Health & WellnessS


Health

Duggar's 20th Pregnancy: Is It Safe?

Wynne Parry
Live Science
Wed, 09 Nov 2011 08:34 UTC
Pregnant Woman
© Live Science

Michelle Duggar's pregnancy with her 20th child is not only jaw-dropping; it is also risky, according to experts.

Duggar, who appears with her husband Jim Bob on the reality TV show 19 Kids and Counting, had a life-threatening experience with her last baby, Josie, who had to be delivered three and a half months early, weighing only 1 lb., 6 oz, according to news reports.

"The more pregnancies one has, the greater the risk of a bad outcome that could leave the children that are already born without a mother," said Dr. Philip Darney, director of the Bixby Center for Global Reproductive Health at the University of California, San Francisco.

Worldwide, he said, as the number of births per women increase, so does the rate of maternal or neonatal death.

Duggar long ago earned a spot in the category doctors have created for women who have had many children. Women achieve what is called grand multiparity when they give birth at least five times, and, for these women, additional pregnancies bring special risks.
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Health

5 Grams Daily of This REVERSED Severe Radiation Poisoning in Chernobyl Children...


Mercola.com
Wed, 09 Nov 2011 08:55 UTC
Due to the many requests I received from concerned readers asking for guidance about strategies to help protect against radioactive fallout in the wake of the Japanese nuclear disaster, I recently wrote an article addressing those concerns.

Although the suggestions I made were all based on the latest scientific research, my investigation will be continuing in this area so that I can further refine those recommendations. And as I learn more, I will pass along that information to you.

That said, one specific superfood that jumps to the top of the list is spirulina, and it's this very special blue-green "algae" that I want to expand upon today. There is a great deal of research about spirulina's effectiveness in insulating you from the effects of radiation.

Spirulina was actually used to treat children exposed to chronic low-levels of radiation after the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, which I'll be covering in more detail below. According to a scientific review of spirulina's benefits in the Journal of Applied Phycology:
"Up to very recently, the interest in Spirulina was mainly in its nutritive value. Currently, however, numerous people are looking into the possible therapeutic effects of Spirulina.

Many pre-clinical studies and a few clinical studies suggest several therapeutic effects ranging from reduction of cholesterol and cancer to enhancing the immune system, increasing intestinal lactobacilli, reducing nephrotoxicity by heavy metals and drugs and radiation protection."
Spirulina is ranked by AARP as the #1 superfood for extending your lifespan, and the UN has identified it as a primary ingredient in the fight against malnutrition worldwide. But what exactly is spirulina? You may be surprised!
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Megaphone

Best of the Web: Water Fluoridation War: Government Admits Dangers, Experts Speak Out

Andre Evans
Activist Post
Tue, 08 Nov 2011 13:48 UTC
Image
© fluoridationfacts.com
It was only a few years ago that if you labeled fluoride as a dangerous substance, you would be laughed at and scorned. For years, a select minority of individuals were the only ones raising the awareness of this health concern. Their cries have been and continue to be met with dissonance, despite the fact that the public's opinion on fluoride has changed much in just a short time.

In fact, even the United States government has called for lower levels of water fluoridation following a study published in Environmental Health Perspectives, which found that increased fluoride consumption led to decreased IQ in children.

Communities are attempting to end water fluoridation, mainstream news is acknowledging its negative effects, and even a number of professional dentists have recognized the dangers of fluoride, and spoken out against its use and distribution. Most recently, the Palmer City Council of Alaska passed an ordinance repealing the town's water fluoridation mandate.
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Info

Smart and Diligent Consumerism | Knowing Deceptive Advertising and Marketing Tactics

Andre Evans
Natural Society
Tue, 08 Nov 2011 12:10 UTC
Shopping
© Natural Society

In today's world, smart and diligent consumerism will take you a long way. There are scores of products that all hold fast to claims of quality and integrity. The truth about purchasing most products however is that you must be privy to the meaning of health subtitles.

Smart and Diligent Consumerism | Reading Labels and Exposing Deceptive Advertising and Marketing Tactics

In the realm of health foods and supplements, products are pushed in many different ways. Advertising techniques can range from pointing out unique vitamins or minerals to branding the product as 'all natural' or 'certified organic.' The Food and Drug Administration's regulations make the guidelines for authenticity rather lenient, and so companies capitalize on the lack of awareness in the average buyer often by using deceptive advertising and marketing tactics.

The average person on a base level acknowledges that there are dangerous additives like aspartame and high fructose corn syrup in many products. In an attempt to avoid these harmful ingredients, a product with an 'all natural' label will be picked up instead. Many products that are labeled as such, however, often don't contain all natural ingredients and are simply the result of deceptive advertising and marketing tactics.

