approval of their drugs.

FDA staff knows that the cash means higher salaries and more perks in the agency budget. The drug companies know the high fees prevent small competitors with good ideas from getting their products to market. The coziness between the FDA and major drug and device companies gets tighter, while innovative entrepreneurs are shut out and the public loses twice: good drugs aren't being considered, and controversial drugs are rubber-stamped.

Comment: For a more in depth look at the issue of Mercury in Modern Dentistry read the following articles:

FDA to Review Science Behind Ruling on Mercury in Dental Fillings
FDA Reluctantly Admits Mercury Fillings Have Neurotoxic Effects on Children
Dental Fillings - Mercury Exposure At Dangerous Levels and Alzheimer's Disease
FDA, ADA Conspiracy to Poison Children with Toxic Mercury Fillings Exposed in Groundbreaking Lawsuit
FDA to Review Safety of Mercury Fillings
Mercury Dental Fillings: What the FDA and the ADA Are Not Telling You


Health

Mother's Diet Can Positively Influence Infant Allergies

Mother's Diet
© redOrbit

According to new research, pregnant women can reduce the chances of their babies developing food allergies by eating a diet rich in fish oil and nuts.

Researchers found that omega-3 fatty acids prompt the gut to develop in a way that boosts the immune system.

The team from France's National Agricultural Research Institute (INRA) found that when pregnant women ate a diet high in a particular group of polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs), the gut walls of their offspring were more permeable.

"There is intense research interest in maternal diet during pregnancy.

In the western diet, the group of polyunsaturated fatty acids that we have shown to help gut function are actually disappearing - our dietary intake of fish and nut oils is being replaced by corn oils which contain a different kind of fatty acid," Dr Gaëlle Boudry, of the INRA research institute in Rennes, France, said in a press release.

"Our study identifies that a certain group of polyunsaturated fatty acids - known as n-3PUFAs - causes a change in how a baby's gut develops, which in turn might change how the gut immune system develops. These changes are likely to reduce the risk of developing allergies in later life."

Evil Rays

When Annoying Sounds Spark Major Rage: Driven to Distraction, and Worse, By Noise, Misophonia Sufferers Seek a Solution

Ever since she was a little girl, mealtime has been a torture for Adah Siganoff. The eating sounds - the chewing, the slurping, the chomping - drove Adah to distraction. The noises grated on her nervous system, sparking anxiety and rage. To this day, she can't sit next to her husband at dinner time - she has to go to the peace and quiet of another room to eat.



"The fear is that I won't control the rage," Siganoff told TODAY's Mara Schiavocampo. "It's huge. It's physical. It's everything I have turns into a boiling pot of rage. And then I have to talk myself down because this isn't the way you're supposed to live."

Comment: Candida, or Candidiasis is known to cause sensitivity to noise, extreme irritability and impatience among other things. Of course, there is no way to know for sure if Adah Siganoff's symptoms are caused by candida overgrowth, but there is no doubt that she would benefit from low-carb high-fat diet that would stabilize her gut flora and calm her highly agitated nervous system.


Bulb

Stimulating the vagus nerve: Memories are made of this

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© Unknown
Psychobiologists show how the vagal pathway links hormones outside the brain to neurotransmitters inside the brain to lock in memory of emotional or stressful events.

University of Virginia psychologists have moved the science of memory forward, reporting that stimulating the vagus nerve, which carries sensory messages to and from the brain, releases the neurotransmitter norepinephrine into the amygdala, strengthening memory storage in limbic regions of the brain that regulate arousal, memory and feeling responses to emotionally laden stimuli.

Their findings, which appear in the February issue of Behavioral Neuroscience (Vol. 118, No. 1), outline the neural pathway through which hormones that are released in the body affect specific parts of the brain during meaningful or emotionally arousing events in order to strengthen memories that will later foster sentimental pleasure or torture us with relived trauma.

The researchers--psychobiologists Cedric L.Williams, PhD, Derrick Hassert, PhD, and Teiko Miyashita, PhD--conclude that the vagus nerve is the "missing link" between the hormone epinephrine outside the brain and the neurotransmitter norepinephrine inside the brain.

Comment: There is one proven technique that can assist you with reducing your stress, calming and focusing your mind, creating better links between body and mind and thus improving quality of life, increasing sense of connection with others in your community. It will help you to have improved overall health, a stronger immune system, better impulse control, reduced inflammation, etc. It will also help you to heal emotional wounds; anything that may hinder or prevent you from leading a healthy and fulfilling life.

To learn more about Vagus Nerve Stimulation, through breathing exercises, and naturally producing the stress reducing hormone Oxytocin in the brain, visit the Éiriú Eolas Stress Control, Healing and Rejuvenation Program here.


Health

Chewing The Fat

Fats
© Dr.Joe Today

It has become "settled science" that fat is bad for us. We hear it all the time. Yet despite the push for low fat diets and low fat foods from health authorities, the same authorities keep telling us we are losing the "war" on obesity and that rates of illnesses associated with diet are increasing.

So what if there is a hole in the story? What if we have been led up the wrong path? It is so ingrained that fats are bad and that fatty foods are unhealthy that to even suggest something like this will provoke outrage in some quarters.

Two major reviews published on PubMed, which is part of the National Institute of Health, throw a massive question mark over our assumptions. A review of 500 trials published in the Archives of Internal Medicine (The Journal of The American Medical Association) showed NO correlation between dietary fat intake and Coronary Heart Disease. A second analysis of nearly 350,000 people over 23 years showed no association between dietary fat intake and either heart disease or stroke!

That's right! Despite all the years of study and all the claims by authorities that going low fat is good for the heart-there is not actually any evidence to support this.