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Exercise is Good for the Brain

Jeanna Bryner
LiveScience
Mon, 26 Apr 2010 15:20 UTC
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© Getty Images
Working out on a treadmill isn't just good for the body, it's good for the brain, according to a new study, the latest to weigh in on the cognitive benefits of exercise.

Regular exercise speeds learning and improves blood flow to the brain in monkeys, the study found. The researchers suspect the same would hold true for humans.

While there is ample evidence of the beneficial effects of exercise on cognition in other animal models, such as the rat, it has been unclear whether the same holds true for people, said study researcher Judy Cameron, a psychiatry professor at Pitt School of Medicine. Testing the hypothesis in monkeys can provide information that is more comparable to human physiology.

For one, monkeys exercise like people, in that they love getting on a treadmill (well sort of like us), and they won't run all night as rats would do if provided with a running wheel, Cameron said.
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Repetitive Laughter Response is Similar to the Effect of Repetitive Exercise


Medical News Today
Tue, 27 Apr 2010 01:00 UTC
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© iStockphoto
Laughter is a highly complex process. Joyous or mirthful laughter is considered a positive stress (eustress) that involves complicated brain activities leading to a positive effect on health. Norman Cousins first suggested the idea that humor and the associated laughter can benefit a person's health in the 1970s. His ground-breaking work, as a layperson diagnosed with an autoimmune disease, documented his use of laughter in treating himself with medical approval and oversight into remission. He published his personal research results in the New England Journal of Medicine and is considered one of the original architects of mind-body medicine.

Dr. Lee S. Berk, a preventive care specialist and psychoneuroimmunology researcher at Loma Linda University's Schools of Allied Health (SAHP) and Medicine, and director of the molecular research lab at SAHP, Loma Linda, CA, and Dr. Stanley Tan have picked up where Cousins left off. Since the 1980s, they have been studying the human body's response to mirthful laughter and have found that laughter helps optimize many of the functions of various body systems. Berk and his colleagues were the first to establish that laughter helps optimize the hormones in the endocrine system, including decreasing the levels of cortisol and epinephrine, which lead to stress reduction. They have also shown that laughter has a positive effect on modulating components of the immune system, including increased production of antibodies and activation of the body's protective cells, including T-cells and especially Natural Killer cells' killing activity of tumor cells.

Their studies have shown that repetitious "mirthful laughter," which they call Laughercise©, causes the body to respond in a way similar to moderate physical exercise. Laughercise© enhances your mood, decreases stress hormones, enhances immune activity, lowers bad cholesterol and systolic blood pressure, and raises good cholesterol (HDL).

As Berk explains, "We are finally starting to realize that our everyday behaviors and emotions are modulating our bodies in many ways." His latest research expands the role of laughter even further.
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Attention

Two-Thirds of Store-Bought Chickens Contaminated with Food-Borne Illness Microbes

David Gutierrez
NaturalNews
Tue, 27 Apr 2010 00:00 UTC
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© Getty Images
Two out of every three store-bought chickens may be contaminated with bacteria that commonly cause human illness, according to a study conducted by the Consumers Union.

"Consumers still need to be very careful in handling chicken, which is routinely contaminated with disease-causing bacteria," said Urvashi Rangan, the union's director of technical policy.

Researchers conducted tests on 382 fresh broiler chickens purchased at 100 retailers in 22 states in spring 2009. A full two-thirds of the chickens were contaminated with either one or both of the bacteria strains most often responsible for food-borne illness. Although this figure is an improvement over the 2007 figure of 80 percent, the Consumers Union still called the numbers "far too high" and called for stricter government regulation.

Sixty-two percent of chickens tested positive for campylobacter, the number two cause of food-borne illness. Fourteen percent tested positive for salmonella, the number one cause, and 9 percent tested positive for both.
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Vitamin D Reduces Diabetes Risk by 43 Percent - Is There Anything This Vitamin Can't Do?

Ethan A. Huff
NaturalNews
Tue, 27 Apr 2010 00:00 UTC
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© Google Images
A team from Warwick Medical School in the U.K. has found that people who maintain healthy vitamin D levels are 43 percent less likely to get heart disease or diabetes. After evaluating 28 different studies conducted on nearly 100,000 people, researchers concluded that people who eat oily fish two or three times a week and five servings of fruits and vegetables a day are able to achieve healthy levels of vitamin D.

While the team evaluated only natural sources of vitamin D, including from sunlight exposure and consumption of oily fish like tuna, salmon, and mackerel, it is probable that supplementation with natural vitamin D3 would prove to have the same effect.

