Health & WellnessS


Black Magic

2012: The year of synthetic drugs

Dirk Hanson
The Fix
Sun, 20 Jan 2013 18:27 UTC
Image
© The Fix
From the "Bath Salts" Cannibal to a dramatic spike in Spice-related ER visits, 2012 was the year synthetics earned a place in the drug pantheon.

This is the year of the knockoff. A witch's brew of new synthetic drugs, most of them stimulants, peddled as either bath salts or "spice" concoctions, has offered users new forms of Russian Roulette, and has irrevocably changed the face of international drug dealing. 2012 was also the year hysteria took over. Myths began to accumulate, and everywhere you looked, somebody was supposedly doing something psychotic due to the new synthetics. Who can forget Rudy Eugene, Florida's Causeway Cannibal, the bizarre face-eating man on bath salts? The attack left law enforcement officials wondering how a drug could drive Eugene to strip off his clothes, attack a homeless man, and chew pieces of flesh from the man's face.

Well, it wasn't bath salts, as it turned out. But never mind. As Fix columnist Maia Szalavitz wrote: "Despite the fact that Eugene had no synthetic drugs in his system, it's likely that his case will still be used for years as an example of what bath salts can make people do." But drug users saw it differently. After all, how deadly could bath salts really be, hanging there on the rack beside the Slim Jims, the 5-hour energy drinks, and the caffeine tabs at the local Bag-and-Drag minimart?
Read More...
Syringe

Boston declares health emergency as flu outbreak worsens

Scott Malone
Medical Daily
Wed, 09 Jan 2013 15:37 UTC
Vaccine
© Medical Daily
Faced with a surge in flu cases, the mayor of Boston declared a public health emergency on Wednesday as authorities around the United States scrambled to cope with a rising number of patients.

So far, in the early stage of the normal flu season, Boston has already recorded 10 times as many cases as in all of the 2011-2012 flu season.

From Maine to North Carolina, officials said they were expecting a sharp increase in infections, while hospitals tightened rules on visitors and opened new facilities to accommodate more patients.

"This is the worst flu season we've seen since 2009 and people should take the threat of flu seriously," Boston Mayor Thomas Menino said on Wednesday.

The city plans to offer a free flu vaccination for residents who have not already received one.

Encouraging vaccinations is one of the most effective steps in combating what looks to be a serious strain of the flu, said Dr. William Hanage, an associate professor of epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health.

"This is a bad year, there's no question about it. It's going to be, at minimum, moderately severe," Hanage said, adding that the outbreak looks less severe than in 2009 when the dominant strain was the H1N1 swine flu.
Read More...
Cheeseburger

Americans are in worse health than other nationalities

Linda Thrasybule
MyHealthNewsDaily
Wed, 09 Jan 2013 15:52 UTC
Poor Health
© Dreamstime
The U.S. may be one of the wealthiest countries in the world, but it certainly isn't the healthiest, according to a new report from the National Research Council and the Institute of Medicine.

The report, released today, compared the U.S. with 16 other high-income democracies, including Australia, Canada, Japan, and many western European countries. It found, on average, that Americans die sooner and experience higher rates of disease and injury than people in other countries. The report is the first look at multiple diseases, injuries and behaviors across the entire human life span.

"Americans are dying and suffering at rates that we know are unnecessary because people in other high-income countries are living longer lives and enjoying better health," said Steven H. Woolf, professor of family medicine at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond and chair of the panel that wrote the report. "What concerns our panel is why, for decades, we have been slipping behind."

The panel also found that health problems exist among Americans regardless of age and that even Americans with certain advantages, such as higher incomes, a college education and health insurance, are sicker than people in other rich nations.

Some of the key areas of health in which the U.S. fared poorly included infant mortality and low birth weight, injuries and homicides, teen pregnancies, sexually transmitted diseases, obesity, diabetes and heart disease.
Read More...
Info

Flashback A newly discovered reason to avoid fast food and popcorn

Dr. Mercola
Mercola.com
Sat, 01 Dec 2012 15:27 UTC
Image
© drmercola.com
Perfluoroalkyls, which are chemicals used to keep grease from leaking through fast food wrappers, are being ingested by people through their food and showing up as contaminants in blood.

Perfluoroalkyls are stable, synthetic chemicals that repel oil, grease, and water. They are used in surface protection treatments and coatings for packages.

