Health & WellnessS


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Flashback My Forbidden Fruits and Vegetables

Jack Hedin
Common Dreams
Sun, 02 Mar 2008 22:27 UTC
If you've stood in line at a farmers' market recently, you know that the local food movement is thriving, to the point that small farmers are having a tough time keeping up with the demand.

But consumers who would like to be able to buy local fruits and vegetables not just at farmers' markets, but also in the produce aisle of their supermarket, will be dismayed to learn that the federal government works deliberately and forcefully to prevent the local food movement from expanding. And the barriers that the United States Department of Agriculture has put in place will be extended when the farm bill that House and Senate negotiators are working on now goes into effect.
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Magnify

Study Finds Genes Important to Sleep


e! Science News
Sun, 22 Feb 2009 13:29 UTC
For many animals, sleep is a risk: foraging for food, mingling with mates and guarding against predators just aren't possible while snoozing. How, then, has this seemingly life-threatening behavior remained constant among various species of animals?

A new study by scientists at North Carolina State University shows that the fruit fly is genetically wired to sleep, although the sleep comes in widely variable amounts and patterns. Learning more about the genetics of sleep in model animals could lead to advances in understanding human sleep and how sleep loss affects the human condition.

The study, published online in Nature Genetics, examined the sleep and activity patterns of 40 different wild-derived lines of Drosophila melanogaster - one of the model animals used in scientific studies. It found that, on average, male fruit flies slept longer than females; males slept more during the day than females; and males were more active when awake than females. Females, in turn, tended to have more frequent bouts of sleep, and thus were disrupted more from sleep, than males.
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Sherlock

Fat gene mystery unravelled by scientists

Sarah Knapton
Telegraph.co.uk
Sun, 22 Feb 2009 19:13 UTC
The mystery of how some people can eat and never put on weight while others struggle to shed a single ounce may have finally been solved by scientists.

Slight differences in a single gene may be responsible for suppressing the metabolism, making its carriers permanently sluggish and unable to burn calories as effectively.

In contrast, thinner people seem to use up energy more rapidly, expending it in excess heat.

Scientists have long suspected that genetic differences were responsible for weight gain and singled out the FTO gene as the main culprit.
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Magnify

Early Abuse 'Changes Brain Structure'


Daily Telegraph
Sun, 22 Feb 2009 18:09 UTC
Abuse in early childhood can dramatically alter the way the brain copes with stress in adulthood, research shows.

Children abused during their formative years can undergo a change in the structure of their brains, which inhibits the expression of a stress hormone-related gene (NR3C1).

This would make such children less able to cope with stress, according to the Canadian study, which examined the brains of 12 people with a history of child abuse who had taken their own lives.
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Syringe

Risky tan jab warnings 'ignored'


BBC
Wed, 18 Feb 2009 18:57 UTC
Repeated warnings about so-called tan jabs appear to be going unheeded in the UK, experts believe.

Health experts have warned that using melanotan I and II could damage the immune and cardiovascular systems as well as triggering other problems.

But Liverpool John Moores University's Michael Evans-Brown said it seemed the problem was worsening, not improving.
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Syringe

Stem cell 'cure' boy gets tumour


BBC
Wed, 18 Feb 2009 18:47 UTC
A boy treated with foetal stem cells for a rare genetic disease has developed benign tumours, raising questions about the therapy's safety.

The boy, now 17, received the stem cells in 2001 at a Moscow hospital and four years later scans showed brain and spinal tumours, PLoS Medicine reports.

Israeli doctors removed the abnormal growth from his spine and tests suggest it sprouted from the stem cells.
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Roses

Flashback Rhodiola Rosea: The Herb That Came in From the Cold

Peter Jaret
Natural Solutions
Sat, 01 Jan 2005 10:36 UTC
Rhodiola rosea
© WikipediaRhodiola Rosea
For four hours, the unlikely trio made its way up the rugged face of the Sayan Mountains in northern Mongolia - Richard P. Brown, an American psychiatrist and psychopharmacologist, Zakir Ramazanov, a distinguished Russian plant biochemist, and their Siberian guide. Under a cloudless sky of the deepest blue, they climbed quickly, the temperature falling and the oxygen growing thinner as they gained altitude. At last, after climbing more than 10,000 feet over icy streams and rugged rock faces, they crested the last ridge. "We stood and stared in amazement," remembers Brown. "Everywhere we looked, growing in the craggy mountain ravine, were the bright yellow flowers of Rhodiola rosea."

Brown began digging around for information about the little-known herb, which is also called Arctic root or golden root. When he contacted an American company that produces a rhodiola supplement, he was advised to speak with Ramazanov, who had done research on the herb in Russia, where the plant grows. "By an incredible coincidence, Ramazanov had just moved to the United States and was living only an hour away from me," says Brown.

The two men agreed to get together, and during their first meeting the Russian biochemist gave Brown a tall stack of articles and research studies, as well as a book he'd written about the herb. "I realized then that there was much more to this than I'd ever imagined," says Brown.
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Ladybug

How We Think Before We Speak


Red Orbit
Sun, 22 Feb 2009 03:38 UTC
We engage in numerous discussions throughout the day, about a variety of topics, from work assignments to the Super Bowl to what we are having for dinner that evening. We effortlessly move from conversation to conversation, probably not thinking twice about our brain's ability to understand everything that is being said to us. How does the brain turn seemingly random sounds and letters into sentences with clear meaning? In a new report in Current Directions in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, psychologist Jos J.A. Van Berkum from the Max Planck Institute in The Netherlands describes recent experiments using brain waves to understand how we are able to make sense of sentences.
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Syringe

FDA: Three Deaths from PML Tied to Genentech Psoriasis Drug Raptiva

Anna Boyd
eFluxMedia
Sun, 22 Feb 2009 01:08 UTC
Three patients taking Genentech's psoriasis drug Raptiva are thought to have died of a rare brain infection, known as a possible side effect of the drug, federal health officials reported.

On Thursday, the Food and Drug Administration said there have been three confirmed and one possible case of progressive multifocal leukoencephalopathy or PML in people taking Raptiva. Three of the patients died. All four had been treated with the drug for more than three years.
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Stormtrooper

US: Incurable cancer blamed on water at Marine base

Patti Zarling
Green Bay Press-Gazette
Sat, 21 Feb 2009 04:38 UTC
Allen Menard is proud to be a U.S. Marine.

"Love of country comes first," said the Green Bay man, holding a picture of his younger self, standing tall in military fatigues.

But the 45-year-old thinks the military downplayed the presence of toxins in the water supply at Camp Lejeune, N.C., where Menard was stationed from 1981-84. He believes the contaminated water contributed to his rare, noncurable skin cancer.
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