A recent review published in the journal Archives of Disease In Childhood titled, "Marketing breast milk substitutes: problems and perils throughout the world," revealed a disturbing statistic:

Currently, suboptimal breastfeeding is associated with over a million deaths each year and 10% of the global disease burden in children

The review also highlighted an embarrassing fact of US history:

On 21 May 1981 the WHO International Code of Marketing Breast Milk Substitutes (hereafter referred to as the Code) was passed by 118 votes to 1, the US casting the sole negative vote. The Code arose out of concern that the dramatic increase in mortality, malnutrition and diarrhoea in very young infants in the developing world was associated with aggressive marketing of formula. The Code prohibited any advertising of baby formula, bottles or teats and gifts to mothers or 'bribery' of health workers.[1]

The International Code of Marketing Breast Milk Substitutes, which the US thwarted the global consensus on, established an international health policy framework for breastfeeding promotion, as well as recommending restrictions on the marketing of infant formula.

Could the lack of US support and implementation for breastfeeding initiatives such as this be a major factor in why our nation, 30 years later, has one of the worst infant mortality rates in the developed world (29^th), tying Slovakia, but lagging behind Cuba?[2]

Presently, less than 5% of U.S. infants are born in "Baby-Friendly" hospitals, "a global designation that indicates best practices in maternity care to support breastfeeding mothers," according to the CDC's website.[3] This is one reason why only 14.8% of infants born in the US are exclusively breastfed at 6 months, and only 35.% at 3 months. Conversely, 25.4% are never breastfed, with 24.5% of breastfed infants receiving formula before 2 days. ^[4]

According to statistics from 2010, the United States and Western Europe account for 33% of the global infant formula market, which consists of 2,260,000,000 lbs of product worth 11.5 billion US dollars. ^[5]

And here is a major point in need of differentiation: is the aforementioned global burden of infant mortality associated solely with a lack of breastfeeding, or, rather, does it not also reveal the potential lethality of the milk substitutes being provided and promoted?

A couple weeks back, I wrote about the top 8 most common reactions you get when people hear you don't eat grains, and I offered up some concise responses to those reactions. It was well received, so I thought I'd do the same thing for "your high-fat diet." If you thought having to explain your grain-free diet was tough, explaining a high-fat diet - in particular, a high-animal fat diet - may seem even harder. At least with a grain-free diet, you're merely removing something that many hold near and dear to their hearts. It's "healthy" and "delicious," sure, but at least you're not adding something that will actively kill you. Fat is that deadly thing, for many people. It's "fat," for crying out loud. It's bad for you, practically a poison. Everyone knows it. I mean, have you seen what fat down the kitchen drain does to your plumbing? Read more.

While the United States population has learned to deal with routine outbreaks of E. coli and other bacterial strains within the traditional US meat supply, many may be completely unaware that it is quite common for conventional meat products to contain even more concerning contaminants. Among these are heavy metals, drug residues, and pesticides. While bacteria can be killed off by cooking, these contaminants continue to stay in the meat.

Contaminated US Meat

Back in 2008, Mexico rejected a shipment of United States beef. Why? Because the US meat actually exceeded Mexico's regulatory upper limit for copper. The meat, after being rejected by Mexico over serious health concerns due to the heavy metal content, was then sold in the United States, and eaten. The way in which much of the meat supply is contaminated has to do with how sick cows are treated and expedited off to consumers as quickly as possible. AlterNet explains:

"Sick dairy cows are given medications to help them recover, but if it appears an animal will die, it's often sold to a slaughterhouse as quickly as possible, in time to kill it before it dies."

A potentially dangerous sexually transmitted disease that infects millions of people each year is growing resistant to drugs and could soon become untreatable, the World Health Organization said Wednesday.

Scientists reported last year finding a "superbug" strain of gonorrhea in Japan in 2008 that was resistant to all recommended antibiotics and warned then that it could transform a once easily treatable infections into a global health threat.

"This organism has basically been developing resistance against every medication we've thrown at it," said Dr. Manjula Lusti-Narasimhan, a scientist in the agency's department of sexually transmitted diseases. This includes a group of antibiotics called cephalosporins currently considered the last line of treatment.

"In a couple of years it will have become resistant to every treatment option we have available now," she told The Associated Press in an interview ahead of WHO's public announcement on its 'global action plan' to combat the disease.

A study into whether physical activity alleviates the symptoms of depression has found there is no benefit.

Research published in the British Medical Journal suggests that adding a physical activity intervention to usual care did not reduce symptoms of depression more than usual care alone.

This contrasts with current clinical guidance which recommends exercise to help those suffering from the mental illness, which affects one in six adults in Britain at any one time.

To carry out the study researchers recruited 361 patients aged 18 to 69 years who had recently been diagnosed with depression.

Trial participants were then split into two groups to receive either the physical activity intervention in addition to usual care, or usual care on its own and were followed up for 12 months to assess any change in their symptoms.

