Health & WellnessS


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With Amino Acid Diet, Mice Improve After Brain Injury

Neurology researchers have shown that feeding amino acids to brain-injured animals restores their cognitive abilities and may set the stage for the first effective treatment for cognitive impairments suffered by people with traumatic brain injuries.

"We have shown in an animal model that dietary intervention can restore a proper balance of neurochemicals in the injured part of the brain, and simultaneously improves cognitive performance," said study leader Akiva S. Cohen, Ph.D., a neuroscientist at The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia.

The study appears December 7 in the online issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

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CDC Analyzes Toxics In Humans

With its fourth and most ambitious edition of its National Report on Human Exposure to Environmental Chemicals, released today, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) casts the issue of pollution in people in sharp focus.

The CDC has detected 212 contaminants in the blood and urine of thousands of people tested from 1999-2004, the most extensive survey of the American body burden ever published by the federal government.

CDC's testing focuses on adults and children age 6 and older, leaving EWG and other environmental health groups and academic scientists to investigate the extent to which pollutants were invading the womb.

Last week, EWG released its second cord blood study, reporting detections of up to 232 contaminants in the cord blood of 10 minority infants born between 2007 and 2008. EWG's study was the first to find the plastic ingredient bisphenol A (BPA), an endocrine-disrupting chemical, in American cord blood. EWG's first cord blood study, published in 2005, found up to 287 chemicals in 10 cord blood samples.

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USDA Will Offer Lawmakers a Sampling of School Lunches

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© Katherine Frey/the Washington PostUSDA Secretary Tom Vilsack samples food the agency provides to public schools, some of which will be served to lawmakers next week.
Agency seeks boost in funding to continue reworking menus

Chicken fajita strips, sliced ham and canned green beans: That's what's for lunch one day next week for some lawmakers and congressional staffers, courtesy of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The menu offers the same products, known as commodity foods, that the agency provides every day to public schools across the nation.

The goal of next week's tasting is to show lawmakers the improvements the department has made in the nutritional quality -- and taste -- of the $1.2 billion in school commodity foods and to win support to fund further improvements. With one-third of American children overweight or obese, the USDA has been working to cut salt and fat and provide more fruits and vegetables.

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Spice Compounds May Stem Tumor Growth

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Tumeric (curcumin)
Lab study suggests possible action against breast cancer

Compounds derived from two spices -- pepper and turmeric -- could help prevent breast cancer by limiting the growth of stem cells that promote tumor growth, a new study shows.

When curcumin (from turmeric) and piperine (from black peppers) were applied to breast cells in the laboratory, the number of stem cells decreased, but there was no change in normal cells, say researchers at the University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center.

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How a Healthy Diet Can Prevent Depression

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.

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


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Britain: Swine Flu Less Deadly Than First Thought

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.

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Brain Activity Exposes Those Who Break Promises

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© iStockphotoResearchers have discovered the physiological mechanisms in the brain that underlie broken promises.
Scientists from the University of Zurich have discovered the physiological mechanisms in the brain that underlie broken promises. Patterns of brain activity even enable predicting whether someone will break a promise.

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.

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Fruit Flies Can Be Alcoholics, Too

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© Fred WolfThis fruit fly has been exposed to ethanol vapor, which renders it uncoordinated.
Behavior of Drosophila shows similarities to human addiction

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.

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Why Are BPA and Other Chemicals in the Womb?

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.

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Best of the Web: Shocking truth about AIDS exposed on World AIDS Day with "House of Numbers" un-cut footage

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© HouseofNumbers.com
When Brent Leung started showcasing his groundbreaking new documentary film about AIDS, House of Numbers, he had no way to comprehend the wave of defamatory attacks that would be unleashed against him. Promoters of conventional AIDS theories (with all their vaccines and pharmaceuticals) have gone on a rampage against Leung, calling him an "AIDS denialist" -- with an obvious invocation of the similar-sounding "Holocaust denialist" phrase.

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.