Health & WellnessS


Bacon n Eggs

Two major studies conclude that saturated fat does NOT cause heart disease


drbriffa.com
Fri, 15 Jan 2010 14:48 UTC
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One of things I try and do on this blog is right what I see as nutritional wrongs. So, if there's a common perception that artificial sweeteners are better than sugar for weight loss, but there's really no evidence for that, then I'm inclined to write about it. If the evidence suggests that margarine is likely to be unhealthier than butter, I'll write about that too. Similarly, I've been keen to point out that it appears that saturated fat, widely taken as to be artery-clogging and heart disease-provoking, is nothing of the sort.

I have written more than once about this, most recently here. This review of the literature found no evidence that saturated fat causes heart disease. And it's a shame (in my opinion, anyway), that this study got no mainstream publicity.

The same, appears to be true, of a recent report published in the Annals of Nutrition and Metabolism1. You can read a complete version of this report here. The whole edition of this journal was dedicated to reporting an 'Expert Consultation' held jointly by the World Health Organization (WHO) and Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the US. The consultation took a wide, sweeping look at the relationship between fats, physiology and health, and took place in late 2008. One of the things that was inevitably a focus of the consultation was the link between saturated fat and heart disease.

The 'experts' responsible for assessing this relationship looked at two lines of evidence: epidemiological studies and intervention studies. Let's look at both in turn.
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Evil Rays

New deadly SARS-like virus has potential to transfer from human to human


Raw Story
Wed, 13 Feb 2013 13:26 UTC
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AFP Photo / Frederic J. Brown
British health officials warn a new deadly virus, similar to Sars, could spread from person to person. WHO officials are encouraging countries to be on the lookout for the new illness, as its origins remain unclear.

A new coronavirus is causing concern for the World Health Organization and medics everywhere over its ability to spread from person to person, as an eleventh case of the disease seems to prove.Out of these cases, five have resulted in death.

The virus has been registered in Saudi Arabia and Qatar, and initially was thought to spread from animals, such as bats, to humans.

But the latest patient with no history of travelling in the Middle East has been diagnosed with the virus.

The patient is a relative of another registered case, who has recently beenin the Middle East and Pakistan.
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2 + 2 = 4

The effect C-sections versus vaginal delivery can have on lifelong gut health

Alice Park
Healthland.time.com
Tue, 12 Feb 2013 09:54 UTC
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© Getty Images
Cesarean sections and breast feeding can have lifelong effects on a baby's health, and researchers may have uncovered why.

It's all about the bugs. Or, to be more precise, the bacteria that live in the gut to help digest food and, it turns out, perform a host of other important functions.

In a study published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, researchers led by Anita Kozyrskyj found that babies born by C-section harbored a different set of microbes in their digestive tracts than those born vaginally, and that infants who were breast-fed had a different recipe of bacteria in their guts than those who were given formula.
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Megaphone

Lawmakers fail to restore paleo blogger's free speech

Sara Burrows
Activist Post
Mon, 11 Feb 2013 16:47 UTC
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NC legislators back-pedal on proposal to dismantle state nutrition board after registered dietitians catch wind of it

North Carolina legislators proposed a law that would have restored Paleo Blogger Steve Cooskey's freedom of speech by allowing him to continue writing about his diet and recommending it to others, but the bill's sponsors gutted it at the last minute, with no explanation.

The bill originally would have abolished the North Carolina Board of Dietetics/Nutrition, which threatened to send Cooksey to jail for "dispensing" nutritional advice without a license.

The board was one of dozens of "wasteful" boards and commissions state legislators planned to eliminate in a bill whose purpose was to "reduce the size of government" and strengthen free enterprise. But just before it reached the Senate floor on Feb. 6, the bill's own sponsors changed their minds and decided to spare the nutrition board.

Bill sponsor Senator Bill Rabon amended the legislation so that it preserved the state's law requiring a person to have a license before sharing his opinion about what people should eat. Instead he proposed to fire the seven current board members and replace them with five new ones. It is unclear whether the new members will be more sympathetic to freedom of speech.
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Bullseye

Vaccine propaganda heats up - The latest scandals

Dr. Mercola
Mercola.com
Tue, 12 Feb 2013 16:08 UTC
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A wide range of vaccine stories have been featured in the news over the past few weeks - many, no doubt, published to propagandize the updated 2013 vaccination schedules for children and adults1, 2, 3 and to promote the seasonal flu vaccine.

Ironically, if not tragically, while increasing amounts of research highlight the many dangers of vaccinations and their ineffectiveness, the US government keeps insisting that everything is fine, "just get your shots and don't worry about it. We know what we're doing!"

But do they really? The evidence is overwhelmingly negative in this regard.

And, while suddenly paying lip service to vaccine safety, vaccine policymakers ignore the safest and most effective strategies that can naturally strengthen your immunity to help you stay well or move through illness with fewer complications if you do get sick.

For example, there are many far more effective ways to help prevent the flu and other flu-like diseases, such as dietary interventions, making sure your vitamin D and gut flora are optimized, being more meticulous about washing your hands, getting enough exercise and sleep, and taking natural antibiotics like oil of oregano and garlic.
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Question

Multiple students suffering from unexplained hiccups, tics at Massachusetts high school


Fox News
Tue, 29 Jan 2013 14:43 UTC
An investigation is underway at Essex Agricultural and Technical High School in Danvers, Mass., where more than a dozen students have been experiencing bizarre vocal tics or hiccups, the Salem News reported.

The Massachusetts Department of Health is working with local health officials in order to better assist the community.

