Health & Wellness
© Gary Taxali
If the specter of obesity and diabetes wasn't enough to turn you off-
high- fructose corn syrup (HFCS), try this: New research suggests that the sweetener could be tainted with
mercury, putting millions of children at risk for developmental problems.
In 2004, Renee Dufault, an environmental health researcher at the
Food and Drug Administration (FDA), stumbled upon an obscure Environmental Protection Agency report on chemical plants' mercury emissions. Some chemical companies, she learned, make lye by pumping salt through large vats of mercury. Since lye is a key ingredient in making HFCS (it's used to separate corn starch from the kernel), Dufault wondered if mercury might be getting into the ubiquitous sweetener that makes up 1 out of every 10 calories Americans eat.
U.S. researchers say some people may be more susceptible to irrelevant stimuli than others.
The study, published in the Journal of Neuroscience, said the finding may help lead to therapies to help those easily distracted to focus better.
Principal study investigator Edward Vogel of the University of Oregon suspects people who are good at staying on focus have a good gatekeeper -- similar to a bouncer hired to allow only approved people into concert.
"Often, to be able to complete complex and important goal-directed behavior, we need to be able to ignore salient but irrelevant things, such as advertisements flashing around an article you are trying to read on a computer screen," Vogel says in a statement.
If, the next time you're investing vast amounts of time in Facebook, you detect an ominous wave of loathing emanating from your partner, close the network and refocus your attentions because, chances are, jealousy is about to rear its ugly head.
More pointedly, a new study conducted by team of psychology researchers claims that prolonged one-to-one time with Facebook can create relationship rage and jealous investigation in ignored partners and potentially damage relationships with regard to the widespread online availability of personal information.
The study, entitled Does Facebook bring out the green-eyed monster of jealousy? was carried out by researchers for the CyberPsychology & Behaviour journal, and saw them polling a total of 308 college students (75 percent of which were female) about the Facebook habits of both themselves and their partners.
Hispanics who move to the U.S. are at greater risk for getting cancer than those living in their countries of origin, whether they're from Mexico, Puerto Rico or Cuba, according to a study.
Cancer rates of Hispanic immigrants living in Florida were 40 percent higher than those of compatriots in their home countries, said researchers at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine. Hispanics had overall lower rates of cancer than non-Hispanics, according to a study published today in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research.
The Iowa Department of Public Health has announced the first confirmed human case of West Nile virus in the state this year.
The health department said Friday that the case was a middle-aged woman in Clayton County who was not hospitalized.
Health officials say statewide surveillance has also found an increased number of mosquitoes infected with the virus. They're cautioning residents to get rid of mosquito breeding areas and to use insect repellent outdoors.
With the specter of an H1N1 flu resurgence this fall -- and 55 million students preparing to return to the nation's classrooms -- federal officials on Friday released new guidelines for schools that address how to keep the flu from spreading and describe under which circumstances they should consider closing.
Good hygiene is key, they say: Students and staff need to wash their hands frequently, and cough and sneeze into a tissue or shirt sleeve. Sick kids and teachers should be given protective gear and isolate themselves from the rest of the school until they can go home.
Once home, they need to stay put until 24 hours after their fever breaks -- a departure from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) previous guidelines, which recommended a seven-day seclusion period.
"We absolutely must continue to make prevention our collective business," U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said.
The number of people who have reported symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of being directly exposed to the World Trade Center attacks has increased over time, according to a new study published in The Journal of the American Medical Association, based on a survey of 50,000 people conducted five to six years after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
Overall, 19 percent of those surveyed in 2006-7 said they had developed post-traumatic stress symptoms in the five to six years after the attack, up from 14 percent in the first survey done of the group, two to three years after the attack. The increase was seen across the board - in rescue workers, office employees, residents and passers-by - but the sharpest jump was reported in the rescue workers.
From the McDonald's McGriddle to Wendy's "Baconator" to "baconnaise" to bacon-infused vodka, bacon has become a ubiquitous ingredient in many diets in this era of extreme food combinations. Arun Gupta of
The Indypendent writes, "Behind the proliferation of bacon offerings is a confluence of government policy, factory farming, the boom in fast food and manipulation of consumer taste that has turned bacon into a weapon of mass destruction."
Amy Goodman: We're joined here in our firehouse studio by Arun Gupta, journalist, editor of
The Indypendent newspaper in New York. He's writing a book on the decline of American empire for Haymarket Books. His latest article is published at Alternet.org and
The Indypendent, and it's called
"Gonzo Gastronomy: How the Food Industry Has Made Bacon a Weapon of Mass Destruction," looking at how industrial farming is central to the processed food industry. Arun also happens to be a trained chef, a graduate of the French Culinary Institute.
As well, we're joined from Link TV's studios in San Francisco by Dr. David Kessler, who is the former FDA commissioner, has written the book
The End of Overeating: Taking Control of the Insatiable American Appetite.
Shelagh McLoughlin
The WitnessFri, 31 Jul 2009 13:53 UTC
WHAT is raw food?
Raw food is plant-based, uncooked food the way nature provides it to us. By cooking we mean heating anything beyond 47°C, which is the temperature at which enzymes in food begin to be destroyed. To test how hot this is, if it burns your finger it's too hot.
Why eat it?
Uncooked food provides you with more nutrients. The cooking process has been shown to destroy nutrients and the higher the temperature, the more is detroyed. Because of the destruction of enzymes, cooked food requires more energy to digest.
What are the benefits?
Most common is a feeling of lightness and clarity. Emotions become more stable. Chronic conditions often improve and skin, hair and nails look better. Less sleep is required, as your body is no longer detoxifying all night and weight loss is often dramatic. I can see this being easier to follow in summer than in winter.
A new advanced method for nano-scale imaging of vesicle-fusion - vesicles are biological nano-sized containers - could add to our understanding of diseases of the nervous system and viral infections. In the long term, this could be useful in developing a cure for neurological diseases and mental disorders (e.g. schizophrenia, depression, Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's disease). Researchers from the Department of Neuroscience and Pharmacology and the Nano-Science Center at the University of Copenhagen are behind the new data, which have recently been published in the prestigious scientific journal PNAS.
Neurons communicate with each other with the help of nano-sized vesicles. Disruption of this communication process is responsible for many diseases and mental disorders like e.g. depression. Nerve signals travel from one neuron to another through vesicles - a nano-sized container loaded with neurotransmitter molecules. A vesicle fuses with the membrane surrounding a neuron, releases neurotransmitters into the surroundings that are detected by the next neuron in line. However, we still lack a more detailed understanding of how the fusion of vesicles occurs on the nano-scale.
