The city of Oakland, Calif., which is marked largely by blight and crime, has decided to go after a backyard gardener for growing and occasionally selling the fruits of her labor. According to a recent report in the San Francisco Chronicle (SFC), Oakland city officials are summoning Novella Carpenter to either pay a costly permit fee and penalties for providing locals with backyard produce items like Swiss chard without government approval, or face city sanctions.
The 4,500-square-foot plot of land on which Carpenter has been growing produce and raising some small animals is in a very rough part of Oakland. There are plenty of abandoned, graffiti-laden buildings, and empty plots of land -- not to mention a severe lack of adequate grocery stores and food shops.
After allegedly squatting the land for several years, Carpenter finally decided to buy it several months ago for $30,000, and she now raises food for herself and her neighbors on it. Though she does sell some of it, the primary purpose of the lot is not to run a business. In fact, Carpenter has on numerous occasions allowed locals in need to come and pick food for their own use.
Health & Wellness
One woman replied that she had special antibodies that were needed to save the lives of infants. If her plasma was needed to save the lives of infants, it was a good thing to do. However, the woman died at about half of her life expectancy about two years later of what was classified officially as natural death. So the question is: Was her plasma really used to save the lives of any children?
Given the facts, anyone might surmise that nobody can lose a significant portion of their blood plasma without sharply decreasing the body's ability to renew itself for at least twenty-four hours, among other things...
Cells must "eat" albumin through a process called pinocytosis. Today's college biology textbooks make it look as if the cell is engulfing only water, and they fail to properly credit the albumin plasma protein (as if cells had to eat water). It is composed of a perfect balance of amino acids, and it is the greatest source of building materials for all cellular constructs as well as for cellular reproduction. If cells were to reproduce without albumin, they would reduce in size each time.
The body is a sponge matrix of various types of water compartments, most of which must be maintained with precision. Every compartment of the body must have access to a continual supply of plasma proteins that invariably hold a certain amount of fluid. Remember, it is the particulates that hold the water, constituting the fluid for the proper hydration of the entire vascular tree, each potential space, and the joints.
Given the facts, anyone might surmise that nobody can lose a significant portion of their blood plasma without sharply decreasing the body's ability to renew itself for at least twenty-four hours, among other things...
Cells must "eat" albumin through a process called pinocytosis. Today's college biology textbooks make it look as if the cell is engulfing only water, and they fail to properly credit the albumin plasma protein (as if cells had to eat water). It is composed of a perfect balance of amino acids, and it is the greatest source of building materials for all cellular constructs as well as for cellular reproduction. If cells were to reproduce without albumin, they would reduce in size each time.
The body is a sponge matrix of various types of water compartments, most of which must be maintained with precision. Every compartment of the body must have access to a continual supply of plasma proteins that invariably hold a certain amount of fluid. Remember, it is the particulates that hold the water, constituting the fluid for the proper hydration of the entire vascular tree, each potential space, and the joints.
On his 82nd birthday, Dr. Charles Ray Jones sat in his New Haven office at 111 Park St., surrounded by patient files and wearing a blue tracksuit.
Though it has been a long while since Jones could last run - in fact, he now uses a cane to get around - Jones finds himself in a number of races: a medical one with a debilitating disease, a legal one with the Connecticut Medical Board, and even an academic one with Yale.
Over the past four decades, Jones has treated roughly 10,000 children with severe chronic Lyme disease. Parents from all over the world bring their children to Jones, and many said they consider him their final hope. But despite his popularity with his patients, many in the medical field strongly disagree with his practices, which, they say, treat a form of Lyme disease that does not exist.
Most doctors believe that Lyme disease, a tick-borne illness, almost always presents with a rash, fever or arthritic pain. But Jones says that Lyme disease can have a much wider array of symptoms, such as mental impairment, that can last for years.
Though it has been a long while since Jones could last run - in fact, he now uses a cane to get around - Jones finds himself in a number of races: a medical one with a debilitating disease, a legal one with the Connecticut Medical Board, and even an academic one with Yale.
Over the past four decades, Jones has treated roughly 10,000 children with severe chronic Lyme disease. Parents from all over the world bring their children to Jones, and many said they consider him their final hope. But despite his popularity with his patients, many in the medical field strongly disagree with his practices, which, they say, treat a form of Lyme disease that does not exist.
Most doctors believe that Lyme disease, a tick-borne illness, almost always presents with a rash, fever or arthritic pain. But Jones says that Lyme disease can have a much wider array of symptoms, such as mental impairment, that can last for years.
© The Associated Press / Toby Talbot
Johnson & Johnson Band-Aid products are seen on Monday, Jan. 24, 2011 in Montpelier, Vt. Health care giant Johnson & Johnson, hammered by numerous recalls that have kept some products off the market, posts a 5.5 percent drop in sales Tuesday, Jan. 25, and a 12 percent drop in profit in the fourth quarter.
