The pesticide industry and EU regulators knew as long ago as the 1980s-1990s that Roundup, the world's best selling herbicide, causes birth defects - but they failed to inform the public.

This report, co-authored by international scientists and researchers, reveals that industry's own studies (including one commissioned by Monsanto) showed as long ago as the 1980s that Roundup's active ingredient glyphosate causes birth defects in laboratory animals.

A team of researchers from across the globe believe they have discovered a means of re-opening "critical periods" in brain development, allowing adults to acquire abilities - such as perfect pitch or fluency in language - that could previously only be acquired early in life.

According to the study in Frontiers in Systems Neuroscience, the mood-stabilizing drug valproate allows the adult brain to absorb new information as effortlessly as it did during critical windows in childhood.

Women who drank a glass of wine a week while pregnant had children who were more well adjusted than women who didn't drink at all, says a new study.

Researchers in Denmark looked at the drinking habits of 100,000 Danish moms-to-be between 1996 and 2002, reports the Express.

They asked 37,000 of those women about the behavior of their children, and found the kids were generally more emotionally stable and more well behaved.

Psychologist Janni Nicalsen with the University of Copenhagen explains, "it is a question of taking account of childhood related psychological factors like attachment between mother and child in this type of study."

Nicalsen warns this is not an invitation to pregnant women to start drinking.

As a young woman, Dr. Terry Wahls ran marathons and competed in martial arts competitions. Like many young professionals, she led a full and busy life, balancing her education, her career, her family. She had one degree in fine arts and another in medicine, and then she reached even farther, earning an MBA. She was a high achiever and there was no stopping her. Someday, she expected to climb mountains with her grandchildren. What she didn't expect, even though there were early signs and troubling symptoms - and, once, even a cautious prediction from a well-meaning colleague - was to face a diagnosis of multiple sclerosis and find herself confined to a wheelchair at the age of 52.

In her upcoming book, The Wahls Protocol: How I Beat Progressive MS Using Paleo Principles and Functional Medicine (Avery, 2014), Dr. Wahls relates the compelling story of her illness from her unique perspective as both doctor and patient:

"Everyone with multiple sclerosis has a story - the years of clues and strange symptom that finally, in retrospect, make sense. It is in the nature of most neurological and autoimmune diseases that symptoms accumulate slowly, bit by bit, over the course of decades. This is what happened to me. As a doctor, I was compelled to find answers: a diagnosis and a cure. As a patient, I was compelled to save my own life."

When I first had the pleasure of meeting Dr. Wahls at an educational event a number of years ago, she was in a wheelchair. But she was - at that time - also engaged in a battle to regain her mobility, her strength, her health, her active lifestyle. Flash forward to the present, and a recent conversation I had with Dr. Wahls that is featured in the December 2013 issue of Functional Medicine Update. I'm pleased to report that not only did Dr. Wahls win that battle, she is now also sharing her story with others and leading clinical trials that test the effectiveness of her approaches, thereby making it possible for other clinicians and patients to learn from her experiences and recognize improvements in their own treatment programs. Dr. Wahls has established a remarkable website, www.terrywahls.com, where free resources and research links are available, as well as information about the trials being organized through her foundation, and - perhaps most inspiring - you can read stories sent to Dr. Wahls by fellow MS patients who are successfully managing their symptoms and living their lives more optimally.

There is no simpler way to put it - we are entering a mini to full blown ice age, and despite the rhetoric, we all have to prepare for it.

I don't care if you are rich or poor. Your skin color matters not, nor your political leanings. We all have to prepare for the obvious and the sooner you do, the quicker your life can begin some sense of normality.

Preparing for an ice age means that you will have to alter your diet to meet available foodstuffs. Planning now is the smartest decision you can make.

The sun, the life giving big ball of gas, is not acting normal. It's acting sluggish. And when it does that, we enter into periods of global cooling. These three articles tell us that the sun is at a low:

• Solar activity drops to 100-year low, puzzling scientists
• Sun Is Weakest In 200 years
• Starvation: Coming to Your Town...Soon

It doesn't matter what some academic aboard a research vessel says - we are getting colder.

The problem has been defined. The solution - not that difficult! It will require work and basic knowledge, but if our ancestors could survive, so can we.

First, your diet needs to change. A meatless diet simply will not work, as the body needs cholesterol in order to make the necessary hormones like adrenaline, testosterone, and estrogen. As the mercury drops to sub-normal temperature, cholesterol will be used by the body because of increased activity to stay warm. The shiver reflex helps raise the body's temperature, the testosterone will increase body hair to help stay warm, and estrogen will help thermoregulate a woman's body.

