Health & WellnessS


Bell

Vagus Nerve Stimulation Helps Resolve Tinnitus in Rat

Jamie Talan
Neurology Today
Thu, 17 Feb 2011 00:00 UTC
Image
Study authors Dr. Navzer engineer (left) and DR. MICHAEL KILGARD in the Cortical Plasticity Lab at the University of Texas at Dallas.
Investigator paired tones with brief pulses of vagus nerve stimulation, eliminating the physiological and behavioral symptoms of tinnitus in noise-exposed rats.

Investigators were able to use vagus nerve stimulation (VNS) to restore neural activity to normal and reverse the pathology of tinnitus in a rat model, according to a paper published online Jan. 12 before the print edition of Nature.

Based on the findings, the investigators - scientists at the University of Texas and MicroTransponder, a medical device company - are working to design a clinical trial for treating tinnitus.

"Brain changes in response to nerve damage or cochlear trauma cause irregular neural activity believed to be responsible for many types of chronic pain and tinnitus," said the senior investigator Michael Kilgard, PhD, associate professor of neuroscience at the University of Texas at Dallas.

The brain maps in the somatosensory and auditory cortex are changed in response to the noise trauma and this generates pathological neural activity thought to be responsible for the tinnitus, the study author explained, adding that the severity of the tinnitus is correlated with the degree of map reorganization.

"When we paired tones with brief pulses of VNS we eliminated the physiological and behavioral symptoms of tinnitus in noise-exposed rats," said the lead author Navzer D. Engineer, PhD, vice president of preclinical affairs at MicroTransponder and a former post-doctoral fellow in the Dr. Kilgard's laboratory. The animals were monitored for three weeks after the therapy and the changes remained constant. "Pairing sounds with VNS provides that precision by rewiring damaged circuits and reverses the abnormal activity that generates the phantom sound."

Comment: It is possible to safely and easily stimulate the vagus nerve through gentle breathing exercises. 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...
Life Preserver

A daily dose of cod liver oil helps 'cure' arthritis

Jenny Hope
Daily Mail
Thu, 14 Jul 2011 19:39 UTC
Scientists have discovered that cod liver oil can repair arthritic joints as well as lubricating healthy ones.

They say Granny really did know best when she insisted on a daily dose, because it halts the inflammation and destruction of joint cartilage caused by arthritis.

And they believe supplements could help thousands of patients waiting in agony for hip and knee replacements by beginning a reversal of the degenerative process.
Read More...
Ambulance

Best of the Web: Mass Psychosis in the U.S.

James Ridgeway
aljazeera.net
Tue, 12 Jul 2011 14:30 UTC
Image
© GALLO/GETTYDrug companies like Pfizer are accused of pressuring doctors into over-prescribing medications to patients in order to increase profits.
Has America become a nation of psychotics? You would certainly think so, based on the explosion in the use of antipsychotic medications. In 2008, with over $14 billion in sales, antipsychotics became the single top-selling therapeutic class of prescription drugs in the United States, surpassing drugs used to treat high cholesterol and acid reflux.

Once upon a time, antipsychotics were reserved for a relatively small number of patients with hard-core psychiatric diagnoses - primarily schizophrenia and bipolar disorder - to treat such symptoms as delusions, hallucinations, or formal thought disorder. Today, it seems, everyone is taking antipsychotics. Parents are told that their unruly kids are in fact bipolar, and in need of anti-psychotics, while old people with dementia are dosed, in large numbers, with drugs once reserved largely for schizophrenics. Americans with symptoms ranging from chronic depression to anxiety to insomnia are now being prescribed anti-psychotics at rates that seem to indicate a national mass psychosis.

It is anything but a coincidence that the explosion in antipsychotic use coincides with the pharmaceutical industry's development of a new class of medications known as "atypical antipsychotics." Beginning with Zyprexa, Risperdal, and Seroquel in the 1990s, followed by Abilify in the early 2000s, these drugs were touted as being more effective than older antipsychotics like Haldol and Thorazine. More importantly, they lacked the most noxious side effects of the older drugs - in particular, the tremors and other motor control problems.
Read More...
Attention

Low Fat Diet Dramatically Worsens Diabetic Blood Sugars


diabetesupdate.blogspot.com
Thu, 07 Jul 2011 15:35 UTC
Over the past month the media have been busy doing what they do best - reporting bady designed animal research as if it were human research. As a result we read "A high-fat diet during pregnancy may program a woman's baby for future diabetes, even if she herself is not obese or diabetic." This headline multiplied through the web appearing on dozens of newspaper sites.

Only by reading the full article do we learn that the researchers concluded this after an undisclosed, but probably low, number of "obesity-resistant rats" were "fed... either a high-fat or a control diet from the first day of gestation."

Rodents have evolved to eat a very different diet than humans and don't do well on high fat diets. They have very different pancreases and enzyme function than humans. And, of course, the "high fat diet" used in rat research is also a high carbohydrate diet. But that didn't deter the media from reporting this finding as if it were a human study.

Another study that was reported in the media claimed that "Pregnant women who tuck into fatty foods are at greater risk of having a stillbirth."
Read More...
Health

Low-carbohydrate, High-protein Diets May Reduce Both Tumor Growth Rates and Cancer Risk

American Association for Cancer Research
Eurekalert
Thu, 14 Jul 2011 14:08 UTC
Eating a low-carbohydrate, high-protein diet may reduce the risk of cancer and slow the growth of tumors already present, according to a study published in Cancer Research, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research.

The study was conducted in mice, but the scientists involved agree that the strong biological findings are definitive enough that an effect in humans can be considered.

