Millions of people could reduce their risk of high blood pressure by going out in the sunlight every day, says a report published today

Scientists have found a direct link between a deficiency in vitamin D - caused by lack of exposure to the sun - and hypertension, which also raises the likelihood of stroke and heart attacks.

The worldwide study found that people with high concentrations of the "sunshine vitamin" had reduced blood pressure.

Scientists say there is a "strong case for food fortification with vitamin D to ­prevent some kinds of cardiovascular disease".

A spokesman for Vitabiotics, who developed Ultra Vitamin D, which contains the preferred D3 form found in the body said: "Vitamin D has been called the 'Wonder Vitamin' as it plays a truly remarkable role in the body and is essential for all round good health. Vitamin D has been found to influence all 36 organ tissues in the body.

"It is not only vital for strong bones, but is now known for its role in the immune system, hormone metabolism, brain function and mood, Cardio-vascular function and now blood pressure regulation. While scientific data is mounting on almost a daily basis about the enormous benefits of vitamin D, at the same time it is clear most of us are not getting enough vitamin D due to the lack of sunlight we are exposed to throughout the year.

"New research shows that optimum intake levels of vitamin D may be far higher than previously thought and this has led to widespread calls from leading doctors and scientists across Europe for the RDA for vitamin D to be increased."

Just when you thought the market for controversy over genetically modified organisms (GMOs) was completely saturated, a new study published in the Journal of Organic Systems finds that pigs raised on a mixed diet of GM corn and GM soy had higher rates of intestinal problems, "including inflammation of the stomach and small intestine, stomach ulcers, a thinning of intestinal walls and an increase in haemorrhagic bowel disease, where a pig can rapidly 'bleed-out' from their bowel and die." Both male and female pigs reared on the GM diet were more likely to have severe stomach inflammation, at a rate of four times and 2.2 times the control group, respectively. There were also reproductive effects: the uteri of female pigs raised on GM feed were 25 percent larger (in proportion to body size) than those of control sows. (All male pigs were neutered, so scientists were unable to study any effects on the male reproductive systems.)

More than 55 diseases have been linked to gluten, the protein found in wheat, rye, and barley. It's estimated that 99% of the people who have either gluten intolerance or celiac disease are never diagnosed.

It is also estimated that as much as 15% of the US population is gluten intolerant. Could you be one of them?

Six common symptoms of gluten intolerance

1. Gastrointestinal (GI), stomach, and digestive problems. These can include one or more of the following: gas, bloating, queasiness, abdominal cramping, constipation, diarrhea, or an alternating combination of both - IBS (Irritable Bowel Syndrome).
2. Headaches and/or migraines.
3. Diagnosis of an autoimmune disease such as Hashimoto's thyroiditis, rheumatoid arthritis, ulcerative colitis, lupus, psoriasis, scleroderma or multiple sclerosis.
4. Emotional issues involving chronic irritability and sudden, irrational, mood shifts.
5. Neurological issues. This may include dizziness, difficulty balancing, and peripheral neuropathy affecting nerves outside the central nervous system and resulting in pain, weakness, tingling or numbness in the extremities.
6. Fatigue, brain fog, or feeling tired after eating a meal that contains gluten.

Most of these symptoms are common to other health issues and diseases. That's why identifying symptoms alone and trying to tie them to gluten intolerance is difficult.

OMG, GMOs!

You might ask, "why all the fuss about agricultural genetically modified organisms (GMOs)?" After all, regulatory agencies have approved these technologies for widespread application and consumption, so they must be safe, right? Well, the truth is that there is no agency and no industry that works to protect our health. At best, the EPA, USDA, and FDA attempt to respond to our disease after the cause is widespread. At that point only risk reduction, rather than risk avoidance, can be achieved. This has been the case historically with radium paint, particulate air pollution, water pollution, asbestos, lead, food-borne illnesses, and DDT. A number of the various 80,000 chemicals in production will likely be added to this list in the future while the majority of them that actually do contribute to disease (often in combination and in complex ways) will never be scientifically associated with disease. This is because science is far from perfect, scientific methodology is always biased and often manipulated, and scientific interpretation by stakeholders and decision makers is alarmingly inept (I'm not being political or condescending, these are well known and easily observed facts).

The situation with agricultural GMOs is unique compared to other technologies. While genetic engineering of food crops has been ongoing for 15 years, it is currently experiencing a major boom with the potential for widespread worldwide application. Yet, few people understand how a GMO food could really be so much different than a non-GMO food in regard to health and disease effects. GMO foods look like non-GMO foods and so we don't experience the same hesitation and aversion to consuming them like we would, say, a clearly labeled bottle of virus and pesticide in tomato juice. Therefore, the quality of public education, consumer awareness, and informed public discussion about this technology has the potential to alter the future of GMO agriculture for better or worse.

In this article, I'll first briefly mention the relative paucity of risk assessment studies on GMOs and the unbelievable weaknesses of the industry studies that have been done. Then, drawing from numerous independent studies, I will explore the routes by which agricultural GMOs may cause adverse health effects.

At least among mice, females have innate protection from certain digestive conditions, according to a new Michigan State University study.

While it's tricky to draw conclusions for human health, the findings could eventually help scientists better understand and treat the 1.4 million Americans suffering from inflammatory bowel diseases, or IBD.

Crohn's disease and colitis, the two most common forms of IBD, involve abnormal functioning of the immune system that can damage the digestive tract, causing inflammation, diarrhea, constipation, abdominal pain and other symptoms.

