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I am 48 years old and disabled. I have been thrown into this cruel and complex Medicare Part Plan. I am speaking out on behalf of all disabled as we are not mentioned by any media as having to lose our Medicaid Drug coverage and sign on to a Medicare plan. We also will not have a lot of our very vital life-saving medications paid for and now have premiums and co-pays.
A daily dose of vitamin D could cut the risk of cancers of the breast, colon and ovary by up to a half, a 40-year review of research has found. The evidence for the protective effect of the "sunshine vitamin" is so overwhelming that urgent action must be taken by public health authorities to boost blood levels, say cancer specialists.
A growing body of evidence in recent years has shown that lack of vitamin D may have lethal effects. Heart disease, lung disease, cancer, diabetes, high blood pressure, schizophrenia and multiple sclerosis are among the conditions in which it is believed to play a vital role. The vitamin is also essential for bone health and protects against rickets in children and osteoporosis in the elderly.
A growing body of evidence in recent years has shown that lack of vitamin D may have lethal effects. Heart disease, lung disease, cancer, diabetes, high blood pressure, schizophrenia and multiple sclerosis are among the conditions in which it is believed to play a vital role. The vitamin is also essential for bone health and protects against rickets in children and osteoporosis in the elderly.
Use of antidepressants by children continued to drop sharply this year in the wake of warning labels linking the prescription drugs to suicidal behavior, according to market analyses.
The decrease signals that doctors and parents are taking a more careful look at benefits and risks of treatments for depression, says child psychiatrist David Fassler of Burlington, Vt. "Not all depressed kids need medication. There are effective therapies, especially for milder forms of depression."
The decrease signals that doctors and parents are taking a more careful look at benefits and risks of treatments for depression, says child psychiatrist David Fassler of Burlington, Vt. "Not all depressed kids need medication. There are effective therapies, especially for milder forms of depression."
Richard Wetherill was intolerably good at chess. Hardly surprising, for the retired university lecturer could think a mind-boggling eight moves ahead. But in recent months, his razor-sharp mind had started to dull. When he found he could no longer think five moves ahead, he was sure something was seriously wrong and arranged to meet neurologist Nick Fox at University College London's Institute of Neurology. Though his wife dismissed his complaints, Wetherill was adamant that he needed help. Yet Fox's battery of tests revealed nothing amiss: his patient sailed through every test designed to spot early dementia. Under a brain imager, his brain looked normal.
Two years later, in 2003, Wetherill died suddenly. Imagine Fox's amazement when the autopsy revealed a brain riddled with plaques and tangles, the hallmark of Alzheimer's disease. The anatomical evidence indicated advanced disease, with a level of physical damage that would have reduced most people to a state of total confusion. Yet for Wetherill the only impact was that he could no longer play chess to high standards. What on earth was he doing differently? What was cushioning the blow?
Wetherill's experience is a perfect example of a phenomenon that has long puzzled scientists: people who lead more intellectually stimulating lives, who are more intelligent, better educated and have high-status occupations, are somehow protected from the mental decline that comes with age. And not just age, but other insults too, from head injuries and alcohol intoxication to stroke, HIV, Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease.
Two years later, in 2003, Wetherill died suddenly. Imagine Fox's amazement when the autopsy revealed a brain riddled with plaques and tangles, the hallmark of Alzheimer's disease. The anatomical evidence indicated advanced disease, with a level of physical damage that would have reduced most people to a state of total confusion. Yet for Wetherill the only impact was that he could no longer play chess to high standards. What on earth was he doing differently? What was cushioning the blow?
Wetherill's experience is a perfect example of a phenomenon that has long puzzled scientists: people who lead more intellectually stimulating lives, who are more intelligent, better educated and have high-status occupations, are somehow protected from the mental decline that comes with age. And not just age, but other insults too, from head injuries and alcohol intoxication to stroke, HIV, Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease.
Washington - Cigarette smoking is at its lowest level in a survey of teenagers, and use of illicit drugs has been declining, but continuing high rates of abuse for prescription painkillers remain a worry, the government reported Monday.
Comment: It's good to know that teenagers are getting hooked on prescription painkillers and ruining their minds instead of smoking, which would have enhanced their ability to think in many cases.
© David M Spindle
This little booklet purported to be a true account of an abductee/contactee whose information, curiously, paralleled the Cassiopaean account of the alien abduction scenario/reality. At one point in this account, the writer claimed that he was told that the anti-smoking campaign and dietary improvement instructions given to many abductees by the Gray aliens who are then seen as "benevolent," was, in fact, due to the influence of the Reptoid aliens; and NOT because they had human interests at heart, but because they were interested in the diet of their food source! In other words, it was exactly the same as when humans put pigs or cows on a diet of corn for a period of time just prior to slaughtering them! Aliens don't like to eat folks who ingest chemicals, junk food, or who smoke cigarettes!
Well, I read this account to our group one night and, when I got to that part, every person in the room who was a smoker reached for their cigarettes and lit up, puffing vigorously as though to demonstrate their poor quality as "food." We all began to laugh hysterically at this semi-subconscious reaction!
