Health & WellnessS


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Flashback Can Food Change Your Genes?

Mark Hyman
PARADE
Wed, 08 Mar 2006 16:58 UTC
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Dr. Mark Hyman
New research shows how nutrition can help prevent certain diseases.

A new field of medical science is showing that nutrition may eliminate disease by changing our very biochemistry. PARADE asked Dr. Mark Hyman - a leading practitioner in nutrigenomics, which studies the relationship between food and genes - to explain how four common conditions can be cured before they cause lasting damage.

In the future, a drop of your blood placed on a special DNA chip will predict the diseases that lie dormant in your genes. Your doctor will then suggest a personalized set of lifestyle and dietary changes, as well as pharmaceutical recommendations. These changes will "turn off" the genetic trigger in your cells that begins the process of disease. Medicine will be able to deal with disease at the roots, rather than at the branches.
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Hypnosis has "Real" Brain Effect


BBC News
Mon, 16 Nov 2009 02:19 UTC
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© SPLHypnosis can be used for overcoming anxiety and addiction
Hypnosis has a "very real" effect that can be picked up on brain scans, say Hull University researchers.

An imaging study of hypnotised participants showed decreased activity in the parts of the brain linked with daydreaming or letting the mind wander.

The same brain patterns were absent in people who had the tests but who were not susceptible to being hypnotised.

One psychologist said the study backed the theory that hypnosis "primes" the brain to be open to suggestion.

Hypnosis is increasingly being used to help people stop smoking or lose weight and advisers recently recommended its use on the NHS to treat irritable bowel syndrome.
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Gut Disorder 'Blamed on Leaks'


Herald de Paris
Sun, 15 Nov 2009 10:00 UTC
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© SPLUlcerative Colitis
Genetic defects leading to a leaky gut are a key cause of the inflammatory disorder ulcerative colitis, UK research suggests.

The disorder causes ulceration of the rectum and the colon, but its exact cause has yet to be pinned down.

The latest study links the condition to four genes which all play a role in keeping the intestine lining healthy.

The Nature Genetics study is based on an analysis of the genes of 12,700 people.

It is twice as large as any previous study - giving the results far greater robustness.

Ulcerative colitis (Colitis ulcerosa) is a life-long, incurable condition, which can cause diarrhoea, fever, abdominal pain and swelling and weight loss. It affects approximately one in 1,000 people.
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Pills

Hooked: Canada's Painkiller Problem

Anna Mehler Paperny
Globe and Mail
Mon, 16 Nov 2009 16:21 UTC
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© Kevin Van Paassen/The Globe and MailAt a rate of more than 466,000 doses a day, Canadains pop more painkillers (like Oxycontin, shown here) per capita than almost any other country (topped only by the United States and Belgium).
Canadians use prescription pills at a higher rate than almost any other nation. Patients are becoming addicts and pills are taking over from heroin as the street drug of choice. So why are voluntary 'guidelines' for doctors the best the experts can offer?
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Info

Chill: A Little Stress May Help You Live Longer

Melinda Wenner
Woman's Health
Thu, 05 Nov 2009 16:00 UTC
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Here's a statement you never hear: "I'm so stressed out - it's awesome!" But the fact is, certain pressure-filled situations - say, the occasional public-speaking gig or cramming for an exam - can be good for your health.

"There are good and bad types of stress. The bad kind is chronic and uncontrollable, like the tension caused by an unhappy marriage or a sick relative," says Edward Calabrese, Ph. D., a toxicologist at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. "But there are a lot of positives associated with short bursts of stress that ease up quickly," such as being stuck in a snarl of traffic or sweating through a presentation at work.

In a recent Ohio State University study, mice that experienced brief but intense stress were better able to fight the flu. And a smattering of research has linked acute short-term stress to a reduced risk of diabetes, heart disease, cancer, and Alzheimer's.
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Alarm Clock

Breast Cancer Stigma Endangers Poorer Women


Associated Press
Mon, 16 Nov 2009 15:42 UTC
In developing nations, two-thirds aren't diagnosed until disease has spread

Washington- Nurses were training women in rural Mexico to examine their breasts for cancer when one raised her hand to object. If she lost her breast, Harvard public health specialist Felicia Knaul recalls the woman saying, "My man would leave me" - and with him, the family's income.

International cancer specialists meet this week to plan an assault on a troubling increase of breast cancer in developing countries, where nearly two-thirds of women aren't diagnosed until it has spread through their bodies.

