Fears are growing over the safety of an anti-smoking "wonder drug", taken by nearly a quarter of a million Britons, after officials in America linked it to 37 suicides.

The Food and Drug Administration said it looks "increasingly likely" that there is a connection between the drug Champix and serious psychiatric problems.

The Mail on Sunday revealed in December that there were concerns over the drug after it emerged that seven deaths in Britain were thought to be linked to the pill.

But updated figures now suggest that 11 people taking Champix in the UK have died.

And reports of suspected adverse reactions to the drug to the Government's medicines watchdog, the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency, have risen by 35 per cent to 1,811 in just the past seven weeks.

The FDA began investigating Champix in November after a number of patients reported possible side-effects ranging from depression and agitation to headaches and nausea.

On top of the 37 suicides, it has recorded more than 400 cases of suicidal behaviour.

You've seen such lists before: 5 steps to prevent heart disease or some such thing. These lists usually say things like "cut your saturated fat," eat a "balanced diet" (whatever the heck that means), exercise, and don't smoke.

I would offer a different list. You already know that smoking is a supremely idiotic habit, so I won't repeat that. Here are the 5 most important strategies I know of that help you prevent heart disease and heart attack:


1) Eliminate wheat from the diet--Provided you don't do something stupid, like allow M&M's, Coca Cola, and corn chips to dominate your diet, elimination of wheat is an enormously effective means to reduce small LDL particles, reduce triglycerides, increase HDL, reduce inflammatory measures like c-reactive protein, lose weight (inflammation-driving visceral fat), reduce blood sugar, and reduce blood pressure. I know of no other single dietary strategy that packs as much punch. This has become even more true over the past 20 years, ever since the dwarf variant of modern wheat has come to dominate.

2) Achieve a desirable 25-hydroxy vitamin D level--Contrary to the inane comments of the Institute of Medicine, vitamin D supplementation increases HDL, reduces small LDL, normalizes insulin and reduces blood sugar, reduces blood pressure, and exerts potent anti-inflammatory effects on c-reactive protein, matrix metalloproteinase, and other inflammatory mediators. While we also have drugs that mimic some of these effects, vitamin D does so without side-effects.

Sausages, bacon, fried bread, black pudding, eggs - for generations it's been seen as the quintessentially British start to the day.

But our love of a 'full English' fry-up is in danger of sizzling out, according to a survey.

Just one in 100 is tucking in to bacon and eggs for breakfast each day, compared with more than half the population in 1950.

But with just over half of Britons estimated to be overweight, the dive in popularity could be partly explained by the battle to beat the bulge, according to the Good Food channel's Big Adventure Breakfast Report.

Ingredients of a 'Full Monty' fry-up, which averages 1,000 calories, are being replaced with less fattening options.

The first GM food crop containing human genes is set to be approved for commercial production.

The laboratory-created rice produces some of the human proteins found in breast milk and saliva.

Its U.S. developers say they could be used to treat children with diarrhoea, a major killer in the Third World.

The rice is a major step in so-called Frankenstein Foods, the first mingling of human-origin genes and those from plants. But the U.S. Department of Agriculture has already signalled it plans to allow commercial cultivation.

The rice's producers, California-based Ventria Bioscience, have been given preliminary approval to grow it on more than 3,000 acres in Kansas. The company plans to harvest the proteins and use them in drinks, desserts, yoghurts and muesli bars.

Though they seem to have more lives than a cat, it seems likely that Quackbusters will be down for the count.

Amidst the morass of fallacious attacks by mainstream medicine on honest alternative approaches to health, now and then there's a glitter of good news. It's a breath of fresh air to announce that the self-styled Quackbusters, headed by a self-styled psychiatrist who failed his exam and was never accepted into the profession, has fallen to one of its targeted victims.

On 25 June, the tables were turned on Stephen Barrett. The Doctor's Data Laboratory, which does laboratory testing on issues of heavy metal, nutritional deficiencies, liver toxification, metabolic abnormalities, and environmentally-caused diseases sued Barrett for what, after getting through the legaleze, amounts to defamation of character, libel, conspiracy, and intentionally attempting to destroy their business.

The suit asks for $5 million in damages and another $15 million in punitive damages, plus injunctions to prevent Barrett from ever attempting to destroy their business in the future. Barrett has initiated many frivolous lawsuits against alternative practitioners, causing enormous trauma and expense to his victims, is currently out of cash. The last time Barrett was sued for libel, he relied on his homeowners insurance to defend him. That source of legal defense money appears not to be available to him now.

Barrett had until 12 July to file a response to the Federal lawsuit filed by Doctor's Data Lab. He never responded.

The corporation Barrett presided over, Quackwatch, which seems to have been the recipient of mysterious funding through most of its history, is now unable provide a defense. Aside from its websites, Quackwatch now appears to be defunct.

Stephen Barrett, Lead Quackbuster

Stephen Barrett is a retired psychiatrist and hires himself out as an "expert" to testify against non-mainstream medical practitioners. He is a retired psychiatrist, though he was never certified because he didn't pass the board examinations. In America, once licensed as a physician, it's legal to practice any type of medicine desired. Simply take a look at the storefront self-styled plastic surgeons doing liposuction and other plastic surgery.

Barrett was terminated from a part time position by the Pennsylvania State Mental Hospital in 1993 and, in a profession that has supposedly been very short staffed for more than two decades, he was unable to find work. He turned his medical license in and retreated - some say to his basement.

