Health & WellnessS


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Why Detoxification is Key to Upgrading Your Diet

Kim Evans
NaturalNews
Fri, 09 Apr 2010 00:00 UTC
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© Getty ImagesJunk Food
Scientists recently found that changes in the brain happen with eating large amounts of junk food, and that junk food can be as addictive as cigarettes or heroin.

That's bad news for the well-being of junk food eating folks, but fortunately, there's a solution that makes getting off junk foods much easier. Not surprisingly, the same solution is also effective for those breaking other addictive habits, like smoking or doing heroin. This solution is simply to detoxify your body to remove the remnants of the addictive substances that linger inside. Detoxification is key because those remnants are what are causing the cravings. Therefore, by removing them, you can end the cravings to make upgrading your diet much easier.

One important thing to understand about food cravings is that we crave what's already inside us - and crave what were used to eating. So, if you're used to eating pizza and hamburgers regularly, you'll crave them. It's because small particles of them from previous meals are still in your body.

A look at other addictive habits like smoking and drugs offers more insight into what the body craves. Put it this way: a heroin addict doesn't crave heroin before he's tried it. He only craves it because particles of it remain in his body. The same applies for cravings of cigarettes. Nobody has ever craved a cigarette before first smoking one. People only crave cigarettes after the chemicals and molecules from them are already inside the body. With these addictive habits too, when you remove the molecules that are causing the cravings through detoxification, you can effectively end the cravings.
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Soda Tax: Consider the Health Benefit and Paying for Healthcare

Deanna Dean
NaturalNews
Fri, 09 Apr 2010 00:00 UTC
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© Getty Images
The new federal excise tax on soda and other sugary drinks is being considered by the Senate Finance Committee as they listen to proposals on how to pay for President Obama's universal health care plan, which is expected to cost more than $1 trillion. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that a three-cent tax would generate $24 billion over the next four years. The tax also has the full support of many in the health industry including Washington based Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), which pressures food companies to make healthier products. Strong opposition is likely to come from an already tax burdened electorate and the beverage industry.

Michael Jacobson of the CSPI states, "Soft drinks are nutritionally worthless...[and] are directly related to weight gain, partly because beverages are more conducive to weight gain than solid foods." "Beverage companies market more than 14 billion gallons of calorie-laden soft drinks annually. That is equivalent to about 506 12-oz. servings per year, for every man, woman, and child." He contends that consumption would be less by around one percent and overall health would be improved for each penny tax on a 12 ounce drink. He goes on to say that $1.5 billion could be raised annually with this tax.

The obesity epidemic in the United States, according to the journal Archives of Internal Medicine, costs the United States an estimated $147 billion a year in health costs.
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Enjoy Safer Grilling This Year with Rosemary and Cherries

Tony Isaacs
NaturalNews
Fri, 09 Apr 2010 00:00 UTC
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© Getty Images
For many of us, spring signals the start of grilling season. Unfortunately, grilling meat and cooking meat at high temperatures result in the formation of chemical compounds which may increase the risk of cancer. This year, if you find the urge to fire up the barbecue irresistible, the addition of either of a couple of common food items can greatly reduce the formation of such dangerous compounds: rosemary or tart cherries.

Chief among the cancer causing compounds produced by cooking meats are heterocyclic amines (HCAs), which are classified by the National Toxicology Program of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services as human carcinogens that increase the risk of cancer. Researchers at Kansas State University recently studied adding rosemary extract to ground beef. In addition to alcohol, the rosemary extracts contained a mixture of rosmarinic acid, carnosol, and carnosic acid. The researchers were not sure how or if the compounds worked but they found that adding the extracts reduced the HCA levels anywhere from 30 to 100 percent.

In another study published this month in the International Journal of Food Sciences and Nutrition, researchers in Saudi Arabia found that the total amount of HCAs in grilled chicken was reduced seven-fold when 2% rosemary extract was added. The researchers also found that two other dangerous compounds created during cooking were inhibited to non-detectable levels.
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Red Flag

Scientists Link Chemical in Baby Products to Birth Defects and Cancer

David Derbyshire
Daily Mail
Thu, 08 Apr 2010 22:37 UTC
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A coalition of some of the world's leading scientists has urged the Government to ban gender-bending chemicals used in baby products.
Scientists yesterday called for a ban on a gender-bending chemical found in baby bottles and food containers.

They said clear evidence from four studies linked bisphenol A to cancer, birth defects and heart disease.

Last week Denmark became the first EU country to ban the chemical in food and drink containers for the under threes.

Some scientists believe bisphenol A, or BPA, interferes with the hormonal system by copying oestrogen.

Although some animal studies have shown it to be safe, others have linked it to diseases such as breast cancer, liver damage, obesity, diabetes and infertility.

Comment: Clearly the problem is not just with baby products. BPA is used in a wide variety of household appliances that are used for heating and cooking water and food. 90% of people have it in their bodies. It is very likely in the water supply in most countries. It is toxic, and potentially deadly to humans. Stop using plastic to heat food and water.

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9/11 rescuers' lungs still not getting better: Dust from towers' collapse likely cause

David B. Caruso
The Columbus Dispatch
Thu, 08 Apr 2010 02:55 UTC
Most of the New York City firefighters and medics whose lungs were damaged by pulverized masonry and glass from the Sept. 11 attack on the World Trade Center are not improving as time goes by, according to a new study.

The results are based on breathing tests from nearly 11,000 firefighters who were at ground zero in the first two weeks when the dust cloud was thickest. Of the firefighters who didn't smoke, 13 percent were still scoring below normal up to seven years later, the study found.

