Patna - At least 22 children died and more than two dozen others were sick after eating a free school lunch that was tainted with insecticide, Indian officials said Wednesday.

It was not immediately clear how chemicals ended up in the food in a school in the eastern state of Bihar. One official said the food may not have been properly washed before it was cooked.

The children, between the ages of 5 and 12, fell ill Tuesday soon after eating lunch in Gandamal village in Masrakh block, 50 miles north of the state capital of Patna. School authorities immediately stopped serving the meal of rice, lentils, soybeans and potatoes as the children started vomiting.

Savita, a 12-year-old student who uses only one name, said she had a stomach ache after eating soybeans and potatoes and started vomiting.

"I don't know what happened after that," Savita said in an interview at Patna Medical College Hospital, where she and many other children were recovering.

The lunch, part of a popular national campaign to give at least one daily hot meal to children from poor families, was cooked in the school kitchen.

The children were rushed to a local hospital and later to Patna for treatment, said state official Abhijit Sinha.

The mainstream health authorities have an excellent track record of getting things wrong. Since the failed low-fat diet was born in 1977, rates of obesity and diabetes have skyrocketed. New evidence shows that this advice is not only ineffective, but downright harmful for a lot of people. However, despite the studies piling up, the major organizations and their guidelines show no signs of being about to change.

Here are 6 reasons why I do not trust the mainstream health authorities.

1. Many of them are sponsored by the big junk food companies

In a perfect world, the people in charge of setting dietary guidelines and educating future and current nutrition professionals would be objective.

They would let current science guide their way, not old dogmas, political pressure or financial influences.

However, we do not live in a perfect world. We live in a world that is dominated by money and major corporations exert their influences everywhere, including the health organizations that are supposed to be in charge of protecting our health.

The best example of this is the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, the "world's largest organization of food and nutrition professionals" (formerly known as the ADA - American Dietetic Association).

This organization licenses and educates registered dietitians, the people who are supposed to be the ultimate authorities of what to eat to be healthy.

However, this organization is heavily sponsored by junk food companies.

Here are some of the Academy's most "loyal" corporate sponsors:

This month a group of Dalit (or Untouchables, as they were formerly labelled) students organised a Beef Festival in Osmania University of Hyderabad. It was the festival to assert their culinary rights in public and make a political statement of dietary habits of Dalits and Muslims - by cooking and eating beef Biryani on campus.

About 2000 students participated and although it started out well, the festival was disrupted and students were attacked by right-wing Hindu fascists. The Network of Women in Media, India (NWMI) released a statement describing how Meena Kandasamy, a writer and poet who participated in the festival, was singled out and threatened with gang rape and acid attacks.

This festival is very significant as some Dalit students have organised themselves to fight against food-fascism, campaigning against the very centre of Brahmanical Hinduism that connects caste with food. Culinary politics and contact with animals play a huge role in establishing purity-pollution rules to discriminate people in the caste system.

Have Brahmans always been beef-hating vegetarians? The answer is a resounding no.

Hitler was a complex figure: an inhuman monster who could nevertheless love animals, espouse vegetarianism and be vehemently opposed to smoking.

Adolph Hitler is infamous for his dream of Aryan world conquest, his hatred of the Jewish race and his extermination camps. Nevertheless, like all the great horrendous villains of history, he was not a one-dimensional cardboard cut-out figure, but a multi-faceted individual with paradoxical qualities that in someone else might be considered virtues.

Hitler the Famous Vegetarian and Health Freak

Hitler, the man who could coldly order the death of millions of innocent people, did not like harm to come to animals and so was a vegetarian. According to Colin Cross in History Makers, Hitler refused to eat meat and was harshly critical of others he described as 'eating carcasses'. He employed an excellent chef to prepare him meals of vegetables or eggs. On state occasions he would not bend the rule: on his visit with Mussolini, he refused the grand banquet fare offered and had a plate of scrambled eggs cooked for himself. Those who wanted to toady to Hitler became vegetarian. Cross records that Martin Bormann was despised by his colleagues for being a vegetarian in front of Hitler at dinner but tucking in to a plate of meat when he got home.

Nevertheless, despite the need for some staffers to emulate him, Hitler did not insist on others being vegetarian. He always offered meat and alcohol to his guests even though he did not touch it himself.

If you want to get ahead, get a brain

There is overwhelming evidence that we can not be a vegetarian species. In 1972 the publication of two independent investigations confirmed this.^-1-2They concerned fats. About half our brain and nervous system is composed of complicated, long-chain, fatty acids. These are also used in the walls of our blood vessels. Without them we cannot develop normally. These fatty acids do not occur in plants, although fatty acids in a simpler form do. This is where plant-eating herbivores come in. Over the year, the herbivores convert the simple fatty acids found in grasses and seeds into intermediate, more complicated forms. By eating the herbivores we can convert their stores of these fatty acids into the ones we need.

About 2.5 million years ago animal foods began to occupy an increasingly prominent place in our ancestors' menus. Smaller molar size, less robust facial muscles and alterations in incisor shape from that time all suggest a greater emphasis on foods such as meat that require less grinding and more tearing.

An increasing proportion of meat in the diet would obviously have provided more animal protein, a factor perhaps related to the increase in stature which appears to have accompanied the transition from Australopithecines through Homo habilis to Homo erectus.^-3

But greater availability of animal fat was probably a more important dietary alteration. Crude stone tools allowed early humans to break bones and allowed them access to brain and marrow fats from a broad range of animals obtained by scavenging or hunting. These and other carcass fats were probably as prized by early hominids as they are by modern human hunter-gatherers.^-4

Not only did more animal fat in the diet mean considerably more energy, it was also a source of ready-made, long-chain, polyunsaturated fatty acids, including omega-6 arachidonic acid (AA), omega-3 docosatetraenoic acid (DTA) and omega-3 docosahexaenoic acid (DHA). These 3 fatty acids together make up over 90% of the fatty acids found in the brain matter of all mammalian species.^-5

Our brain is considerably larger than that of any ape. Looking back at the fossil records from early hominids to modern man, we see a remarkable increase in brain size from 375-550 ml at the time of Australopithecus, to 500-800 ml in Homo habilis, 775-1,225 ml in Homo erectus, and 1,350 cc in modern humans (Homo sapiens). While there is still speculation about why this should have happened, this increase in brain size could not have been supported physiologically without an increased intake of preformed long-chain fatty acids which are an essential component in the formation of brain tissue.^-6 It would never have occurred if our ancestors had not eaten meat - with its fat. Human breast milk contains the fatty acids needed for large brain development, cow's milk does not. It is no coincidence that, in relative terms, our brain is some 50 times the size of a cow's.

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.