Health & WellnessS


Cell Phone

Heavy Mobile Use is Linked to Brain Tumours


Daily Express UK
Sat, 24 Oct 2009 17:27 UTC
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© UnknownHeavy mobile use is linked to brain tumours
Long-term mobile phone users could face a higher risk of developing cancer in later life, according to a decade-long study.

The report, to be published later this year, has reportedly found that heavy mobile use is linked to brain tumours.

The survey of 12,800 people in 13 countries has been overseen by the World Health Organisation.

Preliminary results of the inquiry, which is looking at whether mobile phone exposure is linked to three types of brain tumour and a tumour of the salivary gland, have been sent to a scientific journal.
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Health

Swine Flu: Is Meditation the Best Medication?

Richard Cook
richardcook.com
Fri, 23 Oct 2009 14:22 UTC
"long-term practice of meditation on a daily basis seems to raise the energy level of the body. This makes a difference because the body is like an energy-filled vessel. If this energy leaks through negative emotions, unnecessary physical tension, and the constant churning of the mind, the body will suffer a general state of depletion, which is bound to make it more susceptible to disease."
The mainstream media are now reporting the onset of a swine flu "emergency." Yet controversy is raging over the safety and efficacy of the government-approved vaccine.

The strain known as H1N1 supposedly hits children and young people the hardest. The elderly are said to be similarly at risk. Deaths are being reported, as are shortages of vaccine at some locations.

Government officials are making the TV rounds, including Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius, who says the vaccine is "safe and secure" and "right on target with an immune response."

Yet Americans are deeply skeptical. According to a poll by AOL news, 61 percent say they do not plan to get the vaccine. Only 21 percent are "very worried" about the flu outbreak.
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Pills

Pushing drugs? Scientists study possible health benefits of LSD and ecstacy (but whatever you do, don't smoke tobacco)

Denis Campbell
Guardian.co.uk
Fri, 23 Oct 2009 10:46 UTC
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© Yale Joel/Time & Life Pictures/Getty ImageThe fear that the growing use of LSD as a recreational drug in the 1960s, typified by this Life magazine cover, would cause mental illness, led to a ban on research in the 70s.
Growing number of people taking psychedelic drugs to help them cope with conditions such as chronic anxiety attacks

A growing number of people are taking LSD and other psychedelic drugs such as cannabis and ecstasy to help them cope with a variety of conditions including anorexia nervosa, cluster headaches and chronic anxiety attacks.

The emergence of a community that passes the drugs between users on the basis of friendship, support and need - with money rarely involved - comes amid a resurgence of research into the possible therapeutic benefits of psychedelics. This is leading to a growing optimism among those using the drugs that soon they may be able to obtain medicines based on psychedelics from their doctor, rather than risk jail for taking illicit drugs.
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Family

No Einstein in Your Crib? Get a Refund

Tamar Lewin
New York Times
Sat, 24 Oct 2009 01:19 UTC
Parent alert: the Walt Disney Company is now offering refunds for all those Baby Einstein videos that did not make children into geniuses.

They may have been a great electronic baby sitter, but the unusual refunds appear to be a tacit admission that they did not increase infant intellect.

"We see it as an acknowledgment by the leading baby video company that baby videos are not educational, and we hope other baby media companies will follow suit by offering refunds," said Susan Linn, director of Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, which has been pushing the issue for years.
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Heart - Black

Does Military Service Turn Young Men into Sexual Predators?

Penny Coleman
Alternet
Thu, 22 Oct 2009 16:08 UTC
"Everyone has the potential to be a sex offender. It depends on how they have been conditioned."

Every day, for four years as a West Point cadet, Tara Krause lived and worked alongside the men who had gang-raped her.

Still, she managed to graduate in 1982. She served as a field artillery officer during the Cold War and was attached to the 518th Military Intelligence Brigade during the Gulf War. In what she calls "an act of incredible self-destruction," she married a three-tour Vietnam vet in 1985 and, for the next eight years, lived "the private hell of his PTSD."