Adding to the problem, some worrisome data suggests that breast cancer seems to strike women, on average, about 10 years younger in poor countries than it does in the U.S. No one knows why.
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Major Schizophrenia Study Finds Striking Similarities Across 37 Countries in 6 Regions


ScienceDaily
Mon, 16 Nov 2009 02:00 UTC
An international study of more than 17,000 people with schizophrenia has found striking similarities in symptoms, medication, employment and sexual problems, despite the fact that it covered a diverse range of patients and healthcare systems in 37 different countries.

The research, published in the November issue of International Journal of Comparative Psychology (IJCP), provides a valuable international profile of the mental health disorder, which is estimated to affect as many as one in every 250 people at some point in their lives. Schizophrenia is the fifth leading cause of years lost through disability in men and the sixth leading cause in women.

"The Worldwide-Schizophrenia Outpatient Health Outcomes study (W-SOHO) was a three-year observational study designed to assess costs and outcomes in outpatients using antipsychotics" says lead author Dr Jamie Karagianis from Eli Lilly Canada Inc.

"It has enabled us to build up a valuable international picture of the demographics and treatment of schizophrenia across ten European countries and 27 countries from East Asia, Latin America, North Africa and the Middle East.
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Newspaper

H1N1 "Super Flu" Plague in Ukraine Spark Concern, Conspiracy Theories About Origins

Mike Adams
NaturalNews
Mon, 16 Nov 2009 03:00 UTC
Here's what we know with some degree of certainty about the H1N1 virus in Ukraine right now: nearly 300 people have died from the viral strain, and over 65,000 people have been hospitalized (the actual numbers are increasing by the hour). The virus appears to be either a highly aggressive mutation of the globally-circulating H1N1 strain, or a combination of three different influenza strains now circulating in Ukraine. Some observers suspect this new "super flu" might be labeled viral hemorrhagic pneumonia (meaning it destroys lung tissue until your lungs bleed so much that you drown in your own fluid), but that has not been confirmed by any official sources we're aware of.

Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko has issued emergency quarantine orders for nine of the country's regions and ordered the deployment of mobile military hospitals. He announced that the nation had been simultaneously hit with two different seasonal flu strains plus H1N1 -- and then hinted that all three might have recombined into the deadly new Ukrainian super flu.

In his own words, as reported by Daily Mail, "Unlike similar epidemics in other countries, three causes of serious viral infections came together simultaneously in Ukraine: two seasonal flus and the Californian flu. Virologists conclude that this combination of infections may produce an even more aggressive new virus as a result of mutation."
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Red Flag

God, the Army, and PTSD Is religion an obstacle to treatment?

Tara McKelvey
Boston Review
Sun, 15 Nov 2009 17:03 UTC
When Roger Benimoff arrived at the psychiatric building of the Coatesville, Pennsylvania veterans' hospital, he was greeted by a message carved into a nearby tree stump: "Welcome Home." It was a reminder that things had not turned out as he had expected.

In Faith Under Fire, a memoir about Benimoff's life as an Army chaplain in Iraq, Benimoff and co-author Eve Conant describe his return from Iraq to his family in Colorado and subsequent assignment to Walter Reed Army Medical Center. He retreated deep into himself, spending hours on the computer and racking up ten thousand dollars in debt on eBay. Above all, he was angry and jittery, scared even of his young sons, and barely able to make it through the day. He was eventually admitted to Coatesville's "Psych Ward." For a while the lock-down facility was his home. He wondered where God was in all of this, and was not alone in that bewilderment and pain.
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Bizarro Earth

UK: Disease turning 5-year-old girl to stone


eFitnessNow
Sun, 15 Nov 2009 17:33 UTC
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Lille Sutcliffe, a 5-year-old girl in the UK is fighting a rare disease called Cysitinosis, which leads to a build-up of amino acid in the form of crystals, causing problems in the kidney, thyroid gland, eyes and liver. Lillie faces a lifetime of medical treatment to stop, or at least slow down the disease, from turning her body to stone.

Doctors discovered crystals in Lillie's eyes, and diagnosed her with the disease in 2006, when she was just shy of her second birthday.

The future does not look positive for Lille and others like her. The disease can be diagnosed around 2-years-old as in Lillie's case and often children die at age 9 from end-stage kidney failure. The disorder causes an excess of the chemical cystine to form in her system, which causes her cells to solidify. It is estimated that only approximately 2,000 people around the world suffer from it.
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