Health & WellnessS


Arrow Up

Minnesota becomes first state to ban triclosan, controversial ingredient in antibacterial soaps

Aaron Rupar
blogs.citypages.com
Tue, 20 May 2014 08:33 UTC
Image
© botanicskinessentials.comTriclosan is in roughly 75 percent of antibacterial soaps and body washes.
Tucked into an environment bill signed into law by Gov. Mark Dayton on Friday was a measure banning triclosan, a controversial antibacterial agent found in a wide array of consumer products.

Minnesota is the first state to ban triclosan, which is currently being reviewed by the Food and Drug Administration.

The ban, which was approved by the Legislature with broad bipartisan support, has drawn the ire of the D.C.- based American Cleaning Institute.

ACI spokesman Brian Sansoni argues research on triclosan hasn't shown that the agent has any negative health impact on humans.

"For members of the public who want to choose these products, they should certainly be able to have access to them," Sansoni tells us. "This particular chemical has been in use for over 40 years, primarily in health care and then in the consumer space, and it has been safely used. We use it to wash our hands and in other applications too, and it continues to be safely used, and it's been more researched than just about any other ingredient that's used in consumer products."

Comment: Read more about the growing concerns of antibacterial products with triclosan:

The Dangers of Triclosan: A Common Anti-Bacterial Ingredient
Scientists: Chemical in antibacterial hand soaps poses health risks
Freaky Clean: Chemical in antibacterial soap weakens muscle function
Why You Don't Want to Use Antibacterial Soap Anymore
Triclosan May Be Harmful to Health, Says FDA

Read More...
Pills

Doctors ignore guidelines and prescribe antibiotics that don't work

John Tozzi
Bloomberg Business Week
Tue, 20 May 2014 17:25 UTC
Doctor and Patient
© Shutterstock
Medical researchers concluded years ago that antibiotics don't cure acute bronchitis. The drugs might reduce your coughing symptoms slightly, but the antibiotics also increase your risk of side effects such as diarrhea and nausea. And overuse of antibiotics breeds bacteria resistant to the current cures.

Yet patients who show up to clinics or emergency rooms with bronchitis still receive antibiotics about 70 percent of the time, according to a new review of prescribing data published in JAMA: The Journal of the American Medical Association. And the rate even increased slightly between 1996 and 2010 despite efforts to educate doctors and establish guidelines against antibiotics.

Comment: See also:

Overuse of Antibiotics

Doctors Told to Stop Giving Antibiotics for Colds

Read More...
Magnify

Functional nerve cells from skin cells


ScienceDaily
Wed, 21 May 2014 13:59 UTC
Image
© Fahad AliThese are mature nerve cells generated from human cells using enhanced transcription factors.
A new method of generating mature nerve cells from skin cells could greatly enhance understanding of neurodegenerative diseases, and could accelerate the development of new drugs and stem cell-based regenerative medicine.

The nerve cells generated by this new method show the same functional characteristics as the mature cells found in the body, making them much better models for the study of age-related diseases such as Parkinson's and Alzheimer's, and for the testing of new drugs.

Eventually, the technique could also be used to generate mature nerve cells for transplantation into patients with a range of neurodegenerative diseases.

By studying how nerves form in developing tadpoles, researchers from the University of Cambridge were able to identify ways to speed up the cellular processes by which human nerve cells mature. The findings are reported in the May 27th edition of the journal Development.

Stem cells are our master cells, which can develop into almost any cell type within the body. Within a stem cell, there are mechanisms that tell it when to divide, and when to stop dividing and transform into another cell type, a process known as cell differentiation. Several years ago, researchers determined that a group of proteins known as transcription factors, which are found in many tissues throughout the body, regulate both mechanisms.
Read More...
Hearts

Midwifery units provide better experiences than hospitals for women with low-risk pregnancies


Medicalexpress.com
Mon, 19 May 2014 13:47 UTC
Image
Women who planned to give birth in a freestanding midwifery unit rather than in the local hospital obstetric unit were more likely to report a good experience, according to researchers at City University London.

The study - which is published in the journal Midwifery - found that women who went to the midwifery unit in labour were significantly more likely to experience one-to-one care and have the same midwife with them throughout their labour. They were also more likely to report that staff were kind and understanding and treated them with respect and dignity.
Read More...
Muffin

Does gluten have any effect on non-celiacs?

