Health & WellnessS


Attention

Uncovered FDA Documents Reveal 26 More Gardasil Deaths

Anthony Gucciardi
Activist Post
Fri, 21 Oct 2011 17:48 UTC
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© guggiedaly.blogspot.com
Judicial Watch, a public-interest group that has leaked countless government reports, has recently uncovered FDA documents that reveal an additional 26 deaths associated with Merck's HPV vaccine Gardasil.

In addition to the 26 deaths occurring between Sept. 1, 2010, and Sept. 15, 2011, the adverse-reaction reports also detail a number of severe side effects including seizures, paralysis, blindness, pancreatitis, speech problems, short-term memory loss and Guillain-Barré Syndrome.
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Info

The Truth About Salt: New Research Says Increasing Salt Decreases Heart Attacks

Charlotte Hilton Anderse
The Great Fitness Experiment
Tue, 11 Oct 2011 17:08 UTC
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© thegreatfitnessexperiment.com
"Keep your family goiter free! Or else Norman Rockwell will not want to paint adver-pictures of your family!"

Pop quiz time! Salt: life-giving nutrient or heart attack in a ceramic shaker? If you grew up like I did then you probably think of salt as a no-no for a healthy lifestyle but research is now saying that not only does salt not cause heart attacks like we've all been told for the past 20 years, but that slashing salt intake increases incidence of cardiovascular death. Surprised? You shouldn't be - this "new" research that's been making headlines over the past few weeks is based on studies over 20 years old. And yet one of the first things people generally do when they're trying to get healthy is cut back on sodium. Whole diet programs are based almost solely around this one principle.

Me being me, I took this advice to heart and removed almost all salt from diet several years ago. I never added even a smidgen of salt to foods and if a recipe called for it I just omitted it (yet another reason my cookies turned out like turds?). My self righteousness knew no bounds as I handed the salt shaker back to the waiter telling him we wouldn't be needing that murderous mineral at our table.

Comment: For more information on Why Salt Doesn't Deserve its Bad Rap and Why It's Time to End the War on Salt including additional research on the effects of salt consumption on cardiovascular health read the following articles:

To Salt or Not to Salt, That is the Question
Salt - Is It Really the Problem It Is Made Out to Be?
High salt consumption not dangerous, new European study finds, but U.S. experts disagree
New Study Casts Further Doubt on Risk of Death from Higher Salt Intake
Low Salt Diet Increases Cardiovascular Mortality
Salt is 'natural mood-booster'

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Health

Natural, Herbal, and Alternative Treatments for ADD/ADHD

Sarah
Off the Grid News
Mon, 10 Oct 2011 16:37 UTC
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© braininspect.com
Attention Deficit Disorder and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADD/ADHD) are behavioral conditions characterized by a short attention span, which may be accompanied by hyperactivity. Approximately 5 percent of Americans have ADD/ADHD and half to two thirds of children diagnosed with it will carry it into adulthood. Children diagnosed with ADD/ADHD may also have various learning disabilities and may be disruptive in school and other public places.

More boys than girls are afflicted with this disorder. Many are rightly diagnosed with these maladies, but there are those who have been so "branded" just because they are very active, rambunctious children - again boys more often than girls. Just because a school psychologist or other doctor has told you your child's overactive behavior is ADD/ADHD, it may not be true. Some teachers and school administrators don't want to have to deal with disciplining active children, so they have them diagnosed and medicated. For peace of mind, get more than one opinion. You may want to have two other doctors, who aren't connected to the school district, check out your child(ren).
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2 + 2 = 4

Why You Should Not Stop Taking Your Vitamins

Dr. Mark Hyman
Huffington Post
Tue, 18 Oct 2011 15:58 UTC
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© unknown
Do vitamins kill people?

How many people have died from taking vitamins?

Should you stop your vitamins?

It depends. To be exact, it depends on the quality of the science, and the very nature of scientific research. It is very hard to know things exactly through science. The waste bin of science is full of fallen heroes like Premarin, Vioxx and Avandia (which alone was responsible for 47,000 excess cardiac deaths since it was introduced in 1999).

That brings us to the latest apparent casualty, vitamins. The recent media hype around vitamins is a classic case of drawing the wrong conclusions from good science.