"Suicidal behavior, violence and degradation were common threads of daily life," she told me. She survived only because when he put his gun to her head one day, it finally gave her the courage to flee. "Like Lot's wife," she says, she struggles not to look back.
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Bulb

Behavioral Economics and the Food System

Marc Rumminger
The Ethicurean
Mon, 12 Oct 2009 15:04 UTC
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The human mind is fascinating. Understanding how we make decisions, how we form preferences, how we think about the future is not only intellectually interesting, but can also help us understand the dynamics of national conversations and find solutions to some of today's most pressing problems.

The national health care debate (or, all too often in August, temper tantrum) is one recent case where understanding the mental process can be helpful. "Status-Quo Anxiety", a recent column by New Yorker financial columnist James Surowiecki, shows how some findings from the field of behavioral economics apply to health care. Some of what he discusses is also applicable to our national conversation on food.

The first effect presented by Surowiecki is the "endowment effect": when we own something, we tend to overestimate its value. The effect has been shown in many experiments using everyday objects like mugs or event tickets, with the owners of the objects consistently charging far more than buyers are willing to pay.
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Syringe

A vaccine for anxiety? The real reason why drug companies are pushing more vaccines

Mike Adams
Natural News
Fri, 23 Oct 2009 13:19 UTC
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© Unknown
There's a new vaccine for nicotine addiction, and another one for drug addiction. There's an AIDS vaccines (which doesn't work) and a vaccine for cervical cancer that's been approved for use on boys (boys don't have a cervix). Through the pharmaceutical industry, the big push for vaccines is on!

But why, exactly? Is there suddenly a new rash of epidemic disease requiring vaccine treatments? No, not really. What's new is the way Big Pharma is latching on to these diseases as new opportunities to sell more drugs.

There's a huge shift underway from drugs designed for sick people to a whole new class of drugs manufactured for healthy people. The new paradigm is that people need drugs before they get sick, as a sort of "protection" against sickness. Drugs, in essence, are being positioned as nutrients -- things the human body needs in order to be healthy. And from the moment you're born, you're considered deficient in these drugs. That's why babies are injected with vaccines within minutes after being born. There's a strong belief in the medical industry that babies are born deficient in vaccines and that such deficiencies must be "corrected" as soon as possible.
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Light Saber

Amino Acid May Help Reduce Cocaine Cravings


Science Daily
Fri, 23 Oct 2009 12:44 UTC
A new study in rats has found that N-acetylcysteine (NAC), a commonly available and generally nontoxic amino acid derivative, reverses changes in the brain's circuitry associated with cocaine addiction. The reversal appears to lessen the cravings associated with cocaine, thus providing protection against relapse.

The findings were presented at Neuroscience 2009, the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience and the world's largest source of emerging news about brain science and health.

"Our finding suggests a promising therapeutic strategy for cocaine addiction, for which there is no approved treatment," said lead author Khaled Moussawi of the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston.
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Beer

Chronic Voluntary Alcohol Consumption Impairs Neurogenesis


Science Daily
Fri, 23 Oct 2009 12:41 UTC
A new study found that chronic alcohol consumption reduces the number of new brain cells that form in the hippocampus of adolescent rhesus monkeys. This finding suggests these cells are vulnerable to alcohol and their presence may be essential for preventing alcohol dependence.
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Info

When Identifying Emotions, Women Outperform Men

Julie Gazaille
Medical News Today
Fri, 23 Oct 2009 06:46 UTC
Women are better than men at distinguishing between emotions, especially fear and disgust, according to a new study published in the online version of the journal Neuropsychologia. As part of the investigation, Olivier Collignon and a team from the Université de Montréal Centre de recherche en neuropsychologie et cognition (CERNEC) demonstrated that women are better than men at processing auditory, visual and audiovisual emotions.
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