Health & WellnessS


Red Flag

Chile Peppers Recalled for Salmonella Risk


NewsInferno
Fri, 09 Jul 2010 18:20 UTC
Miravalle Foods, Inc. of South El Monte, California is recalling 37,318 pounds of Miravalle Chile California & Miravalle Chile Nuevo Mexico Brand Peppers, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) just announced.

This recall involves Miravalle Chile California & Miravalle Chile Nuevo Mexico Brand Peppers that were distributed between March 15th and May 6th, 2010 to some customers in California, Colorado, Utah, North Carolina, Nebraska, Indiana, Oregon, and Nevada because they have the potential to be contaminated with Salmonella.
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Socializing with Others "Can Help Fight Cancer"

Matthew Moore
The Telegraph
Fri, 09 Jul 2010 02:30 UTC
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© South African TourismSocializing around the barbecue fire.
Socialising with others may help fight cancer, according to research showing that the stress of interaction causes tumours to shrink and even go into remission.

Cancer patients who change their lifestyle to keep company with more people could see substantial improvements in their condition, the study suggests.

The findings challenge accepted wisdom that stress is damaging to health, indicating that a manageable level of stress can help the body fight disease.

However, many recent studies have shown that high stress levels make people more susceptible to cancer, and less likely to survive.

Matthew During of The Ohio State University, who led the experiments on mice, said that the results had substantial implications for how people with cancer should live after diagnosis.
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Utah study points to arsenic in backyard chickens

Judy Fahys
The Salt Lake Tribune
Tue, 06 Jul 2010 19:25 UTC
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Christina McNaughton wasn't sure where to begin looking when worrisome levels of arsenic turned up in two Utah County children last summer. The family's water wasn't contaminated. Not the soil either.

The trail eventually led McNaughton, a toxicologist for the Utah Department of Health, to the family's backyard chicken coop - along with the eggs that came out of it, the feed that went into the hens that laid them and, finally, widely used animal-feed additives containing arsenic.

"For everyone who has backyard chickens," said McNaughton, "this is an issue."
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Hourglass

Potential Health Effects of Oil Spill

Kristine Galvan
My Fox Houston
Tue, 22 Jun 2010 19:02 UTC
In the Gulf, disaster response crews are sucking up the oil from the water's surface. On land, they're collecting what's washed ashore.

And at hospitals in Louisiana, doctors and nurses are manning decontamination tents.

"We usually get a phone call ahead of time when patients are coming in, who have been exposed to some sort of chemical. whether it be from the oil spill or something else. We wash them off to be safe."

As doctors on the ground deal with a first-of-its-kind problem, other medical experts are meeting with scientists at the request of the Department of Health and Human Services.
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Bulb

Stigmatizing Health: The War Against 'Health Nuts'

Christina Pirello
Huffington Post
Wed, 07 Jul 2010 15:59 UTC
Healthy-eating disorder. Yes, you heard right, healthy-eating disorder. In its insatiable quest to create a mental problem or syndrome out of every human phenomenon and activity, the psychiatric industry has fabricated their most ridiculous disorder yet: 'orthorexia nervosa' which in Latin translates to "nervous about correct eating." Named by California doctor, Steven Bratman in 1997, this latest in a long line of left of center syndromes is no laughing matter. While not an entirely new syndrome, it has had new life breathed into it.

According to The Guardian newspaper, if you place your focus on eating healthy foods, you are mentally distressed and most likely in need of some treatment that involves pharmaceuticals, like psychotropic drugs. The theory is that fixation with healthy eating can be a sign of a serious psychological disorder. Huh?

Instead of calling this new syndrome "nervous about healthy eating disorder," which just sounds stupid (oh, wait, it is stupid), the geniuses that define mental health gave it a Latin name so it sounds authentically like a disease and not the made up delusional rantings of a pharmaceutical-driven industry that relies on us being weak, fat, sick and in fear of mental disease.
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The Danger of Toxic Consumer Products, Fragrances

Dr. Samuel Epstein
Huffington Post
Wed, 07 Jul 2010 15:29 UTC
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Perfumes and fragrances are the single largest category of cosmetic and personal care products, especially hair, facial, and eye. These products represent nearly 50 percent of all prestige beauty dollars now spent in the US Fragrances are also extensively used in a wide range of everyday household cleaning products.

Exposure to toxic ingredients in cosmetics and personal care products is predominantly through the skin. In contrast, exposure to toxic ingredients in household cleaning products is predominantly through inhalation.

