Health & WellnessS


Magnify

Brain Scans Find Consciousness in Some Vegetative Patients

Carolyn Weaver
VOA News
Thu, 01 Apr 2010 00:00 UTC
Image
© C. Weaver/VOA
It sounds almost like science fiction: could some patients believed to be in vegetative or minimally conscious states really be conscious all along? And perhaps with new technology, be capable of communicating? Such conditions are caused mainly by stroke, traumatic brain injury, and heart attack. A recent study could give hope to some of these patients, while raising ethical and legal questions about a patient's quality of life.

For more than two decades, Rom Houben was misdiagnosed as being in a vegetative state, after a car accident. Then doctors discovered through a brain scan that he was conscious and possessed normal brain function.

At first it seemed the 46-year-old Belgian could communicate with tiny movements of his fingers as an aide guided his hand on a keyboard. But experts later disproved that. Doctors say Houben has some awareness of self and his surroundings, but cannot communicate.

Now research suggests that patients once misdiagnosed as unresponsive, like Houben might someday, with the right tools, be able to communicate directly from the brain.
Read More...
Magnify

90 Percent of Parents Want to Know More About Alternative Medicine, Survey Reveals

David Gutierrez
NaturalNews
Thu, 01 Apr 2010 00:00 UTC
Ninety percent of parents would like to know more about alternative medical approaches for their children, according to a survey conducted by Children's Hospitals and Clinics of Minnesota (Children's), a nationwide leader in integrative medical approaches.

Integrative medicine combines traditional Western medicine with medical therapies from other traditions, including acupuncture, massage and nutrition.

The survey also found that 90 percent of parents have a strong desire to eliminate their children's pain and improve their quality of life, while 85 percent would like to minimize their dependence on drugs. Parents felt especially strongly about reducing drug treatment for mood or behavioral problems such as anxiety or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Sixty-eight percent of parents believed that integrative treatment could be effective, and more than 75 percent said that hospitals should offer experts on both conventional and alternative treatments.
Read More...
Magnify

Antidepressants Simply Don't Work on Most Patients, Study Finds

Ethan Huff
NaturalNews
Thu, 01 Apr 2010 00:00 UTC
Researchers from the University of Pennsylvania have found that antidepressant drugs do little to nothing for people with mild to moderate depression. Countering the belief that medication helps everyone with depression, Robert DeRubeis and his colleagues found that only in very severe cases of depression do antidepressants offer any sort of perceived benefit.

Published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, the study clarifies the benefit of antidepressants on those with varying degrees of depression. They administered Hamilton Depression Rating Scale questionnaires to 718 people who fell all across the depression spectrum. Study facilitators gave participants either an antidepressant or a placebo for at least six weeks. Following a second evaluation, the only participants who demonstrated measurable improvements were those falling into the "very severe" category of depression.

Researchers noted that those on medication with milder cases of depression are probably finding relief from the act of speaking with their doctors about their symptoms and learning more about their conditions. Interestingly, many people with mild depression find relief in simply speaking with another person about their feelings.
Read More...
Magnify

Vitamin and Mineral Shortages Cause Degenerative Diseases

Helmut Beierbeck
NaturalNews
Fri, 02 Apr 2010 00:00 UTC
When micronutrients like vitamins and minerals are in short supply they are temporarily reserved for the most essential organs, at the expense of less pressing tasks. This is a survival mechanism, an example of physiological triage (1). Neglecting less essential functions on occasion may do no harm but chronic shortages due to bad diets will cause health problems in the long run.

That micronutrients are crucially important should come as no surprise. Vitamins are defined as substances that the body needs but cannot make or cannot make in sufficient quantities; and we obviously cannot make minerals. Chronic micronutrient deficiencies therefore have to be expected to take their toll.

Vitamins and minerals play numerous roles; they are antioxidants, stabilize protein structures and act as enzyme cofactors. They are therefore involved in all aspects of physiology, including such fundamental tasks as DNA maintenance and repair (2).
Read More...
Bad Guys

Rogue Kidney Brokers in the U.S. Sell Black Market Organs for Transplantation

David Gutierrez
NaturalNews
Fri, 02 Apr 2010 00:00 UTC
The recent arrests of 44 people on charges of organ trafficking have exposed a major criminal market in illegal organ transplants, where wealthy patients purchase organs from poor Third World residents through brokers residing in the United States.

"In India, China, Africa and Latin America the poor are selling their kidneys to wealthy buyers through an underground set of networks," said Steven Post of Stony Brook University. "The donors make enough money to buy a house or put their kids through college and the doctors do the transplants overseas, in India for example, at perfectly legitimate hospitals, where nobody cares about the buying and selling of organs," he said.

In other cases, transplants take place at U.S. hospitals -- as in the case of an organ smuggling network that flew poor Moldavian organ donors into the country on fake student or tourist visas and took them directly to hospitals for illegal transplants.
Read More...
Magnify

Let Go of Negative Energy: Easy Techniques to Help

Kim Evans
NaturalNews
Fri, 02 Apr 2010 00:00 UTC
Ever had a conversation or incident with someone that left you upset for a day or two? Maybe there's someone in your life, perhaps a boss or family member, that this happens with regularly? Energy is exchanged in conversation and in events, and if this happens, you've likely gotten a dose of bad energy. If this happens regularly with certain individuals, it's likely that they're accustomed to spreading it, and also that you're not sure how to let it go. Especially for the more sensitive among us, negative energy can sometimes be hard to let go.

