Health & WellnessS


Attention

California State Poised to OK Supertoxic Pesticide

Peter Fimrite
San Francisco Chronicle
Wed, 02 Jun 2010 18:10 UTC
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© Paul Chinn / The ChronicleJim Cochran of organic grower Swanton Berry Farms checks his strawberries, a crop on which methyl iodide often is used.
Farmers planting strawberries and other crops in California will soon have to contend with cancer-causing poison instead of bugs, worms and fungus if regulators get their wish.

The California Department of Pesticide Regulation has proposed registering methyl iodide as a pesticide in California to the dismay of scientists and environmental groups, who say it is so toxic that even chemists are reluctant to handle it.

The chemical will become legal for growers to use after a 60-day comment period ending June 29 unless there is some kind of public outcry.
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Health

The Super Fiber That Controls Your Appetite and Blood Sugar

Dr. Mark Hyman
Huffington Post
Sat, 29 May 2010 17:28 UTC

Imagine eating 12 pounds of food a day - and still staying thin and healthy. That may sound crazy, but it's exactly what our hunter-gatherer ancestors ate for millennia! And they didn't have any obesity or chronic diseases like heart disease, diabetes, cancer, or dementia.

Of course, I wouldn't advise anyone today to eat 12 pounds of food, because the food in our society lacks one major secret ingredient that our ancestors ate in nearly all their food - fiber!

Fiber has so many health benefits that I want to focus on it in this week's blog. I'll explain some of its benefits and give you nine tips you can begin using today to get more fiber in your diet. I'll also tell you about my favorite "super-fiber" that can help you increase your total fiber intake overnight.
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Magnify

The Secret (and Surprising) Power of Naps

Jennifer Soong
WebMD
Fri, 28 May 2010 00:00 UTC
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© iStockphoto
Need to recharge? Don't lean on caffeine -- a power nap will boost your memory, cognitive skills, creativity, and energy level.

Naps help Constance Kobylarz Wilde, 58, recharge, especially if she takes them right after lunch. Wilde, a marketing manager and health blogger in Mountain View, California, is constantly juggling her schedule as a working mom and family caregiver. She's up by 6 a.m. every day and tries to go to bed by 10:30 p.m., but unanticipated issues often push her bedtime later.

"I can't do all-nighters anymore or get six hours of sleep without it beginning to affect me," she says.

So to combat fatigue and stay on top of things at work and at home, Wilde has made power naps a regular part of her routine, setting an alarm for a short snooze.
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Magnify

Meditation Reduces the Emotional Impact of Pain


PhysOrg
Wed, 02 Jun 2010 10:00 UTC
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© Getty Images
People who meditate regularly find pain less unpleasant because their brains anticipate the pain less, a new study has found.

Scientists from The University of Manchester recruited individuals into the study who had a diverse range of experience with meditation, spanning anything from months to decades. It was only the more advanced meditators whose anticipation and experience of pain differed from non-meditators.

The type of meditation practised also varied across individuals, but all included 'mindfulness meditation' practices, such as those that form the basis of Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT), recommended for recurrent depression by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) in 2004.

Comment: Another form of meditation to reduce emotional pain or stress is to practice Éiriú Eolas Breathing and Meditation Program and can be found here.

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Magnify

Why the Fluoridation of Public Water Supplies is Illegal

Mike Adams
NaturalNews
Wed, 02 Jun 2010 00:00 UTC
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© NaturalNews
Municipalities all across America are currently dripping fluoride chemicals into their public water supply, dosing over a hundred million Americans with a chemical that they claim "prevents cavities."

What's interesting here is that this biological effect of "preventing cavities" is a medical claim, according to the FDA. And as such, making this claim instantly and automatically transforms fluoride into a "drug" under currently FDA regulations.

This means that cities and towns all across America are now practicing medicine without a license by dripping liquid medication into the public water supply without the consent of those who are swallowing the medication.

If you or I did this, we would be arrested and tried as either terrorists (because contaminating the water supply is an act of terrorism) or felons practicing medicine without a license. So what allows cities and towns to get away with these very same crimes?
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Magnify

What Happens When We Get Angry?


Medical News Today
Wed, 02 Jun 2010 00:00 UTC
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© iStockphoto
When we get angry, the heart rate, arterial tension and testosterone production increases, cortisol (the stress hormone) decreases, and the left hemisphere of the brain becomes more stimulated. This is indicated by a new investigation lead by scientists from the University of Valencia (UV) that analyses the changes in the brain's cardiovascular, hormonal and asymmetric activation response when we get angry.

