Health & WellnessS


Smoking

Indonesian research clinic ignores anti-smoking fascists, seeks to cure illnesses with tobacco smoke

Jon Meyersohn
ABC News
Wed, 07 Sep 2011 04:38 UTC
video platformvideo managementvideo solutionsvideo player

At a clinic in East Java, a 3-year-old boy named Satrio lies on a medical table, squirming. His father holds him and his mother looks on as a technician blows tobacco smoke through a small tube onto the boy's skin.

Satrio, whose parents say he has attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, is part of a controversial study by Sutiman Bambang Sumitro, a molecular biology professor at the University of Brawijaya in Malang, Indonesia.

Sutiman and his colleagues believe that tobacco can be manipulated to treat illnesses, including cancer.

It has been decades since anyone in the U.S. proclaimed any possible health benefits from smoking. Thousands of international studies show tobacco is addictive and harmful to health. The World Health Organization says tobacco kills about half its users, or more than 5 million people annually. Even tobacco manufacturers have admitted smoking is dangerous and addictive.

Comment: WHO statistics are not worth the paper they are printed on. But it is true that big tobacco companies produce contaminated tobacco products which are dangerous. That is why it is important to seek out toxin-free tobacco. Tobacco is only addictive for those whose genetic profiles seem to require smoking to cope with the toxic and stressful global environment we live in:

Genetic link tied to smoking addiction

The Genetics of Smoking: Fundamental Biological Differences Revealed Between Smokers and Non-Smokers

Comment: Typical hack-job against smoking - no facts, just bald assertions! This clinic may or may not be onto something with its nanotechnology research, but the evidence that smoking unadulterated tobacco is beneficial continues to pile up:

5 Health Benefits of Smoking

Does Smoking Help Protect the Joints?

Dr. Gori on the passive smoking fraud

Smoking Helps Protect Against Lung Cancer

Health Benefits of Smoking Tobacco

Don't Quit Smoking! Longtime Smokers Less Likely to Develop Parkinson's Disease

Long-Term Smoking Protects Against Parkinson's, Study Confirms

Study: Quitting smoking increases risk of developing type 2 diabetes

Smoking 'Can Improve Schizophrenic Minds'

Tobacco plant-made therapeutic thwarts West Nile virus

Modified tobacco plant may block HIV

Tobacco used as medicine

Using tobacco plants to fight cancer

Read More...
Beaker

The Surprising 32-Year Scandal That's Kept This Toxic Substance in Your Head

Dr. Mercola
Mercola.com
Fri, 09 Sep 2011 15:14 UTC
Image
© news.harvard.edu
The United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA), once the world's "gold standard" for food, drug, and device regulation, has evolved from industry regulator to industry captive.

Political scientists are not surprised. The evolution from tough regulator to passive regulator to industry captive is a pattern in Washington. Unless an agency engages in a major system of re-invigoration, the spiral continues. But the FDA seems comfortable being the hand-maiden for industry; it has brought big bucks to the agency and lucrative jobs after time at the FDA.

The big bucks are in the FDA's pay-to-play approval system. Drug companies pay seven-figure amounts into FDA coffers to gain approval of their drugs.

FDA staff knows that the cash means higher salaries and more perks in the agency budget. The drug companies know the high fees prevent small competitors with good ideas from getting their products to market. The coziness between the FDA and major drug and device companies gets tighter, while innovative entrepreneurs are shut out and the public loses twice: good drugs aren't being considered, and controversial drugs are rubber-stamped.

Comment: For a more in depth look at the issue of Mercury in Modern Dentistry read the following articles:

FDA to Review Science Behind Ruling on Mercury in Dental Fillings
FDA Reluctantly Admits Mercury Fillings Have Neurotoxic Effects on Children
Dental Fillings - Mercury Exposure At Dangerous Levels and Alzheimer's Disease
FDA, ADA Conspiracy to Poison Children with Toxic Mercury Fillings Exposed in Groundbreaking Lawsuit
FDA to Review Safety of Mercury Fillings
Mercury Dental Fillings: What the FDA and the ADA Are Not Telling You

Read More...
Health

Mother's Diet Can Positively Influence Infant Allergies


redOrbit
Fri, 09 Sep 2011 13:23 UTC
Mother's Diet
© redOrbit

According to new research, pregnant women can reduce the chances of their babies developing food allergies by eating a diet rich in fish oil and nuts.

Researchers found that omega-3 fatty acids prompt the gut to develop in a way that boosts the immune system.

The team from France's National Agricultural Research Institute (INRA) found that when pregnant women ate a diet high in a particular group of polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs), the gut walls of their offspring were more permeable.

