Health & WellnessS


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ADHD Drugs Linked To Parkinson's Disease in New Study

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© Scientific AmericanDo ADHD drugs take a toll on on the brain?
We have long reported on various substances being linked to Parkinson's disease. Now, WTMA reports that the progressive, degenerative central nervous system disorder that affects motor skills and speech has been linked to certain amphetamines.

A study conducted by Kaiser Permanente Northern California, found that some medications - notably the amphetamines Benzedrine or Dexedrine - used in the treatment of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) that are meant to help ADHD patients achieve more defined focus and increase clarity and awareness, could also place those patients at risk for Parkinson's disease, said WTMA. Findings on the potential defective drug issue were presented this weekend at a meeting of the American Academy of Neurology.

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Chicken, Antibiotic-resistant Bacteria, and Regulatory Independence

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© GristWould you like that chicken tainted with salmonella with resistance to one, two, three, or four different antibiotics?
After my post Monday on aspartame's wild and wacky path from pharmaceutical-company lab to beverage sweetener for millions of people, I got into a back-and-forth on Twitter with star progressive bloggers Matt Yglesias and Adam Ozimek.

They seemed shocked (and a little angry) by my suggestion that something approved both by the FDA and its European counterparts might actually menace the public health. Well, I, in turn, am shocked by the credibility they lavish on these institutions. When you study the politics of food, stories of the "FDA [or USDA or EPA or some European agency] approves [insert dodgy, lucrative practice or substance]" nature are hardly earth-shaking.

Indeed, industry influence over the food-related regulatory institutions seems pretty widespread, as I tried to show in the aspartame post. On Tuesday, an all-too-apt example crossed my desk. It involves the practice of routine use of antibiotics on factory farms - which almost certainly contributes to the surge in antibiotic-resistant infections among people. MRSA - an antibiotic-resistant staph infection - now kills more Americans than AIDS.

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Propaganda Alert! Eat less red meat, British Government scientists warn

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© Christopher JonesYum, steak!
Britons will be warned that they must cut their consumption of red meat to reduce the risk of cancer, following official advice from the Government scientists.

Consumers will be told to eat no more than 500g (1.1lb) of red or processed meat each week, or 70g (2.5oz) a day, under recommendations to be issued by the Coalition this week.

The daily total is the equivalent of three rashers of bacon - while the weekly amount would be reached by eating one large steak, a pork chop, two sausages and a small portion of beef bolognese sauce.

A Coalition source said: "It is important that people are not put off eating red meat entirely - but it would be irresponsible to ignore the potential health risks. The advice is very clear."

The recommendations will follow the publication of a full report by the Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition, which is due within days. The findings are expected to echo the committee's draft report, which found that lower consumption of both red and processed meat would probably reduce the risk of bowel cancer, the second most common cause of cancer death in Britain.

Comment: We would love to see them try to come up with similar results for organic, grass-fed meat.

Saturated Fat and Heart Disease

The Type of Meat that's Full of Cancer-Causing Toxins

Processed Meats Declared Too Dangerous for Human Consumption


Health

The Drugs Won't Work if you Don't Believe in Them

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© n/a
Pain really is all in the mind, according to scientists who have discovered that positive thoughts can double a painkiller's effect while negative thoughts can cancel them out.

Researchers from Oxford, Cambridge and two German universities made their conclusions after a novel experiment examining the role of conscious thought in pain perception.

First, 22 volunteers had a pain device put on their skin that was too hot for comfort.

Each then had an intravenous line attached to deliver a powerful opiate-based painkiller.

The volunteers were asked to rate the pain before any painkiller was introduced. The average score, from 0 to 100, was 66.

Then the researchers started providing the painkiller, without telling the volunteers they had done so. The average score dropped to 55.

But when the scientists told them they had started administering the painkiller the score dropped again to 39.

When they said they had stopped providing the painkiller, the score rose to 64 - even though the opiate was still flowing.

Health

Rare Form of Dwarfism May Protect Against Diabetes & Cancer

Ecuadorian Dwarves
They're about three and a half feet tall and their origins are mysterious, but an isolated group of Ecuadorians with a genetic mutation causing dwarfism are making news for another reason: They hardly ever get cancer or diabetes. Medical researchers say the villagers' genetic protection from these diseases could lead to preventative treatments for the general population - and could therefore increase human longevity.

The villagers' condition is called Laron syndrome, which is caused by an insensitivity to growth hormone.
Laron syndrome results from a mutation in the gene that codes for growth hormone receptor (GHR), a protein that binds with the human growth hormone and ultimately results in the production of the insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF1), causing cells to grow and divide. When a person has two of these mutated and non-working genes, they can develop the disease. [LiveScience]
Jaime Guevara-Aguirre, the leader of the study about the Ecuadorians appearing in Science Translational Medicine, has been looking into their condition and extraordinary resistance to age-related diseases for more than two decades, since his serendipitous discovery of the people while riding horseback in Ecuador.
"I discovered the population in 1987," Dr. Guevara-Aguirre said in an interview from Ecuador. "In 1994, I noticed these patients were not having cancer, compared with their relatives. People told me they are too few people to make any assumption. People said, 'You have to wait 10 years,' so I waited. No one believed me until I got to Valter Longo in 2005." [The New York Times]

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The Right to Discriminate Against Smokers

