Health & WellnessS


Magic Hat

Breakthrough documentary "House of Numbers" challenges conventional thinking on HIV, AIDS

Canadian filmmaker Brent Leung isn't winning any friends in the pharmaceutical industry these days. His breakthrough documentary "House of Numbers" features jaw-dropping interviews with doctors, researchers and even the co-discoverer of HIV himself (Luc Montagnier), all of whom reveal startling information calling into question the "official" explanation of HIV and AIDS.

An exclusive trailer from House of Numbers:


More information about the film is available at HouseOfNumbers.com

The film isn't publicly available yet, as it's been screened in film festivals around the world. Check the available screening events at the film's website.

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Eating animals is making us sick

Editor's note: Jonathan Safran Foer is the author of the critically acclaimed novels Everything is Illuminated and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. His latest book, the nonfiction Eating Animals, (Little, Brown and Co.) will be published November 2.

Like most people, I'd given some thought to what meat actually is, but until I became a father and faced the prospect of having to make food choices on someone else's behalf, there was no urgency to get to the bottom of things.

I'm a novelist and never had it in mind to write nonfiction. Frankly, I doubt I'll ever do it again. But the subject of animal agriculture, at this moment, is something no one should ignore. As a writer, putting words on the page is how I pay attention.

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When Cancer Spreads to the Brain

Doctor
© Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles TimesA doctor stands by images of a CT scan showing a brain with cancer.
The first set of guidelines dealing with cancer that has spread to the brain calls for treatment with both surgery and radiation therapy instead of just radiation alone.

The document, released today at the Congress of Neurological Surgeons meeting in New Orleans, is designed to clarify the best treatments for brain metastases and identify areas where more research is needed, said Dr. Steven Kalkanis, co-director of the Hermelin Brain Tumor Center at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit and a member of the panel of experts who developed the guidelines.

Braincancer Among 1.4 million individuals with cancer in the United States, 30% to 40% will develop brain metastases -- tumors that travel to the brain from other areas in the body, such as the breast or lung. It's common practice to treat patients with whole brain radiation. However, a review of medical literature shows that the best results are obtained when patients have surgery to remove the brain tumors followed by whole brain radiation, Kalkanis said.

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A Molecule of Motivation, Dopamine Excels at Its Task

Dopamine
© Serge Bloch
If you've ever had a problem with rodents and woken up to find that mice had chewed their way through the Cheerios, the Famous Amos, three packages of Ramen noodles, and even that carton of baker's yeast you had bought in a fit of Ladies of the Canyon wistfulness, you will appreciate just how freakish is the strain of laboratory mouse that lacks all motivation to eat.

The mouse is physically capable of eating. It still likes the taste of food. Put a kibble in its mouth, and it will chew and swallow, all the while wriggling its nose in apparent rodent satisfaction.

Yet left on its own, the mouse will not rouse itself for dinner. The mere thought of walking across the cage and lifting food pellets from the bowl fills it with overwhelming apathy. What is the point, really, of all this ingesting and excreting? Why bother? Days pass, the mouse doesn't eat, it hardly moves, and within a couple of weeks, it has starved itself to death.

Behind the rodent's fatal case of ennui is a severe deficit of dopamine, one of the essential signaling molecules in the brain. Dopamine has lately become quite fashionable, today's "it" neurotransmitter, just as serotonin was "it" in the Prozac-laced '90s.

Family

This Is Your Brain Without Dad

Rat
© Matt Collins
Conventional wisdom holds that two parents are better than one. Scientists are now finding that growing up without a father actually changes the way your brain develops.

German biologist Anna Katharina Braun and others are conducting research on animals that are typically raised by two parents, in the hopes of better understanding the impact on humans of being raised by a single parent. Dr. Braun's work focuses on degus, small rodents related to guinea pigs and chinchillas, because mother and father degus naturally raise their babies together.

When deprived of their father, the degu pups exhibit both short- and long-term changes in nerve-cell growth in different regions of the brain. Dr. Braun, director of the Institute of Biology at Otto von Guericke University in Magdeburg, and her colleagues are also looking at how these physical changes affect offspring behavior.

