Health & WellnessS

Attention

California high school to be tested for tuberculosis

All 1,800 students and staff at a southern California high school will be screened for tuberculosis Friday after 45 students tested positive for possible exposure, authorities said.

The Riverside County Department of Public Health and state officials have determined there is a possibility of exposure to other Indio High School students, though "the risk of transmission appears to be moderately low," according to a letter to parents on the school's website

Officials said there is one active case of tuberculosis and they do not fear an outbreak.

"The entire school is being tested out of an abundance of caution," Riverside County Public Health Officer Dr. Cameron Kaiser


Cow Skull

Meat and milk from offspring of cloned animals should be sold WITHOUT labels, say EU officials

  • European Commission proposals would ban sale of food from clones
  • But there would be no controls on food from their sons and daughters
  • Proposals would keep families in the dark about what they are eating
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The European consumer body, BEUC, condemned any proposal that does not require the labeling of food from clone offspring.
Meat and milk from the offspring of clone farm animals should be allowed on to supermarket shelves without labels, according to EU officials.

The proposals, which would keep families in the dark about what they are eating, were outlined today in a move that was condemned by consumer groups.

The idea of cloning animals for food may seem bizarre and akin to science fiction, however it is possible that beef and milk from the offspring of clones is already being imported here from the USA and other countries.

Separately, the Daily Mail has revealed attempts to rear clone animal offspring in the UK to produce milk for breakfast tables dating back to 2008.

It emerged three years ago that a Scottish farmer had purchased two bulls, which were the sons of a clone, and then bred 92 Holstein milking cows from them.

Initially, he planned to sell the milk in the UK, however following a consumer backlash, he decided to destroy more than 40 of the cows and exported around 30 to Portugal.

Smoking

Passive smoking - another of the Nanny State's big lies

smoking cig
Passive smoking doesn't give you lung cancer. So says a new report publicised by the American Cancer Institute which will come as no surprise whatsoever to anyone with a shred of integrity who has looked into the origins of the great "environmental tobacco smoke" meme.

It was, after all, a decade ago that the British Medical Journal, published the results of a massive, long-term survey into the effects of second-hand tobacco smoke. Between 1959 and 1989 two American researchers named James Enstrom and Geoffrey Kabat surveyed no few than 118,094 Californians. Fierce anti-smoking campaigners themselves, they began the research because they wanted to prove once and for all what a pernicious, socially damaging habit smoking was. Their research was initiated by the American Cancer Society and supported by the anti-smoking Tobacco Related Disease Research Program.

At least it was at first. But then something rather embarrassing happened. Much to their surprise, Kabat and Enstrom discovered that exposure to environmental tobacco smoke (ie passive smoking), no matter how intense or prolonged, creates no significantly increased risk of heart disease or lung cancer.

Comment: See also : The devious plan of anti-smoking campaigns to control people and stop them from using their brain


Heart

Broken heart syndrome really does exist

doctor
© Joe Raedle/Getty Images
How many times have you heard someone say they're so sad about something that they have a broken heart? More often than not, they don't really have a broken heart but it can actually happen. Broken heart syndrome is a serious medical condition caused by sadness.

When Janet Ghise's 14-year-old dog, Maggie died unexpectedly at a kennel while she was on vacation, she was devastated.

"She was just the nicest dog," said Ghise. So upset, she nearly died of a broken heart.

"I said to my husband, 'I'm going to the doctor's, to the cardiologist, to see if he can fix my broken heart.' It's exactly what I said," Ghise said. Luckily, she just happened to have a doctor's appointment a few days later.

Info

Chewing gum is often the culprit for migraine headaches in teens

Chewing Gum
© Tel Aviv University
Teenagers are notorious for chewing a lot of gum. The lip smacking, bubble popping, discarded gum stuck to the sole give teachers and parents a headache.

Now, Dr. Nathan Watemberg of Tel Aviv University-affiliated Meir Medical Center has found that gum-chewing teenagers, and younger children as well, are giving themselves headaches too. His findings, published in Pediatric Neurology, could help treat countless cases of migraine and tension headaches in adolescents without the need for additional testing or medication.

"Out of our 30 patients, 26 reported significant improvement, and 19 had complete headache resolution," said Dr. Watemberg. "Twenty of the improved patients later agreed to go back to chewing gum, and all of them reported an immediate relapse of symptoms."

Arrow Up

Lifesaving service dog sniffs out girl's disease, even in operating room

Kaelyn and JJ
© Good Morning America/ABC News
Since she was two months old, Kaelyn "KK" Krawczyk has had a severe form of mastocytosis, which can cause a life-threatening allergic reaction to simple, everyday things - heat, exercise, even exposure to medicines.

Mastocytosis is a rare disease that causes an abnormal accumulation of mast cells in one or more organ systems. When mast cells are activated, they can induce immediate allergic inflammation. The disease is exceedingly rare and has a broad range of symptoms and severity, according to the Mastocytosis Society.

But for KK, a 7-year-old from Apex, N.C., these allergic reactions can be fatal and can escalate quickly to anaphylaxis or fatal shock.

"She gets too hot, she gets stressed, she has an infection," said her mother, Michelle Krawzyck, 39. "Her reactions range from mild, like being flushed or irritable, to life-threatening drop in blood pressure, vomiting and difficulty breathing."

Doctors had warned the family that KK might not even be able to go to school.

"They said it wasn't safe," said Krawzyck, who has four other children, ages 4 to 16. "She could go into anaphylaxis quickly and we would not know the trigger. We were devastated."

