Health & Wellness
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.
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.
"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.
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?
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.
Acrylamide is a naturally occurring chemical that occurs when starch rich foods are cooked at high temperatures, such as frying, baking, grilling or roasting.
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.
Acclaimed author and journalist Michael Pollan argues that what most Americans are consuming today is not food but "edible foodlike substances." His previous book, The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals, was named one of 2006's ten best books by the New York Times and the Washington Post. His latest book is called In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto.
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.