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Children Can Inherit Mom's Abuse-Altered Brain

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© iStockPhotoPhysical and chemical changes in the brain caused by abuse early in life can be passed down from mother to child, studies sho
Physical and chemical changes in the body caused by abuse early in life can be passed down from mother to child, a recent study shows.

The review of published research by behavioral scientists at Emory University in Atlanta was based on studies that show how early life stress (ELS), such as physical and emotional abuse and neglect, leads to observable changes in the brain's hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis.

This system, which is responsible for controlling the "fight or flight" response in humans, can be physically altered by abuse.

Bacon

Best of the Web: You Have Been Lied to About Cholesterol and Fats

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© unknown
For decades we have been indoctrinated that cholesterol from saturated fat is the major harbinger of heart disease and death. The result has been big profits for unhealthy, cheaply produced no/low fat foods like margarine and Big Pharma's dangerous statin drugs.

Over several decades, this propaganda has diminished or even destroyed the health of millions while killing thousands who have been put on cholesterol lowering statin drugs. Simply put, cholesterol as the major heart disease threat is disinformation.

Bad vs Real Science

The original study that started the whole cholesterol/heart disease hypothesis was conducted on rabbits. They were fed enormous quantities of butter and lard daily, equivalent to a quart a day for humans. But those animals are herbivores, not omnivores. Herbivores are not equipped to digest animal proteins and fats. When a similar study was conducted years later on rats, which like humans are omnivores, there were no negative consequences whatsoever.

More impressive are the three epidemiological human studies involving tens of thousands of subjects over two to three generations. They all discovered higher death rates among those with lower cholesterol counts. Those studies were: The Framingham Study; The Honolulu Heart Program Study; The Japanese Lipid Intervention Trial.

Many agree that stress coupled with heavy refined carbohydrate and junk food diets (SAD) are the sources of most obesity, diabetes, chronic inflammation, and heart disease.

Top Secret

How Safe is Your Food? GMO, Foodborne Illnesses and Biotechnology

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© foodfreedom.wordpress.com
A Review of GRAIN's report on Food Safety

GRAIN has released a global report, Food Safety for Whom? Corporate Wealth vs. Peoples' Health, showing how governments and corporations use "food safety" to manipulate market access and control. Rather than making food safer, domestic and trade rules "force open markets, or backdoor ways to limit market access." Highlighting aspects of the report, GRAIN states:
"Across the world, people are getting sick and dying from food like never before. Governments and corporations are responding with all kinds of rules and regulations, but few have anything to do with public health. The trade agreements, laws and private standards used to impose their version of 'food safety' only entrench corporate food systems that make us sick and devastate those that truly feed and care for people, those based on biodiversity, traditional knowledge, and local markets."

Syringe

Best of the Web: Are Vaccines Obsolete?

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© Salem-News.orgMany question the benefits.
Autism and vaccines, a surprising connection.

CBS has opened with the questions surrounding vaccination in broadcasting work by Helen Ratajczak.

"The article in the Journal of Immunotoxicology is entitled 'Theoretical aspects of autism: Causes--A review.' The author is Helen Ratajczak, surprisingly herself a former senior scientist at a pharmaceutical firm. Ratajczak did what nobody else apparently has bothered to do: she reviewed the body of published science since autism was first described in 1943. Not just one theory suggested by research such as the role of MMR shots, or the mercury preservative thimerosal; but all of them.

Ratajczak's article states, in part, that "Documented causes of autism include genetic mutations and/or deletions, viral infections, and encephalitis [brain damage] following vaccination [emphasis added]. Therefore, autism is the result of genetic defects and/or inflammation of the brain." ...

Attention

US: Diabetes is taking a deadly toll

Every day in this country, there is a silent killer among us. It's more deadly than breast cancer and AIDS combined. Unless we join together and continue to fund our nation's effort to stop this epidemic, we will be unable to stop it.

Nearly 26 million Americans are living with diabetes, and an additional 79 million have prediabetes and are at high risk for developing this terrible disease. Diabetes is serious, costly and deadly - and a threat to our nation's health care system and economy. One out of every five health care dollars is spent caring for someone with diagnosed diabetes, while one in ten health care dollars is attributed to diabetes. The national price tag for diabetes-related costs, including undiagnosed diabetes, prediabetes and gestational diabetes is a shocking $218 billion per year. Costly complications such as amputations, blindness and kidney disease will continue to grow unless we fund diabetes programs aimed at finding a cure and preventing needless tragedies.

Eye 1

California votes to label (but not ban) GMO frankenfish

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With the USDA expected to approve genetically modified (GMO) salmon in the near future - without any serious safety research - it may devolve on the states to try to minimize the potential negative impact.

The California Assembly Health Committee in Sacramento on May 3 approved a bill requiring that all GMO salmon sold in California contain clear and prominent labeling.

Assemblymember Jared Huffman introduced the bill, AB 88, due to widespread dissatisfaction by consumer, fishing and environmental groups and Indian Tribes with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) current review of the first-ever proposed commercialization of genetically engineered (GE) Aqua-Bounty salmon.