"This shows that something as simple as a change in diet can have an impact on cancer risk," said lead researcher Gerald Krystal, Ph.D., a distinguished scientist at the British Columbia Cancer Research Centre.
Read More...
Health

This Is Your Brain On Porn

Gary Wilson
Your Brain On Porn
Sun, 01 May 2011 07:36 UTC
This presentation is not an argument against pornography. It was created for anyone who has a porn addiction, or wants to understand pornography addiction.

Science teacher Gary Wilson explains the evolutionary forces behind porn's appeal, how the brain changes in response to super-normal stimulation, what makes today's porn different from static porn of the past, and what you need to know to regain your sense of direction if you're hooked on porn.

Part 1

Read More...
Question

Do we really need 8 glasses of water per day?


redOrbit
Wed, 13 Jul 2011 10:15 UTC
Water
© redOrbit
The long-time recommendations to drink six to eight glasses of water per day to prevent dehydration "is not only nonsense, but is thoroughly debunked nonsense," according to a doctor writing in the British Medical Journal on Tuesday.

Dr. Margaret McCartney, a general practitioner from Glasgow, Scotland, argues that there is no clear evidence of benefit from drinking increased amounts of water, yet the "we-don't-drink-enough-water" myth has endless advocates, including those from the National Health Service (NHS).

The NHS Choices website states: "Try to drink about six to eight glasses of water (or other fluids) a day to prevent dehydration." And many schools get so hung up on the advice, they feel it's appropriate to insist that pupils carry a bottle of water to school with them.

Also, many physicians will tell their patients to drink up to eight glasses of water per day, even though there is no actual research suggesting why this amount should be the norm. For your skin, for your weight, for your kidneys -- such advice has been passed around for years, along with the phrase: "drink more water, it's good for you."

But why? This is the question that some medical groups have been pondering over for the past few years now. Their argument is this: there's no evidence that drinking more water helps our health, so shouldn't we just drink when we're thirsty?

That's the message Dr. McCartney is putting forth in her published article.

Comment: So it boils down to common sense: drink when thirsty!

Problems factor in when we examine the quality of water people are drinking. Fluoride, for example, will leave you feeling like your thirst is never quite satisfied. Which is understandable, given that you're imbibing poison in consistent low doses. Clean water could make all the difference to your health.

Read More...
Bug

Deadly Spider Shuts Down German Supermarket


Spiegel
Mon, 11 Jul 2011 00:00 UTC
spiderwandering
© Spiegel/DPAA Brazilian Wandering Spider on display in the Zoological Institute of Munich University.
A supermarket in Germany was evacuated last Friday after a worker reported seeing one of the world's must deadly and vicious spiders -- a Brazilian Wandering Spider -- jump out of a banana crate. The store is due to reopen Monday after it was sprayed with pesticide -- but the beast has not been found.

It is a nightmare scenario for any supermarket. Last Friday morning, as an employee was unloading bananas from a crate in a large grocery store in south-western Germany, a large, greyish, hairy spider about 13 centimeters long jumped out and scuttled under a shelf.

The member of staff checked the Internet for images of spiders resembling the one he had just seen, and was shocked when he found a match: a Brazilian Wandering Spider (Phoneutria nigriventer), billed as one of the world's most venomous and aggressive spiders.

The store in the town of Bexbach was immediately evacuated and the police were called in. A spider expert from a nearby zoo helped a team of 30 people who gingerly searched the shelves, at times switching off the lights to lure the nocturnal beast out of its hiding place.
Read More...
Info

Australia: Dingo Poo Spreading Deadly Parasites to Humans

Peter Michael
The Courier Mail, Australia
Wed, 13 Jul 2011 12:00 UTC
Dingo Problem
© The Courier Mail
Dingo doo-doo has been linked to a spike in medical cases of a deadly cystic parasite that has been found as big as a football in the liver and lungs of humans.

Scientists are investigating cases in Brisbane, the Sunshine Coast and Townsville, where wild dogs encroaching on urban sprawl have spread the potentially lethal hydatid disease into the human population.

"Dingo poo is not good stuff," Charles Sturt University lead researcher Dr David Jenkins said.

"You can lose chunks of the liver and a whole lung because major surgery is the only way to cut out these fluid-filled cysts."

He said the worry was that because it took 10 to 15 years before the cyst grew to an identifiable size, it was only the tip of human cases being reported.

"As there is more contact, we expect to see a bigger spike in cases," he said.

Australia, on average, has 100 new cases a year of hydatid disease caused by a tiny tapeworm, Echinococcus granulosus, passed from the gut of the wild dog into the environment.
Read More...
Cow

Beef Tainted with Radioactive Cesium Hits Japanese Market

Phred Dvorak
Wall Street Journal
Wed, 13 Jul 2011 09:22 UTC
Fukushima Cattle
© ReutersFukushima-raised calves are led into an auction at the prefecture's livestock markets in Motomiya on Tuesday.
Tokyo - Japan grappled with a fresh radiation scare Tuesday, as authorities found that beef contaminated with radioactive cesium had been shipped to shops and restaurants throughout the country.

The beef, from six cattle raised on a farm near the stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, registered radioactive-cesium levels up to seven times that permitted by Japanese food-safety standards. Some of the meat had already likely been eaten, government officials said.

Experts said the level was too low to create health problems in people who ate just one or two servings. But the discovery dominated local news and TV shows, reminding Japanese consumers that they will be living with the threat of radiation for a long time to come - and highlighting holes in the way Japan is testing cattle for radioactive exposure.
Read More...