New research looks at how the adolescent brain responds to sugar consumption.

It's no secret that teenagers love sugar. One-fifth of the daily diet of a typical American adolescent comes from added sugar - more than any other age group. Half that sugar comes from sweetened beverages such as soda, energy drinks, and sports drinks. But there's more that sets a teen's relationship with sugar apart from an adult's sweet tooth. Not only do teens eat more of it, but it affects their brains differently too. That could have repercussions far more severe than a few cavities.

New research from Yale Medical School shows that sugar may change the still-developing adolescent brain by increasing blood flow to the parts of the brain that control reward and executive function.

With thousands of toxins circulating in the world, it can be very easy to just give up trying to avoid them. Our food supply has been denatured and our air and water have become dangerously polluted. However, there are toxins that we tend to expose ourselves to more commonly throughout our lives that disintegrate our bodies' optimal function. These 5 toxins will cripple your body and brain if left unchecked, so be aware of them, avoid them, and look for solutions to remove them.

Heavy metals

Heavy metals are not something that most people would concern themselves with in regards to food, air, water, and personal care products. But that would be a mistake as they are often at the root of many painful symptoms and disease processes.

Common exposure points to heavy metals include seafood, dental amalgams, vaccinations, personal care products, pots and pans, baking powder, smoke, paint, water, work sites, and chem trails. With the popularity of seafood, prevalence of mercury fillings, and an intense vaccination schedule, one can hardly get out of consuming heavy metals or them put directly into their body.

These deadly toxins can immediately wreak havoc causing chronic pain, fatigue, brain fog, confusion, poor memory, gastrointestinal problems, allergies, headaches, depression, skin problems, insomnia, paralysis, and more.

Learn more about heavy metals and how to remove them.

There are, to my mind, two camps of doctors in terms of their attitude to statins. Some maintain these drugs are 'highly effective' and very safe (and might even be put in the water supply). Others (who bother to look objectively at the research) tell us that statins only help a small minority of people who take them, and have potential harms that are real but underplayed by statin proponents.

Well, some prominent doctors in the latter camp came out swinging recently in the form of a letter they have written to the National Institute of Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE - a body in the UK that sets healthcare policy and is considering recommending much wider the use of statins in people who are well).

The doctors raise a number of concerns about the planned expansion of statin prescribing and the evidence on which this mooted recommendation is based. The authors raise six major issues:

1. The medicalization of millions of healthy individuals
NICE is suggesting we treat ever more people who are healthy. The problem is, in healthy individuals with no evidence of cardiovascular disease, the benefits of statins are vanishingly small, though the hazards are real and significant.

2. Conflicting levels of adverse events
Many 'experts' claim that trials show statins rarely cause problems. Actually, there are many reasons why trials can simple missed harms (like screening out people who are intolerant to statins before the study starts or recognising harms once there is extreme derangement in blood values)

3. Hidden data
The Cholesterol Treatment Trialists' Collaboration (CTT) regularly makes very pro-statin pronouncements based on the 'evidence' from trials given to them by drug companies. The problem is, no one is allowed to take a look at this data to verify it and assess its accuracy.

4. Industry bias
It is well recognised that industry funded studies tend to report more benefits and fewer harms than independently funded studies. The problem is, almost all the statin studies are industry-funded and subject to this bias.

Road-trip season is upon us. Whether you're caravanning up to a beach house or dropping the kids off at camp, the summer months are some of the busiest on the roads. And that means it can be an exceptionally dangerous time, as well -- especially considering the results of a new Harris survey.

According to the Harris survey of more than 2,000 adults, Americans know what constitutes dangerous driving, but they still cop to doing it -- including driving while texting (!) and driving after too many drinks (!!). For example, despite a majority of those surveyed affirming that driving while talking on the phone is dangerous, 74 percent said they still did it. And while seven in 10 people knew that driving while talking on a hand-held phone was dangerous, only about half that number thought driving while talking on a hands-free device was also bad news. Though a minority, this group is right -- when it comes to traffic accident risk and reaction time, hands-free conversations have been comparable to hand-held in research.

I write a lot about using coconut oil in recipes but many don't know of the benefits of using coconut oil outside of the kitchen. We keep a jar of coconut oil in our bathroom always! Coconut oil is a wonderful skin moisturizer as well as a leave in hair treatment. Below is a list of 9 ways our family uses coconut oil in the bathroom. 9 Reasons To Keep Coconut Oil In Your Bathroom

Oil Pulling - Have you swished with coconut oil? Oil pulling is a traditional way to cleanse the mouth of bacteria. Start your day with oil pulling by swishing a teaspoon of coconut oil in your mouth. Try to swish for at least 10 minutes. If you can, swish up to 20 minutes. Learn more about oil pulling here.

Use as a carrier oil. When I'm stressed or need to relax I mix a spoonful of coconut with a few drops of my favorite essential oils. I use Panaway for sore muscles, Peace and Calming for relaxation, lemon or peppermint to energize and lavender to help me sleep.

