Health & WellnessS


Hourglass

US: Monsanto Lawyer Hired by FDA as Key Advisor


FTO South African News Blog
Fri, 20 Nov 2009 00:08 UTC
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© Unknown
Washington, D.C. - After Barack Obama said that he will not employ lobbyists in the government the FDA (which is part of the government in the US) employs a Monsanto Lawyer that is responsible for much of the genetically [modified] milk being consumed in the US.

Michael Taylor former employee of Monsanto now takes the top job of advising Margaret Hamburg. She is the commissioner of food and drugs in the US.

It does not just stop there, we know that the US wants to outlaw vitamins and nutrition from food, if I have it correctly they are already labeled as toxins and this guy called Michael Taylor will also work as the DA Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, the Center for Veterinary Medicine, the Office of Regulatory Affairs, Congress and the White House.
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Butterfly

Yoga Helps Even Little Ones Channel Energy, Emotion

Ashley Fantz
CNN
Fri, 13 Nov 2009 15:00 UTC
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Decatur, Georgia -- Gigi reaches up into her sun salutation. She steps back into her high lunge and kicks her legs straight into plank pose, a push-up she holds without wobbling for 10 seconds before looking up impatiently at her yoga teacher.

It's close to 6 p.m. She's had a long day.

She collapses on her mat, rolls on her back and closes her eyes. And then sends one finger digging up her nose.

What? C'mon, she's only 5.

This is yoga for kids. Once an oddity reserved for only the crunchiest communities, downward dog for the grade-school set is now being taught in studios from Minnetonka, Minnesota, to Moscow, Russia. And educators, including Chicago's Namaste School, which serves mostly poor kids who speak a language other than English, are turning to yoga to connect with a generation that many say has been dismissed as deficit this or hyperactive that.

At Decatur Yoga and Pilates studio, just outside Atlanta, Georgia, Dylan Laakmann, sits quietly next to his mother. The lanky 12-year-old whose fashionably long hair hangs in his face, describes himself as a "downer" before he started taking yoga two years ago.
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Magnify

Pushing the Brain to Find New Pathways


ScienceDaily
Thu, 19 Nov 2009 04:00 UTC
Until recently, scientists believed that, following a stroke, a patient had about six months to regain any lost function. After that, patients would be forced to compensate for the lost function by focusing on their remaining abilities. Although this belief has been refuted, a University of Missouri occupational therapy professor believes that the current health system is still not giving patients enough time to recover and underestimating what the human brain can do given the right conditions.

In a recent article for OT Practice Magazine, Guy McCormack, clinical professor and chair of the occupational therapy and occupational science department at the MU School of Health Professions, argues that health practitioners believe their clients need more time and motivation to reclaim lost functions, such as the use of an arm, hand or leg. With today's therapies, it is possible for patients to regain more function than ever thought possible, McCormack said.

"Patients are able to regain function due to the principle of neuroplasticity, or the brain's ability to change, especially when patients continue therapy long after their injuries," McCormack said. "Therapists once believed the brain doesn't develop new neurons; but, now they know neurons change their shape and create new branches to connect with other neurons, rewiring the brain following an injury or trauma."
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Eye 2

Big Pharma pushing vaccine against smoking

Andrew Jack
Financial Times
Mon, 16 Nov 2009 08:02 UTC
Smokers may soon be able to break their habit with an injectable vaccine that prevents nicotine in tobacco entering the brain, where it creates a highly addictive sensation of pleasure.

The NicVAX vaccine moved closer to the market on Monday after a deal between GlaxoSmithKline and the US biotech company Nabi Pharmaceuticals, which developed the product.

GSK will pay $40m (£24m) up front and as much as $500m in the future to Nabi at a time of growing concern over the heavy burden of tobacco-related diseases as one of the leading preventable causes of death worldwide.

The product potentially opens a new front in the tobacco wars, with most existing so-called smoking cessation products and methods failing to prevent many people from returning to their tobacco habits.
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Brick Wall

Children left 'vulnerable' by therapy culture

Graeme Paton
Guardian.co.uk
Mon, 16 Nov 2009 17:01 UTC
The rise of a celebrity-fuelled "therapy culture" is damaging a generation of children, according to new book.

