Health & WellnessS


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Growing Concern Over Drugs Fed to Animals


news.ninemsn.com
Mon, 19 Sep 2011 20:03 UTC
Image
© lowdensitylifestyle.com
Drugs fed to animals to promote growth and prevent diseases may play a key role in the emergence of antibiotic resistant bacteria, microbiologists said Sunday.

The practice of administering large quantities of antimicrobial drugs "favours the emergence of drug resistant bacteria that can spread to humans through the consumption of contaminated food, from direct contact with animals or by environmental spread," said Awa Aidara-Kane of the World Health Organization.

"In addition, genes encoding for resistance can be transmitted from zoonotic bacteria to human pathogens," added Aidara-Kane, who leads the WHO Advisory Group on Integrated Surveillance of Antimicrobial Resistance.

She was speaking during the 51st annual Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy meeting this weekend in Chicago.

Comment: For more information about Farmacology: Antibiotics resistance generated at factory farms and what the FDA 'claims' to be doing about the serious issue with antibiotic resistance in humans read the following articles:

What the USDA Doesn't Want You to Know About Antibiotics and Factory Farms
The FDA Finally Reveals How Many Antibiotics Factory Farms Use
How Factory Farms Are Pumping Americans Full of Deadly Bacteria and Pathogens
As MRSA Gets Worse, the FDA Discovers Antibiotic Abuse on Factory Farms
The Problem with Factory Farms
Why Factory Farms Threaten Your Health
Factory Farms Make You Sick. Let Us Count the Ways

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Stop

US: Child Abuse Head Injuries Increased During Recession, Study Finds

Stephanie Pappas
LiveScience
Mon, 19 Sep 2011 06:50 UTC
Parents Arguing
© Gladskikh Tatiana, ShutterstockParents argue as a child sits by.
Despite earlier reports that child abuse did not increase during the economic recession of 2007 to 2009, a new study finds that at least one measure of abusiveness went up in several areas of the U.S. during that time.

Abusive head trauma (AHT), or head injuries from abuse in children, became more common in three geographic areas in the U.S. during the hard times of the recession compared with the years prior, according to a study published today (Sept. 19) in the journal Pediatrics. The study can't prove that the hard times caused the increased injury rate, but the study researchers found the data troubling.

"The presence of an association between the economy and the AHT rate should be sufficient to spur a discussion of specific stressors," they wrote in their report. Physicians might want to think of recessions as times when abuse is more likely, they wrote, much like doctors would keep a close eye out for red-flag symptoms during a disease outbreak.
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Beaker

US: Science Lags as Health Problems Emerge Near Gas Fields

Lustgarten and Nicholas Kusnetz
ProPublica
Fri, 16 Sep 2011 11:55 UTC
gas fracking pollution
© Erin Trieb for ProPublica
Susan Wallace-Babb, wearing the oxygen mask she has to wear almost every day outside, walks with her dog at home in Winnsboro, Texas, on Sept. 12, 2011.
On a summer evening in June 2005, Susan Wallace-Babb went out into a neighbor's field near her ranch in Western Colorado to close an irrigation ditch. She parked down the rutted double-track, stepped out of her truck into the low-slung sun, took a deep breath and collapsed, unconscious.

A natural gas well and a pair of fuel storage tanks sat less than a half-mile away. Later, after Wallace-Babb came to and sought answers, a sheriff's deputy told her that a tank full of gas condensate - liquid hydrocarbons gathered from the production process - had overflowed into another tank. The fumes must have drifted toward the field where she was working, he suggested.

The next morning Wallace-Babb was so sick she could barely move. She vomited uncontrollably and suffered explosive diarrhea. A searing pain shot up her thigh. Within days she developed burning rashes that covered her exposed skin, then lesions. As weeks passed, anytime she went outdoors, her symptoms worsened. Wallace-Babb's doctor began to suspect she had been poisoned.
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People

Prescription Pain Trap

Dr. Osborne
Gluten Free Society
Mon, 19 Sep 2011 09:48 UTC
Unfortunately, most doctors specializing in the treatment of arthritis, joint pain, muscle pain, and autoimmune diseases affecting the musculoskeletal system never even consider food in the diet as a contributing cause in the development of these conditions.