Johnson & Johnson Band-Aid products are seen on Monday, Jan. 24, 2011 in Montpelier, Vt. Health care giant Johnson & Johnson, hammered by numerous recalls that have kept some products off the market, posts a 5.5 percent drop in sales Tuesday, Jan. 25, and a 12 percent drop in profit in the fourth quarter.
The Department of Justice and Securities and Exchange Commission said since 1998 the firm had paid doctors and hospital administrators in Greece, Poland and Romania for contracts and to promote its drugs and medical devices.
Johnson & Johnson also paid kickbacks between 2000-2003 for 19 contracts under the UN Oil for Food Program, which provided humanitarian supplies to Iraqis while the country, still ruled by Saddam Hussein.
The firm, the 15th largest US company by market capitalization, agreed to pay US authorities $70 million to settle the charges, including $48.6 million to the SEC and $21.4 million to the Justice Department.
US prosecutor Mythili Raman that the company had "cooperated extensively" with the investigation.
© Chris Jordan/Earthjustice
People who suffer from asthma often say an attack feels like breathing through a pool of water or with a pillow covering their face. Unfortunately, millions of Americans know all too well what that's like.
In the United States, asthma is a bona fide public health epidemic: 17 million adults and 7 million children suffer from the disease. Every year, our society pays in excess of $53 billion to treat it. Millions of asthmatics, including hundreds of thousands of kids, make visits to the emergency room for medical attention. And in thousands of severe cases, people die.
The scope of this epidemic, broken down by state, is laid out in a report released yesterday by Health Care Without Harm, The National Association of School Nurses, and The Alliance of Nurses for Healthy Environments. The report notes that environmental triggers like air pollution can cause and exacerbate asthma, so it's critically important that we defend existing clean air protections and work for new ones.
Ghost Writing - A Shocking Medical Scandal
I explained to Shirley that her doctor's opinion is shaped by misleading information in medical journals corrupted by a technique called medical ghostwriting, a shocking scandal uncovered by Senator Grassley's Committee.1 In this sinister practice, the prestigious name of an academic MD "opinion leader" appears as author. However, unknown to the reader, the article is actually written by the drug company's paid-for-hire writers. Grassley discovered that sixty articles on women's hormones were ghostwritten, downplaying the adverse effects of synthetic hormones, and casting doubts about bioidentical hormones. Medical ghostwriting is scientific misconduct and fraud which harms society and corrupts the medical literature.
For one week, a study in Louisville, KY gave 308 children, ages ranging from 4 to 10 years old, a bracelet to monitor their sleep. Results found that that the children with the least amount of sleep were 4.2 times more likely to have obesity.
Moreover Dr. Phyllis C. Zee, the director of the Sleep Disorders Center at Northwestern Memorial Hospital reports:
"There is growing evidence for a link between sleep duration and childhood obesity... [P]erhaps even more important than sleep duration is the effect of day to day variability of sleep wake timing on weight regulation."
© Time Magazine
When a little girl starts growing breasts a year after losing her first baby tooth, her parents probably understand the situation as little as she does. And when it happens to girls across the country, and to many girls growing up in certain neighborhoods but not others, scientists struggle to explain the phenomenon as well.
Women's bodies have always carried biological freight from one generation to the next, bearing the physical imprint of industry and environmental loss. One of the most confounding effects of environmental change is precocious puberty among girls - taking the form of an unusually young first period, early growth of pubic hair, or breast buds in the first grade - which may be tied to where families live, the products they consume, and how healthy and happy they'll be later in life.
© cleanandhealthyme.org
When was the last time you were exposed to fresh paint, new carpets, a copier or laser printer?
What about cleaning products, nail polish remover or other solvents?
How about a big flat-screen TV, which can give off an odor of slowly cooking plastic?
Let's face it: these things aren't making the air we breathe any cleaner or safer.
Many of the products we use everyday are giving off toxins that we then breathe in, or absorb through our skin.
With 90 percent of time spent indoors, there is a good chance that indoor air pollution impacts your health, for the worse.
In fact, if the building in which you live, work or study in is a sick building, it could very well be making you sick too.
And you probably don't even realize what is making you ill.
© n/a
Context
Atrazine is an herbicide used to kill weeds that grow among agricultural crops. It is mainly used on corn, sorghum and sugarcane fields. Although the European Union banned its use in 2001, the United States and 70 other countries still use atrazine.
Atrazine is one of the most used herbicides in the United States. Every year, farmers apply more than 70 million pounds to crops before and after planting. It is most commonly used in Midwestern states such as Illinois, Indiana, Iowa and Nebraska.
People are directly exposed to atrazine when they make and use the herbicide. Exposure also occurs through contaminated soil and dust in the air. The biggest source for people, though, is drinking water. Rain and wind can carry the herbicide off the fields to contaminate surface and ground water used for drinking water.
Comment: While pollution is a serious problem (and one that won't go away in the near future), there are other things that you CAN do. It has been found that gluten and casein are linked to asthma and eliminating these from the diet can help.
Optimizing your Vitamin D levels are important as low levels of Vitamin D have also been linked to severe asthma.