Health & WellnessS


Water

Coke's conspiracy against tap water

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© killercoke.org
Coca-Cola is running a stealth advertising campaign.

Stealth? Why would a corporation as ad-dependent as Coke spend big bucks on advertising that it doesn't want consumers to notice? Shhhh - because the campaign is a surreptitious ploy to enlist restaurants in a marketing conspiracy that targets you, your children, and - of course - your wallet.

Coke calls its covert gambit "Cap the Tap," urging restaurateurs to stop offering plain old tap water to customers: "Every time your business fills a cup or glass with tap water, it pours potential profits down the drain." Cap the Tap can put a stop to that, says Coke, "by teaching [your] crew members or waitstaff suggestive selling techniques to convert requests for tap water into orders for revenue-generating beverages."

Comment: Sounds like more Soda wars for the share of your stomach

The Real Dangers of Soda to You and Your Children
Do the Chemicals That Turn Soda Brown Also Cause Cancer?
The Facts, Statistics and Dangers of Soda Pop
Soda Ingredients Linked to Cirrhosis and Cancer


Arrow Down

Yet another reason to avoid McDonald's - Your chicken order may have an unexpected surprise

McDonald's Chicken
© Prevent Disease
If you're still not convinced you should avoid McDonald's, here is yet another reason. Katherine Ortega took her 5-year-old son to a Newport McDonald's, where they bought a box of fried chicken wings (a special promotion). As she passed them around her dinner table, she realized that one of the wings wasn't a wing at all.

I'll Have A Side Order of Chicken McNoggin Please

What happened to Katherine Ortega in a Newport McDonald's is perhaps one of the most disturbing reports after being verified by the news station WVEC-TV in Newport as well as the Washington Post.

Many McDonald's franchises sell Mighty Wings as part of their Chicken & Fish menu.

One afternoon, Katherine Ortega brought home an order of the McDonald's wings. As she passed them around her dinner table, she realized that one of the wings wasn't a wing! She called WVEC-TV, Channel 13 in Newport News. They thought it was a hoax until they dispatched a cameraman to Ortega's home.

She called WVEC-TV, Channel 13 in Newport News. They thought it was a hoax until they dispatched a cameraman to Ortega's home.

"Our cameraman called in and said, 'The batter on the chicken head is the exact match of all the rest of the pieces of chicken,' " reported WVEC news director Jim Tellus.

Health

Best of the Web: Epidemic of dementia looms with 135 million sufferers seen by 2050

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Many governments are woefully unprepared for an epidemic of dementia currently affecting 44 million people worldwide and set to more than treble to 135 million people by 2050, health experts and campaigners said on Thursday.

Fresh estimates from the advocacy group Alzheimer's Disease International (ADI) showed a 17 percent increase in the number of people with the incurable mind-robbing condition compared with 2010, and warned that by 2050 more than 70 percent of dementia sufferers will be living in poorer countries.

"It's a global epidemic and it is only getting worse," said ADI's executive director Marc Wortmann.

"If we look into the future the numbers of elderly people will rise dramatically. It's vital that the World Health Organization makes dementia a priority, so the world is ready to face this condition."

Comment: Alzheimer's is often referred to as type 3 diabetes because it results from insulin resistance in the brain. And like type 2 diabetes, it is entirely preventable and usually curable by following the ketogenic diet.

The Ketogenic Diet - An Overview
Beyond weight loss: a review of the therapeutic uses of very-low-carbohydrate (ketogenic) diets
Ketogenic Diet Reduces Symptoms of Alzheimer's
Ketogenic Diet (high-fat, low-carb) Has Neuroprotective and Disease-modifying Effects
The fat-fueled brain: unnatural or advantageous?
Solve Your Health Issues with a Ketogenic Diet


Heart - Black

Hospital prices soar, and now a stitch tops $500 in U.S. unrestrained profit centered system

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© Fabrizio Costantini for the New York TimesTwo-year-old Ben Bellar of East Lansing, Mich., getting stitches after a fall at home. The bill for his treatment came to more than $2,000.
With blood oozing from deep lacerations, the two patients arrived at California Pacific Medical Center's tidy emergency room. Deepika Singh, 26, had gashed her knee at a backyard barbecue. Orla Roche, a rambunctious toddler on vacation with her family, had tumbled from a couch, splitting open her forehead on a table.

