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Women Given Useless and Dangerous Hormone Replacement Therapy Drugs to Prevent Heart Disease

David Gutierrez
NaturalNews
Tue, 04 May 2010 00:00 UTC
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© Getty Images
Synthetic HRT Tablets
Despite lack of evidence that hormone replacement therapy (HRT) drugs could reduce the risk of heart disease in postmenopausal women, potentially millions of women were given the drugs to reduce these risks during the 1990s, according to a study conducted by researchers from Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center and published in the American Journal of Public Health.

HRT drugs were approved for reducing the symptoms of menopause, such as hot flashes and mood swings. They became widely popular, with 11 million women between the ages of 45 and 74 using them by 1999. Although no evidence ever linked them to a lowered risk of heart disease, lawsuits allege that pharmaceutical companies covertly marketed them for this purpose.

In 2002, the Women's Health Initiative study found that the drugs significantly increased women's risk of dying from heart attacks, strokes, and blood clots. Since then, research has also linked the drugs to breast cancer and dementia. Use of the drugs fell to six million by 2003.

Comment: See other articles regarding HRT:

Hormone Replacement Therapy Drugs Based on Medical Fraud

Pfizer Hid Evidence That Hormone Replacement Therapy Causes Cancer

Hormone Replacement Therapy Now Linked to Cataracts

Study Shows HRT Decreases Mortality in Younger Postmenopausal Woman

Hormone Replacement Therapy Leads to Female Brain Shrinkage

Hormone Therapy Skews Breast Cancer Diagnosis

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The Art of Mindreading: Empathy or Rational Inference?


ScienceDaily
Tue, 04 May 2010 10:00 UTC
Image
© Getty Images
The ability to infer what another person is thinking is an essential tool for social interaction and is known by neuroscientists as "Theory of Mind" (ToM), but how does the brain actually allow us to do this? We are able to rationally infer what someone knows, thinks, or intends, but we are also able to "slip into their shoes" and infer how they feel, and it seems that the brain processes these different types of information in different ways, as confirmed by a new report in the June 2010 issue of Elsevier's Cortex.

Prof. Elke Kalbe and colleagues from the Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine at the Research Centre Juelich and the Neurological University Clinic Cologne, Germany, studied a group of male volunteers as they performed a computerized task, which assessed their abilities in both emotional and rational inference. The researchers then applied repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) to a part of the brain thought to be involved in rational inference -- the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex -- in order to interfere temporarily with the activity in that part of the brain and test its effect on the ToM abilities of the volunteers.

The findings showed that the temporary interference in this particular area of the brain had an effect on the rational inference abilities (cognitive ToM) of the volunteers, but not on their abilities to infer emotions (affective ToM).
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Family

A Mother's Touch: Study Shows Maternal Stimuli can Improve Cognitive Function, Stress Resilience

Tom Vasich
PhysOrg
Tue, 04 May 2010 17:00 UTC
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© PhysOrg
UCI child neurologist and neuroscientist Dr. Tallie Z. Baram has found that maternal care and other sensory input triggers activity in a baby's developing brain that improves cognitive function and builds resilience to stress.

For an infant, a mother's touch provides a feeling of security, comfort and love. But research at UC Irvine is showing that it does much more.

UCI child neurologist and neuroscientist Dr. Tallie Z. Baram has found that caressing and other sensory input triggers activity in a baby's developing brain that improves cognitive function and builds resilience to stress.

The finding contributes to growing knowledge about epigenetics, the study of how environmental factors can reprogram the expression of genes.
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New Research: Omega-3s May Treat Male Infertility

S. L. Baker
NaturalNews
Tue, 04 May 2010 15:00 UTC
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© NaturalNews
More than two million married couples in the U.S. are unable to conceive a child and, according to the National Institutes of Health, male infertility is the cause about 40% of the time. Now a University of Illinois (UI) study recently published in the Journal of Lipid Research offers hope that omega-3 fatty acids can help many infertile men become fathers one day.

UI scientists came up with this discovery while investigating docosahexaenoic acid (DHA), an omega-3 the body can make from alpha-linolenic acids found in vegetable oils, including soybean and canola oils. DHA is already known to be important for the development of the body's nervous system. But it turns out DHA also may correct two major causes of male infertility -- low sperm counts and abnormally shaped sperm.

"In our experiment, we used 'knockout' mice that lacked the gene responsible for an enzyme important in making DHA. In the absence of DHA, male mice are basically infertile, producing few if any misshaped sperm that can't get where they need to go," Manabu Nakamura, a UI associate professor of food science and human nutrition, explained in a press statement.
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USA

Doctors trying to reduce radiation risk from imaging scans

Liz Szabo
USA TODAY
Tue, 04 May 2010 17:53 UTC
Doctors are exploring ways to reduce the amount of radiation exposure from medical imaging tests in light of renewed concerns about the cancer risk, according to research presented at a radiology conference this week.

