Health & WellnessS


Health

Appendix May Actually Have a Purpose

Jennifer Warner
WebMD
Fri, 12 Oct 2007 16:31 UTC
appendix_01
© 2009 Nucleus Medical Art, Inc.
Researchers Say the Appendix May Be a Place Where Good Bacteria Can Live Safely

The lowly appendix may have a purpose after all.

New research suggests that the seemingly useless organ provides a safe haven for good bacteria to hang out in the gut.

Although the study stops short of providing direct proof of this proposed purpose for the appendix, researchers say there's a strong case to be made for the appendix based on new information about the role of bacteria in intestinal health.

"While there is no smoking gun, the abundance of circumstantial evidence makes a strong case for the role of the appendix as a place where the good bacteria can live safe and undisturbed until they are needed," researcher William Parker, PhD, assistant professor of experimental surgery at Duke University Medical Center, says in a news release.

The appendix is a small, 2- to 4-inch pouch located near where the large and small intestines meet. Doctors have debated the exact function of the organ for years, as removal causes no noticeable symptoms.

Not much is known about the human appendix because studies on the appendix are difficult to conduct. There are only a few animals that have the organ; an animal's appendix is very different than the human appendix.
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Family

Suicide spikes among middle-aged women

Julie Weingarden Dubin
Microsoft National Broadcasting Company
Wed, 27 Jul 2011 15:03 UTC
Image
© UnknownGail Boledovich, left, and her daughter, Julie Boledovich Farhat, are all smiles at Farhat's graduation from Michigan State University in 2003. Julie's mother committed suicide just two years later, in 2005.
Experts speculate that depression, substance abuse and sleep issues may all play a part

At 23, Julie Boledovich Farhat decided to leave her boyfriend, three siblings and beloved hometown in Michigan to focus on saving her mother.

After watching her mom, Gail Boledovich, battle schizophrenia for three years and suffer from hallucinations and delusions, Julie resolved to take an engineering job in Bowling Green, Ky., and buy a house where her mom could live with her and have a beautiful garden and even an art studio to create her mosaics. Gail would be spared the stress of having to work or pay bills. Everything would work out, Julie thought.
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Health

Mind-Controlling Parasite May Increase Brain Cancer Risk

Charles Q. Choi
Live Science
Wed, 27 Jul 2011 12:06 UTC
Toxoplasma gondii
© Ke Hu and John Murray, PLoSThe mind-altering parasite called Toxoplasma gondii has a unique apparatus that is likely used to invade host cells and for its own replication. Shown here, the parasite is building daughter scaffolds within the mother cell.

Mind-altering parasites already linked to neurosis and schizophrenia might also be linked to brain cancer, scientists now find.

The germ, found worldwide, is known as Toxoplasma gondii. The parasites ultimately want to end up in cats, where they breed, but until then they can live in the cells of many warm-blooded creatures. In fact, it has infected about a third of all humans.

That doesn't mean that a third of humans will get brain cancer, and the scientists caution that they remain unsure of how one might cause the other.

"I do really want to emphasize we haven't definitively shown cause-and-effect, only a correlation," said researcher Kevin Lafferty, an infectious disease ecologist at the U.S. Geological Survey. "We hope our results inspire researchers to look for a link between Toxoplasma and cancer."

Also, "one shouldn't be panicking about owning cats," Lafferty added. "The risk factors for getting Toxoplasma are really hygiene and eating undercooked meat. One should be more concerned about those than pets."
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Pills

Interview with Psychiatryland Author Phillip Sinaikin, MD

Martha Rosenberg
Scoop Independent News
Mon, 25 Jul 2011 14:28 UTC
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Phillip Sinaikin, MD, is a Florida psychiatrist who has been in practice for 25 years. Author of Get Smart About Weight Control and co-author of Fat Madness: How to Stop the Diet Cycle and Achieve Permanent Well-Being, his new book focuses on excesses and industry influence in the field of psychiatry.