Bacon

B12 deficiency: a silent epidemic with serious consequences

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© Unknown
What do all of these diseases have in common?

  • Alzheimer's, dementia, cognitive decline and memory loss (collectively referred to as "aging")
  • Multiple sclerosis (MS) and other neurological disorders
  • Mental illness (depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, psychosis)
  • Cardiovascular disease
  • Learning or developmental disorders in kids
  • Autism spectrum disorder
  • Autoimmune disease and immune dysregulation
  • Cancer
  • Male and female infertility
Answer: they can all be caused by vitamin B12 deficiency.

B12 deficiency: an invisible epidemic

B12 deficiency isn't a bizarre, mysterious disease. It's written about in every medical textbook and its causes and effects are well-established in the scientific literature.

However, B12 deficiency is far more common than most health care practitioners and the general public realize. Data from the Tufts University Framingham Offspring Study suggest that 40 percent of people between the ages of 26 and 83 have plasma B12 levels in the low normal range - a range at which many experience neurological symptoms. 9 percent had outright deficiency, and 16 percent exhibited "near deficiency". Most surprising to the researchers was the fact that low B12 levels were as common in younger people as they were in the elderly.

That said, B12 deficiency has been estimated to affect about 40% of people over 60 years of age. It's entirely possible that at least some of the symptoms we attribute to "normal" aging - such as memory loss, cognitive decline, decreased mobility, etc. - are at least in part caused by B12 deficiency.

Magnify

Best of the Web: A Spoon Full of Sugar.... Is Toxic?

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© greenprophet.com
An academic lecture that lasts nearly 90 minutes usually will get about a million yawns and, if lucky, a hundred hits on YouTube.

But a recently discovered talk by a Bay Area doctor with a fresh take on the obesity epidemic recently rocketed the YouTube video to viral status. Supporting the thesis that sugar is nothing short of "poison," Dr. Robert Lustig, a professor of clinical pediatrics in the division of endocrinology at UCSF, clearly has hit a nerve. And his no-nonsense message about health and sugar is spreading through media channels like wildfire.


Comment: Watch Dr. Robert Lustig's 90 minute lecture: Sugar: The Bitter Truth


The U.S. will not get a handle on the obesity epidemic, Lustig says, if the public continues to view obesity as the result of gluttony and sloth. No one chooses to be fat, especially not the thousands of babies and toddlers in the United States who are obese or at risk for it. That's why obesity should be seen as a public health crisis on the level of AIDS rather than a personal responsibility issue, he argues.

Family

A curious clue? Women infected with toxoplasmosis are more likely to have boys

Women infected with dormant toxoplasmosis are more likely to give birth to boys than women who are Toxoplasma negative, according to research by S. Kankova and colleagues from the Departments of Parasitology, Microbiology and Zoology, Charles University; the Centre of Reproductive Medicine; and GynCentrum, in the Czech Republic. They found that the presence of the parasite Toxoplasma gondii in the mothers' blood, one of the most common parasites in humans with a worldwide prevalence of 20-80%, increased the likelihood that these women would give birth to a boy. This is the first study1, published in Springer's journal Naturwissenschaften this week, to suggest an effect of parasitic infection on the sex of a baby.

Kankova and colleagues analysed the effect of latent (or dormant) toxoplasmosis2 on the probability of the birth of a boy in humans. Latent toxoplasmosis is asymptomatic but is usually a life-long infection characterised by the presence of anti-Toxoplasma antibodies in the blood.

They analysed over 1800 clinical records of babies born between 1996-2004 in private maternity clinics in the Czech Republic. Women attending these private clinics were routinely tested for toxoplasmosis. The records contained information on the mother's age, the concentration of anti-Toxoplasma antibodies in the mother's blood, previous deliveries and abortions, and the sex of the newborn.

Nuke

Radiation Protection: Your Child and Your Pregnancy...

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As multiple nuclear reactors in Fukushima exhaust their particles into the ocean and atmosphere, certain species and categories of life prove their greater or lesser cellular vulnerability.

Radiation affects cells that are in vulnerable phases of their life cycles. The most vulnerable times of life are in the pre and peri-natal stages, and therefore women who are pregnant. It is CRUCIAL that we understand that everything that happens to a pregnant mother, whether it be radiation exposure, drugs prescription or otherwise, alcohol, emotional trauma... are felt and IMPRINTED into the fetus. The child's physical and emotional health will then be influenced by those factors. It's a miracle we all aren't sick or insane. On the other hand, we have one crazy planet on our hands.

The remaining population with great vulnerability is those that are already compromised by weakened immune systems such as in HIV, post-chemotherapy patients and some auto-immune disorders. This article summarizes the reasons why pregnant women and infants through pubescent individuals are more likely to be affected by radiation, and what can be done to optimize their own protective mechanisms besides adding challenges to their immune systems such as dietary toxins (artificial sweeteners, sugar, processed meats, toxic fats).