Published in the journal Maturitas, the study revealed that high levels of vitamin D reduce the risk of developing cardiovascular disease by 33 percent, metabolic syndrome by 51 percent, and type-2 diabetes by an astounding 55 percent.

According to Dr. Johanna Parker, one of the study authors, sunlight exposure is the best way to get vitamin D. "People should expose themselves for 30 minutes twice a week - this means exposing the face and arms with no sunscreen. This would provide the body with adequate vitamin D," she explained.
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Maca gives potential relief for migraine sufferers

William Rudolph
NaturalNews
Tue, 27 Apr 2010 00:00 UTC
Image
© Chris Kilham
Maca Roots
People who suffer from the debilitating pain of migraine headaches need relief. Could the solution be found in a radish-like root vegetable that grows in an extreme climate where few other plants can survive? Might something the Incas consumed regularly 2,000 years ago be a modern day panacea for migraine sufferers?

Migraines Defined

The word migraine derives from the Greek word hemikrania meaning "half a skull". The disorder was so named because migraines are typically unilateral (affecting one half of the head). Migraines are severe, vascular headaches often accompanied by symptoms such as persistent pain in the temple or behind the ear, nausea, vomiting, and sensitivity to sounds and light. Some migraines are preceded by an aura, which is a type of unusual visual or auditory sensory experience. For some, a migraine will last only a couple of hours. For others, the intense pain and discomfort can last up to 72 hours.
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Natural Substance in Breast Milk Destroys Cancer Cells

S. L. Baker
NaturalNews
Tue, 27 Apr 2010 00:00 UTC
Breast milk is documented to be the best food possible for infants and breastfeeding is known to have enormous health benefits for moms, too. It turns out, however, that breast milk has even more amazing properties. Swedish researchers have found that it contains a compound that kills cancer cells in humans.

The substance, dubbed HAMLET (which stands for Human Alpha-lactalbumin Made LEthal to Tumor cells), is comprised of a protein and a fatty acid. Although found naturally in breast milk, scientists are not sure if HAMLET develops spontaneously or if it requires interaction with the acidic digestive system of a newborn.

HAMLET was first discovered by chance several years ago by researchers who were investigating the antibacterial properties of breast milk. Scientists soon began testing it on cancer cells and the findings were nothing short of astounding.

For example, studies in the lab showed that HAMLET was able to kill 40 different types of cancer cells. What's more, in animal studies the natural substance was found to be effective in killing one of the most deadly types of brain cancers -- glioblastoma.
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Attention

You're Appointing Who? Please Obama, Say It's Not So!

Jeffrey M. Smith
Huffington Post
Thu, 23 Jul 2009 21:26 UTC
The person who may be responsible for more food-related illness and death than anyone in history has just been made the US food safety czar. This is no joke.

Here's the back story.

When FDA scientists were asked to weigh in on what was to become the most radical and potentially dangerous change in our food supply - the introduction of genetically modified (GM) foods - secret documents now reveal that the experts were very concerned. Memo after memo described toxins, new diseases, nutritional deficiencies, and hard-to-detect allergens. They were adamant that the technology carried "serious health hazards," and required careful, long-term research, including human studies, before any genetically modified organisms (GMOs) could be safely released into the food supply.

But the biotech industry had rigged the game so that neither science nor scientists would stand in their way. They had placed their own man in charge of FDA policy and he wasn't going to be swayed by feeble arguments related to food safety. No, he was going to do what corporations had done for decades to get past these types of pesky concerns. He was going to lie.
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Attention

Another Fraud Of Alternative Medicine: M.M.S.

Sarah Cain
The Health Wyze Report
Tue, 09 Feb 2010 10:46 UTC
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Over the past few years, we have periodically seen the letters 'M.M.S.' used in reference to an alternative health treatment. However, it was not until it was written about on our site, by a visiting commentator, that we did any research into M.M.S.. It is unfortunate that it has taken this long for us to notice this fraud, and we can only hope that it has not harmed anyone in the meantime. M.M.S. is an acronym for 'Miracle Mineral Solution'. (Yeah, that's what we thought too.) If you are not already cringing from the market-speak, you will be, when you find that it is simply chlorine dioxide (oxygenated chlorine).

This is the same compound which is used to bleach flour, and disinfect the municipal water supplies. Promoters of M.M.S. claim that it cures AIDS, herpes, cancer, malaria, T.B., and "many more diseases", which are unnamed. Snake oils never had it so good. The M.M.S. fraud would be amusing if it weren't so potentially dangerous. It is primarily being promoted by two people, named Jim Humble and Adam Abraham.