"There is intense research interest in maternal diet during pregnancy.

In the western diet, the group of polyunsaturated fatty acids that we have shown to help gut function are actually disappearing - our dietary intake of fish and nut oils is being replaced by corn oils which contain a different kind of fatty acid," Dr Gaëlle Boudry, of the INRA research institute in Rennes, France, said in a press release.

"Our study identifies that a certain group of polyunsaturated fatty acids - known as n-3PUFAs - causes a change in how a baby's gut develops, which in turn might change how the gut immune system develops. These changes are likely to reduce the risk of developing allergies in later life."
Read More...
Evil Rays

When Annoying Sounds Spark Major Rage: Driven to Distraction, and Worse, By Noise, Misophonia Sufferers Seek a Solution

Linda Carroll
Today Health
Thu, 08 Sep 2011 09:57 UTC
Ever since she was a little girl, mealtime has been a torture for Adah Siganoff. The eating sounds - the chewing, the slurping, the chomping - drove Adah to distraction. The noises grated on her nervous system, sparking anxiety and rage. To this day, she can't sit next to her husband at dinner time - she has to go to the peace and quiet of another room to eat.



"The fear is that I won't control the rage," Siganoff told TODAY's Mara Schiavocampo. "It's huge. It's physical. It's everything I have turns into a boiling pot of rage. And then I have to talk myself down because this isn't the way you're supposed to live."

Comment: Candida, or Candidiasis is known to cause sensitivity to noise, extreme irritability and impatience among other things. Of course, there is no way to know for sure if Adah Siganoff's symptoms are caused by candida overgrowth, but there is no doubt that she would benefit from low-carb high-fat diet that would stabilize her gut flora and calm her highly agitated nervous system.

Read More...
Bulb

Stimulating the vagus nerve: Memories are made of this

Rachel Adelson
American Psychological Association, Vol 35, No. 4
Thu, 01 Apr 2004 07:17 UTC
Image
© Unknown
Psychobiologists show how the vagal pathway links hormones outside the brain to neurotransmitters inside the brain to lock in memory of emotional or stressful events.

University of Virginia psychologists have moved the science of memory forward, reporting that stimulating the vagus nerve, which carries sensory messages to and from the brain, releases the neurotransmitter norepinephrine into the amygdala, strengthening memory storage in limbic regions of the brain that regulate arousal, memory and feeling responses to emotionally laden stimuli.

Their findings, which appear in the February issue of Behavioral Neuroscience (Vol. 118, No. 1), outline the neural pathway through which hormones that are released in the body affect specific parts of the brain during meaningful or emotionally arousing events in order to strengthen memories that will later foster sentimental pleasure or torture us with relived trauma.

The researchers--psychobiologists Cedric L.Williams, PhD, Derrick Hassert, PhD, and Teiko Miyashita, PhD--conclude that the vagus nerve is the "missing link" between the hormone epinephrine outside the brain and the neurotransmitter norepinephrine inside the brain.

Comment: There is one proven technique that can assist you with reducing your stress, calming and focusing your mind, creating better links between body and mind and thus improving quality of life, increasing sense of connection with others in your community. It will help you to have improved overall health, a stronger immune system, better impulse control, reduced inflammation, etc. It will also help you to heal emotional wounds; anything that may hinder or prevent you from leading a healthy and fulfilling life.

To learn more about Vagus Nerve Stimulation, through breathing exercises, and naturally producing the stress reducing hormone Oxytocin in the brain, visit the Éiriú Eolas Stress Control, Healing and Rejuvenation Program here.

Read More...
Health

Chewing The Fat

Dr.Joe
Dr.Joe Today
Fri, 09 Sep 2011 08:51 UTC
Fats
© Dr.Joe Today

It has become "settled science" that fat is bad for us. We hear it all the time. Yet despite the push for low fat diets and low fat foods from health authorities, the same authorities keep telling us we are losing the "war" on obesity and that rates of illnesses associated with diet are increasing.

So what if there is a hole in the story? What if we have been led up the wrong path? It is so ingrained that fats are bad and that fatty foods are unhealthy that to even suggest something like this will provoke outrage in some quarters.

Two major reviews published on PubMed, which is part of the National Institute of Health, throw a massive question mark over our assumptions. A review of 500 trials published in the Archives of Internal Medicine (The Journal of The American Medical Association) showed NO correlation between dietary fat intake and Coronary Heart Disease. A second analysis of nearly 350,000 people over 23 years showed no association between dietary fat intake and either heart disease or stroke!

