Health & WellnessS


Extinguisher

Would you like flame retardant in your soft drink?

Richard Schiffman
Guardian
Sat, 05 Jan 2013 10:38 UTC
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© Photograph: PRGatorade advert: the popular sports drink has sparked an online petition over its use of the brominated vegetable oil (BVO) additive.
Well, in the US you're getting it anyway. But not for much longer - as an online petition against the BVO additive catches fire.

Nobody pretends that sodas are a health food. But until recently, there was little talk about how seriously bad it can be to chug the 57 gallons (217 litres) of soft drinks that the average American consumes each year.

What sparked this discussion was New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg's controversial ban on the sale of super-sized (larger than 16oz, or half-litre) sodas in movie theaters and fast food restaurants. The ban was approved by the city's board of health in September and will take effect in March 2013. It has generally been applauded by public health activists who blame the sugary drinks for a nationwide spike in obesity and diabetes, especially among teens for whom it is the number one source of calories, according to a study by the National Cancer Institute (pdf).

Many school districts around the country have taken soda cans out of their vending machines, and legislation seeking to restrict federal food stamps from being used to purchase soda and other "junk foods" was introduced during the past year in California, Oregon, Illinois, Vermont, Florida and Texas. None of these bills has yet passed.

While the high sugar content of America's favorite beverage has gotten most of the bad press, there are other additives that may be putting consumers at risk. For example, phosphorous (a leading cause of osteoporosis), phosphoric acid (which corrodes teeth and damages kidneys) and sodium (which is implicated in high blood pressure) all show up in super-sized doses in America's soft drinks. Recently, Coke and Pepsi decided to reduce the amount of synthetic caramel color 4-methylimidazole (4-MEI) in some of their sodas - rather than label these drinks with cancer warnings in accord with California health guidelines.
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Bulb

Genetic tie to personality traits influencing healthy aging: Dopamine-receptor gene variant linked to human longevity


UCI
Thu, 03 Jan 2013 07:43 UTC
A variant of a gene associated with active personality traits in humans seems to also be involved with living a longer life, UC Irvine and other researchers have found.

This derivative of a dopamine-receptor gene - called the DRD4 7R allele - appears in significantly higher rates in people more than 90 years old and is linked to lifespan increases in mouse studies.

Robert Moyzis, professor of biological chemistry at UC Irvine, and Dr. Nora Volkow, a psychiatrist who conducts research at the Brookhaven National Laboratory and also directs the National Institute on Drug Abuse, led a research effort that included data from the UC Irvine-led 90+ Study in Laguna Woods, Calif. Results appear online in The Journal of Neuroscience.
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Health

Research shows that a prolonged fertility window can cause recurrent miscarriage

Luke Harrison
University of Warwick
Fri, 04 Jan 2013 07:36 UTC
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© Unknown
Researchers at Warwick Medical School have discovered that recurrent pregnancy loss can be due to a dysfunctional monthly fertility window. The study, led by Professor Jan Brosens and Professor Siobhan Quenby of the Division of Reproductive Health, sheds new light on the mechanisms that determine the timing and duration of the fertility window and how that may increase the chances of miscarriage.

The release of the cytokine IL-33 and the activation of its receptor (ST2) in cells in the uterus induces an inflammatory response that controls the stage that we are familiar with as the two to three days of peak fertility.

Work at the Clinical Sciences Research Laboratories at University Hospital, Coventry, showed clearly that in patients with a record of recurrent pregnancy loss, this inflammatory response was prolonged. When the fertility window remains open too long, embryos implant out-of-phase into an environment that cannot support the pregnancy, which leads to miscarriage.
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Magic Wand

Black Seed - 'The remedy for everything but death'

Sayer Ji
Activist Post
Thu, 03 Jan 2013 16:41 UTC
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© greenmedinfo.com
This humble, but immensely powerful seed, kills MRSA, heals the chemical weapon poisoned body, stimulates regeneration of the dying beta cells with the diabetic's pancreas, and yet too few even know it exists.

The seeds of the annual flowering plant, Nigella Sativa, have been prized for their healing properties since time immemorial. While frequently referred to among English-speaking cultures as Roman coriander, black sesame, black cumin, black caraway and onion seed, it is known today primarily as black seed, which is at the very least an accurate description of its physical appearance.

The earliest record of its cultivation and use come from ancient Egypt. Black seed oil, in fact, was found in Egyptian pharoah Tutankhamun's tomb, dating back to approximately 3,300 years ago.[i] In Arabic cultures, black cumin is so known as Habbatul barakah, meaning the "seed of blessing." It is also believed that the Islamic prophet Mohammed said of it that it is "a remedy for all diseases except death."

Many of black cumin's traditionally ascribed health benefits have been thoroughly confirmed in the biomedical literature. In fact, since 1964, there have been 458 published, peer-reviewed studies referencing it.
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Attention

The Hormone Battle

Peter Osborne
Gluten Free Society
Fri, 04 Jan 2013 08:14 UTC
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There's a hormone disruption epidemic going on and it's CRITICAL you read this.

* MEN are seeing rapid DECREASES in testosterone

* WOMEN are at a HIGHER risk than ever for
breast cancer

* Even YOUNG GIRLS are reaching puberty 6-12 months EARLIER than they did just 40 years ago

What's causing this tragic health crisis?

Big corporations and agri-businesses are pumping you full of ESTROGEN!

Estrogen (a "female" hormone) occurs naturally in both men and women. But at heightened levels it causes all sorts of
health problems. And sure enough, levels are rising dramatically and penetrating their way into your body!

