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The World Health Organization predicts that depression will become the second highest cause of the global disease burden by 2020. Why is this? Many people consume a diet high in bad fats, fried, refined and sugary foods. Studies show that such a diet can certainly increase the risk of depression. When that happens, an individual will usually make an appointment to see a doctor who typically ends up prescribing anti-depressants, resulting in potential long term mental and physical health problems. It is a fact that a diet high in vegetables, fruits, and fish helps to prevent depression.
Swine flu is far less dangerous than originally feared, British officials said Thursday - about 100 times less lethal than the 1918 Spanish flu.
To determine how deadly the virus is, the British health department tracked all reported swine flu patients hospitalized between July and November. In a paper published online in the British journal, BMJ, experts estimated that out of every 100,000 infected people in Britain, about 26 died.
That is about 100 times less deadly than the devastating 1918 Spanish flu, which killed at least 50 million people worldwide. And swine flu appears to be nearly 10 times less fatal than the flu pandemics in 1957 and 1968, the British numbers showed.
Earlier this week, American researchers released a similar analysis of the virus and said swine flu, or H1N1, may turn out to be the mildest pandemic on record. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated swine flu has a lower death rate than seasonal flu.
To determine how deadly the virus is, the British health department tracked all reported swine flu patients hospitalized between July and November. In a paper published online in the British journal, BMJ, experts estimated that out of every 100,000 infected people in Britain, about 26 died.
That is about 100 times less deadly than the devastating 1918 Spanish flu, which killed at least 50 million people worldwide. And swine flu appears to be nearly 10 times less fatal than the flu pandemics in 1957 and 1968, the British numbers showed.
Earlier this week, American researchers released a similar analysis of the virus and said swine flu, or H1N1, may turn out to be the mildest pandemic on record. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated swine flu has a lower death rate than seasonal flu.
© iStockphotoResearchers have discovered the physiological mechanisms in the brain that underlie broken promises.
The results of the study conducted by Dr. Thomas Baumgartner and Professor Ernst Fehr, both of the University of Zurich, and Professor Urs Fischbacher of the University of Konstanz, will be published in the journal Neuron on December 10, 2009.
The promise is one of the oldest human-specific behaviors promoting cooperation, trust, and partnership. Although promises are generally not legally binding, they form the basis for a great many everyday social and economic exchange situations. Promises, however, are not only kept, but also broken. Material incentives to deceive are in fact ubiquitous in human society, and promises can thus also be misused in any social or economic exchange scenario in order to cheat one's interaction partner. Business people, politicians, diplomats, attorneys, and private persons do not always behave honestly, as recent financial scandals have dramatically demonstrated.
© Fred WolfThis fruit fly has been exposed to ethanol vapor, which renders it uncoordinated.
Guard the bourbon fruitcake: Fruit flies like a little booze in their food. And once they get a nip, they're hooked, say scientists studying Drosophila melanogaster, the darling of genetic scientists around the world. The flies show evidence of alcohol addiction, including drinking despite dangerous consequences, a study appearing online December 10 in Current Biology reports.
Studying a model of alcoholism in a simple organism like the fruit fly may lead to a better understanding of the disease in humans. The new research is "a big step forward," says Zachary Rodd, a behavioral pharmacologist who studies rodent models of alcoholism at Indiana University School of Medicine in Indianapolis. "It's always good to have many models. Each model has its benefits and its limitations. Drosophila has a lot of positives behind it."
Earlier studies found that alcohol has profound physiological effects on fruit flies, but the new study is one of the first to offer flies the choice to drink. Anita Devineni and Ulrike Heberlein, both of the University of California, San Francisco, devised a fly-sized drinking device reminiscent of the water bottles in hamster cages. Flies held inside vials could sip from thin tubes holding either liquid food spiked with 15 percent ethanol or plain liquid food. The researchers measured the descent of the liquids inside each tube to get a readout of which food the flies preferred.
As a physician, I'm careful to ask my patients for a complete list of their medications before prescribing another pharmaceutical because drugs that may not have any important side effects when taken individually can cause significant toxicity when mixed in the body.
As a scientist specializing in environmental health, I'm quite concerned about new Environmental Working Group-commissioned research that has detected more than 200 environmental pollutants in the cord blood of 10 American newborns from racial and ethnic minority groups.
As a scientist specializing in environmental health, I'm quite concerned about new Environmental Working Group-commissioned research that has detected more than 200 environmental pollutants in the cord blood of 10 American newborns from racial and ethnic minority groups.
Best of the Web: Shocking truth about AIDS exposed on World AIDS Day with "House of Numbers" un-cut footage
© HouseofNumbers.com
The implication, of course, is that if you deny any part of conventional AIDS theories, you're as bad as a Nazi war criminal. It's a curious comparison, especially given that the origins of the modern pharmaceutical industry are found precisely in the Nazi regime where pharmaceutical scientists routinely conducted medical experiments on Jewish prisoners. As a fascinating matter of historical fact, the Chairman of Bayer in the 1950's (yes, the same Bayer that makes Bayer Aspirin) was Dr. Fritz ter Meer, a convicted war criminal, who after committing crimes against humanity was sentenced to seven years in prison at the Nuremberg war trials.