Comment: We wish to emphasize a couple of comments from the above article. As Jeremy Narby noted, "Indeed, by one of those curious coincidences, tobacco, curare, and snake venom all fit into exactly the same locks inside our brains." [Narby, 1998] Consider this in relation to Andrew Lobaczewski's remarks about the effect of a psychopath on a normal human:
When the human mind comes into contact with [the psychopathic] reality, so different from any experiences encountered by a person raised in a society dominated by normal people, it releases psychophysiological shock symptoms in the human brain with a higher tonus of cortex inhibition and a stifling of feelings, which then sometimes gush forth uncontrollably. Human minds work more slowly and less keenly, since the associative mechanisms have become inefficient. Especially when a person has direct contact with [a psychopath] who uses their specific experience so as to traumatize the minds of the ยothersย with their own personalities, his mind succumbs to a state of short-term catatonia. Their humiliating and arrogant techniques, brutal paramoralizations, deaden his thought processes and his self-defense capabilities, and their divergent experiential method anchors in his mind. ยLaura commented as follows:
Now, it seems strange that these same receptors are stimulated by both nicotine and snake venom, though in opposite modes... hmmm... are we close to a "Reptilian" reason for the enormous campaign to stamp out smoking? And, further, are we close to the chemical condition of the "paralysis" induced in alien abductions? (See Delgado.)
We would like to speculate that we are also close to a "psychopathic" reason for the campaign to stamp out smoking. But then, maybe it's one and the same? As J. Reid Meloy, Ph.D., author of The Psychopathic Mind, writes:
"The other clinical observation that supports the hypothesis of a reptilian state among certain primitive psychopathic characters is the absence of perceived emotion in their eyes. Although this information is only intuitive and anecdotal, it is my experience in forensic treatment and custody settings to hear descriptions of certain patients' or inmates' eyes as cold, staring, harsh, empty, vacant, and absent of feeling. Reactions from staff to this percetion of the psychopath's eyes have included, "I was frightened... he's very eerie; I felt as if he was staring right through me; when he looked at me the hair stood up on my neck." This last comment is particularly telling since it captures the primitive, autonomic, and fearful response to a predator.As long as you can be shocked and "frozen in the headlights" by them, they can control you. And it very well may be that smoking is a major defense. As the C's remarked recently:
"I have rarely heard such comments as these from the same experienced inpatient staff during highly arousing, threatening, and violent outbursts by other angry, combative patients. It is as if they sense the absence of a capacity for emotional relatedness and empathy in the psychopathic individual, despite his lack of actual physical violence at the moment. ...
"I have found little in the research literature, either theoretical or empirical, that attempts to understand this act of visual predation in the psychopathic process. ... The fixated stare of the psychopath is a prelude to instinctual gratification rather than empathic caring. The interaction is socially defined by parameters of power rather than attachment."
Some people are born to serve, others are born to be served...
[6 August 05]
A member of the parliamentary select committee on food and the environment yesterday called for emergency action to ban the artificial sweetener aspartame, used in 6,000 food, drink and medicinal products.
The Liberal Democrat MP Roger Williams said in an adjournment debate in the Commons that there was "compelling and reliable evidence for this carcinogenic substance to be banned from the UK food and drinks market altogether". In licensing aspartame for use, regulators around the world had failed in their main task of protecting the public, he told MPs.
The Liberal Democrat MP Roger Williams said in an adjournment debate in the Commons that there was "compelling and reliable evidence for this carcinogenic substance to be banned from the UK food and drinks market altogether". In licensing aspartame for use, regulators around the world had failed in their main task of protecting the public, he told MPs.
Scientists are warning about the risks posed by paracetamol after it emerged the painkiller had become the leading cause of liver failure in the US.
The annual proportion of cases caused by paracetamol - known in the US as acetaminophen - had risen from 28% in 1998 to 51% in 2003, researchers said.
The US team found just 20 pills a day - the recommended maximum is eight - was enough to kill, New Scientist reported.
Experts said restrictions on sales had helped cut the number of UK cases.
Since 1998 in the UK, pharmacies have been advised not to sell more than one pack of 32 paracetamol tablets to any individual.
The annual proportion of cases caused by paracetamol - known in the US as acetaminophen - had risen from 28% in 1998 to 51% in 2003, researchers said.
The US team found just 20 pills a day - the recommended maximum is eight - was enough to kill, New Scientist reported.
Experts said restrictions on sales had helped cut the number of UK cases.
Since 1998 in the UK, pharmacies have been advised not to sell more than one pack of 32 paracetamol tablets to any individual.
Salt Lake City, Utah - When Steven Hawks is tempted by ice cream bars, M&Ms and toffee-covered almonds at the grocery store, he doesn't pass them by. He fills up his shopping cart.
It's the no-diet diet, an approach the Brigham Young University health science professor used to lose 50 pounds and to keep it off for more than five years.
It's the no-diet diet, an approach the Brigham Young University health science professor used to lose 50 pounds and to keep it off for more than five years.
Decaffeinated coffee may be worse for drinkers' health than the caffeine-laden kind, scientists reported yesterday.
In the first randomised study of the two coffees, researchers found that the decaffeinated variety raises the level of fats and "bad" cholesterol in the blood more than caffeinated blends.
The finding was presented to a meeting of the American Heart Association after a study of 187 people by the Fuqua Heart Centre in Atlanta, Georgia.
In the first randomised study of the two coffees, researchers found that the decaffeinated variety raises the level of fats and "bad" cholesterol in the blood more than caffeinated blends.
The finding was presented to a meeting of the American Heart Association after a study of 187 people by the Fuqua Heart Centre in Atlanta, Georgia.
Comment: What is truly sad about this state of affairs is that no one seems to be asking the questions: Why are so many young Americans apparently so depressed? Why not seek out and address the root causes of the high rates of teenage depression - if they are in fact so high? Why are so many parents so eager to pump their children full of Big Pharma's latest creation?