Health & Wellness
THE INVESTIGATORS
Dr. Martin Mainster and Dr. Patricia Turner, University of Kansas School of Medicine.
For decades, scientists have looked for explanations as to why certain conditions occur with age, among them memory loss, slower reaction time, insomnia and even depression. They have scrupulously investigated such suspects as high cholesterol, obesity, heart disease and an inactive lifestyle.
Now a fascinating body of research supports a largely unrecognized culprit: the aging of the eye.
The gradual yellowing of the lens and the narrowing of the pupil that occur with age disturb the body's circadian rhythm, contributing to a range of health problems, these studies suggest. As the eyes age, less and less sunlight gets through the lens to reach key cells in the retina that regulate the body's circadian rhythm, its internal clock.
"We believe the effect is huge and that it's just beginning to be recognized as a problem," said Dr. Patricia Turner, an ophthalmologist in Leawood, Kan., who with her husband, Dr. Martin Mainster, a professor of ophthalmology at the University of Kansas Medical School, has written extensively about the effects of the aging eye on health.
How can those two things possibly co-exist?
The mistake is to think that if you eat an abundance of calories, your diet automatically delivers all the nutrients your body needs. But the opposite is true. The more processed food you eat, the more vitamins you need. That's because vitamins and minerals lubricate the wheels of our metabolism, helping the chemical reactions in our bodies run properly. Among those biochemical processes greased by nutrients is the regulation of sugar and burning of fat. The problem is that the standard American diet (SAD) is energy dense (too many calories) but nutrient poor (not enough vitamins and minerals). Too many "empty calories" confuse the metabolism and pack on the pounds.
A Nutritionally Deficient Culture
After reviewing the major nutritional research over the last 40 years and doing nutritional testing on over 10,000 patients - I can tell you that Americans are suffering from massive nutritional deficiencies. What I see in my office is reflected in the scientific literature. Upwards of 30 percent of American diets fall short of such common plant-derived nutrients as magnesium, Vitamin C, Vitamin E, and Vitamin A (2). More than 80 percent of Americans are running low on Vitamin D (3). And nine out of 10 people are deficient in omega-3 fats, which are critical for staving off inflammation and controlling blood sugar levels. (For more information, plus a quiz on where your nutritional imbalances lie, see The Blood Sugar Solution).
Water fluoridation was introduced to the United States in the 1940s as a way to use waste product from the manufacture of aluminum, a waste product that was expensive to dispose of and which was harming cattle and farmland. Since then, the federal government has taken the stance that the fluoridation of drinking water, which conveniently disposed of the waste, is vitally important to help prevent tooth decay; the CDC called it one of the ten great public health achievements of the 20th century. But the the latest scientific studies have finally made the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) change their tune on how much fluoride is safe.
The data indicates that dental fluorosi - damage to the teeth from fluoride, ranging from lacy white markings or spots on the enamel to staining and pitting of the tooth surface - happens when fluoride levels are too high. Water is only one of several sources of fluoride. Other common sources include dental products such as toothpaste and mouth rinses, prescription fluoride supplements, fluoride applied by dental professionals, and exposure through our food, which is often sprayed with fluoride-based pesticides.
The workhorse of this system is the light-sensitive hormone melatonin, which is produced by the body every evening and during the night. Melatonin promotes sleep and alerts a variety of biological processes to the approximate hour of the day.
Light hitting the retina suppresses the production of melatonin - and there lies the rub. In this modern world, our eyes are flooded with light well after dusk, contrary to our evolutionary programming. Scientists are just beginning to understand the potential health consequences. The disruption of circadian cycles may not just be shortchanging our sleep, they have found, but also contributing to a host of diseases.