The F.D.A. has not made any move against these fraudsters, despite making every 'unapproved medical claim' imaginable. Yet, when colloidal silver is honestly promoted, or cherry farmers quote scientific studies in favor of their crops medicinal benefits, the F.D.A. enters high alert. This is a pattern which we have noticed, for the F.D.A. is only interested in silencing effective and legitimate alternative medicines, but it condones obvious frauds like M.M.S., because these frauds hurt alternative medicine (the competition) in the long term. In other words, alternative medicine frauds like this are actually beneficial to the pharmaceutical industry.

Comment: MMS is chlorine dioxide. Chlorine dioxide is formed from the chemical combination of sodium chlorite and the acetic acid (vinegar) or citric acid. Chlorine dioxide is dangerous to handle and use. A search for material safety data sheets sustains the risk of using this substance.
Chlorine dioxide: May decompose explosively on shock, friction or concussion, or on heating rapidly. Strong oxidant - reacts violently with combustible and reducing materials, and with mercury, ammonia, sulphur and many organic compounds.

A strong irritant of the skin, eyes, and respiratory tract; A strong oxidizer that promotes combustion; Concentrated solutions may be corrosive to the skin and eyes; Mild hemolytic anemia and increased methemoglobin in males is observed in animal feeding studies.

Acute Health Effects:

Ingestion: Not a normal route of exposure. Harmful if swallowed. Can cause irritation to mouth, esophagus, stomach, and mucous membranes.

Eye Contact: Contact causes redness, irritation, pain, blurred vision, tearing, corneal injury and burns.

Inhalation: Harmful if inhaled. Coughing, headaches, labored breathing, nausea, shortness of breath, pulmonary edema.

Chronic Health Effects: May have effects on lungs, resulting in chronic bronchitis and permanent lung damage (with chronic exposure).
For more information, please visit our forum discussion.

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Attention

Deadly Chemical Being Sold as Miracle Cure

Erik Jensen
The Sydney Morning Herald
Sat, 09 Jan 2010 15:00 UTC
A chemical plant in South Australia is being used to manufacture a drug implicated in the death of a woman in Vanuatu last year. The product, likened to ''concentrated bleach'', is freely available in Australia and was responsible for at least three hospital admissions in NSW last year.

Miracle Mineral Solution, a chlorine dioxide solution claimed to treat everything from AIDS to leukaemia, is not registered for medical use in Australia and is being investigated by the Therapeutic Goods Administration over ''concerns about this product''.

But it is being produced and sold online by several Australian companies that claim variously that it is a cure for malaria, cancer, asthma and arthritis. Last year, six people suffered adverse reactions to the drug in NSW, according to the state's poisons centre. ''It's a bit like drinking concentrated bleach. They've had corrosive injuries: vomiting, stomach pains, diarrhoea,'' the medical director of the NSW Poisons Information Centre, Dr Naren Gunja, said. ''None of the people we know of have died. But if you drink enough sodium chlorite [the main chemical in MMS] and it causes problems of methemoglobinemia or kidney problems, it could cause death.''

Comment: Anybody, who advocates drinking this poison, should first try it, and then go to do blood tests, provided that they are still able to stand on two legs.

Drinking bleach is not going to get anybody too far. It is beyond understanding that this scam was allowed to last so long.

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Women Can Dramatically Slash Their Risk of Strokes Through Regular Walking

S. L. Baker
NaturalNews
Mon, 26 Apr 2010 15:00 UTC
Image
© Getty Images
A large, long-term study just reported in the American Heart Association journal Stroke has great news for women. Once again, a non-drug approach to avoiding one of the country's top killers has been shown to be a powerful "prescription". Harvard researchers found that women can dramatically slash their risk for both clot-caused (ischemic) strokes as well as bleeding (hemorrhagic) strokes by simply walking regularly.

"Though the exact relationship among different types of physical activity and different stroke subtypes remains unclear, the results of this specific study indicate that walking, in particular, is associated with lower risk of stroke," Jacob R. Sattelmair, M.Sc., lead author and doctoral candidate in epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health, said in a statement to the media.

The research team followed 39,315 U.S. female health professionals with an average age of 54 who were taking part in the Women's Health Study. Every two to three years, the study participants reported the physical activities they'd engaged in during the past years -- including walking or hiking, jogging, running, biking, doing aerobic exercise/aerobic dance, using exercise machines, playing tennis, swimming, or doing yoga. The women also reported how fast they tended to walk -- whether their walking pace was casual (about 2 mph), normal (2.9 mph), brisk (3.9 mph) or very brisk (4 mph).
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