Mark Sisson
Marksdailyapple.com
Wed, 21 May 2014 00:00 UTC
Image
© Unknown
The headlines are everywhere: gluten sensitivity doesn't actually exist, and anyone who thinks they have it is a liar, delusional, dumb, or all three. The message isn't a new one, but the stories do point to a new study from a group of researchers who previously found that removing wheat from the diet improved symptoms in people with IBS. In the new paper, the researchers tested whether isolated gluten - rather than wheat - exacerbated IBS symptoms. It did not. The IBS patients in the latest study showed no reaction to isolated gluten, and the only dietary variable that increased their symptoms was wheat. This could suggest that at least for some people (with IBS), gluten sensitivity may actually be wheat sensitivity triggered by the fermentable FODMAP fibers found in the grain.

Comment: Some additional resources on the dangers of gluten:

Beyond Celiac disease: The universal toxicity of wheat, Part I
Wheat contains over 23,000 potentially harmful proteins
Gluten - Biohazard and pathogen

Read More...
2 + 2 = 4

Always hungry? Here's why

David S. Ludwig and Mark I. Friedman
The New York Times
Fri, 16 May 2014 10:49 UTC
Image
© Sarah Illenberger
For most of the last century, our understanding of the cause of obesity has been based on immutable physical law. Specifically, it's the first law of thermodynamics, which dictates that energy can neither be created nor destroyed. When it comes to body weight, this means that calorie intake minus calorie expenditure equals calories stored. Surrounded by tempting foods, we overeat, consuming more calories than we can burn off, and the excess is deposited as fat. The simple solution is to exert willpower and eat less.

The problem is that this advice doesn't work, at least not for most people over the long term. In other words, your New Year's resolution to lose weight probably won't last through the spring, let alone affect how you look in a swimsuit in July. More of us than ever are obese, despite an incessant focus on calorie balance by the government, nutrition organizations and the food industry.

But what if we've confused cause and effect? What if it's not overeating that causes us to get fat, but the process of getting fatter that causes us to overeat?

The more calories we lock away in fat tissue, the fewer there are circulating in the bloodstream to satisfy the body's requirements. If we look at it this way, it's a distribution problem: We have an abundance of calories, but they're in the wrong place. As a result, the body needs to increase its intake. We get hungrier because we're getting fatter.

Comment: For more information, see:

-The key to automatic weight loss!
-Increasing Adiposity: Consequence or Cause of Overeating?

No wonder the ketogenic diet has proved most effective in weight loss! See:

-The Ketogenic Diet - An Overview
-Beyond weight loss: a review of the therapeutic uses of very-low-carbohydrate (ketogenic) diets
-Low-carb, high-fat ketogenic diet fuels rapid weight loss

Read More...
Key

The key to automatic weight loss!

Mark Hyman, MD
Dr. Mark Hyman
Mon, 19 May 2014 10:34 UTC
Why are we fat? Is it gluttony, or is your fat actually hungry?

Image
Carbs are the culprits!
What if everything you ever learned about weight loss was wrong? What if losing weight has nothing to do with calories - counting them or cutting them out by sheer willpower? What if, in fact, most health professionals (including doctors and dietitians), our own government and especially the food industry are giving us weight loss advice guaranteed to make us fat?

Here's their mantra: "Eat less and exercise more. The secret to weight loss is energy balance. There are no good or bad calories. It's all about moderation."

If you doubt that this advice could be wrong, just look around. We have tripled our obesity rates since 1960, and in the last decade, cases of type 2 diabetes in children have increased by over 30 percent. In 1980, there were no children with type 2 diabetes (formerly known as adult onset diabetes), and now, there are over 50,000. Seven out of ten Americans are overweight. The advice is not working. Could it be the wrong advice?

Nobody wakes up in the morning saying, "Hey, I want to gain weight today. I am going to overeat. I want to be fat."

Rather, we have a $60 billion weight loss industry. It specializes in helping people count calories, eat less and exercise more. When are we going to realize that that our approach - as a scientific community and as policy makers - is failing miserably at stemming the tsunami of obesity and related health, social and economic costs?

Could it be we have it all wrong? Could it be the world is round, not flat, even though it looks flat, just as it seems that if you eat fewer calories than you burn, you will lose weight?