An increase in reality TV programmes, self-help guides and confessional autobiographies is leaving young people feeling increasingly "vulnerable" and unable to cope with normal pressure, it was claimed.

Kathryn Ecclestone, professor of education at Birmingham University, said the trend had been driven by New Labour which had "responded to popular concerns about emotional vulnerability and unhappiness" by rewriting the way education is delivered in schools, colleges and universities.
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Pills

Atrocious diet leads to behavioural problems; atrocious drugs make them worse

Graeme Paton
Telegraph.co.uk
Mon, 16 Nov 2009 16:41 UTC
Growing numbers of parents are turning to drugs for a "quick fix" solution to their children's mental disorders, figures show.

Sami Timimi, consultant child and adolescent psychiatrist in the NHS and a visiting professor at Lincoln University, said the trend underlined the "McDonaldisation" of childhood mental health.

He said that, like fast food, the medical industry fed on "peoples' desire for instant satisfaction and a quick fix".

More children were taking medication to deal with emotional difficulties, anxiety, eating disorders and behavioural problems with little evidence of improvements, he said.
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Family

Children Turned into 'Mini-Adults'

Martin Beckford
Telegraph.co.uk
Mon, 16 Nov 2009 16:32 UTC
Children are being treated as "mini-adults" by society, according to an academic.

Richard House, from Roehampton University's Research Centre for Therapeutic Education, criticised the Government's "nappy curriculum" for under-fives.

Under the Early Years Foundation Stage Framework, children are supposed to hit 69 learning targets by the time they start full-time education.

But Dr House, who co-edited the book Childhood, Wellbeing and a Therapeutic Ethos, said it was "robbing children more and more of their right to a childhood relatively free of adult anxieties, preoccupations, and intrusions".

Biddy Youell, head of child psychotherapy at the Tavistock and Portman NHS Trust, said that children's development could be stunted unless they were given the opportunity to play and be playful at an early age.
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Magnify

Study: Vitamin D linked to heart health


ABC News
Wed, 18 Nov 2009 15:38 UTC
Research from a new study reaffirms the importance of proper vitamin D levels to a healthy heart.

Researchers at Intermountain Medical Center in Utah found that low levels of vitamin D significantly increase the risk for stroke, heart disease and death.

The study followed 27,686 people age 50 and older with no history of cardiovascular disease. The participants were divided into three groups based on their vitamin D levels of normal, low or very low.

After just a year, those with very low levels were 77 percent more likely to die, 45 percent more likely to develop coronary artery disease and 78 percent more likely to have a stroke compared to those with normal vitamin D levels.
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Attention

US: Study Finds Uninsured Trauma Patients Much More Likely To Die In ER


RedOrbit
Wed, 18 Nov 2009 15:27 UTC
A new study shows that trauma patients without health insurance are twice as likely to die in the hospital as those with insurance, according to the Associated Press.

Doctors and health experts, who thought emergency room treatment was fair and unprejudiced, were shocked to hear the news from the Harvard University researchers.

"This is another drop in a sea of evidence that the uninsured fare much worse in their health in the United States," said senior author Dr. Atul Gawande, a Harvard surgeon and medical journalist.

Published in the November issue of Archives of Surgery, the study is just in time to add fuel to the debate in Congress over extending health insurance coverage to the millions of uninsured in America.
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Heart

Meditation 'cuts risk of heart attack by half'

Rebecca Smith
The Daily Telegraph
Tue, 17 Nov 2009 13:27 UTC
Meditation
© Getty
Meditation is good for the body as well as the mind, scientists have discovered, as the practice significantly reduces the risk of a heart attack for people with heart disease.

Patients with heart disease who practised Transcendental Meditation cut their chances of a heart attack, stroke and death by half, compared with non-meditating patients, the first study of its kind has found.

Stress is a major factor in heart disease and meditation experts say the technique can help control it.

Transcendental Meditation, practised by the Beatles and based on an ancient tradition of enlightenment in India, involves sitting quietly and concentrating to focus the mind inwards by silently repeating a mantra. The practice is said to induce inner peace by allowing thoughts to flow in and out of the mind.

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

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