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Bacon n Eggs

Can a ketogenic diet really fight depression? Low-carb, high fat foods shown to drastically improve mental health

Annabel Fenwick Elliott
The Daily Mail
Thu, 27 Mar 2014 14:04 UTC
depressed woman
© unknown
They say you are what eat, and we all know the difference a better diet makes to our complexion and our waistlines. But what about our heads?

An increasing number of scientists are pointing to the Ketogenic diet - similar in nature to the low-carb, high-protein Atkins and Caveman meal plans, which have shown promising results in the treatment of depression and bipolar disorder.

'It's a very new field; the first papers only came out a few years ago,' Michael Berk, a professor of psychiatry at the Deakin University School of Medicine in Australia tells The Washington Post. 'But the results are unusually consistent, and they show a link between diet quality and mental health.'

A Ketogenic diet typically restricts the intake of carbs to no more than 50g a day. A good rule of thumb is to follow the 60/35/5 rule in which 60 per cent of calories come from fat, 35 per cent from protein, and five per cent from carbs. Grass-fed meat, fish, dairy, nuts and avocado are top of the list in terms of foods that comply.

Comment: For more information on the ketogenic diet see:

The Ketogenic Diet - An Overview

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Heart

8 Ways in which Magnesium rescues hormones

Lara Briden
Lara Bridens Healthy Hormone Blog
Sun, 30 Mar 2014 02:50 UTC
Image
© Unknown
As my patients can tell you, I prescribe magnesium for almost every hormonal condition. I prescribe it for PCOS, thyroid, adrenal fatigue, hair loss, PMS and menopausal symptoms. I love magnesium because it makes people feel better almost immediately.

What is up with this mineral? Why are we all so deficient? We're deficient because our cells dump magnesium during stress. We actively push the mineral out of our bodies as a way to rev up our nervous system and cope with daily life.

A revved up nervous system is what an average modern human needs to get through an average modern day. If you work, or commute, or drink coffee, or worry, then you are deficient in magnesium. If you live the meditative life of a monk on a mountainside, then you're probably Ok.
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Alarm Clock

Change in amount of sleep caused by daylight saving linked to heart attacks, study

Ransdell Pierson and Bill Berkrot
Reuters
Sat, 29 Mar 2014 15:43 UTC
Image
Switching over to daylight saving time, and losing one hour of sleep, raised the risk of having a heart attack the following Monday by 25 percent, compared to other Mondays during the year, according to a new U.S. study released on Saturday.

By contrast, heart attack risk fell 21 percent later in the year, on the Tuesday after the clock was returned to standard time, and people got an extra hour's sleep.

The not-so-subtle impact of moving the clock forward and backward was seen in a comparison of hospital admissions from a database of non-federal Michigan hospitals. It examined admissions before the start of daylight saving time and the Monday immediately after, for four consecutive years.

In general, heart attacks historically occur most often on Monday mornings, maybe due to the stress of starting a new work week and inherent changes in our sleep-wake cycle, said Dr. Amneet Sandhu, a cardiology fellow at the University of Colorado in Denver who led the study.
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Health

Does aluminum in antiperspirants cause breast cancer?

Heidi Stevenson
Waking Times
Mon, 24 Mar 2014 09:04 UTC
breast cancer cupcakes
© unknown
Breast cancer and cyst formation are at epidemic proportions. At what point can we say, conclusively, that aluminum in antiperspirants is causal? The evidence grows stronger and stronger, largely due to the labors of one dedicated scientist, but she states that absolute proof does not yet exist. So, how much proof do you require before deciding it's better to be safe than sorry?

Antiperspirants: Cause of Breast Cancer? discussed some of Keele Conference scientist Philippa Darbre's work on the likelihood of a relationship between aluminum in antiperspirants and breast cancer, in particular locations of aluminum in breast tissue and aluminum as an estrogen mimic. This article follows her work into other areas as the noose tightens around antiperspirant aluminum as a serious risk in breast diseases.

As previously noted in Antiperspirants: Cause of Breast Cancer?, Dr. Philippa Darbre's latest presentation at the Keele Conference was on research demonstrating the ability of aluminum to cause changes in proteins that may lead to cancer metastasis, which can turn a benign tumor into a malignant metastatic cancer. Here is information she's elicited in earlier work that has led to the study on aluminum's potential to cause breast cancer metastasis.
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Magic Wand

Have a good night sleep! Sleep may stop chronic pain sufferers from becoming 'zombies'

Tom Frew
University of Warwick
Thu, 27 Mar 2014 13:20 UTC
Image
© University of Warwick
This is a photo of Dr. Nicole Tang, University of Warwick.
Chronic pain sufferers could be kept physically active by improving the quality of their sleep, new research suggests.

The study by the University of Warwick's Department of Psychology, published in PLoS One, found that sleep was a worthy target for treating chronic pain and not only as an answer to pain-related insomnia.

"Engaging in physical activity is a key treatment process in pain management. Very often, clinicians would prescribe exercise classes, physiotherapy, walking and cycling programmes as part of the treatment, but who would like to engage in these activities when they feel like a zombie?", argues study lead-author Dr Nicole Tang.

