Health & WellnessS


Health

Quitting Cigarettes Increases Diabetes Risk

Andy Coghlan
New Scientist
Tue, 05 Jan 2010 17:18 UTC
For smokers under pressure to give up in 2010, it will seem like the ultimate excuse: quitting smoking appears to increase the risk of diabetes.

Smokers are on average 30 per cent more likely than non-smokers to develop type 2 or adult-onset diabetes. Now a study of 10,892 adults over 10 years has found that, in the first six years after giving up, former smokers are 70 per cent more likely than non-smokers to develop the disease.

Hsin-Chieh Yeh and colleagues at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, Maryland, found that the risk of diabetes is highest straight after quitting and gradually reduces to that of non-smokers. This is most likely because quitting makes people more likely to put on weight, which is known to increase the risk of diabetes.
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Book

'Food Rules': A Completely Different Way To Fix The Health Care Crisis

Michael Pollan
Huffington Post
Mon, 04 Jan 2010 13:41 UTC
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The idea for this book came from a doctor--a couple of them, as a matter of fact. They had read my last book, In Defense of Food, which ended with a handful of tips for eating well: simple ways to navigate the treacherous landscape of modern food and the often-confusing science of nutrition. "What I would love is a pamphlet I could hand to my patients with some rules for eating wisely," they would say. "I don't have time for the big nutrition lecture and, anyway, they really don't need to know what an antioxidant is in order to eat wisely." Another doctor, a transplant cardiologist, wrote to say "you can't imagine what I see on the insides of people these days wrecked by eating food products instead of food." So rather than leaving his heart patients with yet another prescription or lecture on cholesterol, he gives them a simple recipe for roasting a chicken, and getting three wholesome meals out of it -- a very different way of thinking about health.
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Attention

BPA Study Points To Intestine Damage


NewsInferno
Wed, 06 Jan 2010 10:28 UTC
Bisphenol a - BPA - is making news again today. This time, for yet another adverse health effect linked to the estrogenic plastic hardener. Now, according to MLIve.com, emerging research has linked the chemical to intestinal problems.

The study was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy Sciences Journal and revealed the hormone mimicker does, in fact, cause harm to intestines, said MLive.com. MLive.com noted that intestines are the first organ in contact with the chemical following ingestion of BPA.
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Cheeseburger

US scientists may have discovered key to defeating obesity


Raw Story
Wed, 06 Jan 2010 09:53 UTC
Shutting down an energy-controlling mechanism in mice left them leaner than normal mice and could be a new way to fight obesity in humans, US researchers said in a study published Tuesday.

And the finding is big news in the United States, where around a third of the adult population is considered obese, meaning they have a body mass index (BMI) greater than 30, according to the American Obesity Association.

BMI is calculated by dividing a person's body weight in kilograms by their height in meters squared.
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Radar

Police officers sue force over 'radio injuries'

Nigel Bunyan
Telegraph UK
Fri, 01 Jan 2010 06:43 UTC
Police officers are preparing to sue their own force over a series of illnesses they claim were caused by the radio system they use while out on patrol.

The Lancashire Constabulary was the first in Britain to try out the Airwave network, designed specifically to have longer range and more capcaity to the emergency services and the military.

Nine years after its introduction scores of officers are claiming that radiation emissions from the system have caused them to suffer such ailments as nausea, headaches, stomach pains and skin rashes.
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Magnify

Disinfectants May Turn Potentially Deadly Germs into Superbugs

S. L. Baker
Natural News
Wed, 06 Jan 2010 00:00 UTC
The opportunistic bacterium Pseudomonas aeruginosa is increasingly recognized as a cause of severe nosocomial infections -- those are infections people contract as a result of treatment in a hospital or other medical center. In fact, a Pseudomonas aeruginosa infection can be life-threatening, especially if someone is immunocompromised.