KK needs to be monitored all night long so her parents worry that anything, even hot blankets, might lead to a reaction that causes a fall down the stairs, unconsciousness or worse.

But for the last 18 months, they have a much better medical watchdog: a terrier named JJ who can smell the cell changes before she has a serious reaction and warn her parents that she needs her medical kit.

Question

Brazilian doctors perform emergency C-section, find no baby

C-Section
© Cult Gigolo via Flickr
Cabo Frio - Concerned that they were unable to detect a baby's heartbeat, doctors in Brazil performed an emergency C-section on the mother -- only to discover that she wasn't in fact pregnant.

According to the Brazilian news site Globo G1, stunned doctors at the Women's Hospital in Cabo Frio, Brazil, later determined that the woman they had presumed was 41 weeks pregnant was actually suffering from pseudocyesis, a false pregnancy.

False pregnancy is the belief that you are expecting a baby when you are not actually pregnant. People with pseudocyesis have many, if not all of, the symptoms of pregnancy.

Doctors say the 37-year-old patient arrived at the hospital with what she said was proof of her prenatal care and was "showing" with a protruded belly and complaining of sharp pains.When doctors examined the patient using a stethoscope to detect the baby's heartbeat, they heard nothing. The attending physician determined there was no time to do an ultrasound and the woman was sent directly to the emergency room in an attempt to save the unborn child's life.

When the medical staff later spoke with the patient's husband he reportedly admitted that this was the second "pregnancy" in the past year.

But he says his wife told him she lost that child at birth, she did not, however, show him a death certificate.The woman was released from the hospital and advised to seek psychiatric care.The hospital's director says this is actually the second time this year that a woman has turned out to not be pregnant despite insisting otherwise.

In the other instance, the woman faked an ultrasound result and used another patient's name to get treatment at the facility.

Arrow Up

Leprosy cases rising in Andhra Pradesh as govt ignores warnings

Hyderabad: Leprosy is increasing alarmingly in Andhra Pradesh with the government doing precious little to check the bacterial infection from spreading, experts said as a staggering 8,285 cases were reported in the state during 2012-13. As many as 239 new cases were detected in Hyderabad in the same period.

Health department officials said Andhra Pradesh now has the dubious distinction of figuring among the top 12 states with the highest caseloads of leprosy in the country. The proportion of new paediatric cases in the state was also among the highest in the country, experts said. Data from the National Leprosy Eradication Programme shows that out of the total new cases, a substantial 911 cases (11.34%) are of children, officials said.

Experts said the numbers have gone up particularly in the last two years. During 2011-12, 7,820 cases were detected, they pointed out and attributed the grim situation to the state government's apathy towards the health issue so much so that it is now regaining ground.

"We could not identify these cases well in time," said Dr Michael Sukumar, a WHO consultant who is working with the state leprosy cell here, underscoring a situation when agencies are sometimes helpless when local governments fail to read health warnings.

Info

Science focuses on body's own 'inner light' as the ultimate healer

Bioontology
© Natural Society
Do you think you are psychic enough to predict your future health? Most people would answer, 'of course not' but with a new science called biontology, we can literally measure the light stored in our DNA and determine our probable state of well-being and vitality.

If having a 'light-body' sounds like new age mumbo jumbo to you, you might reconsider after reading further. According to scientists like Alfred Fritz-Popp and Pjotr Garjajev, along with physicists who have studied medicine like Johan Boswinkle, biophotons are the 'light' we exude from our own bodies at very weak levels which are just beyond the visible spectrum. They are in fact, the sub-quark level organizing force of all life - animal, plant and human alike. They precede any biochemical reaction in the body.
"In the classic models of chemistry and physics, light is emitted when an electron is "excited" to a higher energy state and then falls back down to a lower energy state, which occurs any time a chemical reaction takes place. Traditionally, biology and medicine have focused on the biochemical reactions between proteins, DNA, and other molecules within cells. However, a biophoton is always emitted before every biochemical reaction."
One device that has come from Biontology science, a biophotonic scanner, has already proven to be very helpful. The scanner is essentially a way to measure your DNA's own light, and can determine your future health. By sending a laser into your palm, the device measures carotenoid pigments in your cells.

Cupcake Pink

This is your brain on gluten

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© relwaldman/flickrAll of the neurodegenerative diseases are really predicated on inflammation.
"If you could make just three simple changes in your life to prevent, or even reverse, memory loss and other brain disorders, wouldn't you?"

So asks Dr. David Perlmutter, in promotion of his PBS special Brain Change, coming soon to your regional affiliate. Three changes. Simple ones. Wouldn't you?

The 90-minute special is a companion to Perlmutter's blockbuster book on how gluten and carbs are destroying our brains. In November it became a New York Times number one bestseller. Since its September release, as Perlmutter told me, "It's never not been on the bestseller list, frankly."

"Is it still number one?" I asked. A pause over the phone as he checked. In modern interview style, we were both also on our computers.

"As of next week it's number six ... darn."

The book is Grain Brain: The surprising truth about wheat, carbs, and sugar; your brain's silent killers. It promises straightforward dietary solutions to prevent the illnesses we most hate and fear.

Why wouldn't you make three simple changes?

Comment: We find it mind-boggling that the author will write these conclusions considering the health catastrophe that stares him in the face. Perhaps his gluten and carb addiction blinds him from the simple facts of our present reality, so he cannot possibly endorse advice that would ease the problems we are dealing nowadays.