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The idea that eating more saturated fat will increases our risk of heart disease is claimed to be 'well-established' according to most nutritional commentators. The fact is, as I disclosed here, there really isn't any good evidence to support this assertion. Three major reviews in recent times have failed to find evidence demonstrating that saturated fat causes heart disease. Getting doctors, dieticians and governments to release their grasp on this concept has not been easy. I sympathise - there was a time I believed with all my heart that saturated fat caused heart disease. Note, I write 'with all my heart'. My head knew no such thing, and the reason was simple: at that time I'd never thought to check the facts. Such was the certainty with which I had been told the 'saturated fat causes heart disease story', it didn't even occur to me to look at the evidence. When I did, I was truly aghast at what I discovered.
© Dennis Hallinan/AlamyA woman with Alzheimer's. The global cost of dementia this year, £388bn, includes social care, unpaid care and medical bills.
The global cost of dementia this year will be £388bn - more than 1% of GDP - and governments are unprepared to meet the challenge, according to a report released today.
The cost of social care, unpaid care by relatives and the medical bills for treating dementia was calculated in the World Alzheimer's Report 2010. Experts from the Karolinska Institute in Sweden and King's College London examined the cost of dementia care and found that, if it was a country, it would be the world's 18th biggest economy.
If it was a company, it would be the world's biggest by annual revenue, higher than Wal-Mart (£265.6bn) and Exxon Mobil (£200bn).
Campaigners have already warned that the costs of caring for people with dementia are on the rise, mostly due to people living longer. The number of people with dementia, currently 35.6 million, will almost double by 2030 to 65.7 million, and more than triple by 2050, when it is estimated there will be 115.4 million people with the disease.
The study said the costs will rise even faster than the prevalence of dementia - there could be an 85% increase in worldwide costs by 2030. In the UK, the Alzheimer's Society estimated dementia currently costs the country £20bn a year.
© IStockPhoto/Jo Ann Snover
Stopping your bottled water habits requires change. To end reliance on bottled water when we are out and about, we have to think reusable. For you, this could mean bottles made of glass, plastics, aluminum or steel. There are endless options.
© greenarbytheday.wordpress.com
Advertisements are plentiful for all kinds of products and supplements that purport to improve longevity or fend off disease. What may be harder to find, however, are ways you can influence these yourself without "six easy payments."
The Inflammation Link
We now know that many diseases are linked to low-grade inflammation in the body. If we can lower inflammation through our diets, there is a good chance of lowering incidence of diabetes, heart disease, cancer, arthritis and other medical issues.
Most health care professional concur that if an individual follows the basic principles outlined below for clean, anti-inflammatory eating, many illnesses could be prevented.
Sound too good to be true? It really isn't. Let's look at how we got to this point and how you can shift to eating foods that lower inflammation.
Comment: To learn more about the importance of an anti inflammatory diet read the following thread on the forum: Anti-Candida, Inflammation, Heavy Metals Detox and Diet
© Stanley KaysHemigraphis alternata, or purple waffle plant, one of the highest rated ornamentals for removing indoor air pollutants.
© poolie/flickr
Though I see her point - high-fructose corn syrup is a bit of a mouthful, and what does it mean anyway? - I am concerned about changing the name.
© unknown
A drug-resistant strain of pneumonia is the result of a highly-praised vaccine routinely given to infants three times in their first year of life, according to a study that will be published in tomorrow's Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). The timing of this study is particularly interesting, as it comes shortly after the replacement of the heptavalent pneumococcal conjugate vaccine (PCV-7) with an updated version, PCV-13.
© AFP/USFWS/Ho/FileA wild salmon swims up a stream in Alaska. Environmental and food safety groups are concerned genetically engineered slamon could not only endanger wild salmon but open the door to other kinds of genetically modified animal foods that may pose health or environmental dangers.
Ron Stotish, CEO of AquaBounty, said at Monday's first of two days of hearings that his company's fish product is safe and environmentally sustainable.
Food and Drug Administration officials have largely agreed with him, saying that the salmon, which grows twice as fast as its conventional "sisters," is as safe to eat as the traditional variety. But they have not yet decided whether to approve the request.
Critics call the modified salmon a "frankenfish" that could cause allergies in humans and the eventual decimation of the wild salmon population. An FDA advisory committee is reviewing the science of the genetically engineered fish this week and hearing such criticisms as the agency ponders approval.
© New York TimesTwo Cousins, Two Paths Thomas McLaughlin, left, was given a promising experimental drug to treat his lethal skin cancer in a medical trial; Brandon Ryan had to go without it.
And when, last year, each learned that a lethal skin cancer called melanoma was spreading rapidly through his body, the young men found themselves with the shared chance of benefiting from a recent medical breakthrough.
Only months before, a new drug had shown that it could safely slow the cancer's progress in certain patients. Both cousins had the type of tumor almost sure to respond to it. And major cancer centers, including the University of California, Los Angeles, were enrolling patients for the last, crucial test that regulators required to consider approving it for sale.
"Dude, you have to get on these superpills," Thomas McLaughlin, then 24, whose melanoma was diagnosed first, urged his cousin, Brandon Ryan. Mr. McLaughlin's tumors had stopped growing after two months of taking the pills.
But when Mr. Ryan, 22, was admitted to the trial in May, he was assigned by a computer lottery to what is known as the control arm. Instead of the pills, he was to get infusions of the chemotherapy drug that has been the notoriously ineffective recourse in treating melanoma for 30 years.
Even if it became clear that the chemotherapy could not hold back the tumors advancing into his lungs, liver and, most painfully, his spine, he would not be allowed to switch, lest it muddy the trial's results.
© Karl Vick/Washington PostCourtney juices carrots to cut the harsh taste of the ingredient, which is largely absent in psychotropic variety of cannabis.
William Courtney, MD, offered the chair to the right of the desk, the one occupied during regular office hours by a steady stream of patients seeking a doctor's recommendation for marijuana. In California, such a recommendation means an adult may grow, buy and smoke marijuana, all while remaining safely within the confines of state law.
The singular peculiarity of Courtney's "pot doc" practice here in Northern California is what he recommends: Don't smoke the stuff, he tells patients. Eat it.
Marijuana, he avers to every person who appears before him, turns out to be brimming with healing compounds. It won't get you high eaten raw, but juiced with a handful of carrots to cut the bitter taste, its leaves and buds may well have restored the health of his girlfriend, who had been given a diagnosis of lupus and a butcher's bill of other disorders that lab tests show have subsided. A local sufferer of Crohn's disease credits the plant with helping reverse the debilitating intestinal disorder. And published research from accredited laboratories suggests promise in preventing diabetes, heart disease, Alzheimer's, cancers and assorted maladies arising from chronic inflammation.
Yet almost no one knows any of this beyond a handful of scientists, including two at the National Institutes of Health who were sufficiently impressed that they joined a Nobel laureate in patenting a cannabis molecule. Courtney hands a copy of their U.S. Patent 6630507 to occupants of the chair, typically midway through a jargon-rich spiel that sometimes hits the patient right in the wheelhouse and sometimes goes whizzing overhead.
Comment: For more information on counteracting dementia, see these Sott links:
Read, Eat Well and Keep Spirits High to Avoid Dementia
Stress in Middle Age Could Contribute to Late-Life Dementia
Educated people cope better with dementia