However, Peter Mirandi, the health director for Danvers, said that no physicians have officially diagnosed or confirmed any of the students' cases - meaning health officials cannot determine a specific cause just yet.

"I have no confirmed cases of something; we don't know if it's a contagious disease or an environmentally induced disorder. It's not responsible for me to say anything further on it," Mirandi told the Salem News.
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Info

Doctors report tuberculosis now 'virtually untreatable'

Marc Lallanilla
LiveScience
Tue, 12 Feb 2013 11:25 UTC
TB
© CDC/Dr. Ray ButlerThe tuberculosis bacterium, Mycobacterium tuberculosis, is easily spread through coughing or sneezing.
Medical experts are alarmed that strains of tuberculosis, or TB, have emerged that are so virulent they're being called "virtually untreatable," even with the most powerful drugs available.

The latest issue of the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases, published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, reports that cases of "totally drug-resistant" TB have now been seen in South African clinics.

TB is a respiratory infection caused by the bacteria Mycobacterium tuberculosis; it was once widespread until antibiotics such as streptomycin were developed in the years following World War II. Though TB was eliminated in much of the industrialized world, pockets of the disease remained in developing countries.

And now, TB is poised to make a dramatic - and deadly - comeback. "Whatever we may have once optimistically thought, TB remains with death, taxes and political chicanery as being inevitable, unavoidable and deeply unpleasant," Andrew Bush and Ian Pavord, editors of the journal Thorax, wrote in the latest issue.

"It shows every sign of weathering the storm of potent anti-tuberculous medications," they added, noting that the disease is capable of "potentially turning the clock back to the 1930s," when TB clinics and sanitariums were commonplace.
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Cheesecake

Opioids and gut issues

Kevin Cann
Robbwolf.com
Tue, 12 Feb 2013 12:05 UTC
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Gluten and casein have the abilities to create morphine like compounds.
An opioid is a chemical messenger that bonds to an opioid receptor. A well known group of opioids are known as our endorphins. These are the "feel good" neurotransmitters that come in after a workout. They are also associated with our ability to manage pain. In fact, pain medications work on our opioid receptors to decrease the sensation of pain and increase our tolerance to it. Opioid receptors are found in the brain, spinal cord, and gastrointestinal tract.

Opioid receptors being in the gut tells us that they play a role in gut function. One of the biggest side effects of opioid analgesics (fancy way of saying pain meds) is constipation. These pain meds, which act upon our opioid receptors, cause a disruption to peristalsis (our stomach contractions that allow us to digest food) and also blocks fluid secretion (Holzer, 2007). Modern medicine is attempting to find ways to enact upon the opioid system to manage pain, but not to interfere with the gut.

Comment: For more information on this topic and why veggies might not be the solution, check our forum discussions Life Without Bread and Ketogenic Diet.

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Attention

Gut bacteria liberate hidden toxins found In grains

Louisa Dalton
Chemical and Engineering News
Wed, 06 Feb 2013 11:36 UTC
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© AGER ProjectThe mold Fusarium graminearium grows on maturing wheat (visible on the lighter heads) and deposits harmful mycotoxins.
Crops such as wheat, corn, and peanuts sometimes harbor chemicals from molds that grow on the plants. Some of these compounds are seemingly harmless derivatives of toxins produced by the fungi. For the first time, researchers have shown that human gut bacteria can break down these compounds and release the toxins, which can cause gastrointestinal and neurological damage (Chem. Res. Toxicol., DOI: 10.1021/tx300438c).

The findings strongly suggest that these masked toxins may not stay hidden within our digestive tracts, and that government agencies may need to regulate the chemicals, the researchers say.

Scientists have long known that fungi, such as Fusarium graminearium, deposit toxins on food crops. These so-called mycotoxins can contaminate the food supply, causing a wide range of nasty effects and even death in people and livestock. As a result, many countries set a limit for the amount of mycotoxins in food and animal feed.

But in the past decade, scientists have discovered that mycotoxins can hide. The toxins are harmful to the crops themselves, so, as a defense strategy, the plants neutralize the mycotoxins by tacking on a sugar or sulfate group to the chemicals. Because of this chemical modification, these masked mycotoxins slip past current detection methods used by food safety inspectors. Also scientists don't know much about the toxicity of the derivatives.

If cereal grains hold masked mycotoxins, "what happens to the compounds during human digestion?" asks Chiara Dall'Asta, a chemist at the University of Parma, in Italy. "Are they less toxic or as toxic as their parent compounds?"
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Eggs Fried

Our ancestors thrived on high-fat diets

Stanley A. Fishman
Tender Grassfed Meat
Tue, 12 Feb 2013 11:29 UTC
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If you study the history of food, and read what contemporary people wrote and said about it, you will be struck by one inevitable fact - our ancestors considered fat a vital nutrient, and loved to eat it. The only bad thing about fat was the difficulty in obtaining it, as it was often expensive and hard to get.

This fact is shocking to modern people, who have been subject to a propaganda campaign that labeled most fat as bad, unhealthy, and the cause of most illness. This propaganda campaign began in the 1960s, and became accepted as absolute fact in the 1980s. Even though there never was any real evidence to support the all-animal-fat-is-bad theory, nearly everyone believed it. Even today, most people believe that fat, especially saturated animal fat, is bad for health and should be restricted.

This belief remains common even though it has never been proven and many studies and much research has totally discredited it.

Now, I am not a doctor, or a nutritionist, or a scientist. But I am an attorney, and I have been one for a very long time. Attorneys are experts in evaluating evidence. I have evaluated the available evidence on fat, and it is my opinion that animal fat from healthy animals eating their natural diet is one of the healthiest, most vital, and most needed foods we can eat.
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