Welcome to Sott.net
Tue, 27 Sep 2016
The World for People who Think

Health & Wellness
Map


Book 2

Mara Kahn: "Vegan betrayal: Love, lies, and hunger in a plants-only world"

Dr. Mercola
Mercola.com
Sun, 25 Sep 2016 14:22 UTC
An estimated 6 million Americans are vegans, which is typically considered to be a healthy choice. However, there are drawbacks to strict veganism that need careful consideration.

Mara Kahn, author of Vegan Betrayal: Love, Lies, and Hunger in a Plants-Only World, delves deep into the history and science of veganism, revealing many oft-ignored facts about this strictly plant-based diet.

She's put together a compelling story, covering her personal journey from being a vegan and vegetarian to exploring diet and health and finding out the truth behind the hype. It's really the best book I've ever read on this topic, as it covers the vegan issues in their entirety.
"Even though my book is titled Vegan Betrayal, I do respect vegans and what they're trying to do. My own journey led me back to vegetarianism. I know that many ... vegetarians that became vegans ... are suffering from diminished strength and faltering health.
I think this is a topic which has been swept under the rug and it's not being openly discussed in the vegan community. I think it's very important that we start this discussion. I hope this book will help kick-start that really important dialogue," Kahn says.

Comment: The Vegetarian Myth is an excellent book that covers the topic of veganism, ethical vegetarians and much more. Check out the interview with author Lierre Keith - Why vegetarianism and high-carb diets have destroyed the health of people and planet.

Additional 'food for thought':

      Read More...
Headphones

Misophonia: A recognized disorder for people hypersensitive to sound

Meeri N. Kim
Washington Post
Mon, 01 Dec 2014 15:43 UTC
© Mary Smith
Miren Edelstein hooked up electrodes to volunteers’ hands to verify that their aversion to certain sounds was real.
For many of us, a giant holiday dinner is a bonding experience where family and friends break bread and share stories while stuffing ourselves silly with special food and drink. It's the one time where sheer gluttony is more or less expected.

But for those with a rare, newly recognized disorder called misophonia, the mere thought of such a meal inspires only anxiety and dread. People with misophonia hate certain noises — termed "trigger sounds" — and respond with stress, anger, irritation and, in extreme cases, violent rage. Common triggers include eating noises, lip-smacking, pen clicking, tapping and typing.

All that chewing, chomping, slurping and clinking of silverware can drive a person with misophonia to avoid family gatherings altogether. And worse, feelings of aggression tend to be amplified if the sounds are coming from those with emotional ties to the sufferer, such as family members or significant others.

"I haven't eaten with my parents, at least without earplugs, in over a decade," said Meredith Rosol, a 25-year-old elementary school teacher from Baltimore who was diagnosed with misophonia two years ago after years of hypersensitivity to sound.

"I was 6 years old, and it started with my parents chewing at the dinner table," she recalled. Her list of triggers grew longer with every year: chewing (especially foods with crunch), tapping, typing, heavy breathing, silverware clinking, foot shuffling. Even certain sights started bugging her, such as foot-shaking and fidgeting. At school, typical classroom noises — like that of chalk scraping against the blackboard or the hum of a radiator — made her skin crawl.
      Read More...
Smoking

The anti-anxiety effects of nicotine


Psyblog
Mon, 26 Sep 2016 15:01 UTC
Map
© RIA Novosti/Alexandr Kryazhev
Could cigarettes contain the latest clue to an anti-ageing drug?
Nicotine could help to protect the brain from Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease, new research finds.

The substance — when given independently from tobacco — could help to protect the ageing brain.

The neuroprotective effect of nicotine could be down to its well-known quality of reducing appetite.

For the study, the researchers gave varying levels of nicotine to mice in their drinking water.

There was no evidence, though, that it caused anxiety, which the researchers were concerned would be the case.

Comment: These scientists are a bit behind on the research on the benefits of tobacco and nicotine. Nicotine can do much more than prevent anxiety.

      Read More...
Family

California doctor Bob Sears under review for putting 'conscience before career'

Jeffery Jaxen
jefferyjaxen.com
Fri, 09 Sep 2016 14:43 UTC
Capistrano Beach pediatrician Dr. Bob Sears has come under review from the California Medical Board. He now joins a long list of modern-day medical professionals targeted and persecuted for standing by their training, medical ethics, common sense and unwavering beliefs. Regardless of what is going through the mind and heart of Dr. Sears at this moment, he now joins the spiritually conscious company of fellow healers Dr. Stanislaw Burzynski, Nicholas Gonzalez, M.D, Dr. Jack Wolfson, Dr. Kalb and many others who have publicly and privately put their careers second to their conscience.