Under these regulations, it is entirely acceptable to include additives which aren't deemed 'additives' based on the FDA. It is also acceptable to use unnatural preparation methods like frying, genetic modification, or pasteurization. These things cause the product to only be part natural at best. Even more remarkable is that the terms 'natural'and 'all natural' have no defined parameters in law or regulation, so essentially products with these claims can be and are easily as contaminated as the products trying to be avoided.
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Beaker

Study Says Pesticides in Food Chain Causes ADHD in Children

Dave Stancliff
Times-Standard
Sun, 06 Nov 2011 11:05 UTC
Image
© minnpost.com
Pesticides threaten our health, yet we still use them in America today. In the Vietnam War, herbicides (a subclass of pesticides) and their deadly effects created a dark legacy that still lingers.

Many Americans have heard about Agent Orange and are aware that the Veterans Administration has recognized numerous ill effects it had on people who were exposed to it. Not so well known is that nine of the 12 most dangerous and persistent organic chemicals are pesticides, according to the 2001 Stockholm Convention findings on Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs).

The result of the convention was an international environmental treaty, which went into effect in May 2004. The aim was to eliminate or restrict the production and use of POPs, defined as "chemical substances that persist in the environment, bio-accumulate through the food web, and pose a risk of causing adverse effects to human health and the environment."

In the early 1960s, we sprayed Agent Orange in Vietnam as a defoliant. It contained dioxin, but the chemical companies assured everyone that dioxin occurred naturally in the environment and was not harmful to humans. They knew better.

Comment: Read the following articles for more information about pesticides and the risks posed to children from pesticide exposure through the environment and water:

Study Finds: Risk to kids from toxic pesticides may be underestimated
Research Links Pesticides with ADHD in Children
U.S. Study: Pesticides Tied to ADHD in Children
From the Fields to Inner City, Pesticides Affect Children's IQ
Fruit and Vegetables Have 'Unacceptable' Levels of Pesticides
Farm Workers and Allies Ask Government to Protect Kids From Toxic Pesticide Drift
Video: Pesticides Tied to ADHD in Children

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Syringe

US: North Texas Researchers Creating Ultimate Flu Shot


CBS News DFW.com
Fri, 04 Nov 2011 09:00 UTC

North Texas researchers are on the brink of revolutionizing the way we fight the flu.

Every year, scientists try to guess which strain of the flu will cause the most people to get sick. They use that particular flu bug to make a flu vaccine. But what if you could get one shot that would tackle every single type of flu?

Dena Rushing from Little Elm has not had the flu in years. "Overall, we're a very healthy family, and very active," she said. But it is not because she gets the flu shot. She used to get it, but said that she would always get sick. "I can't remember a year I didn't, and then I stopped taking it and I stopped getting the flu."

Rushing believes that the inactive virus - which makes up the shot - is what is responsible for making her sick. Most doctors say that is not the case. But for her, experience speaks volumes. "We haven't got it and we haven't got the flu," Rushing said.

Now, researchers in North Texas say that this fear could soon become a thing of the past.
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Bizarro Earth

Best of the Web: US: As Dolphins Die, Gulf Residents Ask What About Us?

Rocky Kistner
Truthout
Tue, 01 Nov 2011 19:02 UTC
dead dolphin
© Unknown

Willie Seaman of Irvington, AL, lays carpet and floors for a living. But last summer, as the BP well gushed thousands of barrels of oil daily into the Gulf, Seaman signed up with the BP cleanup program, working on a shrimp boat several miles off shore.

It was brutally hot and the smell of oil was putrid, Seaman remembers. His job was to use a net to try to pull in the thick, reddish BP crude that he says was up to a foot thick in places. Problem was, the white protective suits didn't do much to keep the oil off, Willie recalls. Instead, he says they acted like absorbent pads, soaking up the oil that would rub against his skin.

Seaman says before long he started breaking out in blistery red hives on his hands and feet. The itching was so bad a coworker said Seaman would scrub his feet with a wire brush until his skin sloughed off like scales of a fish. Despite shots of steroids and numerous doctor visits, Seaman endured countless bouts of painful hives; and he still gets them, he says, especially after eating seafood from the Gulf. He also says he knows others who have broken out in hives after eating seafood.

