Health & WellnessS


Health

SOTT Focus: Gabriela Segura, M.D.: Detoxing After the Gulf Oil Disaster

WVPRadio
WVPRadio & Sott.net
Sat, 12 Mar 2011 13:00 UTC
On 3/11/11, Sott.net's Gabriela Segura, M.D. was a special guest on WVP Radio show 'Gulf Blue Plague' with host Michael Edward. Dr. Segura's article "The Day the Water Died: Detoxing After the Gulf Oil Spill" brought attention to how mainstream Western medicine doesn't recognize diseases caused by environmental toxicity. Dr. Segura is a heart surgeon with extensive experience and interest in alternative health, research, psychology and the human condition. Her internet sites are at http://health-matrix.net and http://sott.net

Also on the show was Jessica, a brilliant student and aspiring saxophonist from Grand Isle, Louisiana, who spoke about her and her classmates' experiences and health challenges living directly on the Gulf.

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Beaker

A Perfect Storm of GMOs, Chemicals and Cancer

Rady Ananda
Food Freedom
Thu, 10 Mar 2011 10:07 UTC
Idiot Cycle cover
© Emmanuelle Schick Garcia
Several books, including Seeds of Destruction and Corrupt to the Core, along with the film, The Idiot Cycle, lay out the framework for and evidence of a concerted effort to sicken and then treat humanity, while earning obscene profits. When we factor in other recent actions taken by transnational corporations and lawmakers, the conspiracy adopts a more ominous tone.

Authors William Engdahl and Shiv Chopra appear in Emmanuelle Schick Garcia's powerful film, The Idiot Cycle: What You Aren't Being Told About Cancer. Both writers provide detailed evidence of a corporate-government conspiracy to adulterate the food and water supply with dangerous substances linked to a host of illnesses. The Case Against Fluoride, a book using hundreds of peer-reviewed studies, provides more evidence. In David Gumpert's Raw Milk Revolution, we get a peek at the US government's war on the natural dairy industry.

Looking at six companies, Dow Chemical, BASF, Bayer, Dupont, Astrazeneca (Syngenta), and Monsanto, Idiot Cycle exposes corporate-government collusion in the release of carcinogenic chemicals, but also reveals how some of the same chemical companies then profit from treating cancer. It's a cycle only an idiot would tolerate. Going further, much of the film then addresses genetically modified food and its potentially disastrous effect on health and the environment.
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Cookie

The Many Heads of Gluten Sensitivity

Dr. Peter Osborne
Gluten Free Society
Fri, 11 Mar 2011 06:37 UTC
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Unfortunately, today most people do not understand the difference between gluten sensitivity and celiac disease. As a matter of fact, this is one of the reasons why so many patients fail to get properly diagnosed. Lab tests have traditionally focused on diagnosing celiac disease. This has created a proverbial No Man's Land for those patients who react to gluten differently. Because the labs come back negative for them, they are told to continue the consumption of grains, and they are told not to worry about gluten because they don't have celiac disease.

Until last year, most doctors and celiac disease researchers ignored or denied the existence of gluten sensitivity. The general thought was - if you don't have celiac disease, you don't have to worry about avoiding grains.

A new study published this week attempted to elucidate the differences between Celiac Disease and Gluten Sensitivity

As much as I love the work being done by Dr. Fasano at the University of Maryland, I have to take offense at the following quote from from Fox News' interpretation of the study:
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Cow

Milk and calcium good for the bones? Don't think so

Dr. John Briffa
drbriffa.com
Tue, 08 Mar 2011 06:30 UTC
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If I were to try and condense what I regard as good nutritional advice into a soundbite, I'd say 'Eat like a caveman (or cavewoman)'. The idea here being to emulate the diet we as a species evolved on, and are best adapted to. There is, I think, abundant research that strongly supports this as being, in the main, the way to go. Though I appreciate there will be some who reject the notion of primal eating based on (I think) faulty paradigms such as saturated fat is bad and grains are good.

Another supposed anomaly here is dairy products. They do seem to be quite a recent addition to the diet (5000 years or so), so in theory not so important for health. Many nutritional commentators tell us, though, they are almost essential for our bones. Yet, the bony record from before about 10,000 years ago shows good bone health. How did we manage for more than 2 millions years without cow's milk and now suddenly need it? Maybe, just maybe, we don't need it at all.

I decided to revisit some of the science in this area recently. I found a quite-recent meta-analysis (amassing of similar studies) which looked at the relationship between milk consumption and risk of hip fracture [1]. I think fracture risk, by the way, is a much better judge of the value of dairy products than bone density. The whole point, supposedly, of having dense bones is to prevent fracture, so it makes sense to look at this (not density).

Comment: For more information on this topic, see also Why Milk Is So Evil

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Syringe

Vaccinate against killer flu virus now, say experts

Steve Connor
The Independent
Thu, 10 Mar 2011 04:55 UTC
patient injection

Governments must start to vaccinate children and young adults against a strain of the influenza virus that killed several million people in the 1960s, a leading expert has warned.

The last outbreak of the H2N2 flu occurred in 1968 but the virus is now circulating in birds and pigs and could easily cross into the human population where most people under the age of 50 have little or no immunity, according to Gary Nabel, a vaccine researcher at the US National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland.