Rosenberg: Your new book, Psychiatryland, traces how deception, conflicts of interest, medical enabling and direct-to-consumer advertising have resulted in millions being on psychiatric drugs they don't need. One patient you describe has legitimate mourning and grief work to do after his wife leaves him for his own cousin. But his grief is pathologized into "bipolar disorder" by the system, including his own mother.

Sinaikin: By the time I saw this patient, he was on Wellbutrin and another antidepressant, the mood stabilizers Eskaltih and Keppra, the antipyschotic Abilify, the tranquilizer Klonopin and Adderall for ADD. Calling grief a psychiatric disorder deflates and dishonors the spiritual dimension of loss and grief and the sadness which is a marker of the lost love. By the time this patient came under my care (three years after the loss of his wife) his "case" had become such a jumbled, incomprehensible and irrational mess of overdiagnosis and overmedication that the only word I can use to describe it is criminal.
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Attention

Pesticides in Your Toothpaste

Martha Rosenberg
Counterpunch
Mon, 25 Jul 2011 14:00 UTC
Most people know by now that the orgy of antibacterial dish, body and laundry soaps that emerged in the 2000s do less to protect people from germs than to build new and better germs via antibiotic resistance. They also know that such bacterial overkill (soap and water work just as well) is at the basis of the "hygiene hypothesis" theory of childhood allergies that says a too clean environment with no exposure to microbes subverts the immune system.

But how many realize the antibiotic germ killers in such products are the same endocrine disrupter pesticides producing frogs with no penises in polluted streams?

One pesticide, triclosan, found in Colgate's Total toothpaste, breaks down into chloroform with tap water and dioxin in the environment, impairs thyroid function and lives in human breast milk, urine and blood, according to studies. When Dr. Sarah Janssen, a staff scientist with the Natural Resources Defense Council, spoke in Chicago about the health risks of triclosan and other endocrine disruptors in consumer products, many went home and filled garbage bags with Ajax and Palmolive antibacterial dish detergents, Colgate's Total toothpaste and other products. Yes, people are brushing their teeth with pesticides.
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Cow

Best of the Web: Enjoy Saturated Fats, They're Good for You!

Donald W. Miller, Jr., MD
LewRockwell.com
Tue, 19 Jul 2011 10:35 UTC
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This article is taken from a talk I gave at the 29th Annual Meeting of the Doctors for Disaster Preparedness in Albuquerque last week, on the controversial subject of saturated fats. Some of the slides that I used for this talk are put in here.

The medical establishment and government health authorities say that consumption of saturated animal fats is bad for us and causes heart disease. According to the lipid hypothesis - the label used for the diet-cholesterol theory of heart disease - saturated fats raise serum cholesterol levels, and high blood cholesterol causes obstructive plaques to form in arteries, called atherosclerosis. This pathologic process causes coronary heart disease and the need for coronary artery bypass surgery, which is what I do.

Types and Structure of Fats

Animals and tropical plants contain saturated fats while plants outside the tropics have mostly unsaturated fats. Saturated animal fats are in milk, meat, eggs, butter, and cheese. And tropical coconut and palm oil contain a lot of saturated fat.

The food industry makes trans fats. They do this by shooting hydrogen atoms into polyunsaturated vegetable oils. This straightens out the fatty acid molecules and packs them closer together, giving vegetable oil so treated a solid texture like lard. Trans fats are used to make margarine, with yellow bleach added so it looks like butter. They are also used prolong the shelf life of bakery products, snack chips, imitation cheese, and other processed foods.
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Ambulance

Methylmercury in seafood hinders enzyme that protects against heart disease

Roxanne Karimi
Environmental Health News
Wed, 27 Jul 2011 08:54 UTC
Ayotte, P, A Carrier, N Ouellet, V Boiteau, B Abdous, EAL Sidi, ML Château-Degat and E Dewailly. 2011. Relation between methylmercury exposure and plasma paraoxonase activity in Inuit adults from Nunavik. Environmental Health Perspectives

A new study finds a reason behind why mercury exposure increases heart disease risk.