For the study, researchers induced colitis by giving mice with weakened immune systems a dose of bacteria that can cause digestive trouble. After six weeks, the males had significantly more severe symptoms than the females and had more of the bacteria left in their guts. The males also showed more deterioration of their bones, which studies have linked to gut inflammation.

"It seems females are protected from bad bacteria-induced bone loss, and it's because they have reduced gut inflammation," said co-author Laura McCabe, a professor in the MSU Departments of Physiology and Radiology. "When we looked at markers of inflammation in the male mice, they were really high, whereas the females didn't have that kind of bad response. They can somehow handle these nasty bacteria."

McCabe said while the new study is a step toward better understanding of IBD, it's not clear if women have the same kind of resistance to the condition as the female mice. Indeed, much is still unknown about IBD, including what causes it. The imbalance of good and bad gut bacteria that the experiment simulated is one possible cause.

Elizabeth A. Thiele, M.D., Ph.D., presenting at the Ancestral Health Symposium 2012 (AHS12): "Dietary Therapy: Role in Epilepsy and Beyond."

Abstract

Dietary treatment is probably the oldest treatment for epilepsy. It has an important role even today, as nearly a third of people with epilepsy don't respond to the available anticonvulsant medications.

This presentation will describe the history of diet modification in the treatment of epilepsy, the role of the classic ketogenic diet, and recent modifications that make dietary therapy more tolerable and practical. The role of dietary treatments for other neurological disorders and for cancer will also be considered.

Bio

Dr. Thiele is Director of the Pediatric epilepsy program at the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), Director of the MGH Center for Dietary Therapy of Epilepsy, and Director of the Herscot Center for Tuberous Sclerosis Complex.

A leading expert on health effects from cellphone radiation goes to battle against a multi-trillion-dollar industry.

In her 2011 book Disconnect, National Book Award finalist, former senior White House health advisor and internationally regarded epidemiologist Devra Davis revealed that the cellphone industry is knowingly exposing us to dangerous levels of electromagnetic radiation. No small problem when you consider that of the roughly 7 billion people on this planet, about 6 billion of us now use mobile phones.

In a recent analysis for the Huffington Post, Davis examined the cellphone industry's long-term strategy, devised in the early '90s, to deal with studies showing cellphone radiation damages DNA: "war-game the science." Noted in a 1994 Motorola memo, this strategy, wrote Davis, "remains alive and well" today, the latest example occurring just last month. When the World Health Organization's International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) published newly detailed documentation for its yearlong 2011 expert review - which declared cellphone radiation a "possible human carcinogen" (same as lead and DDT) - the multi-trillion-dollar cellular industry responded by citing a new dubious report out of Taiwan.

Lead, flame retardants, and BPA are everywhere, but you can limit your exposure.

After watching this week's interview with Gerald Markowitz and David Rosner, you'll probably be wondering what you can do to protect yourself and your family from toxic chemicals. Perhaps the most important thing you can do is become politically involved - join the fight against both chemicals in our environment and money in our political system. In today's world, it's virtually impossible to avoid dangerous chemicals, even in your own home, but here are a few simple steps you can take to limit your exposure to known toxins like lead, flame retardants and BPA.

It seems like everywhere you look on food shelves today, from the baby food aisle to the dairy case, just about everything is fortified with iron.

But is that really a good thing?

When most people think about dietary iron, they wonder if they're getting enough. This is an important consideration, but research shows you're more likely to have too much iron than not enough - and this can pose serious risks to your health.

Excess Iron Far More Common Than Iron Deficiency

Iron is essential for virtually every life form, including humans, where it is a key part of various proteins and enzymes, involved in the transport of oxygen and the regulation of cell growth and differentiation, among many other uses.

One of the most important roles of iron is to provide hemoglobin (the protein in red blood cells) a mechanism through which it can bind to oxygen and carry it throughout your tissues, as without proper oxygenation your cells quickly start dying.

If you have too little iron, you may experience fatigue, decreased immunity or iron-deficiency anemia, which can be serious if left untreated.

However, if you have more iron than your body needs to satisfy your hemoglobin requirement (for cell oxygenation), the excess becomes a dangerous surplus. This is an issue that deserves attention, as research examining iron levels in Americans shows that more people have iron levels that are considered too high, than levels that are deficient. In one study of more than 1,000 people, only 3 percent were iron deficient, but 13 percent had iron overload.¹

MERS-CoV, sometimes called nCoV (novel coronavirus), was first characterized in 2012 by Prof Ali Mohamed Zaki. That first case was a 60-year old male with suspected viral pneumonia. Prof. Zaki ran the usual respiratory viral tests which were negative so he sent a sample to virus hunters at Erasmus Medical Centre in The Netherlands. In the interim Prof Zaki tried a broad-spectrum "pan-coronavirus" RT-PCR method and got a positive result.

Members of the subfamily Coronavirinae that infect humans currently include the respiratory coronaviruses HCoV-OC43 (a betaCoV), HCoV-229E (alphaCoV), HCoV-NL63 (alphaCoV), SARS-CoV (betaCoV), MERS-CoV and HCoV-HKU1 (both betaCoV).

Quick numbers

As of 06^th June; FluTrackers, CIDRAP, WHO

• Total human cases of MERS-CoV: 55^a
• Total deaths attributed to infection with MERS-CoV: 33
• Current Case Fatality Rate (CFR^d): 61%

^a Data from FluTrackers, WHO and the European CDC.
^b This uses numbers based on publicly available data which may lack detail. This number gives you an idea of our understanding at the moment. To be pedantic and use only the number of discharges as the denominator for the CFR is most useful at the end of an outbreak/epidemic/pandemic, but not so much when data-in-hand is poor during the beginning.