The specific chemicals studied were polyfluoroalkyl phosphate esters (PAPs), which are the breakdown products of the perfluorinated carboxylic acids used in coating the food wrappers.

Common Dreams reports:
"The researchers used the PAP concentrations previously observed in human blood together with the PAP and PFCA concentrations observed in the rats to calculate human exposure to the chemical perflurooctanoic acid, PFOA."
Read More...
Heart

Cholesterol lowering statins may kill Omega-3 heart benefits

Sayer Ji
GreenMedInfo
Wed, 09 Jan 2013 05:00 UTC
Omega 3
© GreenMedInfo
There is a growing awareness that the unintended, adverse health effects of cholesterol-lowering statin drugs far outweigh their purported benefits. But now new research indicates that these drugs may even interfere with the heart-protective effects of omega-3 fatty acids in those who are taking them.

A new study published in the journal BMC Medicine is shedding much needed light on why the widely publicized fish oil study released late last year in the Journal of the American Medical Association, which diverged from earlier randomized controlled trials (RCTs) demonstrating the health benefits of omega-3 fatty acids, showed no evidence of cardiovascular disease risk reduction associated with omega-3 intake.

In the new study, researchers at the Joseph Fourier University in Grenoble, France proposed that more recent RCTs on fish oil and heart health that have reported negative findings, like the JAMA study, can be explained by two hidden confounding variables:
  1. Today, with both increased awareness of the health benefits and increased consumption of omega-3 fats, the vast majority of participants in these newer controlled trials are no longer as omega-3 fat deficient and therefore may not show as great (if any) measurable beneficial effect when given additional supplemented omega-3.
  2. The vast majority of contemporary RCT study participants are also on statin drugs, which suppress the beneficial properties of omega-3 fatty acids within the body, making negative findings more likely.[i]
The second confounding variable, that statins suppress omega-3 fatty acid benefits, is the most groundbreaking, as very few doctors or patients are away of this possibility. On the other hand, statins exert such a broad range of adverse health effects in the body, including major deficiencies of zinc, copper, selenium, coq10, vitamin E, and possibly vitamin D, as well, that we shouldn't be all that surprised.[ii]
Read More...
Info

Traditional Chinese medicine tongue diagnosis gains favour

Rebecca Eckler
Macleans.Ca
Tue, 08 Jan 2013 09:41 UTC
TCM
© David Gray/Reuters
Holly Fennell sees about 50 tongues a week. The first thing the naturopath looks at is the colour. A "nice pinky-red" is normal, but many of her patients have a dark purple hue, which is her first clue that there is something off with their energy, or ch'i. A yellowish coating may indicate the flu or a cold. If the outside edge is bumpy, it could be a sign of anxiety. And Fennell, who has been practising Chinese medicine in Toronto's tony Summerhill neighbourhood for 10 years, has a very deep line down the middle of hers, which she says points to her asthma. Patients think she is psychic, the way she reads their tongues.

Jen Miller, who lives in Toronto, has seen two traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) doctors. The first time, she was feeling sluggish, headachey and queasy, "not really a surprise because I'd recently had a bad breakup."

The TCM doctor examined her mouth with a depressor and a little light, then asked her to move her tongue up and down. "She said, 'Oh, not sleeping enough . . . you're so sad . . . more water will make those headaches stop.' " Miller saw a second TCM doctor a year later for stubborn acne. "He started all our visits by looking in my mouth. The first time he looked in and said, 'Uh! So much candy! All that sugar!' " The night before, admits Miller, she had eaten a box of chocolates. "Again, it was fascinating but creepy."
Read More...
Syringe

First cases of 'incurable' antibiotic resistant gonorrhea found in North America as CDC warns of public health nightmare?

James Nye
Daily Mail
Tue, 08 Jan 2013 09:45 UTC
Image
Neisseria gonorrhoeae is the bacteria that causes the sexually transmitted disease gonorrhea - scientists in North America noted in a study released on January 8th that they have detected the first incurable strain of the disease
The long feared nightmare of U.S. public health officials has come to pass with the news anti-biotic resistant Gonorrhea has been detected in North American patients.A study released today by the Journal of the American Medical Association announced it had found nine patients with a strain of the sexually transmitted disease immune to the last remaining effective oral antibiotic.

