Health & WellnessS


Health

Greece, Israel, Cyprus to share transplant organs


PR-inside.com/Associated Press
Fri, 06 Jun 2008 15:19 UTC
Health officials from Greece, Israel and Cyprus met in Miami on Thursday to discuss a plan to share transplant organs and overcome the challenge of having small populations and low donation rates.

An informal pooling of medical resources _ organs as well as specialist surgeons _ has existed among them for several years. But the Mediterranean nations are now looking to formalize the relationship, make it more efficient and consistent, and establish a Web-based donor registry to facilitate it, officials said.
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Attention

What you need to know about MONSANTO and our food!


BloggerMom
Tue, 03 Jun 2008 15:13 UTC


Image

Many people haven't heard of Monsanto before. But I guarantee after reading this you will remember it.

Monsanto, the chemical giant, has created some of the most toxic substances whose residues have creates the most polluted places on our earth (Barlett, 2008). With that in mind, it is scary to think they have infiltrated the worlds agriculture with genetically modified seeds and mafia like tactics.

Monsanto has produced Genetically modified soybeans, corn, canola, and cotton. More are in the works including sugar beets, and alfalfa. They are also branching out with a strangle hold on the milk industry marketing artificial growth hormones that increase milk production in dairy cow. Monsanto is taking aggressive steps to put those who do not use growth hormones out of business (Barlett, 2008).
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Stop

Flashback Half of All Americans Wouldn't Buy FrankenFoods...If They Could Tell The Difference

MC Milker
Ecopreneurist
Fri, 23 May 2008 14:43 UTC
A recent New York Times/CBS poll bears good news for ecopreneurs in the food industry. Fifty-Three percent of consumers said they would not buy genetically modified food. Unfortunately, there's no way to tell the difference between Frankenfoods and the real thing.
A new CBS News poll found that 87% of consumers would like GMO ingredients to be labeled, just as they are in Europe, Japan and Australia. Yet the U.S. Congress has never even held a vote on the issue, to give shoppers the opportunity to exercise their most basic right - to make a choice.
Once again, labeling decisions made by the FDA and USDA, influenced heavily by big agriculture are keeping consumers from understanding what is in their food. The FDA's position is: GMOs are the "substantial equivalent" of conventional crops and so does not require "disclosure of genetic engineering techniques...on the label."Of course, there's an explanation for that.
Robert Brackett is spokesman for the Grocery Manufacturers of America.

"I think that consumers have that information available to them if they want to look for it," says Brackett, "You can find it on websites. You can go directly to the manufacturer."
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People

Nearly 1 in 5 teenagers admit eating problems, but anxiety is a bigger problem than appearance


Wiley-Blackwell
Wed, 04 Jun 2008 12:56 UTC
Eighteen per cent of school children who took part in two health surveys carried out a year apart admitted they had eating problems, according to research published in the latest Journal of Advanced Nursing.

Thirteen per cent admitted eating problems in either the first or second survey and a further five per cent reported problems in both surveys.

Students who had ongoing eating problems were more likely to report multiple psychological problems and health complaints.

"For example we noticed that students who reported suffering from anxiety earlier in adolescence were 20 times more likely to have ongoing eating problems" says Lea Hautala from the Adolescent Psychiatry Clinic at the University of Turku, Finland.

"And teenagers who were dissatisfied with their appearance only had recurring eating problems if they also reported anxiety earlier in adolescence."
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Coffee

Eating and weight gain not necessarily linked, study shows


University of California - San Francisco
Tue, 03 Jun 2008 11:41 UTC
You may not be what you eat after all.

A new study shows that increased eating does not necessarily lead to increased fat. The finding in the much-studied roundworm opens the possibility of identifying new targets for drugs to control weight, the researchers say.

The discovery reveals that the neurotransmitter serotonin, already known to control appetite and fat build-up, actually does so through two separate signaling channels. One set of signals regulates feeding, and a separate set of signals regulates fat metabolism. The worm, known scientifically as Caenorhabdtis elegans, shares half of its genes with humans and is often a predictor of human traits.