The seeds of wheat and other grains are doused with estrogen compounds to aid in growth. Regular crops are sprayed with pesticides that contain estrogen-mimicking compounds... Some plastics you use actually LEAK synthetic
estrogens... Cows are given estrogen and made to produce more milk for you to drink. And cattle are supplemented with estrogen to prep them for your dinner table. In fact, the meat of hormone-treated cows have been found to contain up to 5 TIMES the amount of estrogen as untreated cattle!

Face it, there's a virtual "HORMONE WAR" going on...and we're losing!

Is there ANYTHING you can do about it?

In a word...YES!
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Health

Tending the body's microbial garden

Carl Zimmer
nytimes.com
Mon, 18 Jun 2012 17:08 UTC
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© The New York Times

For a century, doctors have waged war against bacteria, using antibiotics as their weapons. But that relationship is changing as scientists become more familiar with the 100 trillion microbes that call us home - collectively known as the microbiome.

"I would like to lose the language of warfare," said Julie Segre, a senior investigator at the National Human Genome Research Institute. "It does a disservice to all the bacteria that have co-evolved with us and are maintaining the health of our bodies."

This new approach to health is known as medical ecology. Rather than conducting indiscriminate slaughter, Dr. Segre and like-minded scientists want to be microbial wildlife managers.
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Dollars

GMO pig development gets $500,000 from USDA

Jill Ettinger
organicauthority.com
Sun, 30 Dec 2012 16:57 UTC
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With the near-certain approval by the FDA for Aqua Bounty's genetically modified salmon, which would be the first GMO animal allowed in the U.S. food supply, the USDA has announced a $500,000 grant for research on developing genetically modifying pig genomes, reports Sustainable Food News.

The grant was issued by the USDA on the very same day that the FDA announced its latest findings on AquAdvantage - the Aqua Bounty, Inc salmon modified to contain genes from a Chinook and a pout fish so that it grows to maturity in half the time as conventional salmon.

Comment: Read more about the 'creation' of Genetically Engineered Pigs:
The Mad Hatter world of industrial agriculture has announced another victory the University of Guelph in Canada has genetically engineered pigs whose manure contains 30-70% less phosphorus than that of regular pigs...

Developed in 1999, and now on its way to commercial production and a place on grocery store shelves, the EnviropigTM is apparently the solution. Perhaps we should instead question the problem. Intensive hog "farms," cattle feedlots, and intensive egg production and poultry facilities are creating toxic wastelands, treating the animal inmates as nothing more than animated foodstuffs.


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Question

Can antibiotics make you fat?

Tom Philpott
Mother Jones Magazine
Wed, 02 Jan 2013 16:44 UTC
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© Mother Jones Magazine
Factory animals are pumped full of antibiotics to make them gain weight. What does that mean for our waistlines?

Like hospital patients, US farm animals tend to be confined to tight spaces and dosed with antibiotics. But that's where the similarities end. Hospitals dole out antibiotics to save lives. On America's factory-scale meat farms, the goal is to fatten animals for their date at the slaughterhouse.

And it turns out that antibiotics help with the fattening process. Back in the 1940s, scientists discovered that regular low doses of antibiotics increased "feed efficiency" - that is, they caused animals to put on more weight per pound of feed. No one understood why, but farmers seized on this unexpected benefit. By the 1980s, feed laced with small amounts of the drugs became de rigueur as US meat production shifted increasingly to factory farms. In 2009, an estimated 80 percent of the antibiotics sold in the United States went to livestock.
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Megaphone

Cancer of corruption, seeds of destruction: The Monsanto GMO whitewash

F. William Engdahl
Global Research
Wed, 19 Dec 2012 16:05 UTC
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© snippits-and-slappits.blogspot.com
Because of the power vested in the EU Commission in Brussels, Belgium, with command over a space encompassing 27 nations with more than 500 million citizens and the largest nominal world gross domestic product (GDP) of 18 trillion US dollars, it's perhaps no surprise in this era of moral promiscuity that powerful private lobby groups such as the tobacco industry, the drug lobby, the agribusiness lobby and countless others spend enormous sums of money and other favors - legal and sometimes illegal - to influence policy decisions of the EU Commission.

This revolving door of corrupt ties between powerful private industry lobby groups and the EU Commission was in full view recently with the ruling of the European Food Safety Administration (EFSA) trying to discredit serious scientific tests about the deadly effects of a variety of Monsanto GMO corn.

Cancer of Corruption

In September 2012, Food and Chemical Toxicology, a serious international scientific journal, released a study by a team of scientists at France's Caen University led by Professor Gilles-Eric Seralini. Before publication the Seralini study had been reviewed over a four-month period by a qualified group of scientific peers for its methodology and was deemed publishable.

It was no amateur undertaking. The scientists at Caen made carefully-documented results of tests on a group of 200 rats over a two-year life span, basically with one group of non-GMO fed rats, a so-called control group, and the other a group of GMO-fed rats.
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Bad Guys

Food poisoning on a global scale

Vandana Shiva
Common Dreams
Wed, 02 Jan 2013 15:50 UTC
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Food is supposed to provide us nourishment and health but because of the toxins it contains, what we consume has become a major threat to our health. Some toxic substances are added to our food physically, through adulteration, while some enter our food system chemically, through pesticide residues. And some toxins enter the food chain genetically, through genetic engineering of seeds and crops. Even food packaging can be a source of toxins in food.

While physical adulteration, like stones in pulses, can be removed, the chemicals can't be. The pollutants will stop entering our food system only when poisonous chemicals are banned. Genetic pollution and contamination of food is the new, big threat to food safety and it cannot be undone. Once toxic genes are put into a plant, they are in the genetic code. There is no rollback. Which is why the debate on biosafety of GMOs is so intense.
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