Never Let a Good Crisis Go to Waste

From the early reporting and local news articles, Dr. Sears case might have been prompted by unintentionally being caught between a family's legal and medical disagreements. However, the high-profile status of Dr. Sears as an outspoken member of the California medical community towards California's Senate Bill 277 (SB277) and the Center's for Disease Control and Prevention's untested vaccine schedule casts doubt that his medical board review case was pure coincidence. At this point, how and when Dr. Sears became caught up in the system may matter little in California's SB277-charged environment. It will be the treatment he receives and the ultimate ruling bestowed upon him that the nation will be watching.

According to local reports, the California Medical Board appears to have a somewhat weak case with historically dangerous implications and accusations. The board is accusing Dr. Sears of committing "gross negligence" for a medical exemption he wrote in 2014 after the child's mother described an adverse reaction as an infant.

Comment: When does crony medicine become fascist medicine - when the attorney general of California tries to stop medical exemptions for vaccines

      Read More...
Heart - Black

Cold-hearted: Obese patients aren't getting adequate healthcare as doctors won't look past the fat

Gina Kolata
New York Times
Sun, 25 Sep 2016 00:00 UTC
Map
© Lexey Swall for The New York Times
Patty Nece of Alexandria, Va., saw a doctor who attributed her hip pain to obesity without examining her, she said. She later learned she had progressive scoliosis, a condition not caused by obesity.
You must lose weight, a doctor told Sarah Bramblette, advising a 1,200-calorie-a-day diet. But Ms. Bramblette had a basic question: How much do I weigh?

The doctor's scale went up to 350 pounds, and she was heavier than that. If she did not know the number, how would she know if the diet was working?

The doctor had no answer. So Ms. Bramblette, 39, who lived in Ohio at the time, resorted to a solution that made her burn with shame. She drove to a nearby junkyard that had a scale that could weigh her. She was 502 pounds.

One in three Americans is obese, a rate that has been steadily growing for more than two decades, but the health care system — in its attitudes, equipment and common practices — is ill prepared, and its practitioners are often unwilling, to treat the rising population of fat patients.

The difficulties range from scales and scanners, like M.R.I. machines that are not built big enough for very heavy people, to surgeons who categorically refuse to give knee or hip replacements to the obese, to drug doses that have not been calibrated for obese patients. The situation is particularly thorny for the more than 15 million Americans who have extreme obesity — a body mass index of 40 or higher — and face a wide range of health concerns.

Comment: UK health officials to bar routine operations for obese people and smokers

      Read More...
Biohazard

Transgenic wars: GMO crops are destroying the health of both humans and livestock around the globe

Dr. Mercola
Mercola.com
Sat, 24 Sep 2016 00:00 UTC
© Antara Foto / Reuters
"Transgenic Wars," an award-winning film by French investigative journalist Paul Moreira, takes us on a journey through Europe and Latin America, looking at the effects of genetically engineered (GE) crops, both on livestock and human health.

It also delves into tangential concerns, such as the increased use of glyphosate-based herbicides, atrazine and 2,4-D, the latter of which was an ingredient in the devastating defoliant Agent Orange, used during the Vietnam War.

Coincidentally, Monsanto was a leading producer of Agent Orange during the war, and its war contributions, which began with its involvement in the Manhattan Project and the creation of the atomic bomb, help explain how Monsanto has managed to secure such staunch allegiance from the U.S. government.

It's a destructive and often incomprehensible allegiance that continues to this day, with the U.S. government's support of and involvement in spreading Monsanto's genetically engineered (GE) crops and toxic chemicals around the world — now repackaged as "necessary" for agriculture.
      Read More...
Sherlock

Is Psychiatry bullsh*t? Some psychiatrists view the chemical-imbalance theory as a well-meaning lie

Bruce Levine
Alternet
Fri, 23 Sep 2016 17:08 UTC
© Olena Yakobchuk / Shutterstock
In the current issue of the journal Ethical Human Psychology and Psychiatry, Australian dissident psychiatrist Niall McLaren titles his article, "Psychiatry as Bullshit" and makes a case for just that.

The great controversies in psychiatry are no longer about its chemical-imbalance theory of mental illness or its DSM diagnostic system, both of which have now been declared invalid even by the pillars of the psychiatry establishment.

