Health & Wellness
© Alternet
It's Monday night at the Battle & Brew, a gamer hangout in this Atlanta suburb. The crowd is slumping in chairs, ears entombed in headphones, eyes locked on flat-screen monitors and minds lost in tonight's video game of choice: The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.
To help stay alert all night, each man has an open can of "gamer fuel" inches from his keyboard. "I've seen some of these dudes plow through six sodas in six hours," said Brian Smawley, a regular at the gamer bar.
Gamers say they chug their fuel for the sugar and caffeine, but drinkers of Mountain Dew and some other citrus-flavored drinks are also getting a dose of a synthetic chemical called brominated vegetable oil, or BVO.
Patented by chemical companies as a flame retardant, and banned in food throughout Europe and Japan, BVO has been added to sodas for decades in North America. Now some scientists have a renewed interest in this little-known ingredient, found in 10 percent of sodas in the United States.
© vaccineresistancemovement.org
Following the advice of an advisory panel who failed to examine the high number of adverse reactions and deaths associated with Gardasil use, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) is now recommending that all boys between the ages of 11 and 12-years-old receive the Gardasil shot.
The advisory panel and the CDC both fail to mention that Gardasil was linked to 3,589 harmful reactions and 16 deaths between May 2009 and September 2010 alone, which could be of major concern to parents considering injecting their children with the shot. Permanent disability was the result of 213 cases; 25 resulted in the diagnosis of Guillain-Barre Syndrome; and there were 789 other "serious" reports according to FDA documents.
© Life's Little Mysteries
A bizarre illness has affected about a dozen students at a western New York high school and is making national news. During the first few months of the school year, the students - all girls except one, and mostly friends - began experiencing involuntary jerks and tics. Sometimes their limbs, neck or face would suddenly spasm; other times they would twitch, grunt or shout. It was strange and troubling behavior, made all the more scary because it had no clear cause.
The students at Le Roy High School, in Le Roy, a small town near Buffalo, were examined by school nurses and private doctors, officials from the Health Department, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and Columbia University. None could find any biological basis for the symptoms. The school was thoroughly checked for mold, lead, carbon monoxide and other environmental contaminants; those tests also came back negative. All the experts came to the same conclusion - one that has not been well received by the afflicted students and their parents.
It has been widely described as a baffling mystery and unexplained puzzle, but for most doctors it's neither unexplained, nor mysterious. In fact, the students in the Le Roy case have all the classic symptoms of a well-known (but widely misunderstood) problem called conversion disorder, in which psychological symptoms are converted into physical conditions. Collectively it is known as mass sociogenic illness, or, more commonly, mass hysteria.
© Activist Post
Many meat-eaters opt to purchase organic meat in order to avoid the cocktail of hormones, additives, and other unwanted ingredients that go along with conventional meat products.
Despite this, the many forms of meat products are largely contaminated and have their own host of issues - including 'antibiotic-free' meats, according to a new report.
Whether it be through the use of hormones on animals, the issue of genetically modified feed for animals, the feed itself being inferior quality, or the fact that the FDA allows the use of bacteria-eating viruses to clean meat, the global meat supply is in a dire state of contamination.
© Alamy
Good news: Silver can kill some cancers as effectively as chemotherapy and with potentially fewer side effects, new research has claimed.
Good news: Silver can kill some cancers as effectively as chemotherapy and with potentially fewer side effects, new research has claimed.
Scientists say that old wives tales about the precious metal being a 'silver bullet' to beat the Big C could be true.
The metal already has a wide range of medicinal uses and is a common antiseptic, antibiotic and means of purifying water in the third world.
And British researchers now say that silver compounds are as effective at killing certain cancer cells as a leading chemotherapy drug, but with potentially far fewer side-effects.
They compared it to Cisplatin, currently used to treat a wide variety of cancers, but known to have harsh side effects including nausea, vomiting and even kidney damage.
© Unknown
This convergence adds a new possibility to the list of suspects already being scrutinized in this picturesque Western New York village of 4,400, suspects that range from a 1970 train derailment that spewed toxic chemicals, to an autoimmune disorder called PANDAS, to leaks from gas wells on school grounds that may or may not have employed "fracking." The new possibility: Poisoning from a fungus that grows on a grass commonly planted on school grounds.
The fungus is called ergot, and it can grow when ryegrass - used on most athletic playing fields - sprouts a floweret that gets infected. That most often happens during wet spring months and on low-lying or marshy areas. (This photo was taken on school grounds last week.)
© Nikolay Titov / Getty Images
When it comes to child abuse, the first year of life is the most dangerous for children. Although SIDS, or sudden infant death syndrome, attracts far more attention, the rate of hospital admissions related to SIDS is actually lower than the rate of child abuse - 50 per 100,000 children under age 1 for SIDS, compared with 58.2 per 100,000 births, according to research published Monday in the journal Pediatrics.
"These kids are physically vulnerable because they're small," says Dr. John M. Leventhal, lead author of the study and a professor of pediatrics at Yale Medical School. "They are challenging for some parents to take care of because they cry, it's hard to understand what they want and parents can get frustrated, exhausted and angry."
Natural Selections line of meat contains preservative that may be linked to cancer
A number of food companies offer supposed health benefits that don't check out with nutrition and medical experts, including a product line from Maple Leaf Foods, a CBC Marketplace investigation has revealed.
Consumers are often interested in healthier alternatives - based largely on the packaging displayed in the grocery store - and are willing to pay extra for it.
Companies make reference to natural ingredients, the presence of vitamins or minerals and or the absence of substances that are linked to certain diseases.
Others suggest consumers will become smarter or healthier, including providing a nutritional or immunity boost, as a result of using the products.
A number of food companies offer supposed health benefits that don't check out with nutrition and medical experts, including a product line from Maple Leaf Foods, a CBC Marketplace investigation has revealed.
Consumers are often interested in healthier alternatives - based largely on the packaging displayed in the grocery store - and are willing to pay extra for it.
Companies make reference to natural ingredients, the presence of vitamins or minerals and or the absence of substances that are linked to certain diseases.
Others suggest consumers will become smarter or healthier, including providing a nutritional or immunity boost, as a result of using the products.
© unknown
Reports say a total of 248 people have been stricken on the two ships, the Crown Princess and the Ruby Princess.
Norovirus triggers severe gastroenteritis and is highly contagious. It is spread easily by person-to-person contact, especially through food or any items people touch.
Princess Cruise Lines say the ships will undergo a complete disinfection.
Norovirus is a viral infection that almost always include vomiting and/or diarrhea and may include muscle aches and low-grade fever.
Symptoms usually last only 48 to 72 hours and can be debilitating for the very young, the very old and those with weakened immune systems.
Comment: Additional information about the ongoing safety issues associated with the HPV/ Gardasil vaccine:
New Worries About Gardasil Safety
Time for the Truth about Gardasil Gardasil HPV Vaccines Found Contaminated with Recombinant DNA
8 more deaths connected to HPV vaccine: Adverse reactions from Gardasil number in thousands