Medical radiation from exams such as CTs, or computed tomography, causes 29,000 new cancers a year, a report in the Archives of Internal Medicine showed in December. An accompanying article found that the scans may expose people to four times as much radiation as previously estimated. The Food and Drug Administration is considering safeguards for CT scanners and other imaging machines.

"It's a very serious issue," says radiologist Sobhi Abadi of McGill University in Montreal, who presented his research Tuesday at a meeting of the American Roentgen Ray Society in San Diego.

Radiologists have been working for several years to reduce unnecessary radiation exposure in children, whose growing bodies are more sensitive to radiation than adults', says Richard Morin, chairman of the American College of Radiology's Safety Committee. Later this year, he says, radiologists will expand the effort to adults.

But Morin says other doctors also need to do more to protect patients, such as referring them for imaging tests only when they're really necessary. Studies show that one-third of CT scans aren't medically needed but are performed because of fear of lawsuits, among other reasons.
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Heart

'Green' Exercise Quickly 'Boosts Mental Health'


BBC News
Tue, 04 May 2010 16:34 UTC
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Green space is important for mental health
Just five minutes of exercise in a "green space" such as a park can boost mental health, researchers claim.

There is growing evidence that combining activities such as walking or cycling with nature boosts well-being.

In the latest analysis, UK researchers looked at evidence from 1,250 people in 10 studies and found fast improvements in mood and self-esteem.
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Attention

Flame Retardants in Our Bodies: Prenatal Exposure to PBDEs and Brain Damage

Kellyn S. Betts
Environmental Health Perspectives
Sat, 01 May 2010 13:15 UTC
A longitudinal cohort study of more than 150 U.S. children conducted over 7 years associates prenatal exposure to higher concentrations of polybrominated diphenyl ether (PBDE) flame retardants with lower scores on tests of neurodevelopment [EHP 118:712 - 719; Herbstman et al.]. This is the second recent epidemiologic study to link PBDEs with evidence of adverse effects on brain development, although differences in methodology between this and the other study [EHP 117:1953 - 1958; Roze et al.] make direct comparisons difficult.

PBDE flame retardants have been used for decades in a wide variety of goods, including automobile and airplane components, electronics, and home and office furnishings. The toxicologic evidence linking PBDEs to adverse health effects led the European Union to use the precautionary principle as the basis for banning all three PBDE formulations (penta, octa, and deca). In the United States, manufacturers voluntarily discontinued the penta and octa formulations in 2004 and have agreed to phase out deca by the end of 2012.
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YouTube Censors Video Interview with Jeffrey Smith about GMOs

Mike Adams
Natural News
Tue, 04 May 2010 14:40 UTC
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Within hours after posting our video interview with Jeffrey Smith, creator of Seeds of Deception and author of Genetic Roulette, YouTube pulled the video. Attempts to play the video are now met with the following message: "This video has been removed due to terms of use violation."

That is, of course, an outright lie.

This video features myself (the Health Ranger) talking with Jeffrey Smith about the health dangers of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) at the recent Health Freedom Expo. Natural News staff filmed the segment, and we used intro music legally licensed from a music production company. There was no violation of the YouTube terms of agreement.
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Health

Chronic Injury Found in Kidneys of Healthy Adults


Science Daily
Tue, 04 May 2010 11:33 UTC
Mayo Clinic researchers have found that the kidneys of healthy adults show signs of chronic mild injury that increase with age. This damage is present even though the adults showed no clinical signs of kidney disease.

The findings are reported in the current issue of the Annals of Internal Medicine.

"This was a surprise," says Andrew Rule, M.D., M.Sc., a Mayo Clinic nephrologist and epidemiologist who led the study. "These patients' kidneys are functioning normally, and this damage doesn't show up on the tests doctors routinely use to assess kidney health. It means we need to come up with new tests to detect mild kidney injury more accurately."

The medical records of 1,203 people who donated kidneys at Mayo Clinic from 1999 to 2009 were used for the cross-sectional study. The donor kidneys were examined with a needle biopsy once they were transplanted into the recipient as part of a routine procedure to gather baseline information about the new kidney.
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Health

Less Sleep May Add Up to More Pounds in Adolescents


Science Daily
Tue, 04 May 2010 11:27 UTC
Image
© womenshealthmag
Adolescents who don't get enough sleep may gain more than some extra time to play video games or text their friends. They also may gain weight, according to research being presented at the Pediatric Academic Societies (PAS) annual meeting in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.

Other studies have shown a relationship between sleep and weight issues, particularly in young children. However, this is one of the first studies to document an association between sleep duration and weight in adolescents, even after controlling for calorie intake, activity level and depressive symptoms.

In research led by Leslie A. Lytle, PhD, from the Center for Child Health, Behavior and Development at Seattle Children's Research Institute, study investigators collected data on 723 adolescents (mean age 14.7 years) about how long they slept on weeknights and weekends, and how frequently they experienced sleep problems. On three separate occasions, researchers also asked the youths about the foods and beverages they had consumed the prior day to determine how many calories they consumed.
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