Their preliminary analysis indicates that fatherless degu pups exhibit more aggressive and impulsive behavior than pups raised by two parents.

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Is Childhood Sexual Abuse Linked to Inability to Express Emotions in Adulthood?

An investigation published in the current issue of Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics explores the link between child sexual abuse and inability to express emotions in adulthood.

Alexithymia, a clinical condition typified by a reported inability to identify or describe one's emotions, is associated with various forms of psychopathology, including depression. Highly alexithymic (HA) outpatients are more likely to be female, less likely to have children and are characterized by more somatic-affective symptoms of depression and interpersonal aloofness.

The Authors of this investigation extended these findings by examining personality traits and childhood sexual abuse history. Participants were 94 depressed patients [57.45% with recurrent major depressive disorder (MDD), 37.23% with single-episode MDD, 5.32% with depressive disorder not otherwise specified] 50 years of age and older recruited from psychiatric treatment facilities in Upstate New York. Individuals completed the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV Axis I disorders. Alexithymia was assessed with the 20-item self-report Toronto Alexithymia Scale. Its 3 subscales measure difficulty identifying feelings and distinguishing them from bodily sensations (DIF), difficulty describing and communicating feelings (DDF) and externally oriented thinking (EOT), the latter being a tendency to focus on concrete details of external events rather than on aspects of inner experience.

Family

Curry spice 'kills cancer cells'

Image
The yellow spice gives curries their bright colour
An extract found in the bright yellow curry spice turmeric can kill off cancer cells, scientists have shown.

The chemical - curcumin - has long been thought to have healing powers and is already being tested as a treatment for arthritis and even dementia.

Now tests by a team at the Cork Cancer Research Centre show it can destroy gullet cancer cells in the lab.

Cancer experts said the findings in the British Journal of Cancer could help doctors find new treatments.

Dr Sharon McKenna and her team found that curcumin started to kill cancer cells within 24 hours.

Health

Exposure to Earlier Flu Viruses Provides Many with Natural Immunity to H1N1, Scientists Find

Despite all the panic and hype about the H1N1 pandemic and the rush to immunize people in droves against the virus, the fact is -- so far -- the outbreak has been fairly mild. Now University of California (UC) Davis, researchers studying H1N1, formerly referred to as "swine flu," have identified a group of immunologically important sites called epitopes in the virus that are also present in seasonal flu viruses, which have been circulating for untold years. So what does this mean? If you were exposed to the earlier influenza viruses, you probably already have some level of immunity to H1N1.

The new study would explain why so many people over the age of 60 -- whose bodies were likely exposed to similar flu viruses over the decades -- have been found to carry antibodies or other kinds of immunity against H1N1. In fact, the CDC now admits pre-existing antibodies against the virus are found in about one third of H1N1 2009 patients over the age of 60, a fact that shows some natural immunity to the new H1N1 virus exists in many people.

Syringe

Doctors speak out about H1N1 vaccine dangers

Are vaccines today more dangerous, in some cases, than the diseases? Has something gone wrong with the system or the companies making them? Filmed at the 4th International Public Conference on Vaccinations (sponsored by the National Vaccine Information Center) in October 2009; listen to what these health professionals have to say!


Cloud Lightning

Cloudy With a Chance of Allergies or Autism?

Ever wonder what this food fiasco is costing us? You and me? Taxpayers? Well, the Economist recently assembled these jaw-dropping food safety stats in a "Farm to Fork" article in their October 9 issue:

1. There are 26,000 food poisoning cases per 100,000 Americans, every year (an eye-popping 26% of the population)

2. Compare that to only 3,400 cases in the UK, and just 1,200 in France. Stunning.

3. 76 million Americans become ill with food poisoning. That's as if every child in America were to get sick. All 75 million of them. And then some.

4. Insufficient food safety is costing the US $35 Billion a year (as a benchmark, the entire 2009 budget for the FDA was only $2.4 Billion).