Letting the energy dissipate on its own can sometimes take a day or two, but it's a real bummer when someone else's poor communication, lack of consciousness, or proneness to being emotionally triggered and verbally or otherwise attacking others affects us long after the moment the incident happened in. Fortunately, though, there are a few ways to expedite the removal of negative energy from us and shorten the amount of time it drags down our own consciousness.

Comment: Another way to reduce negative energy, in addition to stress release, is to practice Éiriú Eolas Breathing and Meditation Program and can be found here.

Read More...
Magnify

Words Easily Trigger Painful Memories


ScienceDaily
Wed, 31 Mar 2010 00:00 UTC
Image
© Peter Scheere/FSU JenaProfessor Dr. Thomas Weiss and his doctoral candidate Maria Richter from Jena University examine how pain-associated words are processed in the brain.
"Watch out, it'll hurt for a second." Not only children but also many adults get uneasy when they hear those words from their doctor. And, as soon as the needle touches their skin the piercing pain can be felt very clearly. "After such an experience it is enough to simply imagine a needle at the next vaccination appointment to activate our pain memory," knows Prof. Dr. Thomas Weiss from the Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena.

As the scientist and his team from the Dept. of Biological and Clinical Psychology could show in a study for the first time it is not only the painful memories and associations that set our pain memory on the alert. "Even verbal stimuli lead to reactions in certain areas of the brain," claims Prof. Weiss. As soon as we hear words like "tormenting," "gruelling" or "plaguing," exactly those areas in the brain are being activated which process the corresponding pain.

The psychologists from Jena University were able to examine this phenomenon using functional magnetic resonance tomography (fMRT). In their study they investigated how healthy subjects process words associated with experiencing pain. In order to prevent reactions based on a plain negative affect the subjects were also confronted with negatively connotated words like "terrifying," "horrible" or "disgusting" besides the proper pain words.
Read More...
Bad Guys

Judge Strikes Fear into Biotech Industry with Nullification of Patents on Human Genes BRCA1

Mike Adams
NaturalNews
Thu, 01 Apr 2010 00:00 UTC
Image
© Getty Images
As NaturalNews readers already know, corporations and universities right now claim intellectual property ownership over roughly twenty percent of your genetic code. This absurdity has occurred due to bizarre operations of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office which has handed corporations intellectual property monopolies over everything ranging from human genes to animals and seeds. Monsanto's "ownership" of genetically modified seed crops, for example, was only made possible by the patent office's willingness to grant the corporation intellectual property ownership over seeds.

I have long argued that granting patents on seeds, genes and medicines is a violation of natural law. In 2007, for example, I wrote an article entitled " Corporate Greed, Intellectual Property Laws and the Destruction of Human Civilization" in which I argued that the granting of such patents is a threat to not just human freedom but also the future of life on earth.

What happens when corporations, for example, wish to start collecting royalties on the human genes that you are copying when you reproduce by having children? The mere act of conceiving a child makes you a patent law violator... a criminal engaged in genetic piracy under U.S. law. This may sound patently absurd, if you'll excuse the expression, but it is precisely what has been held as true under current U.S. patent law.
Read More...
Bad Guys

National Institutes of Health Researchers Are Up-Front About Their Support From Drug Companies, Right? Wrong!

S. L. Baker
NaturalNews
Thu, 01 Apr 2010 00:00 UTC
Medical research that is sponsored by drug companies has long been a conundrum. After all, scientists often welcome the big bucks of the drug industry in order to finance their studies -- but can they be totally objective when they are supported by Big Pharma? NaturalNews has previously covered this problem and how mainstream medicine, including the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), has glossed over issues of researchers failing to disclose their association with drug companies.

But at least the U.S. government's own National Institutes of Health (NIH) funded scientists are open about their financial arrangements with drug companies, right? Wrong. And the Project On Government Oversight (POGO), an independent nonprofit group that investigates and exposes corruption and other misconduct in the federal government, is calling the NIH out on this problem.

POGO has gone public to urge NIH Director Francis Collins to deal strongly and openly with financial conflicts of interest among researchers funded by the NIH in universities and medical schools. Currently, the financial arrangements are reported on a strictly confidential basis only to the researchers' institutions. This secrecy has obviously created opportunities for abuses and conflicts of interest involving scientists funded by Big Pharma.
Read More...
Bad Guys

National Health Service Recruits Six Times More Bureaucrats than Nurses

Marek Doyle
NaturalNews
Thu, 01 Apr 2010 00:00 UTC
The flaws of Britain's failed state health system have been highlighted again and again in recent years, and now the National Health Service has responded - by hiring an additional 5,000 administrators. The NHS Information Centre released statistics this week that show that, whilst the numbers of nurses have risen by just 1.9 percent, there has been a 12 percent increase in the number of 'pen-pushers'. There are now 44,660 bureaucrats employed by the health service.

Total staff numbers in the NHS reached 1,432,000 in 2009, which is 30 percent more than a decade before. This means that, with a population of 60 million people, an incredible one in every 42 people living in Britain is employed by the NHS. Patients can be forgiven for wondering where their tax contributions are going.

Despite the long waits, restricted access to care and a culture of confusion and waste, the NHS was actually offered as a good example of universal healthcare by lobbyists in the recent battle in Congress to reform the US health system. These latest figures suggest that a system that removes choice and accountability may result in equal reductions in both quality of care and cost efficiency.
Read More...