The pharmaceutical industry operating today is largely a cabal of unindicted criminals who are guilty of crimes against humanity, and one of their favorite methods of multiplying their profits is to push a disease, then sell a vaccine they claim "treats" the disease. It's the same old scam, whether we're talking about cervical cancer, swine flu or even AIDS.
A Sioux Falls woman is accusing Johnson and Johnson and two mining companies of failing for decades to warn consumers about a link between ovarian cancer and talcum powder.
Deane Berg, 52, applied talc-based body powder to her perineum each day after showering from 1975 to 2007, she says in a federal lawsuit filed last week. She contracted ovarian cancer in 2006.
Berg maintains that talc caused her cancer and that the companies selling the mineral knew there was a risk but failed to warn the public.
"I feel like women have been kept in the dark about a known hazard," said R. Allen Smith, Berg's lawyer. "It's the classic definition of why we need product liability lawsuits."
Deane Berg, 52, applied talc-based body powder to her perineum each day after showering from 1975 to 2007, she says in a federal lawsuit filed last week. She contracted ovarian cancer in 2006.
Berg maintains that talc caused her cancer and that the companies selling the mineral knew there was a risk but failed to warn the public.
"I feel like women have been kept in the dark about a known hazard," said R. Allen Smith, Berg's lawyer. "It's the classic definition of why we need product liability lawsuits."
Flashback FDA Hid Research That Damned Aspartame: Fatal Studies Should Have Blocked NutraSweet Approval
When the G.D. Searle Co. sought FDA approval for NutraSweet they submitted doctored, fraudulent "studies," so corrupt that the Department of Justice appointed two prosecutors to Investigate Searle. Searle's lawyers hired the prosecutors and the case died with the statute of limitations.
Listen in on aspartame hearings in 1976 between Senator Ted Kennedy and FDA Commissioner Alexander Schmidt at the Senate Subcommittee on Labor and Public Health:
Listen in on aspartame hearings in 1976 between Senator Ted Kennedy and FDA Commissioner Alexander Schmidt at the Senate Subcommittee on Labor and Public Health:
Commissioner Schmidt: "Today I would like to report to you the final results of the Food and Drug Administration's detailed investigation of animal studies performed by Searle."Yet a year later look what happened!
Senator Kennedy: "Is this the first time, to your knowledge, that such a problem has been uncovered of this magnitude by the Food and Drug Administration?"
Dr. Schmidt: "It is certainly the first time that such an extensive and detailed examination of this kind has taken place. We have never before conducted such an examination as we did at Searle. From time to time, we have been aware of isolated problems, but we were not aware of the extent of the problem in one pharmaceutical house."
Senator Kennedy: "The extensive nature of the almost unbelievable range of abuses discovered by the FDA on several major Searle products is profoundly disturbing."
© Unknown
$2 million US dollar verdict against Bayer confirms company's liability for an uncontrollable technology
Greenpeace welcomes the United States federal jury ruling on 4 December 2009 that Bayer CropScience LP must pay $2 million US dollars to two Missouri farmers after their rice crop was contaminated with an experimental variety of rice that the company was testing in 2006.
Two new studies show that the thalamus--the small central brain structure often characterized as a mere pit-stop for sensory information on its way to the cortex--is heavily involved in sensory processing, and is an important conductor of the brain's complex orchestra.
Published in Nature Neuroscience and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the two studies from the laboratory of Murray Sherman both demonstrate the important role of the thalamus in shaping what humans see, hear and feel.
"The thalamus really hasn't been a part of people's thinking of how cortex functions," said Sherman, professor and chairman of neurobiology at the University of Chicago Medical Center. "It's viewed as a way to get information to cortex in the first place and then its role is done. But the hope is these kinds of demonstrations will start putting the thalamus on the map."
Published in Nature Neuroscience and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the two studies from the laboratory of Murray Sherman both demonstrate the important role of the thalamus in shaping what humans see, hear and feel.
"The thalamus really hasn't been a part of people's thinking of how cortex functions," said Sherman, professor and chairman of neurobiology at the University of Chicago Medical Center. "It's viewed as a way to get information to cortex in the first place and then its role is done. But the hope is these kinds of demonstrations will start putting the thalamus on the map."
Comment: For information about Diet and Inflammation read the following articles:
Battling Inflammation, Disease Through Food
The Anti-Inflammation Diet
Vitamin E Shows Possible Promise In Easing Chronic Inflammation
Inflammation May Be Link Between Extreme Sleep Durations And Poor Health
In addition, books like The UltraMind Solution: How to Fix Your Broken Brain by Dr. Mark Hyman provides a groundbreaking program that shows how we can fix our brains by healing our bodies first, preventing brain issues such as depression, anxiety, memory loss, brain fog, attention deficit disorder, autism and dementia. According to Dr. Hyman 'we have all heard of the mind and body connection and how our thoughts affect the health of our body. But the reverse is far more powerful what you do to your body, your basic biology has a profound effect on your brain'
Watch Dr. Mark Hyman describe how diet can reduce Inflammation, 'How to cool the fire inside you':
Also check out the forum discussion: Anti-Candida, Inflammation, Heavy Metals Detox and Diet