"They took advantage of everyone down here because we were all poor and broke," he says. "They told us in hazwhoper class that we didn't have to worry about the toxins because the oil was weathered and there were no fumes. We'll it was so bad my eyes were on fire and I had tears running down my throat."
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Syringe

US: Parents Warned About Mail Order Chicken Pox Lollipops

Leezel Tanglao
ABC News
Mon, 07 Nov 2011 15:47 UTC
vaccination
© ABC NewsParents Warned About Mail Order Chicken Pox Lollipops
Authorities and doctors are warning parents who want to avoid chicken pox vaccines for their children that a new mail-order scheme to share lollipops licked by children infected with the disease as a way to create immunity in their kids is not only unsafe but illegal.

"Can you imagine getting a package in the mail from this complete stranger that you know from Facebook because you joined a group, and say here, drink this purported spit from some other kid?" U.S. Attorney for the Middle District of Tennessee Jerry Martin told The Associated Press.

News reports from Phoenix's KPHO-TV and Nashville's WSMV-TV this week looked into groups forming on social media sites like Facebook that offer ways to get "natural immunity" from chicken pox by deliberately exposing children to the disease.

Concerns about the vaccine range from worries about whether some of the ingredients are harmful to children, to fears that the vaccine itself is ineffective and would only be creating only short-term immunity to the disease.
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Pills

How The Pharmaceutical Industry Has Mastered The Art Of Creating and Naming Diseases


drleonardcoldwell.com
Thu, 22 Sep 2011 12:56 UTC
Image
© drleonardcoldwell.com
You may think there is enough disease in the world already, and that no one would want to add to the diseases that we humans must deal with. But there is a powerful industry in our society that is working overtime to invent illnesses and to convince us we are suffering from them.

This effort is known as "disease mongering," a term introduced by health-science writer Lynn Payer in her 1992 book Disease-Mongers: How Doctors, Drug Companies, and Insurers Are Making You Feel Sick. Payer defined disease mongering as "trying to convince essentially well people that they are sick, or slightly sick people that they are very ill." This strategy has also been called "the corporate construction of disease" by Ray Moynihan, Iona Heath and David Henry in the British Medical Journal. "There's a lot of money to be made from telling healthy people they're sick," they say. "Pharmaceutical companies are actively involved in sponsoring the definition of diseases and promoting them to both prescribers and consumers."

Comment: For a more in depth look at How Big Pharma Learned To Seduce You with disease mongering and fear tactics read the following articles carried on SOTT.NET by Martha Rosenberg.

Martha Rosenberg frequently writes about the impact of the pharmaceutical, food and gun industries on public health. According to Martha Rosenberg's article: 15 Dirty Big Pharma Tricks That Rip You Off and Risk Your Health for Profit
Even during a recession, pharma is still the nation's third most profitable sector. Here are some of the dirty tricks it employs to stay on top.
15 Dangerous Drugs Big Pharma Shoves Down Our Throats
How Big Pharma Distorts Science to Get FDA Approval for Dangerous Drugs
8 Invented Diseases Big Pharma Is Banking on
Some Asthma Drugs Kill More People Than Asthma: Why Is Big Pharma Allowed to Hawk Deadly Pills?

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Arrow Down

'Elixir of Youth' Sparks Clash of Croatian Scientists

Mico Tatalovic
ScienceInsider
Mon, 07 Nov 2011 12:41 UTC
Elixir
© yekyek.files.wordpress.com

A Slovenian company that makes an antioxidant pill some media have dubbed an "elixir of youth" is threatening to file lawsuits against scientists who have publicly spoken out against the product, calling it insufficiently tested. The face-off has an added bit of complexity: one prominent Croatian scientist is criticizing another who has endorsed the therapy.

The pill at the heart of the dispute, a mixture of four antioxidants - resveratrol, oligomeric proanthocyanidin, lycopene, and EGCG (green tea extract) - called Energiser HPE 40 or ADR, was introduced at a hotel press conference in Zagreb on 20 October by its maker Regiopharma, which already sells food supplements. Present at the media briefing and offering his support was Miroslav Radman, a Croatia-born scientist at the medical faculty of Paris University V, France, known for his work on DNA repair and bacterial cell death. Radman, who is also a co-founder and current head of the life sciences research institute MedILS in Split, Croatia, told local media that his team there had tested Energiser HPE 40 on cells and found it to be a powerful antioxidant. Radman added that he has been taking the pill, and it made him feel more energetic.

Ivan Đikić, a Croatian émigré scientist who is scientific director of Frankfurt Institute for Molecular Life Sciences in Germany, has publicly criticized Regiopharma's product, and Radman for endorsing it. In the days following the press conference, he told Croatian journalists that there were no peer-reviewed published studies nor clinical trials to support the firm's claims that the new product is safe for human use and that it slows aging.
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