More than one out of every five nursing home residents is still being given powerful antipsychotic drugs despite a growing consensus that they are inappropriate and often dangerous. These drugs frequently are given to "calm" dementia patients even though many are approved only for the treatment of diseases such as schizophrenia.

Despite a federal initiative, a $2.2 billion legal settlement by a major drugmaker earlier this month, and the support of many nursing home and consumer organizations, it has been extremely difficult to reduce the overuse of these drugs.

In March, 2012, the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services kicked off an effort aimed at reducing nursing home use of antipsychotic drugs from nearly 24 percent to about 20 percent by the end of that year. When it missed the target, CMS pushed back the goal to the end of 2013. Usage is declining, but the agency says that more than 21 percent of long-stay nursing home residents are still getting these drugs. A coalition of patient advocates estimates that represents more than 300,000 residents.

It's well known that the brains of meditators change, but it's not entirely clear what those changes mean or how the changes might benefit the meditator. A new pilot study led by researchers at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center suggests that the brain changes associated with meditation and stress reduction may play an important role in slowing the progression of age-related cognitive disorders like Alzheimer's disease and other dementias.

"We know that approximately 50 percent of people diagnosed with mild cognitive impairment - the intermediate stage between the expected declines of normal aging and the more serious cognitive deterioration associated with dementia - may develop dementia within five years. And unfortunately, we know there are currently no FDA approved medications that can stop that progression," says first author Rebecca Erwin Wells, MD, MPH, who conducted her research as a fellow in Integrative Medicine at BIDMC and Harvard Medical School. "We also know that as people age, there's a high correlation between perceived stress and Alzheimer's disease, so we wanted to know if stress reduction through meditation might improve cognitive reserve."

The results of the study appeared online October 10 in Neuroscience Letters.

A mother who thought she was sending her children to school with a decent homemade, whole-food lunch was shocked to find a penalty note from school officials informing her that the lunch of roast beef, potatoes, carrots, oranges and milk she provided was "unbalanced" and therefore had to be supplemented with Ritz crackers.

It's quite possible that the single most ridiculous school lunch policy on the planet comes courtesy of a strange interpretation of the Canadian province of Manitoba's Government Early Learning and Child Care lunch regulations.

Apparently if a child's lunch is deemed "unbalanced", where "balance" refers to ensuring that a lunch conforms to the proportions of food groups as laid out by Canada's awful Food Guide, then that child's lunch is "supplemented", and their parent is fined.

Quebec-based magazine La Maison du 21e siecle asked physician David O. Carpenter, former founding dean of the University at Albany (NY)'s School of Public Health, to comment on a letter published in the Montreal daily Le Devoir last May 24.

This letter claimed wireless smart meters pose no risk to public health. Some forty international experts contributed to the following rebuttal.

We, the undersigned are a group of scientists and health professionals who together have coauthored hundreds of peer-reviewed studies on the health effects of electromagnetic fields (EMFs). We wish to correct some of the gross misinformation found in the letter regarding wireless "smart" meters that was published in the Montreal daily Le Devoir on May 24.

Submitted by a group Quebec engineers, physicists and chemists, the letter in question reflects an obvious lack of understanding of the science behind the health impacts of the radiofrequency (RF)/microwave EMFs emitted by these meters.

The statement that « Thousands of studies, both epidemiological and experimental in humans, show no increase in cancer cases as a result of exposure to radio waves of low intensity... » is false (1). In fact, only a few such studies - two dozen case-control studies of mobile phone use, certainly not thousands, have reported no elevations of cancer, and most were funded by the wireless industry.

In addition, these reassuring studies contained significant experimental design flaws, mainly the fact that the populations followed were too small and were followed for a too short period of time.

At 43, singer Debbie Gibson looks about a decade younger. How does she maintain that rock star body? She revealed her secrets to Us Weekly on November 16.

It took numerous health problems to make Debbie decide that her unwise diet choices had to change.

"I was constantly going to the doctor," says Debbie, who once suffered from acid reflux and relied on anti-anxiety meds Prozac and Xanax. "I finally realized my food choices were affecting my health."

Debbie chose a phased diet that began with a month-long detox from sugar, alcohol and processed food. After that, she gradually added in new foods. The goal: Determining which foods caused her problems. (Learn more about elimination diets and Dr. Mehmet Oz's explanation of how they help you find hidden food allergies by clicking here.)

"You become a scientist about your own body, to find out what your tolerances are, so you don't wake up one day and go, 'Why do I feel underwater today? What did I eat?'," explains Debbie.

Yes, it is true, smoking does not cause lung cancer. It is only one of many risk factors for lung cancer. I initially was going to write an article on how the professional literature and publications misuse the language by saying "smoking causes lung cancer"1,2, but the more that I looked into how biased the literature, professional organizations, and the media are, I modified this article to one on trying to put the relationship between smoking and cancer into perspective. (No, I did not get paid off by the tobacco companies, or anything else like that.)

