Millions of women undergo them annually, but few are even remotely aware of just how many dangers they are exposing themselves to in the name of prevention, not the least of which are misdiagnosis, overdiagnosis and the promotion of breast cancer itself.

A new study published in the Annals of Family Medicine titled, Long-term psychosocial consequences of false-positive screening mammography, brings to the forefront a major underreported harm of breast screening programs: the very real and lasting trauma associated with a false-positive diagnosis of breast cancer.[1]

The study found that women with false-positive diagnoses of breast cancer, even three years after being declared free of cancer, "consistently reported greater negative psychosocial consequences compared with women who had normal findings in all 12 psychosocial outcomes."

The psychosocial and existential parameters adversely affected were:

• Sense of dejection
• Anxiety
• Negative impact on behavior
• Negative impact on sleep
• Degree of breast self-examination
• Negative impact on sexuality
• Feeling of attractiveness
• Ability to keep 'mind off things'
• Worries about breast cancer
• Inner calm
• Social network
• Existential values

What is even more concerning is that "[S]ix months after final diagnosis, women with false-positive findings reported changes in existential values and inner calmness as great as those reported by women with a diagnosis of breast cancer."

In other words, even after being "cleared of cancer," the measurable adverse psychospiritual effects of the trauma of diagnosis were equivalent to actually having breast cancer.

Given that the cumulative probability of false-positive recall or biopsy recommendation after 10 years of screening mammography is at least 50%,[2] this is an issue that will affect the health of millions of women undergoing routine breast screening.

In this month's British Medical Journal, there's a report on a study demonstrating the relationship of sleep to brain development in kids. It is called the Millennium cohort Study, and it followed 11,000 children. Those children who demonstrated irregular bedtimes up to the age of three were the most negatively affected when it came to reading, math skills and spatial awareness. When followed over time, they continued to lag developmentally even by the age of seven -- and girls more than boys. The authors concluded that the first three years of life seem to be a particularly sensitive time for sleep and its relationship to brain development.

The findings are similar to a smaller Canadian study published in the journal Sleep in 2008. This study found that children sleeping less than ten hours a night before age three were more likely to exhibit language and reading problems as well as ADHD. In both studies, these problems persisted despite improvement in total sleep time after the age of three.

What we are seeing here is the relationship of sleep to neuroplasticity. Neuroplasticity relates to structural and functional changes in the brain brought on by training and experience. It is the ability of the brain to change by increasing brain tissue called gray matter and to alter the brain circuits called synapses. We know that adults are capable of these changes but on a much smaller scale. It would appear that the most crucial period for these kinds of brain changes is probably during the first three years of life. In fact, that is one of the reasons that children can recover from head trauma much more completely than adults can. It also explains the fact that if the entire left hemisphere is removed in a three or four year old, that child can still develop normal language skills. This is not possible in an adult.

A new study from neuroscientists at the Wayne State University School of Medicine provides the first novel insights into the neural origins of hot flashes in menopausal women in years. The study may inform and eventually lead to new treatments for those who experience the sudden but temporary episodes of body warmth, flushing and sweating.

The paper, "Temporal Sequencing of Brain Activations During Naturally Occurring Thermoregulatory Events," by Robert Freedman, Ph.D., professor of psychiatry and behavioral neurosciences, founder of the Behavioral Medicine Laboratory and a member at the C.S. Mott Center for Human Growth and Development, and his collaborator, Vaibhav Diwadkar, Ph.D., associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral neurosciences, appears in the June issue of Cerebral Cortex, an Oxford University Press journal.

"The idea of understanding brain responses during thermoregulatory events has spawned many studies where thermal stimuli were applied to the skin. But hot flashes are unique because they are internally generated, so studying them presents unique challenges," said Freedman, the study's principal investigator. "Our participants had to lie in the MRI scanner while being heated between two body-size heating pads for up to two hours while we waited for the onset of a hot flash. They were heroic in this regard and the study could not have been conducted without their incredible level of cooperation."

"Menopause and hot flashes are a significant women's health issue of widespread general interest," Diwadkar added. "However, understanding of the neural origins of hot flashes has remained poor. The question has rarely been assessed with in vivo functional neuroimaging. In part, this paucity of studies reflects the technical limitations of objectively identifying hot flashes while symptomatic women are being scanned with MRI. Nothing like this has been published because this is a very difficult study to do."

During the course of a single year, 20 healthy, symptomatic postmenopausal women ages 47 to 58 who reported six or more hot flashes a day were scanned at the School of Medicine's Vaitkevicius Imaging Center, located in Detroit's Harper University Hospital.

Last year the daughter of one of my patients called me. "Mom is acting really strange. She's being aggressive, and she thinks my Dad is still alive. I don't think she slept last night. Do you think she needs an increase in her medication?"

My patient was a sweet 70 year old woman with a psychosis-heavy bipolar disorder who could get paranoid from time to time, but was never violent, and had been stable on a low dose of medicine for many years. I told her daughter, "If she didn't fall down and hit her head somehow, I think she has a urinary tract infection (UTI). You should take her in to see her primary care doctor if she'll let you. Otherwise, you might need to take her to the ER."

A few hours later, the daughter called me back, quite amazed. "You were right! Her doctor says she has a bad UTI. How did you diagnose that over the phone?"