Dr Tang and study co-author Dr Adam Sanborn examined the day-to-day association between night-time sleep and daytime physical activity in chronic pain patients. "Many of the patients struggled to stay physically active after the onset of pain and we found that chronic pain patients spontaneously engaged in more physical activity following a better night of sleep".
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Pills

Study: anti-anxiety drug usage correlates with higher mortality

Nicholas Bakalar
New York Times
Thu, 27 Mar 2014 14:57 UTC
Image
A large study has linked several common anti-anxiety drugs and sleeping pills to an increased risk of death, although it's not certain the drugs were the cause.

For more than seven years, researchers followed 34,727 people who filled prescriptions for anti-anxiety medications like Valium and Xanax, or sleep aids like Ambien, Sonata and Lunesta, comparing them with 69,418 controls who did not.

After adjusting for a wide variety of factors, the researchers found that people who took the drugs had more than double the risk of death. The study appears online in BMJ.
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Syringe

One drug to rule them all: Scientists find treatment to kill every kind of cancer tumor

Michael Blaustein
New York Post
Thu, 27 Mar 2014 11:02 UTC
Image
© Unknown
Survivor. When mice with human tumors received doses of anti-CD47, which sets the immune system against tumor cells, the cancers shrank and disappeared.
Researchers might have found the Holy Grail in the war against cancer, a miracle drug that has killed every kind of cancer tumor it has come in contact with, the New York Post reported.

The drug works by blocking a protein called CD47 that is essentially a "do not eat" signal to the body's immune system, according to Science magazine.
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Attention

Deadly Ebola now 'a regional threat', as virus spreads to Guinea capital


RT
Fri, 28 Mar 2014 06:32 UTC
Image
© Reuters
The outbreak of the deadly Ebola virus said to have already claimed 63 lives in rural Guinea has now spread to the West African nation's capital, Conakry, with the Health Ministry ringing the alarm and officials calling it a "threat to regional security."

A total of four capital dwellers have fallen victim to the hemorrhagic fever - one of the deadliest viruses known to man. They are currently in quarantine, Reuters reports, citing local Health Minister Remy Lamah.

The origin of the outbreak in Conakry appears to be an old man who visited a place about 150km away from the previously-identified outbreaks. After his funeral, four of his brothers started showing similar symptoms, and were immediately quarantined.

Medical sources also confirmed two staff members at the Kipe University Hospital in Conakry are exhibiting signs of the hemorrhagic fever. This is where the initial victims were treated upon discovery of suspicious symptoms.

Comment: Don't miss:

Black Death found to be Ebola
New Light on the Black Death: The Viral and Cosmic Connection

      Read More...
Bacon n Eggs

Almost everything you've been told about healthy food is wrong

Joanna Blythman
The Guardian
Sun, 23 Mar 2014 20:11 UTC
Eggs and red meat have both been on the nutritional hit list - but after a major study last week dismissed a link between fats and heart disease, is it time for a complete rethink?

grass fed beef
© Mike Kemp/Getty Images/Rubberball
'The evidence that appears to implicate red meat does not separate well-reared, unprocessed meat from its factory farmed, heavily processed equivalent.'
Could eating too much margarine be bad for your critical faculties? The "experts" who so confidently advised us to replace saturated fats, such as butter, with polyunsaturated spreads, people who presumably practise what they preach, have suddenly come over all uncertain and seem to be struggling through a mental fog to reformulate their script.

Last week it fell to a floundering professor, Jeremy Pearson, from the British Heart Foundation to explain why it still adheres to the nutrition establishment's anti-saturated fat doctrine when evidence is stacking up to refute it. After examining 72 academic studies involving more than 600,000 participants, the study, funded by the foundation, found that saturated fat consumption was not associated with coronary disease risk. This assessment echoed a review in 2010 that concluded "there is no convincing evidence that saturated fat causes heart disease".

Comment: It seems that the word is gradually getting out there about the evils of government guidelines, and while they're still a day late and a dollar short, it is nonetheless a good sign.

The Ketogenic Diet - An Overview

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Smoking

Let 'em smoke! Why mentally ill people should get e-cigs

Helen Redmond
substance.com
Wed, 19 Mar 2014 09:35 UTC
mental patient

Cheswick only got his cigs because Jack Nicholson was there to grab ‘em for him

"I want my cigarettes, I want my cigarettes, I want my cigarettes," Charlie Cheswick, an enraged patient in a mental hospital, screams at the sadistically indifferent Nurse Ratched in the classic film One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest. After several heartbreaking minutes, Jack Nicholson's character, Randle P. McMurphy, breaks a window at the nursing station, grabs a carton of Marlboros and hands it to his deeply relieved comrade.

The history of psychiatric hospitals is one of abuse, neglect and copious amounts of cigarette smoking. Until the 1970s, hundreds of thousands of mentally ill people were warehoused for decades in state mental asylums. There was typically little to do, and going to the supervised smoking room every 15 minutes became an "activity" to break the tedium. Cigarettes rewarded compliant behavior or were taken away to punish noncompliance. The scene from One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest played out daily in hospitals nationwide.

Comment: Give the 'mentally ill' a break. After all, they need something to counteract the zombie-fying effects of antipsychotic medicines.

For more on the benefits of smoking (ideally organic or additive free natural tobacco) see:

5 Health Benefits of Smoking

Health Benefits of Smoking Tobacco

Nicotine Benefits

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