That's right! Despite all the years of study and all the claims by authorities that going low fat is good for the heart-there is not actually any evidence to support this.
Read More...
Health

Birth Control Pills Affect Memory, Researchers Find


Science Daily
Fri, 09 Sep 2011 16:29 UTC
Pills
© Hamiza Bakirci / FotoliaWomen who use contraceptives like birth control pills experience memory changes, according to new UC Irvine research. Their ability to remember the gist of an emotional event improves, while women not using the contraceptives better retain details.

Women who use contraceptives like birth control pills experience memory changes, according to new UC Irvine research. Their ability to remember the gist of an emotional event improves, while women not using the contraceptives better retain details.

"What's most exciting about this study is that it shows the use of hormonal contraception alters memory," UCI graduate researcher Shawn Nielsen said. "There are only a handful of studies examining the cognitive effects of the pill, and more than 100 million women use it worldwide."

She stressed that the medications did not damage memory. "It's a change in the type of information they remember, not a deficit."

The change makes sense, said Nielsen, who works with neurobiologist Larry Cahill, because contraceptives suppress sex hormones such as estrogen and progesterone to prevent pregnancy. Those hormones were previously linked to women's strong "left brain" memory by Cahill's research group.

"This new finding may be surprising to some, but it's a natural outgrowth of the research we've been doing on sex differences for 10 years," Cahill said.

A neurobiologist not involved in the latest work agreed it was a logical and intriguing next step in the examination of memory differences between the sexes. Like any research, she added, it would be important to validate it further.
Read More...
Cheeseburger

Stamping Out Hunger with Fast Food?

Tom Laskawy
Grist
Thu, 08 Sep 2011 19:59 UTC
Image
© frugivoremag.com
"Restaurants want a piece of food stamp pie" blared a recent USA Today headline. The article focused on lobbying by fast food restaurants, particularly Yum! Brands, the parent company of Taco Bell and KFC, which is enthusiastic about feeding food stamp recipients its market-tested concoctions. It caused a stir on Twitter and even got Gothamist's snark-filled attention.

The prospect that the food scientists who came up with the gut-busting Double Down sandwich would start a relentless marketing campaign aimed at low-income consumers in an era of rising obesity is alarming. Indeed, Kelly Brownell, director of Yale's Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity, called the idea of Yum! restaurants participating in the program "preposterous."

I was surprised to hear of this lobbying campaign; I had understood that food stamps could not be used at restaurants - and that recipients are barred from using their benefit to purchase prepared foods. But USA Today indicated that several states, including California, Michigan, and Arizona, currently allow such purchases; Rhode Island just started a pilot program limited to a handful of Subway restaurants, while Florida allows it in a single county.
Read More...
Coffee

The Coffee Illusion: What the Magic Brew Really Does to Your Brain

David McRaney
Alternet
Mon, 05 Sep 2011 19:35 UTC
Image
© stationbay.com
Coffee does not make you "superhuman." The truth is that you become addicted to caffeine quickly, and soon you are drinking coffee to cure withdrawal more than for stimulation.

The Misconception: Coffee stimulates you.

The Truth: You become addicted to caffeine quickly, and soon you are drinking coffee to cure withdrawal more than for stimulation.

Mmmm, a warm cup of coffee with delicious cream, topped with a frothy head.

You smell it brewing and feel cozy inside as you browse cakes and brownies, scones and biscotti.

You get some of it in you, and you feel alive again - you feel superhuman.

Suddenly, you feel like John Nash, you can't keep up with your own mind as geometric symbols float over the magazine articles in your lap. Someone strikes up a conversation about health care, and suddenly everything you've ever heard about the topic is at the tip of your tongue.

Damn, coffee is awesome.

Except, of course, much of this is an illusion.
Read More...
Attention

New Meta-Analysis Confirms: 'Genetically Modified Feed is Toxic'

Dr. Eva Sirinathsinghji
Institute of Science in Society
Mon, 05 Sep 2011 18:57 UTC
Image
© unknown
EXTRACTS: A meta-analysis on 19 studies confirms kidney and liver toxicity in rats and mice fed on GM soybean and maize, representing more than 80 percent of all commercially available GM food; it also exposes gross inadequacies of current risk assessment.

A team of independent scientists led by Gilles-Eric Séralini at Caen University in France carried out a meta-analysis combining the results of 19 previous studies [1], and their report concluded:
"From the regulatory tests performed today, it is unacceptable to submit 500 million Europeans and several billions of consumers worldwide to the new pesticide GM-derived foods or feed, this being done without more controls (if any) than the only 3-month-long toxicological tests and using only one mammalian species, especially since there is growing evidence of concern."
Read More...