Uncle Sam says dont smoke
© Unknown
The New York Times reports that "more hospitals and medical businesses in many states are adopting strict policies that make smoking a reason to turn away job applicants." The Times concedes there are "no reliable data on how many businesses have adopted such policies," so the evidence of a trend is thin. But the shift from smoke-free to smoker-free workplaces (assuming it is in fact occurring) is interesting because it provokes objections not only from cigarette manufacturers (who years ago lobbied for bans on employment discrimination against smokers, which most states have adopted) but also from civil libertarians and even some anti-smoking activists. Michael Siegel, the Boston University public health professor who regularly criticizes anti-smoking groupthink, pseudoscience, and extremism, says:
If enough of these companies adopt these policies and it really becomes difficult for smokers to find jobs, there are going to be consequences. Unemployment is also bad for health.
The American Civil Liberties Union and the National Workrights Institute likewise want to protect smokers from employment discrimination. Lewis Maltby, president of the latter group, says:
There is nothing unique about smoking. The number of things that we all do privately that have negative impact on our health is endless. If it's not smoking, it's beer. If it's not beer, it's cheeseburgers. And what about your sex life?

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The Truth about Soy

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© iStockphoto/Thinkstock
In the early 1990's, soy and soy products exploded onto the supermarket scene with promises of bountiful health benefits.

This "new miracle food," soy, was supposed to lower cholesterol, take the heat out of hot flashes, protect against breast and prostate cancer and offer a filling alternative to earth-loving vegetarians.

The problem with these claims?

Most of them are false.

Sadly, most of what you have been led to believe by the media about soy is simply untrue. The sudden upsurge in the recommendation of soy as a health food has been nothing more than a clever marketing gimmick to further reduce the cost and nutritional content of your food.

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Not Having Enough Food Causes Obesity and Diabetes

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© unk
Not having enough to eat may cause obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure, and heart disease. Most of us think the chronic disease epidemic is fueled by abundance, but it may be fueled as much by food scarcity and insecurity as it is by excess. And, right now, America is suffering from the highest levels of poverty and food insecurity that it has seen in more than a decade.

In 2008 49 million Americans - including 16.7 million children - lived in a home at risk of not having enough food on the table every day. After working in Haiti, the poorest country in the Western hemisphere, I learned that one in two Haitians wake up every day not knowing where their next meal will come from. But right here in the wealthiest nation in the world, one in five children live in poverty, one in four children live on food stamps, and one in 10 people don't know where their next meal will come from.

The Census Bureau recently reported that the nation's poverty rate increased to 14.3 percent in 2009 - the highest level we've seen since 1994. 43.6 million Americans lived below the poverty line in 2009, earning less than $21,954 per year for a family of four or $10,956 for an individual. We now have the highest number of people living on the threshold of poverty in the history of government record keeping.

The poorest areas of the country are also the sickest and have the highest rates of obesity, diabetes, and premature death. These people are dying younger, and life expectancy is plummeting in the poorest states. These states also happen to be the fattest. For example, Mississippi - the poorest state in the union - has poverty rates over 20 percent, obesity rates over 33 percent, and extremely high childhood obesity rates. This is no coincidence.

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Supplement Wisely

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In the first three articles in this series, we discussed which foods to eat and which foods to avoid. In this article we're going to talk about when to supplement and how to do it wisely. We've got a lot of material to cover, so you might want to grab a cup of tea and get comfortable!

There are three principles to supplementing wisely:
  • Get nutrients from food whenever possible.
  • Take nutrients in their naturally occurring form whenever possible.
  • Be selective with your supplementation.
Get nutrients from food whenever possible

Humans are adapted to getting nutrients from whole foods. Most nutrients require enzymes, synergistic co-factors and organic mineral-activators to be properly absorbed. While these are naturally present in foods, they are often not included in synthetic vitamins with isolated nutrients.

In a paper published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition called Food Synergy: An Operational Concept For Understanding Nutrition emphasizing the importance of obtaining nutrients from whole foods, the authors concluded:
A person or animal eating a diet consisting solely of purified nutrients in their Dietary Reference Intake amounts, without benefit of the coordination inherent in food, may not thrive and probably would not have optimal health. This review argues for the primacy of food over supplements in meeting nutritional requirements of the population.
They cautioned against the risk of reductionist thinking, which is common in conventional medicine and nutritional supplementation. Instead, they urge us to consider the importance of what they call "food synergy":
The concept of food synergy is based on the proposition that the interrelations between constituents in foods are significant. This significance is dependent on the balance between constituents within the food, how well the constituents survive digestion, and the extent to which they appear biologically active at the cellular level.
They go on to provide evidence that whole foods are more effective than supplements in meeting nutrient needs:
  • Tomato consumption has a greater effect on human prostrate tissue than an equivalent amount of lycopene.
  • Whole pomegranates and broccoli had greater antiproliferative and in vitro chemical effects than did some of their individual constituents.
  • Free radicals were reduced by consumption of brassica vegetables, independent of micronutrient mix.
In short: get nutrients from food, not supplements, whenever you can.

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Brain function linked to birth size in groundbreaking new study

Scientists have discovered the first evidence linking brain function variations between the left and right sides of the brain to size at birth and the weight of the placenta. The finding could shed new light on the causes of mental health problems in later life.

The research, conducted at the University of Southampton and the Medical Research Council (MRC) Lifecourse Epidemiology Unit at Southampton General Hospital, reveals that children who were born small, with relatively large placentas, showed more activity on the right side of their brains than the left. It is this pattern of brain activity that has been linked with mood disorders such as depression.

The study adds to a growing body of evidence showing that adverse environments experienced by fetuses during pregnancy (indicated by smaller birth size and larger placental size) can cause long-term changes in the function of the brain.