High amounts of methylmercury in a person's blood can inhibit an enzyme that helps prevent atherosclerosis, researchers report in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives.

Atherosclerosis is the buildup of plaque deposits along artery walls that can lead to vessel hardening and eventual blockage. This, in turn, can lead to heart attacks and other cardiac problems. The discovery helps explain how eating excessive amounts of mercury-containing seafood can increase the risk of cardiovascular disease.
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MIB

FDA Copies the European Union and Slips In One of its Deadliest Weapons


Alliance for Natural Health
Wed, 27 Jul 2011 07:57 UTC
american flag

Are the NDI guidelines the ultimate FDA tool to freeze dietary supplement innovation? A special report by Robert Verkerk, PhD, ANH-USA Scientific Director and ANH-Europe Executive and Scientific Director.

If the US natural products industry values its ability to keep a diverse range of products available for the benefit of the American public, and believes in not exposing the public to unnecessary costs, we strongly suggest that it look very closely at the latest guidelines from the FDA - with eyes wide open. We refer to the FDA guidelines on so-called "new dietary ingredients" (NDIs) that we've been telling you about over the past several weeks. These guidelines preempt a crackdown on ingredients used in natural products, one that appears to be coordinated closely with a similar clampdown happening currently in Europe. The guidelines bear an uncanny likeness to the European Union's Novel Food Regulation.

The justification given for the new guidelines is - as is always the case when facing a tighter regulatory noose around dietary supplements - consumer safety. This of course brings about a predictable response from the natural health sector: "But where are the dead bodies?" It's actually quite a pertinent question, and one that is rarely taken seriously by the FDA or other regulators.
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Beaker

U.S. Minnesota: Wafting poison makes fertile ground for suit

Josephine Marcotty
Star Tribune
Mon, 25 Jul 2011 11:06 UTC
Crop Spraying
Crop Spraying
Court rules pesticide drifting onto organic farm constitutes trespass.

Oluf Johnson's 12,000-acre farm in Stearns County is an organic island in a sea of chemically treated corn and soybeans.

Improperly applied pesticides repeatedly drift over from neighboring farms, often with dire consequences for Johnson. But now, thanks to a new court ruling, he and other farmers can sue to recover their losses.

Letting damaging chemicals cross property lines is trespassing, the Minnesota Court of Appeals ruled on Monday. Moreover, since those pesticides made his crop unsalable in the organic market, Johnson is entitled to damages from the company that applied it, the Paynesville Farmers Union Cooperative Oil Co., the court said.

"Whenever this happens it will give people with overspray a legal avenue to pursue," said Doug Spanier, an attorney with the Minnesota Department of Agriculture, which administers pesticide enforcement regulations in the state. And that could go for any farmer whose crop is made inedible by someone else's chemical spray and even homeowners whose property has been damaged by a neighbor's overuse of RoundUp, legal experts said.
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Cow

Paleo Diet: Smart Eating or Latest Fad?

Michael d'Estries
Yahoo Shine
Fri, 22 Jul 2011 13:25 UTC
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© Getty Images
In the quest for optimum health and weight, should humans consider looking back at what their ancestors consumed? That's the theory proposed by the "Paleo Diet" (aka, Caveman Diet), which recommends taking cues from the age of hunters and gatherers and leaving some of our modern food groups behind.

The idea is simple: You eat a diet that's gluten-free, but rich in lean, organic meats, fish, poultry, eggs, vegetables, fruit and nuts. As much as possible should be sourced locally. You exclude grains, legumes, dairy products, salt, refined sugar and processed oils.

All of this measures up to a eating regimen that, according to Loren Cordain, professor of health and exercise at Colorado State University, is a "powerful way to normalize health and well-being.

Comment: What additional evidence is needed?? Humans have been eating a Paleolithic diet for most of our history and it was only with the advent of agriculture that the diseases of civilization began to plague mankind. See: Agriculture: The Worst Mistake In The History Of The Human Race

For more information on ways to improve health through correct nutrition, visit our Diet and Health Forum.

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