I was formally trained in rheumatology at the VA hospital in Houston, TX, and I can say that diet and nutritional recommendations to patients were discouraged and in most cases frowned upon by our attending physicians. It was actually this experience that prompted me to dig deeper into the connection between autoimmune disease and food.

Over the past 10 years, I have treated thousands of patients with arthritic conditions. The most single effective therapies have always been diet and exercise. The paradox with exercise... It is harder to stick to an exercise program if it constantly flares up the arthritis.

The problem with food...

Everyone reacts uniquely based on their own unique chemistry. But it only makes sense that if drugs can target inflammation as a treatment, why can't food. After all, isn't food a drug of sorts?

I have found that medical research greatly supports this connection, but more importantly, I have found that patients get better after eliminating inflammatory foods from their diets. What foods should we avoid to help recover from arthritis? Depends on the person. Everyone is unique.

Don't Fall Into the Prescription Pain Trap:

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Health

Antibiotics Losing the Fight Against Deadly Bacteria

Jonathan Owen
The Independent
Sun, 18 Sep 2011 16:50 UTC
A lab technician holds a bacteria culture
© Getty ImagesA lab technician holds a bacteria culture that shows an infection of E.coli, one of the bacteria strains that can become superresistant to antibiotics
Our last line of defence against bacterial infections is fast becoming weakened by a growing number of deadly strains that are resistant to even the strongest antibiotics, according to new figures given to The Independent on Sunday by the Health Protection Agency (HPA).

The disturbing statistics reveal an explosion in cases of super-resistant strains of bacteria such as E.coli and Klebsiella pneumoniae, a cause of pneumonia and urinary tract infections, in less than five years.

Until 2008, there were fewer than five cases a year in the UK of bugs resistant to carbapenem, our most effective intravenous (IV) antibiotic. New statistics reveal how there have been 386 cases already this year, in what the HPA has called a "global public health concern". Doctors are particularly concerned because carbapenems are often the last hope for hospital patients suffering from pneumonia and blood infections that other antibiotics have failed to treat. Such cases were unknown in the UK before 2003.
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Evil Rays

Best of the Web: Corruption of science: Popular Science magazine implies that sensitivity to evil wi-fi is imaginary, mocks community of Wi-Fi refugees in hills of Appalachia

Julie Beck
Popular Science
Tue, 13 Sep 2011 14:31 UTC
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© Jarek Tuszynski/Wikimedia CommonsTelescope at National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Green Banks, Virginia
It's safe to say that most of us have come to accept, if not embrace, the abundance of wireless technology in our everyday lives. Not so for certain Americans who believe they suffer from Electromagnetic Hypersensitivity, or EHS. According to the BBC, five percent of Americans think that exposure to electromagnetic fields created by Wi-Fi and mobile phones are causing them to suffer headaches, muscle spasms, burning skin and chronic pain. And some of these people are seeking refuge in the secluded mountains of Appalachia.

Towns like Green Bank, West Virginia are part of the U.S. Radio Quiet Zone, 13,000 square miles of wireless free land created to keep transmissions from interfering with radio telescopes like those owned by the military and the National Radio Astronomy Observatory. Some of those who believe (and we keep saying "believe" because there is some controversy about the medical validity of the claims) they feel ill effects from Wi-Fi have sought refuge in these hills.
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Health

Maggots Heal Chronic Diabetic Wounds After Other Methods Fail in Study

Ryan Flinn
Bloomberg
Sun, 18 Sep 2011 12:30 UTC
Medical Maggots
© Monarch Labs via Bloomberg Medical-grade maggots are fly larvae grown in a lab and germ-free.

Maggots healed the wounds of diabetic patients where traditional medicine had failed, according to a report that suggests the ancient therapy may offer an alternative for clearing severe ulcers.