I'm sure all my psychiatrist/doctor readers were guessing the outcome right away. UTIs rather famously turn into strange behavior in the elderly, particularly in those with dementia. One time when I was on call in the emergency room, we got a consult for new-onset obsessive compulsive disorder in 77 year old. My fellow resident and I exchanged looks and told the emergency room intern to wait for the results of the urinalysis before we were consulted. 77 year olds don't develop OCD out of the blue without something else medical going on. We were correct...she had a urinary tract infection. The "OCD" resolved with antibiotics. The tricky part for doctors is that these UTIs can occur without any of the usual symptoms we are used to hearing about. No incontinence, fever, or urinary urgency. Or sometimes the patient can't tell us about these symptoms.

You know turmeric has health benefits, most notably reducing inflammation, but did you know it may also protect and heal the damaged and diseased liver?

A new clinical trial published in the journal BMC Complementary and Alternative Medicine is shedding light on turmeric's remarkable liver protective and regenerative properties.^[1]

South Korean researchers at the Clinical Trial Center for Functional Foods, Chonbuk National University Hospital, tested their hypothesis that turmeric may improve liver function by administering a fermented form to subjects, 20 years old and above, who were diagnosed mild to moderate elevated alanine aminotransferase (ALT) levels, a maker for liver damage and/or dysfunction.

Sixty subjects were randomized to receive 3.0 g per fermented turmeric powder (FTP) or placebo 3.0 g per day for 12 weeks. The treatment group received two capsules of FTP three times a day after meals, for 12 weeks.

In early 2013, the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the the very first genetically modified flu vaccine, known as Flublok. It contains recombinant DNA technology and an insect virus known as baculovirus that is apparently supposed to help facilitate a more rapid production of the vaccine. It could hit the market as early as next year. It was developed by Protein Sciences Corp, who received approval for the Flublock vaccine in January of 2103. It uses genetic engineering to grow portions of the virus in insect cells.

The vaccine also contains proteins from three different flu strains, and is produced by extracting cells from the fall army-worm, a type of caterpillar, and genetically altering them to produce large amounts of hemagglutinin, a flu virus protein that enables the flu virus itself to enter the body quickly.

A farmer in Oregon recently discovered unkillable wheat in his fields. He'd sprayed the whole field with a pesticide called Roundup, but this patch of wheat wouldn't die. Convinced he'd discovered a new super-wheat mutation, he sent some to a scientist.

Carol Mallory-Smith was that scientist, an expert in weeds, who immediately knew that the wheat wasn't a super-strain. It's pretty much impossible for a plant to resist death after being treated with Roundup . . . unless it's a genetically-modified "Roundup Ready" strain, created by agribusiness giant Monsanto. But how could Monsanto wheat get into an Oregon farm? The answer proved to be even weirder than she imagined. After genetic testing, she discovered that it was indeed Monsanto wheat. But it was an experimental strain that was engineered 14 years ago.

Somehow, these experimental Monsanto seeds got mixed into wheat seeds being sold over a decade later.

On Scientific American, Arielle Duhaime-Ross writes:

On May 1, with GMO-positive test results in hand, Mallory-Smith contacted the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Serviceto tell them that unapproved seeds which had been engineered 14 years beforehand . . . had somehow found their way into a wheat field in Oregon.

The Roundup Ready wheat program that produced these seeds was canceled a decade ago, but the company has resumed tests of the product in the past year. It's still not clear how the seeds made their way to Oregon.

Still, no polio sufferers have been found, says Health Ministry, stressing that the virus has been located in sewer systems only.

The polio virus has continued to spread through sewer systems across Israel, based on widespread sample surveys of sewer systems recently ordered by the Health Ministry.

Still, no polio sufferers have been found, the Health Ministry said, stressing that the virus has been located in sewer systems only.

The survey found the virus in the Ayalon sewer system that handles sewage from the cities of Ramle, Lod and Modi'in and the communities located in the Gezer Regional Council; in the sewer system that handles sewage from the Lev Hasharon Regional Council, including the community of Kalansua; and in the sewage treatment plant that serves the communities of Jaljulia and Kafr Bara. The discovery of the polio virus in these sewer systems follows the virus' discovery at sewage treatment plants serving Negev communities. The virus was first discovered in May in sewage from the Negev city of Rahat.

A University of Southampton Professor, in collaboration with colleagues at the BC Cancer Agency Research Centre, have discovered a novel way of killing cancer cells. The research, recently published in the journal Cell, has found a new potential treatment for cancer, which leaves the body's healthy cells undamaged, unlike traditional therapies such as radiotherapy.

Chris Proud, Professor of Cellular Regulation in Biological Sciences at the University of Southampton says: "Cancer cells grow and divide much more rapidly than normal cells, meaning they have a much higher demand for and are often starved of, nutrients and oxygen. We have discovered that a cellular component, eEF2K, plays a critical role in allowing cancer cells to survive nutrient starvation, whilst normal, healthy cells do not usually require eEF2K in order to survive. Therefore, by blocking the function of eEF2K, we should be able to kill cancer cells, without harming normal, healthy cells in the process."

© Unknown

Could antibiotics routinely added to animal feed be a contributing factor to the raising levels of antibiotic resistance in human diseases?

David Wallinga from Keep Antibiotics Working: the Campaign to End Antibiotic Overuse in Animal Agriculture told the BMJ online that he thinks that the use of antibiotics in livestock has a "critical role" in the resistance levels to the drugs in humans.

He believes that physicians and policy makers have overlooked this theory, and advises the relevant parties to consider it before developing new, stronger antibiotics.

Overall reductions in antibiotic use should come before any new development, he says. In 2009-11, 72 per cent of the US sales of antimicrobials were intended for water or animal feed for livestock.