But the study found that adding exercise failed to alleviate symptoms of depression more than usual care alone, only increasing levels of physical activity.

A new study from researchers at the University of Texas School of Public Health has revealed that flame retardant chemicals were found in many samples taken from popular food items.

While less than half of the tested food products had detectible levels of the chemical called hexabromocyclododecane (HBCD), 15 out of the 36 items tested positive. HBCD is used in polystyrene foam in the building and construction industry and can be found worldwide in the environment and wildlife, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. It has been highly toxic for aquatic organisms, and shown to have troubling effects on animal populations.

"The levels we found are lower than what the government agencies currently think are dangerous," study author Dr. Arnold Schecter, a public health physician at the University of Texas School of Public Health in Dallas, told WebMD. "But those levels were determined one chemical at a time."

The results were published in Environmental Health Perspectives, a National Institute of Health publication, on May 31.

Skin cancer patients whose childhood included periods of neglect or maltreatment are at a much greater risk for their cancers to return when they face a major stressful event, based on a new study.

The research suggests that such experiences during a person's youth can set a lower level of immune response for life, which in turn might make them more susceptible to the kind of cancers that are often successfully fought by the immune system, so-called immunogenic tumors.

While the research focused on patients with a fairly benign form of skin cancer -- basal cell carcinoma (BCC) -- the findings appear as a warning for patients to be more vigilant in concerns over their health for the rest of their lives.

The study appears in the June 4, 2012, issue of the journal Archives of General Psychiatry and is the latest in three decades of research linking stress and immunity that have been led by investigators at Ohio State University's Institute for Behavioral Medicine Research (IBMR).

"This is the first study to show that troubled early parental experiences, in combination with a severe life event in the past year, predict local immune responses to a BCC tumor," wrote Christopher Fagundes, first author of the paper and a postdoctoral fellow at the IBMR.

Whose heart is healthier: an extreme endurance athlete, a la Lance Armstrong, or a casual exerciser, a la your neighbor who likes to take her dog for 20-minute walks?

Dr. James O'Keefe, a cardiologist at the Mid America Heart Institute of St. Luke's Hospital in Kansas City, Mo., says it's probably the neighbor.

"A lot of people misunderstand that if moderate exercise is good, then more is better," O'Keefe says in an online video that explains his study published in the June issue of the journal Mayo Clinic Proceedings.

The findings come on the heels of last week's report that exercise could actually be bad for some people.

Most benefits of exercise accrue at a moderate level, such as a 20-30 minute walk, O'Keefe says. To O'Keefe, an ideal-for-the-heart exercise pattern might look like this: a 2-4 mile run two or three times a week, plus cross training that includes strength training and yoga on the other days.

Researchers at Joslin Diabetes Center have shown that while a type of "good" fat found in the body can be activated by cold temperatures, it is not able to be activated by the drug ephedrine.

The finding, published in a recent issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, may lead to drugs or other methods aimed at activating the good fat, known as brown fat. When activated, brown fat burns calories and can help in the battle against obesity.

"We propose that agents that work similarly to cold in activating brown fat specifically can provide promising approaches to fighting obesity while minimizing other side effects," said Aaron Cypess, M.D., Ph.D., an assistant investigator and staff physician at Joslin and lead author of the paper.

"At the same time, we now know that ephedrine is not the way to do it," he added.

Brown fat is found in humans naturally and consumes calories to generate heat. Prior studies had shown that brown fat can be activated by cold exposure in a process called non-shivering thermogenesis.

Hippocrates - the father of medicine - said, "Let your food be your medicine, and let your medicine be your food." Medicines are a subset of foods, according to Hippocrates. I like that. What are medicines today? What are foods?
Foods are natural. They come from nature. Foods are things that live and grow. Non-foods do not live and grow in nature. When we concentrate our foods, or specific aspect of foods, they can become medicines and heal our illness. How does this work?

Of course Hippocrates lived in 400 BC. Medicine was in it's infancy, but he knew a thing or two. All illness is caused by a deficiency or an excess. If you are deficient in a nutrient - taking concentrated foods may help, or cure your illness. It is the medicine that actually addresses the cause of the illness - all others are false medicines.
Note: Illness can be caused by many kinds of deficiency or excess, not just foods. You might suffer from deficiencies, or excesses of toxins, of exercise, of growth, of your immune system, etc.

When you are deficient of a nutrient, eating more of, or concentrations of the right foods will correct the imbalance. When you have an excess you might think the only solution is to stop eating the excess - but you might also treat an excess by eating more of other foods - which displace the excess. This might be mistaken, by the inattentive, for the 'placebo effect'.

Hippocrates also knew something about toxic medicines. There were always people who treat illness with poisons. Poisons re-establish balance not be building up the weak side - instead by breaking down the strong. If you are suffering from pains of arthritis - a poison that desensitizes your ability to feel pain can make you feel better, even though your health is actually worse.

He knew that foods are the best medicine - and poisons are only resorted to when the natural approach fails.