This post has been removed because we received the following from the author:

Please remove the post, "Lactose Intolerance Can Be A Symptom Of Gluten Intolerance" posted Saturday January 22nd. I am the author of this content and would like it removed from your site immediately.I don't mind if you put the first paragraph of my post with a link back to my site, but it is against the the international copyrighting law to take the whole post and post it on your site.

Shelly Stuart

If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.
-Joseph Goebbels(pictured left), Reich Minister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda

The history of our race, and each individual's experience, are sown thick with evidence that a truth is not hard to kill and that a lie told well is immortal.
-Mark Twain, Advice to Youth

I've always loved the above two quotes because their sentiments are so on the money. It is sad but true that the bigger the lie, the more people are willing to unquestioningly accept it. And the greater the mass of people who accept the lie, the easier it is to persuade others to join the growing crowd. In such a way does a great lie snowball into a great 'truth.'

Nutritionally I can't think of a bigger lie than the one claiming that fats in general and saturated fats in particular are bad for us. This lie is so deeply embedded in the minds of most that you couldn't blow it out with a stick of dynamite. Especially in the minds of academics, and more especially in the minds of most dietitians. Not all, but most. Nutritionally, it is truly the Big Lie.

Despite the fact that they all tenaciously cling to the Big Lie, the evidence disputes it. But, "a lie told well is immortal." Over at Whole Health Source Stephen Guyenet wrote a post recently looking at the observational data about saturated fat and cholesterol levels and heart disease. Most of the Big Lie devotees worry obsessively about saturated fat intake while the great mass of observational data shows little, if any, correlation. A couple of years ago, I wrote a long post about the invalidity of observational studies as proof of much anything, but in that post I neglected to mention that although observational studies can't show that correlation equals causation, they probably are valid in demonstrating the opposite: if there is no correlation, there probably isn't much of a case for causation. So, if there isn't a lot of correlation between saturated fat intake and elevated cholesterol and/or heart disease, is doubtful that saturated fat intake is causal.

Today marks nine months since the BP Deepwater Horizon offshore oil rig exploded, killing 11 workers and sending millions of gallons of crude oil pouring into the Gulf of Mexico.

Though the gushing well was capped last July, oil continues to wash ashore along the Gulf Coast. BP's oil is also washing up in people's bodies, raising concerns about long-term health effects.

This month the Louisiana Environmental Action Network released the results of tests performed on blood samples collected from Gulf residents. Whole blood samples were collected from 12 people between the ages of 10 and 66 in September, November and December and analyzed by a professional lab in Georgia, with the findings interpreted by environmental chemist and LEAN technical adviser Wilma Subra.

The individuals tested were two boys ages 10 and 11, four men and six women. They included cleanup workers on Orange Beach, Ala., crabbers from the Biloxi, Miss. area and people living on Perdido Key, Ala.

Four of the people tested -- including three adults and the 10-year-old -- showed unusually high levels of benzene, a particularly toxic component of crude oil. Subra compared the levels found in the test subjects to the levels found in subjects in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), a research program conducted by the National Center for Health Statistics.

Generally in practice we're able to make significant headway with all sorts of people with all sorts of health issues be they a 57 year-old man with type 2 diabetes or a 23 year-old woman with irritable bowel syndrome. And yet, I do inevitably come across patients I don't seem to be able to help in any meaningful way, and this includes a handful of patients I've known over the years that suffer from a chronic, dry, tickly cough. These are individuals for whom conventional causes of cough, such as asthma, have been investigated and excluded.

I have, with these individuals, tried the sorts of approaches that one might expect from a naturally oriented doctor (e.g. identification and elimination of foods that might be triggering the problem, immune support if there's any suspicion of compromise here, herbals approaches to soothe the throat and surrounding regions). But I have to say, hand on heart, that the results have generally not been good. Reading a study published yesterday on-line in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, I feel I may have found a missing piece in the puzzle regarding the causes of, and potential cure for, a persistent dry cough.

This study focused on vitamin B12, and the fact that a deficiency in this nutrient can lead to nerve damage. Could B12 deficiency lead to enhanced reactivity in and around the throat? And if so, might B12 supplementation help reduce this as well as the symptoms of chronic cough? [1].

In 2008, the possible health risks of the Bisphenol A (BPA) - a common chemical in plastic - made headlines. Parents were alarmed, pediatricians inundated with questions, and stores sold-out of BPA-free bottles and sippy cups.

Where do things stand now? Have plastic manufacturers changed their practices? How careful does a parent need to be when it comes to plastics and BPA? Here's the latest information we have about possible BPA risks.

BPA Basics

BPA is a chemical that has been used to harden plastics for more than 40 years. It's everywhere. It's in medical devices, compact discs, dental sealants, water bottles, the lining of canned foods and drinks, and many other products.

More than 90% of us have BPA in our bodies right now. We get most of it by eating foods that have been in containers made with BPA. It's also possible to pick up BPA through air, dust, and water.

BPA was common in baby bottles, sippy cups, baby formula cans, and other products for babies and young children. Controversy changed that. Now, the six major companies that make baby bottles and cups for infants have stopped using BPA in the products they sell in the U.S. Many manufacturers of infant formula have stopped using BPA in their cans as well.

According to the U.S. Department of Health, toys generally don't contain BPA. While the hard outer shield of some pacifiers do have BPA, the nipple that the baby sucks on does not.