Medical-grade versions of the fly larvae, placed on the sores of 27 diabetic patients, helped close the wounds in 21 cases, said Lawrence Eron, associate professor at the University of Hawaii's John A Burns School of Medicine, in Honolulu, and an author of the report. Some of the wounds had been open for as long as five years, he said.

Maggot therapy, a medical technique since Biblical times, declined after antibiotics came into use in the 1940s. The treatment is now undergoing a resurgence as a potential cheap alternative for patients with wounds infected with drug- resistant bacteria. The findings were presented today at the Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy, in Chicago.

"There's this yuck factor that permeates not only patients' views of using maggots, but especially the medical profession -- and I was no exception to that," Eron said in a telephone interview. "But when I saw the results of what these maggots do, and what they accomplished, I became very enthusiastic."
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Light Saber

An Immune System Trained to Kill Cancer

Denise Grady
The New York Times
Mon, 12 Sep 2011 13:14 UTC
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© Jessica Kourkounis for The New York TimesDr. Carl June examined re-engineered T-cells last week in his Philadelphia lab.
A year ago, when chemotherapy stopped working against his leukemia, William Ludwig signed up to be the first patient treated in a bold experiment at the University of Pennsylvania. Mr. Ludwig, then 65, a retired corrections officer from Bridgeton, N.J., felt his life draining away and thought he had nothing to lose.

Doctors removed a billion of his T-cells - a type of white blood cell that fights viruses and tumors - and gave them new genes that would program the cells to attack his cancer. Then the altered cells were dripped back into Mr. Ludwig's veins.

At first, nothing happened. But after 10 days, hell broke loose in his hospital room. He began shaking with chills. His temperature shot up. His blood pressure shot down. He became so ill that doctors moved him into intensive care and warned that he might die. His family gathered at the hospital, fearing the worst.

A few weeks later, the fevers were gone. And so was the leukemia.
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People

Best of the Web: Study concludes Gulf War syndrome involves real brain damage

Muriel Kane
RawStory
Fri, 16 Sep 2011 07:26 UTC
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© D. W. Holmes II, US Navy
For the last twenty years, veterans of the Persian Gulf War of 1991 have been complaining of a range of ailments, including pain, fatigue, and problems with memory and concentration. And for just as long, the causes have remained uncertain and there has been a tendency by the military to attribute the complaints to post-traumatic stress disorder.

Now a long-term study at the University of Texas in Dallas has used a new technique to measure blood flow in the brains of sufferers and has detected "marked abnormalities" in brain function that can probably be attributed to low levels of exposure to sarin nerve gas. This abnormal blood flow has persisted or even worsened over the eleven years of the study.

"The findings mark a significant advancement in our understanding of the syndrome, which was for years written off by the Defense Department and the Department of Veterans Affairs as a form of combat stress rather than an objectively diagnosable injury," reports the Dallas Observer.
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People

Neurotransmitter-Regulated Immunity

Rachel Nuwer
The Scientist
Thu, 15 Sep 2011 22:43 UTC
lymphocyte cells
© Picture by Mauricio Rosas-Ballina, courtesy of Kevin TraceyGreen labelled lymphocyte cells are capable of producing acetylcholine
Nerve signals control T cell responses, helping to explain inflammation and stroke.

Neurotransmitters may play a bigger role in immunity than scientists had realized. In two papers published today (September 15) in Science Express, immunologists identify neurotransmitters as key players in two previously mystery-shrouded defense mechanisms: how the nervous system body puts the brakes on an overenthusiastic inflammatory response, and the reasons behind post-stroke infections.

"These connections between the brain and immune system in both health and disease are very intriguing," said Lawrence Steinman, a professor of neurology at Stanford School of Medicine who was not involved in the study. The findings could have implications for the treatment of inflammatory disorders and stroke patients, he added.

Comment: The simple to learn techniques that comprise the Éiriú Eolas program stimulate the vagus nerve naturally, efficiently and effectively.

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