On a quiet Saturday in May, nurses in blue scrubs quickly ushered the two patients into treatment rooms. The wounds were cleaned, numbed and mended in under an hour. "It was great - they had good DVDs, the staff couldn't have been nicer," said Emer Duffy, Orla's mother.

Then the bills arrived. Ms. Singh's three stitches cost $2,229.11. Orla's forehead was sealed with a dab of skin glue for $1,696. "When I first saw the charge, I said, 'What could possibly have cost that much?' " recalled Ms. Singh. "They billed for everything, every pill."

In a medical system notorious for opaque finances and inflated bills, nothing is more convoluted than hospital pricing, economists say. Hospital charges represent about a third of the $2.7 trillion annual United States health care bill, the biggest single segment, according to government statistics, and are the largest driver of medical inflation, a new study in The Journal of the American Medical Association found.

A day spent as an inpatient at an American hospital costs on average more than $4,000, five times the charge in many other developed countries, according to the International Federation of Health Plans, a global network of health insurance industries. The most expensive hospitals charge more than $12,500 a day. And at many of them, including California Pacific Medical Center, emergency rooms are profit centers. That is why one of the simplest and oldest medical procedures - closing a wound with a needle and thread - typically leads to bills of at least $1,500 and often much more.

Info

Monsanto says Roundup is safe. A Scientific study disagreed. Guess who wins?

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Even worse, GMOs are now endangering our food supply by killing off butterflies.

Monsanto, maker of the shockingly toxic herbicide Roundup and developer of the GMO Roundup Ready crop seeds, points to a number of studies that claim their pesticide is safe for the environment - though of course these are mostly studies that Monsanto has funded. Unfortunately, scientists who contradict Monsanto, and seek to expose the dangers of GMO crops and Roundup, face censorship and retraction of their studies.

Gilles-Eric Séralini, of the University of Caen in France, had done a number of studies challenging the safety of genetically engineered foods - yet the food safety journal Food and Chemical Toxicology has decided to retract Séralini's 2012 paper that showed GMO corn and Roundup can cause cancer and premature death in rats. The New York Times said the paper has been criticized as "flawed, sensationalistic, and possibly even fraudulent by many scientists, some of whom are allied with the biotechnology industry" [emphasis ours]. But if the research points to there being even the hint of a danger from GMOs and Roundup, surely this should be explored further rather than pilloried!


Comment: Read about the retracting of Séralini's paper: In the face of Monsanto's minions: Researcher refuses to retract GM maize tumor study


Ambulance

Diesel responsible for 6 percent of lung cancer deaths, study says

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© Tony Alter/flickrThe World Health Organization concluded last year that diesel exhaust is carcinogenic.
Vermeulen R, DT Silverman, E Garshick, J Vlaanderen, L Portengen, K Steenland. Exposure-response estimates for diesel engine exhaust and lung cancer mortality based on data from three occupational cohorts. Environmental Health Perspectives. 2013. http://1.usa.gov/1gcpfX9.

An estimated 6 percent of lung cancer deaths in the United States and the United Kingdom - 11,000 deaths per year - may be due to diesel exhaust, according to a new study.

Emission standards for diesel engines have become more stringent in recent years, but their exhaust still plays a significant role in lung cancer deaths among truckers, miners and railroad workers, the authors wrote. In addition, diesel exhaust still poses a major cancer threat for people living in dense cities or near highways, they said.