A pre-emptive vaccination campaign targeted at children and young people could help to avert a major pandemic. The last epidemics of H2N2 occurred between 1957 and 1968 and are estimated to have killed between one million and four million people.
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Alarm Clock

US: Colorado hospital blew whistle on contaminated wipes

Marc Piscotty
MSNBC
Mon, 07 Mar 2011 08:23 UTC
Dr. Christine Nyquist, medical director of infection prevention at The Children's Hospital in Aurora, Colo
© JoNel AlecciaDr. Christine Nyquist, medical director of infection prevention at The Children's Hospital in Aurora, Colo., holds a sample of the bacteria Bacillus cereus in the microbiology lab at the research hospital just outside of Denver.
Spate of serious infections caused by rare bacteria sparked massive recall, investigation

It took fast-acting doctors at a Colorado hospital to flag problems with tainted alcohol wipes now tied to a massive recall and growing reports of potentially deadly infections, including the case of a 10-year-old boy already battling leukemia.

Medical experts at The Children's Hospital in Aurora said they became alarmed last fall when a few youngsters developed bloodstream infections caused by the rare bacteria Bacillus cereus.

"It just didn't make sense," said Dr. Christine Nyquist, the hospital's medical director of infection prevention. "Based on the kind of patients they were, the organism, the bacteria, didn't make sense."

They included Peyton Armstrong, 10, of Glenwood Springs, Colo., who developed a high fever and intense pain last October within 12 hours of placement of an IV line and a medical port to start chemotherapy treatment for leukemia.

"He was on the brink of death," said Jessica Armstrong, 40, Peyton's mother. "The cancer didn't even matter at that point."

Within weeks, hospital officials were stunned to confirm that Peyton's infection - along with what Nyquist would describe only as "a couple"of others - was caused by contaminated alcohol wipes produced by the hospital's sole supplier: the Triad Group of Hartland, Wis.
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Health

The Coming Cancer Epidemic from Overuse of CT Scans

Patrick Malone
Technorati.com
Thu, 10 Mar 2011 08:27 UTC
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© Unknown
The medical community is waking up to an enormous problem with radiation - mainly X-rays and CT scans - used to diagnose disease and injury. Patients are getting too much radiation, and the excess itself causes injuries, many years down the road, in a big uptick in the risk of cancer.

Even a "routine" CT scan of the abdomen, ordered thousands of times every day in the United States for patients with belly pain, carries a large risk of downstream cancer, just from that single scan.

Dr. Rebecca Smith-Bindman, MD, of the University of California San Francisco, estimates a 20-year-old woman who undergoes a CT scan of the abdomen and pelvis has a one in 250 chance over her lifetime of getting cancer just from that single dose of radiation. This number was in a talk she gave recently at UCSF, as reported by her colleague Bob Wachter, MD, a patient safety expert at UCSF.
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People

How a flash of light to the brain can banish fear


Daily Mail
Thu, 10 Mar 2011 06:35 UTC
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© UnknownDaily torture: But new scientific research could help those who suffer from regular anxiety attacks. (Posed by model)

Millions suffer from the daily torture of anxiety.

But help could be at hand after scientists identified a brain mechanism that makes individuals fearless.

More than one in four people are likely to experience a bout of anxiety at some point in their lives sufficiently intense to be classed as a psychiatric disorder.

The condition can severely damage quality of life, with some suffering regular panic attacks or almost constant 'nervous' symptoms such as sweating, raised heart rate and churning stomach.

Researchers at Stanford University in California found stimulating a brain circuit within a structure of grey matter could counter fear.
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Red Flag

Criminalizing Nature: Dark Times for Herbal Medicine in Europe


Alliance for Natural Health
Thu, 03 Mar 2011 19:36 UTC
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© foodfreedom.wordpress.com
Our European Office, is preparing for a legal challenge against EU herb laws.

As we reported to you last November, thousands of products associated with traditional medicine will soon become illegal throughout the European Union (EU). And more and more, EU legislation influences US domestic policy, especially where health-related laws are concerned. The EU threat to herbal medicine is real, and we urge you to take stock of what's going on so we can collectively jump in the minute anything similar emerges from US regulators. After all, it was that joint action from consumers and health organizations back in 1994 that has kept US regulations over dietary supplements relatively sane. But let's not forget that this kind of freedom needs to be fought for every step of the way.
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Info

After 20 Years, Nearly Everyone Still Wants GM Food to be Labeled

Rady Ananda
foodfreedom.wordpress.com
Sat, 05 Mar 2011 19:20 UTC
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© foodfreedom.wordpress.com
At this MSNBC poll, over 40,000 people have voted strongly in favor of labeling genetically modified foods: 96% of all respondents.

But, a review of several polls going back to 1994 reveals that the numbers have always been high - the vast majority of people have always wanted GM labels. That biotech foods have remained unlabeled for nearly 20 years in the US reveals a deliberate and willful refusal by regulatory agencies to serve the will of the people, instead opting to abet industry profits through public deception.

The 96% rating from MSNBC's casual survey does represent a jump from a scientific poll conducted in 2003 by University of Maine and The Ohio State University (and partly funded by the US Dept. of Agriculture), where 85% of respondents said they wanted GM foods labeled. Researchers also noted:
"Polls have emphasized that a majority of consumers in the United States (US) desire GMFs to be labeled (Pew Initiative on Food and Biotechnology, 2001), and legislation has been entered at both the federal and state levels. For example, HR 3377 and S 2080 - the "Genetically Engineered Food Right to Know Acts" - were introduced into the US House of Representatives and Senate, respectively. In addition, at least seven states have debated labeling and marketing requirements for GM foods (Pollack, 2001). Further, the current lack of harmonization of policies across countries also makes GM food labeling an international trade issue."
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