Remember how doctors thought that hormone replacement therapy was the best thing since sliced bread and recommended it to every single post-menopausal woman? These recommendations were predicated on studies that found a correlation between using hormones and reduced risk of heart attacks. But correlation does not prove cause and effect. It wasn't until we had controlled experiments like the Women's Health Initiative that we learned Premarin (hormone replacement therapy) was killing women, not saving them.
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Stop

Drunkorexia: Eating Disorder Mixes With Alcohol

Marianne English
Discovery News
Fri, 21 Oct 2011 16:35 UTC
Drunkorexia
© Corbis

Both eating disorders and alcohol abuse pose serious health problems for those who experience them. But researchers are most alarmed when people combine the two.

Labeled as "drunkorexia" by some, using anorexic behaviors to "save calories" for drinking alcohol has become common enough in the United States, especially across college campuses, to worry experts. Although there's no official number on how many people combine these addicting behaviors, one estimate of 700 students put forth that as many as one fifth of students have practiced drunkorexia and more than half say they've heard of the idea before.

What makes drunkorexia so dangerous is the fact that a person deprives his brain of nutrients and energy while exposing it to alcohol, one researcher noted in a modified press release. People who restricted calories or purged in anticipation of a night of drinking were more likely to experience substance abuse problems, partake in risky sexual behavior and develop serious health conditions later in life. It's unclear whether these results stem directly from the behavior or if they're more likely to occur among people who mix eating disorders with alcohol. Either way, the short-term risks of alcohol poisoning matter equally.
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Red Flag

Toxic Metals Arsenic and Cadmium Found in Baby Food

Mike Barrett
Activist Post
Thu, 20 Oct 2011 17:34 UTC
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© bombkamp.blogspot.com
As our society has been moving with haste away from raw and natural foods and more towards processed foods, we are seeing a surge of toxic contaminants such as heavy metals leaking into our food. The heavy metals in our food alongside with heavy metals found in vaccinations and other forms of exposure are paving the way for wide-spread heavy metal poisoning. One particular form of heavy metal poisoning our society may be facing is arsenic poisoning.

The growing concern over arsenic exposure and arsenic poisoning is very real. Our bodies are being exposed to heavy metals in amounts that, in some cases, don't exceed the "safety" limit put in place by government organizations. But with all of these "small amount" and with some amounts being completely unsafe, our bodies are being completely invaded by the exposure to these heavy metals.

Arsenic must be especially better controlled at is it being found in our food time and time again. A few months ago, baby foods in the UK were found to have some levels of arsenic - so much so that the babies who ingested the food were exposed to fifty times the amount of arsenic compared to a breast-fed baby.
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Dollar

How to Make People Believe Any Anti-Vitamin Scare? It Just Takes Lots of Pharmaceutical Industry Cash

Andrew W. Saul
Orthomolecular Medicine News Service
Thu, 20 Oct 2011 15:40 UTC
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© unknown
Recent much trumpeted anti-vitamin news is the product of pharmaceutical company payouts. No, this is not one of "those" conspiracy theories. Here's how it's done:
  1. Cash to study authors. Many of the authors of a recent negative vitamin E paper (1) have received substantial income from the pharmaceutical industry. The names are available in the last page of the paper (1556) in the "Conflict of Interest" section. You will not see them in the brief summary at the JAMA website. A number of the study authors have received money from pharmaceutical companies, including Merck, Pfizer, Sanofi-Aventis, AstraZeneca, Abbott, GlaxoSmithKline, Janssen, Amgen, Firmagon, and Novartis.
  2. Advertising revenue. Many popular magazines and almost all major medical journals receive income from the pharmaceutical industry. The only question is, how much? Pick up a copy of the publication and count the pharmaceutical ads. The more space sold, the more revenue for the publication. If you try to find their advertisement revenue, you'll see that they don't disclose it. So, just count the Pharma ads. Look in them all: Readers Digest, JAMA, Newsweek, Time, AARP Today, NEJM, Archives of Pediatrics. Even Prevention magazine. Practically any major periodical.
  3. Rigged trials. Yes, it is true and yes it is provable. In a recent editorial, we explained how trials of new drugs are often rigged. Studies of the health benefits of vitamins and essential nutrients also appear to be rigged. This can be easily done by using low doses to guarantee a negative result, and by biasing the interpretation to show a statistical increase in risk.
  4. Bias in what is published, or rejected for publication. The largest and most popular medical journals receive very large income from pharmaceutical advertising. Peer-reviewed research indicates that this influences what they print, and even what study authors conclude from their data.
  5. Censorship of what is indexed and available to doctors and the public. Public tax money pays for censorship in the largest public medical library on the planet: the US National Library of Medicine (MEDLINE/PubMed).
Don't Believe It?