The appendix is a fingerlike pouch attached to the large intestine in the lower right area of the abdomen.
But the appendix is getting a bad press, says US surgery expert Bill Parker. Far from being an organ of evil, it serves a very useful function - by acting as a safe house for beneficial bacteria in our bodies. In effect, the much-reviled organ is really a sanctuary for helpful microbes, explains Parker, an assistant professor of experimental surgery at Duke University medical centre, in Durham, North Carolina.
"My idea is that the appendix is a storehouse, a cultivation centre for the normal, beneficial bacteria that our gut needs," he says. "That safe house would be necessary and useful in the event that the main compartment of bacteria, the large bowel, got contaminated with some kind of infectious organism and got flushed out."
The appendix is not unique to Homo sapiens. The great apes, other primates, the opossum, the wombat and rabbits: all have appendices. And in each case, Parker argues that the appendix behaves in a similar manner: as a resupply centre for benign microbes.
A crucial part of Parker's theory rests on the importance of the bacteria found in our intestines. Our bodies are made up of around 10 trillion cells. However, we carry about 10 times as many microorganisms inside our bodies, and most of these are found in our gut. Their relationship with humans is symbiotic. The bacteria take some of our sources of energy, our food in other words, and in return they help to prevent the growth of harmful, pathogenic bacteria, and also produce vitamins and hormones. They are crucial to our wellbeing, in short.
In the first human study of its kind researchers have linked trans fatty acid consumption to increased aggression. Published in the Public Library of Science's own journal, PLoS, March 5th 2012, researchers at the Dept. of Medicine at the University of California, San Diego, reported:
"Dietary trans fatty acids (dTFA) are primarily synthetic compounds that have been introduced only recently; little is known about their behavioral effects. dTFA inhibit production of omega-3 fatty acids, which experimentally have been shown to reduce aggression. Potential behavioral effects of dTFA merit investigation. We sought to determine whether dTFA are associated with aggression/irritability."The study looked at 945 adult men and women who were not on lipid-lowering drugs, and who were without LDL-cholesterol extremes, diabetes, HIV, cancer or heart disease. Outcomes assessed adverse behaviors with impact on others based on both objective (life histories of aggression) and subjective (self-rated impatience and irritability) sources of information. The researchers concluded:
"This study provides the first evidence linking dTFA [dietary trans fatty acids] with behavioral irritability and aggression."This novel finding adds to a growing body of existing clinical research indicating that synthetically produced trans fatty acids adversely affect human health, particularly cardiovascular health and cancer risk.
Scandalous: Scientists and Doctors Falsifying Data for Research to be Published
A survey of nearly 2,800 scientists and doctors in the UK has found that 13 percent of them admitted to witnessing the falsification and fabrication of data created by their colleagues. Additionally, 6 percent of the nearly 2,800 individuals surveyed were aware of research misconduct at their own workplace which had never been properly investigated to looked into. Needless to say, there could very well be more scientists or doctors not speaking up, further increasing the scandal rate.

Pain AND Depression: Senior Airman Anthony Mena in Baghdad in 2007. After his death in 2009, a toxicologist found eight prescription medications in his blood.
He returned from his second deployment to Iraq complaining of back pain, insomnia, anxiety and nightmares. Doctors diagnosed post-traumatic stress disorder and prescribed powerful cocktails of psychiatric drugs and narcotics.
Yet his pain only deepened, as did his depression. "I have almost given up hope," he told a doctor in 2008, medical records show. "I should have died in Iraq."
Airman Mena died instead in his Albuquerque apartment, on July 21, 2009, five months after leaving the Air Force on a medical discharge. A toxicologist found eight prescription medications in his blood, including three antidepressants, a sedative, a sleeping pill and two potent painkillers.
Yet his death was no suicide, the medical examiner concluded. What killed Airman Mena was not an overdose of any one drug, but the interaction of many. He was 23.
Based on the existing science, many public health experts believe it is possible we will face an epidemic of cancers in the future resulting from uncontrolled use of cell phones and increased population exposure to WiFi and other wireless devices. Thus it is important that all of us, and especially children, restrict our use of cell phones, limit exposure to background levels of Wi-Fi, and that government and industry discover ways in which to allow use of wireless devices without such elevated risk of serious disease. We need to educate decision-makers that 'business as usual' is unacceptable. The importance of this public health issue can not be underestimated," said Dr. David Carpenter, Dean at the School of Public Health, State University of New York.
Since Wi-Fi is so recent, no studies have yet been done on the long-term health effects of Wi-Fi. However, thousands of studies have been done on the health effects of mobile phones and mobile phone masts. These studies have found that mobile phone radiation can cause cancer!
Carbon monoxide (often referred to as CO) is a colorless, odorless, tasteless gas, one measly oxygen molecule away from the carbon dioxide we all exhale. But that one molecule makes a big difference in that it does very, very bad things to the human body at very, very low concentrations.
CO is toxic because it sticks to hemoglobin, a molecule in blood that usually carries oxygen, even better than oxygen can. When people are exposed to higher levels of CO, the gas takes the place of oxygen in the bloodstream and wreaks havoc. Milder exposures mean headaches, confusion, and tiredness. Higher exposures mean unconsciousness and death, and even those who survive CO poisoning can suffer serious long-term neurological consequences.











Comment: The story of these soldiers over medicating themselves to death is tragic and clearly depicts: The War on Addiction Has Been Brought Home. In addition this article brings to light the issue that soldiers returning from war are suffering more than PTSD, they have injured souls:
Beyond PTSD: Soldiers Have Injured Souls