"Inducing emotions generates profound changes in the autonomous nervous system, which controls the cardiovascular response, and also in the endocrine system. In addition, changes in cerebral activity also occur, especially in the frontal and temporal lobes", Neus Herrero, main author of the study and researcher at UV, explains to SINC.

The researchers induced anger in 30 men using the version that has been adapted to Spanish of the procedure "Anger Induction" (AI), consisting of 50 phrases in first person that reflect daily situations that provoke anger. Before and immediately after the inducement of anger they measured the heart rate and arterial tension, the levels of testosterone and cortisol, and the asymmetric activation of the brain (using the dichotic listening technique), the general state of mind and the subjective experience of the anger emotion.
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Bad Guys

Obama's USDA to Deceive Americans Over GM Crops

David Gutierrez
NaturalNews
Wed, 02 Jun 2010 00:00 UTC
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© AP Photo
The Obama administration's Department of Agriculture (USDA) is attempting to downplay the risks of genetically modified alfalfa, a crop previously banned by numerous federal courts.

In 2007, a federal court rejected the Bush USDA's approval of alfalfa plants genetically engineered for resistance to the Monsanto herbicide Roundup. The court ruled that the USDA had not properly considered the risks posed by the crop. These risks included the possibility that the genetically modified (GM) crops could swap genetic material with related species, thus contaminating neighboring fields or producing non-agricultural "super weeds."

Monsanto continues to appeal the decision, even though the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled against it twice. The case is now pending consideration by the Supreme Court.
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Magnify

Vast Majority of People Survive Common Thyroid Cancer Even Without Treatment

S. L. Baker
NaturalNews
Wed, 02 Jun 2010 00:00 UTC
Mainstream medicine has reported in recent years that the incidence of papillary thyroid cancer -- the most common form of thyroid malignancy -- is growing at an alarming rate. In fact, the number of people diagnosed with this form of cancer, which typically arises as an irregular mass in an otherwise normal thyroid gland, has tripled over the past three decades. But a new study by Dartmouth Medical School researchers has come up with good news about this so-called "epidemic".

First of all, the cases of papillary thyroid cancer have most likely only appeared to increase -- simply because of the huge surge in the use of ultrasound tests and biopsies. And it turns out the vast majority of people with this cancer survive it just fine, even if they receive no treatment at all.

Background information included in the study, which was just published in the May issue of the Archives of Otolaryngology, Head & Neck Surgery explains that papillary thyroid cancer is commonly found on autopsy among people who died of other causes. "Studies published as early as 1947 demonstrated it, and more recently, a report has shown that nearly every thyroid gland might be found to have a cancer if examined closely enough," the study authors wrote. "The advent of ultrasonography and fine-needle aspiration biopsy has allowed many previously undetected cancers to be identified, changing the epidemiology of the disease. Over the past 30 years, the detected incidence of thyroid cancer has increased three-fold, the entire increase attributable to papillary thyroid cancer and 87% of the increase attributable to tumors measuring less than 2 centimeters."
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Bell

Mercury Pollution from Dental Offices is Contaminating Your Seafood

Michael Bender
Grist
Tue, 01 Jun 2010 18:10 UTC
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It seems innocent enough. Your dentist is giving you a new filling. You get some of those little metal slivers in your mouth and he tells you take a swig of water. Rinse and spit.

No problem, right?

Unfortunately, each one of those slivers is about half mercury. Multiply that simple routine millions of times, and you have the reason dentists have become the leading source of mercury pollution in our country's wastewater. Each sliver of mercury down the drain ends up in wastewater, then the nearest river or bay, and ultimately in the fish we eat.

In fact, at least 40 percent of mercury flowing into municipal wastewater treatment plants starts out in dentists' offices. And those plants aren't set up to keep all that mercury out of the environment.
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Attention

Environmental Working Group Says: 'Dirty dozen' Produce Carries More Pesticide Residue

Danielle Dellorto
CNN
Tue, 01 Jun 2010 17:50 UTC
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If you're eating non-organic celery today, you may be ingesting 67 pesticides with it, according to a new report from the Environmental Working Group.

The group, a nonprofit focused on public health, scoured nearly 100,000 produce pesticide reports from the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to determine what fruits and vegetables we eat have the highest, and lowest, amounts of chemical residue.

Most alarming are the fruits and vegetables dubbed the "Dirty Dozen," which contain 47 to 67 pesticides per serving. These foods are believed to be most susceptible because they have soft skin that tends to absorb more pesticides.
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