Her parents were running out of hope. Their teenage daughter, Mary, had been diagnosed with a severe case of obsessive - compulsive disorder (OCD), as well as ADHD. They had dragged her to clinics around the country in an effort to thwart the scary, intrusive thoughts and the repetitive behaviors that Mary felt compelled to perform. Even a litany of psychotropic medications didn't make much difference. It seemed like nothing could stop the relentless nature of Mary's disorder.

Their last hope for Mary was Boston-area psychiatrist James Greenblatt. Arriving at his office in Waltham, MA, her parents had only one request: help us help Mary.

Greenblatt started by posing the usual questions about Mary's background, her childhood, and the onset of her illness. But then he asked a question that no psychiatrist ever had: How was Mary's gut? Did she suffer digestive upset? Constipation or diarrhea? Acid reflux? Had Mary's digestion seemed to change at all before or during her illness? Her parents looked at each other. The answer to many of the doctor's questions was, indeed, "Yes."

That's what prompted Greenblatt to take a surprising approach: besides psychotherapy and medication, Greenblatt also prescribed Mary a twice-daily dose of probiotics, the array of helpful bacteria that lives in our gut. The change in Mary was nothing short of miraculous: within six months, her symptoms had greatly diminished. One year after the probiotic prescription, there was no sign that Mary had ever been ill.

Pop quiz: Is the proportion of American children suffering from the disease known as attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder . . .

a) Less than 5%, as we believed before the early 1990s?
b) More than 11%, and rising, as suggested by CDC statistics?
c) Zero?

The correct answer is (c), says neurologist Richard Saul in his forthcoming book, "ADHD Does Not Exist: The Truth About Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder" (HarperWave), which is sure to cause controversy when it comes out in February.

After a long career treating patients complaining of such problems as short attention spans and an inability to focus, Saul is convinced that ADHD is a collection of symptoms, not a disease, and shouldn't be listed in the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual.

Treating ADHD as a disease is a huge mistake, according to Saul. Imagine walking into a doctor's office with severe abdominal pains and simply being prescribed painkillers. Then you walk away, pain-free. Later you die of appendicitis.

A 3-year-old Hawaii girl who suffered massive brain injuries last month after a dental procedure died late Friday, said an attorney for the child's family.

Earlier this week, the family of Finley Boyle, 3, filed a lawsuit against dentist Lilly Geyer and Island Dentistry for Children in Honolulu, alleging that the child was given incorrect dosages of sedatives and that the hospital staff was not properly trained for emergencies.

Despite widespread opposition from food safety, environmental and watchdog groups, as well as health professionals and concerned consumers, the USDA has paved the way for the commercial use of genetically engineered crops dubbed "Agent Orange" corn and soybeans.

In its Draft Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) released Friday, the agency said that its "preferred" option for Dow AgroSciences' "Enlist" corn and soybean, genetically engineered (GE) to be resistant to the herbicide 2,4-D, is to deregulate them.

2,4-D, the third most widely used herbicide in the U.S., is made by Dow Chemical, and was a component of Agent Orange. The herbicide has been linked to Parkinson's, birth defects, reproductive problems, and endocrine disruption.

Critics say that green-lighting these two genetically engineered crops will expand the use of toxic herbicides at the expense of public and environmental health, while padding the coffers of he pesticide industry.

"'Agent Orange crops' are designed to survive a chemical assault with 2,4-D. They will increase the use of toxic pesticides in industrial agriculture while providing absolutely no benefit to consumers," said Center for Food Safety executive director Andrew Kimbrell.

Some see a cautionary tale from Monsanto's Roundup Ready crops, which led to an increased use of glyphosate and the creation of "super weeds."

Retrotransposons, which are stretches of DNA often dubbed as "junk DNA," may play an important role in schizophrenia.

In a study published in the journal Neuron, a Japanese team revealed that LINE-1 retrotransposons are abnormally abundant in the schizophrenia brain. These transposons modify the expression of genes related to schizophrenia during brain development and may be one of the causes of schizophrenia.

Retrotransposons are short sequences of DNA that autonomously amplify and move around the genome. One class of retrotransposons, named long interspersed nuclear elements (LINE), make up a large part of the eukaryotic genome and are believed to contribute to diseases such as cancer.

LINE-1 have been shown to be more abundant in brain cells than in other cells, providing evidence for enhanced activity of LINE-1 in the human brain. However, the role played by LINE-1 in mental disorders, and in particular schizophrenia, remains unclear.

The team, led by Dr. Kazuya Iwamoto from the University of Tokyo and Dr. Tadafumi Kato from the RIKEN Brain Science Institute, demonstrated that the number of copies of LINE-1 is elevated in the post-mortem brains of patients with schizophrenia.