Shave Your Legs . That's right! Coconut oil is a girls best friend when it comes to shaving. If you want baby soft legs, rub a small amount of coconut oil on your legs before shaving.

Hair Treatment - Coconut oil helps reduce protein loss when used as a pre or post treatment. I swing towards pre-treating my hair by adding a 1/2 tablespoon of coconut oil to the roots and work the oil down to the ends. I then leave the coconut oil on for an hour before rinsing.

First major review provides evidence of sharp increase in deaths from painkillers in US and Canada and leading causes.
The number of deaths involving commonly prescribed painkillers is higher than the number of deaths by overdose from heroin and cocaine combined, according to researchers at McGill University. In a first-of-its-kind review of existing research, the McGill team has put the spotlight on a major public health problem: the dramatic increase in deaths due to prescribed painkillers, which were involved in more than 16,000 deaths in 2010 in the U.S. alone. Currently, the US and Canada rank #1 and #2 in per capita opioid consumption.

"Prescription painkiller overdoses have received a lot of attention in editorials and the popular press, but we wanted to find out what solid evidence is out there," says Nicholas King, of the Biomedical Ethics Unit in the Faculty of Medicine. In an effort to identify and summarize available evidence, King and his team conducted a systematic review of existing literature, comprehensively surveying the scientific literature and including only reports with quantitative evidence.

"We also wanted to find out why thousands of people in the U.S and Canada are dying from prescription painkillers every year, and why these rates have climbed steadily during the past two decades," says Nicholas King, of the Biomedical Ethics Unit in the Faculty of Medicine. "We found evidence for at least 17 different determinants of increasing opioid-related mortality, mainly, dramatically increased prescription and sales of opioids; increased use of strong, long-acting opioids like Oxycontin and methadone; combined use of opioids and other (licit and illicit) drugs and alcohol; and social and demographic factors."

Lard - yes, lard - is cropping up in kitchens around the globe.

The resurgence of lard, or pig fat seems to have come from a change in opinion about saturated fat (fat mainly from meat and dairy) and the growth of the nose-to-tail movement.

Chefs of trendy restaurants like Husk in South Carolina and Marianne in London are coming out as proud lard-servers, saying that it's "so versatile" and "healthier" than alternatives.

But even though some of the stigma has been reduced, people still don't necessarily want to order "lard" off their menus.

Marianne Lamb, the chef and owner of Marianne restaurant in London, told The Guardian that wording is key to get guests interested. "My front of house, Francesca, pronounces lardo di colonnata in perfect Italian, which makes it sound irresistible, compared to just 'lard'!" she said.

Farmers across the nation have reported ill effects in their animals when fed GMO corn and soy feed, but with a simple change, often costing less, non-GMO feed is causing better animal health and less disease.

You can conduct scientific studies on GMO all day long, but when you witness your animals getting sick right before your eyes, there is nothing more telling than that first-hand experience. Danish pig farmer Ib Pedersen was one farmer who saw immediate devastation to his pig herd after feeding them genetically modified soy. He's no inexperienced farmer, either. He supplies one of the biggest companies in his country, Danish Crown, with pork - more than 13,000 pigs a year.

He noticed pig deformities, spontaneous abortions, and intestinal health issues before switching to a non-GMO variety of feed. Just a short time later, he experienced, "less abortions, more piglets born in each litter, and breeding animals living longer." In short, his pig farm became healthy and prosperous, and he wasn't spending as much on medicine to treat unhealthy pigs.

Baby bottles from AVENT, Born Free, Green to Grow, Evenflo and Weil Baby all emit high or very high levels of hormone-altering chemicals, says new research published in the peer-reviewed journal Environmental Health. (1)

"Many PC-replacement-products made from acrylic, polystyrene, polyethersulfone, and Tritan resins leached chemicals with [estrogenic activity], including products made for use by babies. Exposure to various forms of UV radiation often increased the leaching of chemicals with estrogenic activity," write the study authors.

The conclusion of the study will send shockwaves across the baby products industry, stunning many parents who thought "BPA-free" meant "free from all hormone-disrupting chemicals."

The study authors write:

Many BPA-free PC- replacement products still leached chemicals having significant levels of estrogenic activity, as did BPA-containing PC counterparts they were meant to replace. That is, BPA-free did not mean [free from estrogenic activity].

The death toll in west Africa's three-nation Ebola outbreak has risen to 337, the Geneva-based World Health Organization said Wednesday, making it the deadliest ever outbreak of the haemorrhagic fever.

Fresh data from the UN health agency showed that the number of deaths in Guinea, the hardest-hit country, has reached 264, while 49 had died in Sierra Leone and 24 in Liberia.

The new toll marks a more than 60-percent hike since the WHO's last figure on June 4th, when it said 208 people had succumbed to the deadly virus.

Including the deaths, 528 people across the three countries have contracted Ebola, one of the deadliest viruses known to man, the WHO said.

A majority of cases, 398 of them, have surfaced in Guinea, where west Africa's first ever Ebola outbreak began in January.