Comment: For more information about the toxic ingredients in consumer products such as cosmetics and perfume read the following articles carried on SOTT:

Hidden Chemicals in Perfume and Cologne

Toxic Cosmetic Ingredients

The Top 10 Toxic Products You Don't Need

Reckless Failure of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to Protect Against Cancer From Toxics in Cosmetics and GE Milk

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Red Flag

Illness Among Exxon Valdez Workers Could Foreshadow Tragedy for BP Oil Spill Cleanup Crews


NewsInferno
Thu, 08 Jul 2010 15:10 UTC
People working to cleanup the BP oil spill could very well face the prospect of long-term health problems. According to a report on CNN last night, cleanup workers from the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill are still suffering health problems, 21 years later.

A lawyer who represented on such Exxon Valdez worker told CNN that One examination of health records of 11,000 Exxon Valdez cleanup workers found that 6,722 of them had gotten sick. The government and the company called those illnesses the "Exxon crud," a flu or cold that Exxon was not required to report to federal health officials, CNN said.

One former Exxon Valdez cleanup worker interviewed by CNN said he was "slowly poisoned" by the toxins he was exposed to. Today, he continues to suffer from rashes, respiratory problems, and is going blind.
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Info

Genetically Engineered Soybeans May Cause Allergies

Jeffrey M. Smith
Dr. Mercola
Thu, 08 Jul 2010 14:27 UTC
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Jeffrey Smith
"I used to test for soy allergies all the time, but now that soy is genetically engineered, it is so dangerous that I tell people never to eat it - unless it says organic."
- Allergy specialist John Boyles, MD

Beginning in 1996, genes from bacteria and viruses have been forced into the DNA of soy, corn, cotton, and canola plants, which are used for food. Ohio allergist John Boyles is one of a growing number of experts who believe that these genetically modified (GM) foods are contributing to the huge jump in food allergies in the US, especially among children.

The UK is one of the few countries that conduct a yearly food allergy evaluation. In March 1999, researchers at the York Laboratory were alarmed to discover that reactions to soy had skyrocketed by 50% over the previous year.

Genetically modified soy had recently entered the UK from US imports and the soy used in the study was largely GM. John Graham, spokesman for the York laboratory, said, "We believe this raises serious new questions about the safety of GM foods."
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Better Earth

Should You Eat a Paleo-Diet for Health Like These Californians?

Anne Hart
Examiner
Sun, 04 Jul 2010 11:43 UTC
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© Kostenki30,000-year old man found in Kostenki, Russia; face restored from skull.
There's an article in the Sacramento Bee on the Paleo Diet, eating like a caveman for health. But should you really eat like someone who lived 50,000 years ago? Should you eat like a pre-agricultural cave person who dined on buffalo, fish, rhino, mammoth, seasonal berries, wild vegetables, herbs, and roots?

Cave people in France ate lots of rhino. Unfortunately, the ice age drove those animals south. You could buy buffalo burgers at Sacramento's Natural Food Co-op. But you won't find the hunter's staple, mammoth. So you might eat lots of fish. The only problem is cave man's fish didn't have the toxins such as mercury that you find in most of today's fish. So the next best is to eat wild-caught salmon. That's what stone-age people ate 50,000 - 20,000 years ago.


Comment: Unfortunately, this writer is abysmally ignorant about the Paleolithic peoples. When you say "cave man", you are generally referring to Neanderthal. I haven't read a single study saying that Neanderthals ate rhino regularly. What they did eat was opportunistically scavenged, horse, bison, reindeer and a very occasional mammoth. They never ate fish at all. They weren't bright enough to figure out how to get them. So, having that bit of data in mind: the ignorance of the author of the piece, take the rest with a box of salt.


Several weeks ago, according to "Paleo diet turns back the evolutionary clock," a group of health-conscious Sacramentans started their Paleo diet to eat like cave people for nine weeks. That means consuming only animals, vegetables, fruits, nuts, seeds and mushrooms. The Sacramentan behind the cave man eating challenge is Rick Larson, co-owner of CrossFit West Sacramento, the gym running the dietary challenge.

Comment: The genotype and blood type diets are useful guides, but everybody is different and there might be many variations according to genetic vulnerability, accumulated toxic load throughout our lives, nutrition, etc. We recommend the elimination diet to determine food sensitivities and intolerances according to each individual.

For more information on this topic, please visit our Diet and Health forum.

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Something in the Water

Barry Estabrook
The Atlantic
Tue, 06 Jul 2010 21:10 UTC
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© Cayusa/flickr
The nitrogen in chemical fertilizer does two things incredibly well. It supercharges crop growth, and it produces nitrates, chemicals that are ultra-soluble in water and easily pass through soil to accumulate in groundwater. Once there, nitrates can persist for decades and increase in concentration as more fertilizer is added.

Ingestion of nitrates by infants has been shown to lower levels of oxygen in the blood, leading to the potentially fatal blue-baby syndrome. And several studies have shown that consumption of nitrate-contaminated water can cause cancers in animals. But a recent report by a team led by Mary H. Ward of the National Cancer Institute for the first time links nitrates directly to thyroid cancer in humans.
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