Health & WellnessS


Smiley

The vitamin D miracle: Is it for real?

Martin Mittelstaedt
Globe and Mail
Sat, 08 Mar 2008 18:48 UTC
In the summer of 1974, brothers Frank and Cedric Garland had a heretical brainwave.

The young epidemiologists were watching a presentation on death rates from cancer county by county across the United States. As they sat in a lecture hall at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore looking at the colour-coded cancer maps, they noticed a striking pattern, with the map for colon cancer the most pronounced.

Counties with high death rates were red; those with low rates were blue. Oddly, the nation was almost neatly divided in half, red in the north and blue in the south. Why, they wondered, was the risk of dying from cancer greater in bucolic Maine than in highly polluted Southern California?
Read More...
Health

Iowa, US: 22 Children At One School Have Mysterious Illness


Associated Press
Tue, 04 Mar 2008 17:52 UTC
Twenty-two children from Cattell Elementary School were taken to a downtown Des Moines hospital on Thursday afternoon after they became sick, school officials said.

No immediate cause for the illness was reported, but authorities said they had ruled out exposure to carbon monoxide.

Phil Roeder, a spokesman for the Des Moines Public Schools, said that around 1:30 p.m. a group of mostly fifth-graders in a physical education class began to demonstrate symptoms that ranged from lightheadedness to nausea to vomiting. He said a couple adults also showed symptoms.
Read More...
Attention

The Associated Press Probe Finds Drugs in Drinking Water

Jeff Donn, Martha Mendoza and Justin Pritchard
Associated Press
Sun, 09 Mar 2008 16:44 UTC
A vast array of pharmaceuticals - including antibiotics, anti-convulsants, mood stabilizers and sex hormones - have been found in the drinking water supplies of at least 41 million Americans, an Associated Press investigation shows.

To be sure, the concentrations of these pharmaceuticals are tiny, measured in quantities of parts per billion or trillion, far below the levels of a medical dose. Also, utilities insist their water is safe.

But the presence of so many prescription drugs - and over-the-counter medicines like acetaminophen and ibuprofen - in so much of our drinking water is heightening worries among scientists of long-term consequences to human health.
Read More...
Question

Probe into mysterious child deaths in Senegal


Agence France-Presse
Sun, 09 Mar 2008 16:09 UTC
Health authorities in Senegal are looking into the unexplained deaths of about 20 small children in a poor suburb of Dakar, a regional medical chief said Friday.

"Investigations have begun to find out many (children) and what happened," Khemes Ngom told AFP, confirming press reports that 18 to 20 children, aged three to five, died in the fishing district of Thiaroye-sur-Mer.
Read More...
Beer

Drunken stars fuel culture of booze, says pubs boss

Hugo Duncan and Paul Waugh
This is London
Fri, 07 Mar 2008 09:55 UTC
The chairman of the JD Wetherspoon pub chain today criticised the binge culture in Britain and blamed heavy-drinking celebrities.

Drinking
©Unknown
Excess all areas: drinking antics of stars like Lily Allen 'are being copied by the public'

Comment: The problems that lead to drinking are socio-economical and psychological. Unless the quality of life for people improves, unless the everyday living and making ends meet stressors are eliminated, people would continue drinking as self-medication. And this is unlike to happen in pathocratic societies.

Read More...
Butterfly

Flashback Learning to Walk: Are Shoes Harmful?

Jason Godesky
The Anthropik Network
Thu, 28 Jun 2007 00:00 UTC
"No shirt, no shoes, no service." It's a common enough sign in store windows and other establishments, though, who would ever be seen without shoes? Shoes are essential to civilized life, and they bring with them a distinctly civilized manner of walking: lock the knee, and brace a controlled fall on the heel; roll the foot forward, rocking into another locked-knee heel-fall. It's difficult to walk any other way while wearing shoes, and you'll often find this described as the way humans walk. But of course, humans are not born with shoes on, nor did we evolve in shoes. Every human begins walking a different way, and needs to be meticulously trained to walk like this.
Read More...
Butterfly

Dreams Deferred: Do We Try to Sleep Longer than We Should?

A. Roger Ekirch
The New York Times
Sun, 19 Feb 2006 00:00 UTC
Roanoke, Virginia -- "Bed is a medicine," instructs an Italian proverb. Increasingly, Americans are inverting that counsel by ingesting sleeping pills to speed their slumber.

With complaints of insomnia mounting, and marketing by drug companies becoming ever more ubiquitous, we are turning in increasing numbers to drugs like Ambien and Lunesta. According to a recent report from the research company IMS Health, pharmacists in the United States filled some 42 million prescriptions for sleeping pills last year, a rise of nearly 60 percent since 2000.

Are we running too quickly to the medicine cabinet? Or is insomnia genuinely reaching epidemic proportions, a consequence perhaps of the frenetic pace of modern life?
Read More...
Heart

You Will Never Guess the Surprising Cause of Most Heart Attacks


Mercola.com
Sat, 08 Mar 2008 15:39 UTC
Do you think you know what causes heart attacks?

In this video, Dr. David Holt, the leading U.S. physician in German New Medicine, explains that the conventional explanation for heart attacks may not be accurate at all. Conflicts involving territorial loss -- such as losing a family member, your home, or your financial stability -- cause changes in the coronary arteries of all animals -- including humans.

And as Dr. Holt explains, those changes very often lead to heart attacks -- days or even weeks after your conflict has been resolved.


Comment: With all we learned from studying Pavlov's research, Transmarginal Inhibition, and Naomi Klein's book, the Shock Doctrine (watch video here), plus our own studies and research on psychopathy, it is not hard to imagine how "territorial loss" can be induced on humans - both on personal and societal scales - in order to attack their health, and ultimately, bring their death.

Read More...
Info

Soaking Potatoes In Water Before Frying Reduces Acrylamide


sciencedaily.com
Sat, 08 Mar 2008 19:15 UTC
Good news for chips lovers everywhere -- new research in the journal Science of Food and Agriculture shows that pre-soaking potatoes in water before frying can reduce levels of acrylamide.

Acrylamide is a naturally occurring chemical that occurs when starch rich foods are cooked at high temperatures, such as frying, baking, grilling or roasting.
Read More...
Info

Your Brain On Krispy Kremes: How Hunger Motivates


sciencedaily.com
Sat, 08 Mar 2008 18:34 UTC
What makes you suddenly dart into the bakery when you spy chocolate- frosted donuts in the window, though you certainly hadn't planned on indulging? As you lick the frosting off your fingers, don't blame a lack of self-control.

New research from Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine reveals how hunger works in the brain and the way neurons pull your strings to lunge for the sweet fried dough.

donuts
©iStockphoto/Dan Chippendale
What makes you suddenly dart into the bakery when you spy chocolate- frosted donuts in the window, though you certainly hadn't planned on indulging? As you lick the frosting off your fingers, don't blame a lack of self-control.
Read More...