In 2011, Ronald Pies, editor-in-chief emeritus of the Psychiatric Times, stated,
"In truth, the 'chemical imbalance' notion was always a kind of urban legend—never a theory seriously propounded by well-informed psychiatrists." And in 2013, Thomas Insel, then director of the National Institute of Mental Health, offered a harsh rebuke of the DSM, announcing that because the DSM diagnostic system lacks validity, the "NIMH will be re-orienting its research away from DSM categories."
So, the great controversy today has now become just how psychiatry can be most fairly characterized given its record of being proven wrong about virtually all of its assertions, most notably its classifications of behaviors, theories of "mental illness" and treatment effectiveness/adverse effects.
      Read More...
Bulb

A system of food production for human need, not corporate greed: Agroecology versus GMO agribusiness

Colin Todhunter
Global Research
Sun, 25 Sep 2016 15:25 UTC
© canwefeedtheworld.wordpress.com
There has been an adverse trend in the food and agriculture sector in recent times with the control of seeds and chemical inputs being consolidated through various proposed mergers. If these mergers go through, it would mean that three companies would dominate the commercial agricultural seeds and chemicals sector. Over the past couple of decades, there has already been a restriction of choice with the squeezing out of competitors, resulting in higher costs for farmers, who are increasingly reliant on corporate seeds (and their chemical inputs).

Big agribusiness players like Monsanto rely on massive taxpayer handouts to keep their business models on track; highly profitable models that have immense social, health and environmental costs to be paid for by the public. Across the globe healthy, sustainable agriculture has been uprooted and transformed to suit the profit margins of transnational agribusiness concerns. The major players in the global agribusiness sector fuel a geo-politicised, globalized system of food production that result in numerous negative outcomes for both farmers and consumers alike (listed here: 4th paragraph from the end).
      Read More...
Health

Fungus has been identified as key factor in development of Crohn's disease


Science Daily
Tue, 20 Sep 2016 00:00 UTC
Map
© vaakim / Fotolia
Crohn's disease is a debilitating inflammatory bowel disease, which causes severe abdominal pain, diarrhea, weight loss, and fatigue.
A Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine-led team of international researchers has for the first time identified a fungus as a key factor in the development of Crohn's disease. The researchers also linked a new bacterium to the previous bacteria associated with Crohn's. The groundbreaking findings, published on September 20th in mBio, could lead to potential new treatments and ultimately, cures for the debilitating inflammatory bowel disease, which causes severe abdominal pain, diarrhea, weight loss, and fatigue.

"We already know that bacteria, in addition to genetic and dietary factors, play a major role in causing Crohn's disease," said the study's senior and corresponding author, Mahmoud A Ghannoum, PhD, professor and director of the Center for Medical Mycology at Case Western Reserve and University Hospitals Cleveland Medical Center "Essentially, patients with Crohn's have abnormal immune responses to these bacteria, which inhabit the intestines of all people. While most researchers focus their investigations on these bacteria, few have examined the role of fungi, which are also present in everyone's intestines. Our study adds significant new information to understanding why some people develop Crohn's disease. Equally important, it can result in a new generation of treatments, including medications and probiotics, which hold the potential for making qualitative and quantitative differences in the lives of people suffering from Crohn's."

Comment: Read more about the ways that hidden fungal infections contribute to illnesses and how best to combat them: See also:

      Read More...
Donut

Cancer cells are sugar addicts

Ellen Davis
GreenMedInfo
Tue, 13 Sep 2016 14:35 UTC
The science is undeniable: preventing and even reversing cancer could be as simple as altering your diet and depriving the cancer of its favorite food - sugar.
In 1924, Otto Warburg, Ph.D., a Nobel Prize winning biochemist, proposed the hypothesis that cancer is a metabolic disease, that affects the way cells use food to make energy. Warburg believed that cancer cells exhibit a preference for using sugar to fuel themselves, even when the oxygen needed for normal cellular energy processes is available.1,2,3,4 He wrote:
"Cancer, above all other diseases, has countless secondary causes. But, even for cancer, there is only one prime cause. Summarized in a few words, the prime cause of cancer is the replacement of the respiration of oxygen in normal body cells by a fermentation of sugar."1
Until recently, Warburg's hypothesis had been marginalized by the persistent belief in the oncology world that cancer is a genetic disease. However, in his new book, Cancer as a Metabolic Disease: On the Origin, Management, and Prevention of Cancer, Thomas Seyfried, Ph.D., has put Warburg's work back in the medical limelight.5

In his book, Seyfried argues that cancer is not a genetic disorder, but is, indeed, a metabolic disease. He suggests that the focus on genetic causes is why so little progress in curing or even treating cancer has been made. This is evident when we look at the milestones for cancer research. For the last forty years, the oncology research community has been focusing on genetic causes and drug-based treatments, and the results for the patients have been dismal.

Comment: See also:
  • Cancer as a metabolic disease: Why having a fat-burning metabolism reduces your risk

      Read More...
SOTT.NET
Amazon Smile
Revolt! T-shirts