That number was down from 18 percent who initially tested below normal after the attack, said researchers at the New York City Fire Department and the Albert Einstein College of Medicine.

Among emergency medical technicians, the numbers were worse. Of the nearly 2,000 EMTs included in the analysis, 22 percent of the nonsmokers scored below normal on their most recent breathing test.

The research, in today's New England Journal of Medicine, dims hopes that workers who developed respiratory problems after being exposed to the trade center's remnants would gradually return to normal.
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Butterfly

Meditative breathing may help manage chronic pain

Sharon Keeler
Arizona State University News
Thu, 08 Apr 2010 12:33 UTC
Breathing
© UnknownA new study, completed by scientists at ASU and the Barrow Neurological Institute in Phoenix, is the first to directly examine the benefits of breathing rate on physical and emotional reaction to pain. The benefit of slow breathing in relieving pain was greatest in healthy women.
A new study published in the journal Pain offers support for the benefits of yoga-style breathing and meditation to help control chronic pain.

The research, completed by scientists at Arizona State University and the Barrow Neurological Institute in Phoenix, is the first to directly examine the benefits of breathing rate on physical and emotional reaction to pain.

In essence, the researchers put meditation to the test. During the study trials, participants where subjected to brief pulses of moderately painful heat on their palms. They were asked to report what they felt in three ways: how strong was the pain, how unpleasant was the pain, and how much the pain affected their emotional state.

Comment: One of the most effective breathing techniques to achieve these results can be found here.

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Health

Sleep apnea boosts stroke risk

Val Willingham
CNN
Thu, 08 Apr 2010 12:28 UTC
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© Unknown
Obstructive sleep apnea, a condition in which breathing stops intermittently during sleep - is associated with an increased risk of stroke in middle-aged or older Americans, especially in men, according to a new study out of the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine. And that's a scary statistic, since, according to the National Sleep Foundation, 18 million people in the U.S. suffer from sleep apnea and many of them don't know it.

Researchers compiled data from the famous Sleep Heart Health Study and looked at stroke risk in 5,422 participants aged 40 years and older without a history of stroke. At the start of the study, participants performed a standard at-home sleep test that determined whether they had sleep apnea and, if so, the severity of the sleep apnea. Participants were followed for an average of nine years. During that period, a total of 193 participants had a stroke - 85 men (of 2,462 men enrolled) and 108 women (out of 2,960 enrolled).
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China Faces New Health Scare Over "Bad Vaccines"


Breitbart
Wed, 07 Apr 2010 09:36 UTC
Breinbart vaccines
© AFPA Chinese school boy receives a A(H1N1) swine flu vaccine injection at a school in Beijing in October.
Four years ago, Qiang Qiang was a healthy boy. Now, he is epileptic and has trouble keeping up at school -- problems that emerged after a vaccination against Japanese encephalitis.

The seven-year-old is one of dozens of youngsters in the northern Chinese province of Shanxi whose parents believe their children may have suffered serious side effects from vaccines in the country's latest public health scare.

"His teacher at school tells us he is dumb, that he has short memory and cannot follow classes," his father Gao Changhong told AFP.

"We have spent nearly 60,000 yuan ($8,800) to try to cure him, and we really hope the government will take this situation seriously."

A Chinese state media report last month said four children had died and more than 70 others in Shanxi fell ill after they received shots against illnesses such as hepatitis B and rabies between 2006 and 2008.

The China Economic Times report blamed vaccines that had been exposed to excessive heat and should have been destroyed.
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Transplanted Organs Impart Memories Onto Recipients

Ethan A. Huff
NaturalNews
Thu, 08 Apr 2010 00:00 UTC
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© Paul Pearsall
Becoming an organ donor is a great way to help out a person in the event of one's death. A study has shown, however, that sometimes donor recipients take on certain characteristics or personality traits from the donor, a phenomenon that researchers are having a difficult time explaining.

Paul Pearsall, a neuropsychologist, wrote about this interesting topic in his book, The Heart's Code: Tapping the Wisdom and Power of Our Heart Energy. In it, he provides insight into his belief that the physical heart contains within it memories belonging to its person. Part of Pearsall's research for the book included tracking several real life cases of heart transplant recipients who mysteriously inherited some of their donors' traits.

In one case, a Spanish-speaking man began using words that he had not used prior to his transplant. He received his heart from a man named David who had died in a car accident. David's wife, Glenda, when meeting the recipient of her husband's heart for the first time, used the word "copacetic" to describe the situation. The recipient's mother quickly replied that her son had begun using that word for the first time and that it did not even have a Spanish equivalent, indicating that he had adopted the word from David.
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Battle Depression and Anxiety with This Inexpensive Amino Acid

Danna Norek
NaturalNews
Thu, 08 Apr 2010 00:00 UTC
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© Source Naturals
Billions of dollars are spent yearly on the costs associated with depression and anxiety disorders. It's no surprise when you consider the statistic that about ten percent of the US population suffers from depression. Most Americans are not aware that a simple, inexpensive amino acid called 5-HTP can help relieve many mood issues that revolve around anxiety and depression.

Much of the significant profit made by pharmaceutical companies is made through sales of various antidepressants, anti anxiety, and mood related drugs. That's pretty amazing considering that the average patient must try at least 3 different antidepressants before they find one that actually works for them.

Most antidepressants on the market have side effects so unsavory that the symptom may be better than the treatment. That doesn't exactly make a great case for treating depression with these hard core meds.
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