The answer is yes. Our focus on calories has missed the mark entirely. Even if you held the Guinness world record for calorie counting, you could easily be off by 100 calories a day. Do that for 30 years, and you will be 20 to 30 pounds overweight.

Comment: For more information, see:

- Always hungry? Here's why
-Increasing Adiposity: Consequence or Cause of Overeating?
-The Ketogenic Diet - An Overview
-Beyond weight loss: a review of the therapeutic uses of very-low-carbohydrate (ketogenic) diets
-Low-carb, high-fat ketogenic diet fuels rapid weight loss

Read More...
Arrow Down

Big Food companies tell dieticians conference: GMOs are safe and gluten intolerance is a fad


Alliance for Natural Health
Wed, 21 May 2014 10:20 UTC
Meanwhile, there are fresh victories (and challenges) in the battle to stop AND from monopolizing nutrition advice.
Image
© Kiera ButlerMcDonald's sponsored the annual conference of the California branch of the nutritionists' professional organization.
Picture yourself at a continuing education conference for professionals. In the morning, you grab a Hershey's chocolate milk and head to a panel - sponsored by the Wheat Council - on how gluten intolerance is just a "fad." After a lunch provided by McDonalds, you listen in on a discussion (hosted by the Big Food front group International Food Information Council) about how GMOs are perfectly safe and environmentally friendly.

Was this a continuing ed conference for Big Food propagandists? Nope - Registered Dieticians! This was Mother Jones reporter Kiera Butler's actual experience at the annual conference of the California Dietetic Association.

Frankly, we'd expect nothing less from the Coca-Cola, Abbott Nutrition, Pepsi, General Mills, and Kellogg's-funded Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics (AND). After all, corporate contributions are the AND's largest source of income. In fact, the AND's mission has become so skewed that its own members have formed an organization - Dieticians for Professional Integrity - to protest its hijacking by corporate interests.

Why are the AND's doings of concern to the natural health community? Because, as we've previously reported, the AND uses its financial clout to bar other highly qualified professionals from the field of nutritional therapy, to the lasting detriment of consumer choice.
Read More...
Attention

The Food Industry-- Your every day poison delivery source

Rob Kall
OpedNews
Mon, 19 May 2014 09:00 UTC
Pesticide Warning Sign
© Valley_PhotographsPesticide Warning Sign -- Don't walk there, but eat the food!

Pick Your Poisoned Food

Is it possible to eat food that is not poisoned today?

If you buy 98% of the items in a grocery store they are processed foods with all kinds of preservatives and other chemicals added.

Even if you buy food labeled organic, there's a possibility that a percentage of the food is problematic.

Buy produce and most likely it is saturated in insecticides or weed killers, especially the GMO food brought to us by Monsanto and friends. The whole idea of GMO is to breed plants that are not killed when sprayed with insecticides and weed killers.

Well, you could find a local organic farm and join its CSA (community supported agriculture) but you can't be sure that the groundwater isn't polluted from local fracking. Frackers don't have to say what's in the fluids they pump into the ground-- fluids which pollute the local aquifer.

You can be pretty sure that if you are buying food packaged by any of the big food companies that it's been processed, and even if it isn't, there's a really good chance the company has donated to GMO labeling campaigns. I'm using the Buycott app on my phone so I can scan products to make sure I'm not giving business to the Koch brothers or companies that have funded anti GMO campaigns.

If you go to a restaurant you can be almost certain that the food is not organic, that it's loaded with chemical preservatives, or worse, poisons from pesticides and weed killers.

A huge percentage of foods and drinks use corn syrup to sweeten them. Almost all corn is GMO. GMO food is made so it tolerates more pesticides and weed killers. Sweeteners are used to addict us to foods.
Read More...
Health

Virus experiments risk unleashing global pandemic, study warns

Ian Sample
The Guardian
Tue, 20 May 2014 00:00 UTC
Science, flu
© REUTERSScientists examine specimens of the 1918 pandemic influenza virus in the US.
Public health experts have warned that controversial experiments on mutant viruses could put human lives in danger by unleashing an accidental pandemic.

Several groups of scientists around the world are creating and altering viruses to understand how natural strains might evolve into more lethal forms that spread easily among humans.

But in a report published on Tuesday, researchers at Harvard and Yale universities in the US argue that the benefits of the work are outweighed by the risk of pathogenic strains escaping from laboratories and spreading around the world.
Read More...