When the tobacco executives testified to Congress that they did not believe that smoking caused cancer, their answers were probably truthful and I agree with that statement. Now, if they were asked if smoking increases the risk of getting lung cancer, then their answer based upon current evidence should have be "yes." But even so, the risk of a smoker getting lung cancer is much less than anyone would suspect. Based upon what the media and anti-tobacco organizations say, one would think that if you smoke, you get lung cancer (a 100% correlation) or at least expect a 50+% occurrence before someone uses the word "cause."

The law will make it the first large US city or state to prohibit sales to young adults.

City health officials hope that raising the legal purchase age from 18 to 21 will lead to a big decline in smoking rates in a critical age group. Most smokers get addicted to cigarettes before 21, and then have trouble quitting.

The ban has limitations, in terms of its ability to stop young people from picking up the deadly habit. Teenagers can still possess tobacco legally. Children will still be able to steal cigarettes from their parents, take them from friends or buy them from the black-market dealers who are common in many neighbourhoods.

But City Health Commissioner Thomas Farley said the idea was to make it more inconvenient for young people to get started, especially teenagers who had previously had easy access to cigarettes through slightly older peers.

"Right now, an 18-year-old can buy for a 16-year-old," he said. Once the law takes effect, in 180 days, he said, that 16-year-old would "have to find someone in college or out in the workforce."

As the world of people who are wheat-free continues to grow, I am witnessing a range of weird re-exposure reactions when people, intentionally or inadvertently, get re-exposed.

Among the peculiar reactions:

Congestive heart failure

A woman with a clear-cut syndrome of wheat intolerance that was evidenced by diabetes, excessive expression of small LDL particles (around 2000 nmol/L at the start), high triglycerides, gastrointestinal distress, widespread joint pain, and a peripheral neuropathy (impaired coordination, reduced sensation to the legs), and negative blood markers for celiac disease, improved substantially across the entire collection of symptoms. She lost around 40 pounds of weight, reduced HbA1c substantially, dropped small LDL dramatically (to zero), triglycerides to double-digit values, with modest improvement in coordination and peripheral neuropathy, marked improvement in joint discomfort. With each re-exposure, e.g, a couple of bites of birthday cake at her grandson's birthday party, she experienced water retention and congestive heart failure of 27-30 pounds but developing over 7 days. This happened 4-5 times with water retention developing over the precise same time course. On each occasion, she responded to diuretics, losing the 27-30 pounds of retained water, with no other cause identified (no change in left ventricular ejection fraction, no change in kidney status, no change in serum albumin or protein levels, no change in thyroid status, etc.).

Functional achalasia

A young man had been wheat-free for over one year inadvertently had wheat in the form of orzo, mistaking it for rice (since orzo is rice-shaped pasta). Within minutes, food became trapped in his esophagus, necessitating an endoscopy to extract the food. No pathologic findings were seen: no esophageal stricture, inflammation, ulcer, or tumor. There was also no evidence nor history to suggest eosinophilic esophagitis.

• Complex Regional Pain Syndrome (CRPS) can happen to anyone without any specific cause

• CRPS has no cure and causes chronic pain, usually in the limbs or hands and feet

• On the McGill Pain Index Chart, it ranks higher than childbirth and amputation

A mystery condition that causes extreme pain among sufferers has baffled doctors and researchers, who can find neither its cause nor its cure.

Sufferers of Complex Regional Pain Syndrome (CRPS) wake up one morning to debilitating pain that does not go away.

The condition usually affects the arms, legs, hands or feet and sometimes occurs after an injury as minor as a bruise, but often appears without any identified trauma.

We recently invited nutritional therapist, speaker and educator Nora Gedgaudas to speak with us on SOTT Talk Radio. Widely recognized as an expert on the 'Paleo Diet', Nora maintains a private practice in Portland, Oregon as both a Board-Certified nutritional consultant and a Board-Certified clinical Neurofeedback Specialist.

Nora is also the author of the best-seller Primal Body, Primal Mind: Beyond the Paleo Diet for Total Health and a Longer Life, a book that is changing the way people view their diet and health.

Examining the healthy lives of our pre-agricultural Paleolithic ancestors and contrasting it with the marked decline humanity has undergone in the Agricultural Age, up to and including today's epidemic 'diseases of civilization', Nora's book shows how our modern grain- and carbohydrate-heavy low-fat diets are a far cry from the high-fat, moderate-protein hunter-gatherer diets we are genetically programmed for.

Applying the latest scientific discoveries to the basic hunter-gatherer diet forged in the last Ice Age, Nora's message is that a real alternative is available: a holistic, 'paleo' lifestyle that is helping thousands of people to break the negative feedback loop of poor diet and poor health.

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