For millions of years, our ancestors hunted for meat and gathered fruits, nuts and other plant organic vegetables foods. They followed the food supply, so there was no kitchen sink to wash it in. Instead, they brushed the dirt off the foods they gathered. Or rinsed it in a nearby stream.

Today, factory farms add thousands of tons of pesticides and herbicides to our food. Even if we wash our fruits and vegetables thoroughly, we run the risk of slowly poisoning ourselves.

This modern dilemma means that our ancestors received a benefit from their food that we don't. I think of that benefit as "living foods" - the good bacteria that inhabit our guts.

The pain of childbirth may have benefits on which women who opt for painkilling epidurals miss out, a senior male midwife has said.

Dr Denis Walsh, associate professor in midwifery at Nottingham University, said pain was a "rite of passage" which often helped regulate childbirth. He said it helped strengthen a mother's bond with her baby, and prepared her for the responsibility of motherhood.

But the obstetrician said epidurals were an important option for some women. Dr Walsh, who wrote on the subject in a piece submitted to the journal Evidence Based Midwifery, agreed that in some cases epidurals were very useful.

On rare occasions, they can be mad, bad and dangerous. More usually, they live uneventful, friendless lives on the fringes of society, unable to sustain relationships or employment. If they have children, the same cycle of separateness, coldness and brutality is repeated anew.

Psychopaths have long fascinated scientists. They seem doubly burdened - both nature (bad genes) and nurture (poor parenting) have conspired to make them social outcasts. Governments, including this one, have long sought to reduce antisocial behaviour by tackling the nurture bit and encouraging more responsible parenting. Now a study by the Institute of Psychiatry suggests that, broadly speaking, they are backing a loser.

There's lots of support for organic food and farming published in UK national newspapers today in response to yesterday's findings by the pro-GM, anti-organic Food Standards Agency (FSA).

The FSA review dismisses health benefits of eating organic food but admits to a lack of research on which to base findings, while completely ignoring other benefits (eg to the environment and animal welfare) and the risks and damage that arise from intensive agriculture.

The Ecologist reports that researchers could only identify 11 studies relating to the health content of organic food and admitted the current evidence base was, "extremely limited both in terms of the number of studies and the quality of studies found".

As Stonyfield Farm President and CE-Yo, I believe that a new study dismissing the health benefits of organics does in fact mislead an increasingly savvy public by ignoring documented health and environmental benefits of organic.

The supreme irony is that this study is getting an enormous amount of media attention in part because of heightened consumer awareness of where our food comes from, thanks to the popularity of the documentary "Food, Inc." and the discussion it's triggering across the country. "Food, Inc." lays bare just how bankrupt and dangerous our current food system really is, and what we are allowed to know about it. The result is that consumers are looking more critically than ever at studies like this.

Good news! You can rest assured that the organic food you bought today is every bit as beneficial for you and the planet as it was three days ago. Advantages for health and ecological soundness are still there, despite a review released this week claiming that there is insufficient evidence to prove organic superiority on the nutritional grounds it evaluated.

The work, a review of research completed by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and funded by the United Kingdom's Food Standards Agency (FSA), was rigorous in its selection of 55 studies from 50 years of nearly 50,000 studies, some of which were conducted before the creation of national organic standards. Unfortunately, it failed to include contemporary research showing organic strengths, and dismisses areas of organic superiority within its reviewed work, including antioxidant capacity (important for cancer-fighting properties).

Irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), sometimes referred to a 'functional bowl disorder' (FBD) is characterised by symptoms such as abdominal bloating and discomfort, and constipation and/or diarrhoea. Its cause is often said to be unknown. However, in practice I find two approaches to be generally effective in combating the symptoms of IBS. These are:

1. Identification and elimination of food triggers.

2. Correction of any underling imbalance there may be in the 'ecosystem' within the gut.

You can read more about this here and here.

It is possible that any food can trigger IBS symptoms, but my experience in practice is that wheat is the number 1 offender. Now, sometimes wheat sensitivity is caused by a sensitivity to a protein found in wheat (as well as oats, rye and barley) known as gluten. In conventional medicine, gluten sensitivity is a recognised conditions that goes by the name of coeliac disease. This can be tested for using blood tests and biopsy of the lining of the small bowel.

New research suggests that 7 out of 10 children in the US have low levels of vitamin, nudging millions of them toward higher risk of bone disease, high blood pressure and other risk factors for heart disease.

The study was led by Dr Michal L. Melamed, assistant professor of medicine and of epidemiology and population health at Albert Einstein College of Medicine at Yeshiva University, Bronx, New York, and is published in the 3 August online issue of Pediatrics.

Melamed, who has written a lot of scientific papers on the importance of vitamin D, told the media that:

"Several small studies had found a high prevalence of vitamin D deficiency in specific populations, but no one had examined this issue nationwide."

Transposons are mobile genetic elements found in the hereditary material of humans and other organisms. They can replicate and the new copies can insert at novel sites in the genome. Because this threatens the whole organism, molecular mechanisms have evolved which can repress transposon activity. Professor Klaus Förstemann of the Gene Center of Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität (LMU) in Munich and a team of researchers working with the fruitfly Drosophila melanogaster have now uncovered a new type of cellular defence that acts against DNA sequences present in high copy numbers inside the cell, even if they have not integrated into the genome. Small molecules of RNA (a class of nucleic acid closely related to the genetic material DNA) play the central role. "Transposons are genomic parasites, so to speak", says Förstemann. "If they are allowed to proliferate, the genome can become unstable or cancers can develop. We now want to find out whether mammalian cells possess this newly discovered defence mechanism and to elucidate precisely how it works." (EMBO Journal online, 30 July 2009.)

Transposons constitute a significant fraction of the genomes of most higher organisms. Indeed, it is estimated that these mobile elements, which include one or more genes, make up as much as half of the genetic material. "This demonstrates", says Förstemann, "that it is not always possible to tame these "selfish" genetic elements, although highly efficient mechanisms of defence have evolved. For instance, in the germ cells, which are required for reproduction, the system of so-called piRNAs ensures that transposon activity is inhibited - but only if these RNAs are transmitted from the mother. Disruption of this system usually leads to a drastic reduction in the fertility of the progeny.

There is probably no more dreaded and feared disease than memory-destroying and life-robbing Alzheimer's. According to the National Institute on Aging (NIA), as many as 2.4 to 4.5 million Americans are currently living with Alzheimer's Disease (AD) and, as Baby Boomers age, those numbers are expected to soar. Unfortunately, despite millions spent on research and the development of drugs to delay or help symptoms, the bottom line is nothing works to truly prevent, stop or heal the disease. At least, nothing from Big Pharma.

The National Institutes of Health's NIA web site does list some natural strategies -- a nutritious diet, exercise, social engagement, and mentally stimulating pursuits -- which may prevent or delay AD. But now there's new and stunning research that strongly suggests a substance found in nature offers another a way to fight Alzheimer's and maybe even reverse its effects: caffeine.

In experiments with lab mice especially bred to develop symptoms of Alzheimer's disease, University of South Florida (USF) researchers at the Florida Alzheimer's Disease Research Center ADRC gave the aged animals the equivalent of the caffeine in five cups of coffee a day. The results? Their severe memory impairment was reversed.