Comment: For more information about Big Pharma's devious tactics to vilify vitamins and supplements for human health and wellness read the following articles:

Pharma's Don't-Take-Vitamins Study Diametrically Opposed by Valid Study
27 Years: No Deaths from Vitamins, 3 Million from Prescription Drugs
Shame on AMA's Archives of Internal Medicine
Shame on AMA's Archives of Internal Medicine - Part Two
What Kind of Medical Study Would Have Grandma Believe that Her Daily Multivitamin is Dangerous?

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Attention

Shame on AMA's Archives of Internal Medicine - Part Two


Alliance for Natural Health
Tue, 18 Oct 2011 22:54 UTC
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© capilanocourier.com
New info about last week's horribly flawed vitamin study. This story keeps getting worse and worse.

Last Monday the Archives of Internal Medicine released a study claiming that vitamin use might lead to an earlier death. This set off a major media feeding frenzy, wave after wave of scary stories. Fox's headline was typical: "Are Your Supplements Killing You?"

In our article last Tuesday, we pointed out that the study was "junk science" at its worst. The data were "observational": women in Iowa were asked what supplements they were taking three times over eighteen years - that is every six years. Who remembers what they have taken over six years?

In addition, it was all anecdotal: you didn't have to say what you were taking specifically, just vague terms like "multivitamin." Were the vitamins synthetic or natural? How much did they take? Did they really take it, and for how long? Did they take it to stay healthy or because they had become very ill, perhaps with cancer? No one knows.
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Syringe

Canada: '52 of the 98 Teens Who Caught Measles Were Fully Vaccinated'


CBC News
Thu, 20 Oct 2011 09:53 UTC
measles
© U.S. CDC/Canadian PressA still smoldering outbreak of measles in Quebec is the largest in the Americas in over a decade.
An unusual vaccine observation from a large measles outbreak in Quebec may raise some alarm among those who attend the annual meeting of the Infectious Diseases Society of America.

Measles cases have surged in parts of Canada and the United States this year, with cases among unvaccinated children and teens driving the high numbers, public health officials from both countries will tell a major infectious diseases conference this weekend. A still smoldering outbreak of measles in Quebec is the largest in the Americas in over a decade.

An investigation into an outbreak in a high school in a town that was heavily hit by the virus found that about half of the cases were in teens who had received the recommended two doses of vaccine in childhood - in other words, teens whom authorities would have expected to have been protected from the measles virus.
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Cheeseburger

Fun with headlines: Did Paleolithic People Eat Grains?

Melissa McEwen
Hunt Gather Love
Tue, 18 Oct 2011 18:57 UTC
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Great, a new pop-sci treatment of an anthropology paper that your Aunt Maude will forward to you with the implication that you should eat her whole wheat pancakes next time you visit. The article portrays this as some kind of ground-breaking research that totally changes our view of the paleolithic.

So what's the deal with this study? Now that I'm wormed my way into academia again somehow, I read the paper. They found something that looks like a mortar and pestle with some evidence of starch residues.

The title says flour, but that's not the good old white flour your Aunt Maude is thinking of. Of the nine species mentioned, one is a seed, the rest are roots and rhizomes. That ground starch has been used by humans since the upper paleolithic is not really news. Famous anthropologist Richard Wrangham who wrote Catching Fire has been writing about the role of cooked starch in the Upper Paleolithic for quite some time. In the Upper Paleolithic it might have spurred population increases that eventually led to early settlements like Gobekli Tepe. There has been selection for genes like AMY1 which allow for better starch digestion.

And the paper writers are like HAHA look the carnivorous Atkins people are soooo wrong. But wait, I think isotope studies are a little more accurate than a few as the paper admits "poor preserved" plant remains. And the evidence is that the paleolithic diet was mostly animal protein.

Comment: There is evidence that nuts might not be such a healthy addition to a paleo diet - see Another Reason You Shouldn't Go Nuts on Nuts

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