The germ also causes chronic infections in cystic fibrosis patients. So it's no surprise that disinfectants are widely sprayed, sloshed and wiped over surfaces in medical settings to supposedly protect patients. But now comes evidence the very act of relying on disinfectants to prevent Pseudomonas aeruginosa infections could be turning the already dangerous germ into a superbug that's resistant to antibiotics as well as the disinfectant itself.
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Magnify

Window Cleaning Chemical Injected into Fast Food Hamburger Meat

Mike Adams
Natural News
Tue, 05 Jan 2010 15:00 UTC
If you're in the beef business, what do you do with all the extra cow parts and trimmings that have traditionally been sold off for use in pet food? You scrape them together into a pink mass, inject them with a chemical to kill the e.coli, and sell them to fast food restaurants to make into hamburgers.

That's what's been happening all across the USA with beef sold to McDonald's, Burger King, school lunches and other fast food restaurants, according to a New York Times article. The beef is injected with ammonia, a chemical commonly used in glass cleaning and window cleaning products.

This is all fine with the USDA, which endorses the procedure as a way to make the hamburger beef "safe" enough to eat. Ammonia kills e.coli, you see, and the USDA doesn't seem to be concerned with the fact that people are eating ammonia in their hamburgers.
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Control Panel

As an American, I refuse to buy mandatory health insurance that supports corrupt conventional medicine

Mike Adams
Natural News
Tue, 05 Jan 2010 23:31 UTC
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© Truth Publishing International
Even if Obama's health care reform bill becomes law, mandating that all Americans buy health insurance policies for a failed system of "sick care", I will refuse to comply. I've read the U.S. Constitution and its Bill of Rights, and nowhere in that document do I find that the federal government has the power to force consumers to purchase for-profit insurance products from private companies.

The very basis of the health care reform bill is, at its core, unconstitutional.

If this mandate is allowed to stand, it sets a dangerous precedent for the U.S. government to require us to purchase other products and services from whatever industries it chooses to support. What's next? Will the government pass a law forcing us to buy pharmaceuticals at thousands of dollars a year? Will it force us to purchase U.S.-made automobiles in order to boost the automobile industry? Is our economic free choice now centrally planned by our own government operating like Communist China?

This is a serious question that Constitutional scholars will no doubt be debating in the months ahead. But who am I kidding anyway? The U.S. government has long since abandoned the U.S. Constitution and no has any intention of abiding by it. Want proof? Read just one amendment: the 10th amendment.
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Alarm Clock

Child Abuse! More Toddlers, Young Children Given Antipsychotics

Jennifer Thomas
HealthDay/ScoutNews
Mon, 04 Jan 2010 16:00 UTC
Researchers question the 'worrisome' trend

The rate of children aged 2 to 5 who are given antipsychotic medications has doubled in recent years, a new study has found.

Yet little is known about either the effectiveness or the safety of these powerful psychiatric medications in children this age, said researchers from Columbia University and Rutgers University, who looked at data on more than 1 million children with private health insurance.

"It is a worrisome trend, partly because very little is known about the short-term, let alone the long-term, safety of these drugs in this age group," said study author Dr. Mark Olfson, a professor of clinical psychiatry at Columbia University in New York City.
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Health

Vitamin D and the Flu: More about the Science


Alliance for Natural Health
Tue, 05 Jan 2010 19:09 UTC
Bill Faloon, Co-founder of Life Extension Foundation, recently summarized some of the science showing the critical role of Vitamin D in preventing and controlling infections due to the flu. An excerpt from his article in the January 2010 Life Extension Magazine follows:

Evidence that Vitamin D Combats Winter Infections

As daylight hours grow colder and shorter, incidences of the common cold, flu, and respiratory infections spike upwards. Scientists have identified reduced vitamin D levels in winter months as a prime suspect for this increase in infectious disease cases.

Vitamin D in all forms (sunlight, sun lamps, or supplements) reduces the incidence of respiratory infections.[24,26] Dutch children with the least sun exposure are twice as likely to develop a cough and three times more likely to develop a runny nose compared with children with the most sun exposure.[35]
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