This confirms the fears of both the Centers for Disease Control and the World Health Organisation who warned last year that untreatable gonorrhea, the world's second most common STD would soon become a reality.'These are the clinical cases we've been waiting for,' said study leader Vanessa Allen of pUblic Health Ontario. 'This is the translation of the lab information into what the clinical consequence is.'

Researchers observed that 6.7 percent of patients with gonorrhea at one Toronto clinic still had the disease after a round of cephalosporins, which is the last antibiotic which doctors are able to use to cure the disease. Out of 133 patients who returned for a 'test of cure' visit, nine remained positive with the disease, which is roughly one in 15 people. This study revealed the first time that cephalosporin-resistant gonorrhea had been found in humans in North America.
Read More...
Syringe

Over forty children paralyzed by vaccines in one village

Dr. Mark Sircus
drsircus.com
Wed, 09 Jan 2013 08:38 UTC
Image
I am so glad (not!) that we have people like Bill Gates to make sure vaccines are funded for African children. I am not alone in that perspective but there are brave people like Christina England, a U.K. journalist and author who alone is reporting about the unspeakable harm that international vaccination programs bring to the children of the world.

Christina reports that:
On December 20, 2012, a vaccination tragedy hit the small village of Gouro, located in northern Chad, Africa. According to the newspaper La Voix, out of 500 children who received the new meningitis vaccine MenAfriVac, at least 40 of them between the ages of 7 and 18 have become paralyzed. Those children also suffered hallucinations and convulsions.

Since this report, the true extent of this tragedy is coming to light, as parents of these vaccinated children have reported yet more injuries. The authorities in the area are shaken, as citizens set fire to a sanitary administration vehicle in a demonstration of their frustration and anger at the government's negligence.
Read More...
Cheeseburger

Yum! McDonald's McRib sandwich a franken creation of GMOs, toxic ingredients, banned ingredients

Anthony Gucciardi
Natural Society
Tue, 08 Jan 2013 12:42 UTC
McRibs_Small
© Natural Society
It's 'McRib season', and thousands across the nation are scrambling to use online websites like the 'McRib locator' to stuff the McDonald's McRib sandwich down their throats.

A sandwich that is not only full of genetically modified ingredients, a medley of toxic fillers and preservatives, but also some ingredients that are actually banned in other nations around the world. But honestly, are you surprised?

The McRib is the result of intensive marketing by McDonald's. Utilizing the basics of supply and demand through creating scarcity over the McRib by only unleashing the culinary abomination for a fraction of the year that is only known once it is released, McDonald's fans have been known to 'hoard' McRib sandwiches and eat them in extreme excess. It's even a topic of the popular documentary Super Size Me, where filmmaker Morgan Spurlock (who gorges himself with McDonald's for 30 days only to find serious health consequences) encounters 'McRib hunters' who actually travel the country eating McRib sandwiches.

McDonald's even made McRib fans sign a petition to 'save the McRib' online, bringing out a conglomerate of fans to bring back their favorite franken sandwich.
Read More...
Fish

The SuperFood Power of Wild Salmon

David Jockers, DC
Primal Docs
Mon, 07 Jan 2013 09:13 UTC
Image
Foods that have an incredible array of health benefits that go well beyond just their nutrient value are considered Superfoods. These foods are typically loaded with a combination of critical fatty acids, anti-oxidant phytonutrients and essential amino acids. Wild-caught salmon found in non-polluted waters is an extraordinary superfood.

Wild salmon is rich in long-chain omega-3 fatty acids that are essential for healthy neurological and cardiovascular function. Astaxanthin is a unique carotenoid anti-oxidant that gives salmon its pink color. This phytonutrient is produced naturally in specific algae that pass on its free radical scavenging effects to the sea animals such as salmon that eat them.

Wild Salmon are SuperStrong!

Wild salmon naturally feed on red algae and accumulate astaxanthin within their muscle tissue giving them their characteristic pinkish-red color. Salmon are one of the strongest animals in the world with an incredible ability to swim upstream against strong currents. Astaxanthin is credited with providing the anti-oxidant protection that gives them the amazing strength and endurance to swim up rivers and waterfalls

These algae also provide the salmon with the raw materials to produce the long-chain omega-3 fatty acids EPA & DHA. Wild salmon also contains the full spectrum of essential amino acids necessary for cellular repair and optimal immune function. The greater the percentage of micro-algae in the salmon's diet the more concentrated their astaxanthin and omega-3 fatty acids become.
Read More...