The signaling pathways are composed of a series of molecular events triggered by neurons in the brain that ultimately "instruct" the body to burn or store fat.

If the "separate-channel" mechanism is also found in humans, weight-loss drugs might be developed to attack just the fat-deposition channel rather than the hunger-dampening pathway that has met with limited success, says Kaveh Ashrafi, PhD, assistant professor of physiology at UCSF and senior author on the scientific paper reporting the study.
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Bulb

Little or No Evidence Supports Conventional Medical Treatments

Barbara L. Minton
NaturalNews
Thu, 05 Jun 2008 00:18 UTC
Do you ever get the feeling that your doctor doesn't know what he's doing? Well, you are probably right. There is little or no evidence that today's $2 trillion-dollar medical system works any better than various other alternatives. Whether you have diabetes, heart trouble, back pain or cancer, this judgment applies. If you are contemplating surgery, you should know that the orthodox disease establishment doctors have little clue about the success rates for the procedures they endorse.
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Pills

A Look at How the Field of Psychiatry Is Over-Medicating Our Country

Jo Hartley
NaturalNews
Thu, 05 Jun 2008 00:13 UTC
Over recent years, we in the U.S. have become accustomed to the seemingly never-ending parade of prescription drug commercials on television. It's surprising to learn that the only two places advertising of this kind is legal is in the United States and New Zealand.

Would it surprise you to learn that the pharmaceutical industry not only targets Americans directly in this fashion, but also allocates approximately $25,000 per doctor per year? With the help of today's technology, a pharmaceutical representative can know exactly how many prescriptions a doctor has written and for what drugs. Obviously, this information allows the industry to target certain physicians that fit certain profiles.
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Health

Sucrose and Fructose Found to Promote Pancreatic Cancer

David Gutierrez
NaturalNews
Thu, 05 Jun 2008 22:33 UTC
High intake of the sugars fructose and sucrose may increase the risk of developing pancreatic cancer, according to a new study conducted by researchers from the University of Hawaii and the University of Southern California.

Researchers analyzed dietary data on 162,150 people who had participated in the Hawaii-Los Angeles Multiethnic Cohort Study, looking for evidence that a diet with a high glycemic load increases the risk of pancreatic cancer. Participants filled out a food frequency questionnaire at the beginning of the study and were followed for eight years. In that time, 434 participants developed cancer of the pancreas.
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Info

Are Panic And Inability To Express Emotions Related?


Science Daily
Thu, 05 Jun 2008 18:58 UTC
Investigators of the University of Naples have explored the inability to express emotions (alexithymia) in panic disorder. In patients with panic disorder (PD), the difficulty to identify and manage emotional experience might contribute to the enduring vulnerability to panic attacks. Such a difficulty might reflect a dysfunction of fronto-temporo-limbic circuits.

The present study was designed to test the hypothesis that drug-free patients with PD, as compared with healthy subjects (HS), show a higher prevalence of alexithymia, greater difficulty in emotional stimuli processing and poorer performance on neuropsychological tests exploring the activity of fronto-temporo-limbic circuits.

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People

Does everyone really want to be a macho man?


University of Missouri-Columbia
Wed, 04 Jun 2008 16:00 UTC
Traditional attitudes of masculinity, such as physical toughness and personal sacrifice, are valued in Mexican culture. A University of Missouri researcher found that Mexican-American men, as a group, are more likely to endorse traditional 'macho man' attitudes than European-American or black men. Certain factors influenced this attitude, including socioeconomic status (SES). The higher the SES, the greater the likihood that Mexican-American men held tightly to traditional masculine roles, even at the expense of emotional pressure.

According to the study, Mexican-American men who embraced traditional 'macho man' beliefs were more engaged with traditional Mexican culture and often were the primary breadwinners for the family. There were no significant findings that age affected these attitudes.
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