Truckers and miners exposed over their careers to diesel exhaust face a risk of deadly lung cancer that is almost 70 times higher than the risk considered acceptable under U.S. occupational standards. The scientists calculated the lifetime risk for these workers at up to 689 extra lung cancer deaths per 10,000 workers exposed. In comparison, one cancer death per 1,000 workers is used to set federal workplace standards.

Comment: Yet all the emphasis in the public health world is on smoking? And what about this:

A Time-Lapse Map of Every Nuclear Explosion Since 1945


Syringe

You will never look at vaccinated children the same! Shedding Viruses


Syringe

Should we hold those vaccinated against pertussis legally liable for whooping cough outbreaks?

whooping cough boy
© Unknown

The recent news articles to hit the mainstream media in the past week finally states what public health officials and epidemiologists have known for some time: those vaccinated against pertussis are carrying and spreading the bacteria and are responsible for most of the outbreaks.

This news raises the question:

Should we hold those vaccinated with the pertussis vaccine, legally liable for outbreaks?

And, if you look up scholarly articles about previous outbreaks of measles, you'll find academic papers on an entity termed "the paradox of measles"; a paradox because those vaccinated are the ones contracting the disease whilst the unvaccinated in many communities with outbreaks, are unscathed.

In addition, the rise in shingles over the past decade or so, is due to the chicken pox vaccine. This link is not denied in academic literature and was even predicted by mathematical biologists and epidemiologists, and was confirmed by another study funded by the CDC.

If vaccinated children and adults are capable of spreading disease, shall we hold them and their parents legally liable for outbreaks? Shall we mandate 'unvaccination' as a requirement for public school? Since we can't 'unvaccinate,' shall vaccinated children be kicked out of public school?

While the above statements seem absurd, they are equivalent arguments bioethicist, Art Caplan has and continues to make.

Caplan believes parents of unvaccinated children should be held legally liable for outbreaks of disease.

Mind you, Caplan is no regular academic bioethicist, he is a bioethicist who has made a good deal of money for writing pro-industry speak.

If you read about Art Caplan and his direct financial conflicts of interest, you'll also read Art believes these financial conflicts can be managed while producing unbiased work. He and his previous institution of employment, the University of Pennsylvania Department of Bioethics received mega fees from major pharmaceutical companies and the department of vaccine bioethics at U Penn was massively funded by the big vaccine producers.

Health

Bothersome pain afflicts half of older Americans

Findings from a unique study underscore need for public health action on pain and disability in the elderly, reports PAIN®. More than half of older adults in the United States -- an estimated 18.7 million people -- have experienced bothersome pain in the previous month, impairing their physical function and underscoring the need for public health action on pain. Many of those interviewed by investigators for a study published in the current issue of PAIN® reported pain in multiple areas.

The interviews, which included assessments of cognitive and physical performance, were completed by trained survey research staff in the homes of study participants living in the community or in residential care facilities, such as retirement or assisted-living communities. "Pain is common in older adults and one of the major reasons why we start slowing down as we age," says lead investigator Kushang V. Patel, PhD, MPH, of the Center for Pain Research on Impact, Measurement, and Effectiveness in the Department of Anesthesiology and Pain Medicine at the University of Washington.

Arrow Down

Turning classrooms into labs: ADHD diagnosis and the drugging of kids

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"Psychiatrists have attempted to redefine normal to mean something else, to their advantage. It’s psychobabble, it’s dishonest, and it’s junk science.”
The ADHD label has become too common. While blinding us with science, or, in the case of psychiatry, pseudo-science, the diagnostic criteria for ADHD could describe any child's behavior in school.

That behavior has been redefined by clever manipulation, and corruption of what we know to be normal.

One of the items, describing inattention, used to diagnose ADHD, is: "often avoids, dislikes, or is reluctant to engage in tasks that require sustained mental effort, such as schoolwork or homework." This is descriptive of a normal child, in a normal school or a normal home, on a normal day, in a normal world, but psychiatrists would have us think otherwise.