NPR recently reported on a study where the participants ate either a meat-based, fiber-free ketogenic diet or a vegetarian diet and had their gut microflora analyzed. The low carbohydrate diet was much higher in fat, and as such, increased the prevalence of a microbe involved in fat digestion. "Bilophilia." The article focused on this one and cited a 2012 study where Bilophilia was associated with intestinal inflammation... however, the ketogenic diet increased the levels of Bacteroides and decreased Firmicutes. These are the two that brought the whole gut microbe-obesity connection into the spotlight. The microbiome in obese mice is characterized by low Bacteriodetes and high Firmicutes. Fecal transplants from obese mice to lean mice causes them to gain weight. Little is known about Bilophilia relative to Bacteriodetes & Firmicutes, and I suspect the focus was on Bilophilia because the authors wanted something negative to say about a meat-based, fiber-free ketogenic diet, and that 2012 mouse study suggested Bilophilia could be their answer.

Obesity alters gut microbial ecology (Ley et al., 2005)
This study shows increased Firmicutes & decreased Bacteriodetes in genetically obese mice but not their lean siblings. This is important because microbes are usually inherited from Mom and are common among littermates. Apparently, genetic obesity overrides both.

An obesity-associated gut microbiome with increased capacity for energy harvest (Turnbaugh et al., 2006)
This one shows decreased Bacteriodetes & increased Firmicutes in obesity. This is also the study that shows microbial transplantation from obese to lean mice causes weight gain (with no change in food intake). Oh yeah, and by "microbial transplantation," they mean wiping the poop of a fat mouse all over a skinny one. Yes, that's how they do it.

A study in mice shows how a breakdown of the brain's blood vessels may amplify or cause problems associated with Alzheimer's disease. The results published in Nature Communications suggest that blood vessel cells called pericytes may provide novel targets for treatments and diagnoses.

"This study helps show how the brain's vascular system may contribute to the development of Alzheimer's disease," said study leader Berislav V. Zlokovic, M.D. Ph.D., director of the Zilkha Neurogenetic Institute at the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California, Los Angeles. The study was co-funded by the National Institute of Neurological Diseases and Stroke (NINDS) and the National Institute on Aging (NIA), parts of the National Institutes of Health.

Alzheimer's disease is the leading cause of dementia. It is an age-related disease that gradually erodes a person's memory, thinking, and ability to perform everyday tasks. Brains from Alzheimer's patients typically have abnormally high levels of plaques made up of accumulations of beta-amyloid protein next to brain cells, tau protein that clumps together to form neurofibrillary tangles inside neurons, and extensive neuron loss.

Vascular dementias, the second leading cause of dementia, are a diverse group of brain disorders caused by a range of blood vessel problems. Brains from Alzheimer's patients often show evidence of vascular disease, including ischemic stroke, small hemorrhages, and diffuse white matter disease, plus a buildup of beta-amyloid protein in vessel walls. Furthermore, previous studies suggest that APOE4, a genetic risk factor for Alzheimer's disease, is linked to brain blood vessel health and integrity.

"This study may provide a better understanding of the overlap between Alzheimer's disease and vascular dementia," said Roderick Corriveau, Ph.D., a program director at NINDS.

It's a breakthrough that could help thousands of American soldiers returning from dangerous deployments. Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology believe they may have discovered a way to create a vaccine that could prevent post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

"What it's going to do is that they'll still have perfectly strong memories of the event. They just won't have the bad health consequences," said Ki Goosens, an assistant professor of neuroscience with the McGovern Institute for Brain Research.

Scientists at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle have made a "new" (and completely unsurprising) discovery: chemotherapy, used to treat cancer patients, can actually cause cancer. "Our results indicate that damage responses in benign cells... may directly contribute to enhanced tumor growth kinetics," the team wrote. This is an important blow to dangerous, ineffective cancer treatments and a good step forward for alternative medicine.

Since 1952, the American Psychiatric Association has published the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or the DSM, as a guideline for the classification and diagnoses of mental health issues. The DSM, according to the APA itself, "is the standard classification of mental disorders used by mental health professionals in the United States and contains a listing of diagnostic criteria for every psychiatric disorder recognized by the U.S. healthcare system."

Earlier this year, the APA published the DSM-5, the fifth major revision of the manual.

Commonly referred to as the psychiatric diagnostic "bible," the guide has always generated controversy. How are disorders diagnosed? What criteria are used to establish disorders in the first place? Are the categories subjective? Do they reflect cultural biases?

These questions are not unique to the DSM. They have plagued psychiatry since its earliest days. But the DSM, as the base guideline for the use of clinical psychiatrists across America for the past half century, is the place where these philosophical issues are decided in concrete terms.

Some of the DSM's most strident critics dispute the very name of the guide itself, pointing out that it is not statistical and that the term "diagnosis" is itself misleading.

This question of terminology is not mere quibbling over semantics. If the label of "medical diagnosis" is extended to the field of psychiatry, even in the absence of any objective or external criteria for producing that diagnosis, then the medical prognosis of prescription medicine seems justified, perhaps even inevitable. Again, far from an academic debate, the question of when and how to justify pharmaceutical treatment for mental health issues is one with real world implications. Implications that impact the bottom line of the trillion dollar pharmaceutical industry.

Darryl is in jail for life, after being found 'guilty' for killing his partner's daughter, Amy. But there is a lot more than meets the eye to this story.

Parents and Carers worldwide are being falsely accused of harming and killing children shortly after vaccination. An alarming number of adverse reactions to vaccinations are automatically assumed by medical and law enforcement professionals to occur because caregivers have shaken their babies so hard that they have caused them to suffer from 'Shaken Baby Syndrome', defined by a triad of serious brain injuries:

• Retinal haemorrhages (bleeding into the linings of the eyes);
• Subdural haemorrhages (bleeding beneath the dural membrane which covers the brain);
• Encephalopathy (inflammation and swelling of the brain).

Strangely, the medical professionals dismiss adverse reactions to recently administered vaccinations, while parents and carers are automatically assumed to be guilty of horrendous abuse, including the murder of young children. However, if these children have been shaken so violently that it has caused them to suffer extensive brain injuries, then why is it that so many of these children suffer no external injuries as a result of their assault?

We need to ask ourselves, whether just shaking alone can cause these injuries, or are there alternative explanations as to why these injuries occur?

School food is notorious for being low in quality and difficult to look at, but few are doing anything to change the processed and low-nutrient meals being served to the youth.

It is popular belief that cost is the factor inhibiting healthier options, but the group Fed Up disagrees. "There is no major cost difference between nutritious and not nutritious food at schools." In addition, the folks behind the movement report that 71% of kids are unsatisfied with the lunches they're served at school. For these reasons, there are no longer any excuses for not implementing healthier options.

With the growing childhood obesity epidemic in the US, what's being dished up in the lunch line deserves more attention than ever. Fed Up is literally done accepting the poor food-like products being served to adolescents, therefore they encouraged over 25k kids to participate in their "true state of school lunch". This project resulted in over 7,025 photos being sent in to document school lunches from around the country.

Now, Fed Up is allowing visitors to view all the pictures and vote whether to "Eat It" or "Toss It". Here are some examples of what kids are being fed in the US.

• One in twenty women surveyed sleep with the devices next to them in bed

• Some even bought waterproof cases to use phones in the shower

• Half could not go 15 minutes without checking their handset

Nearly half of all women would rather go a month with no sex than be without their phones for the same amount of time.

Some 48 per cent said their iPhone or Android was more important to them than intimacy with another person.

A survey found that one in 20 women adore the devices so much that they sleep in bed with them nestled up to their bodies.

A court in Marseille, France, sentenced the founder of a French company on Tuesday to four years in prison for selling hundreds of thousands of defective breast implants in more than 65 countries.

Jean-Claude Mas, 74, the founder of Poly Implant Prothèse, and four of his former employees were found guilty last spring of aggravated fraud after their company used a less expensive, industrial-grade silicone to fill implants for a decade. The implants ruptured at a much higher rate than the industry norm, leaking silicone into body tissues.

Watch the following 5 minute video on how mercury can cause nerve damage. This is a real eye opener.


Mercury toxicity is the great mimicker of a host of health challenges. Here is a sample of what one should know about mercury toxicity.

1: Mercury is known to denervate nerve fibers, similar to the pathology of multiple sclerosis. In other words it makes it so the nerves do not work.

2: Mercury can leak into the blood-brain barrier and reduce nerve conduction velocity and visual evoked responses, diagnostic tests used for multiple sclerosis.

3: Mercury can inhibit the action (binding) of happy hormones, like serotonin, at the synapse (nerve to nerve connection) leading to depression.