Health & WellnessS


Magic Wand

Sustainable Food Ripe for Entrepreneurs to Drive Forward

Rob Smart
Huffington Post
Sat, 04 Jul 2009 15:56 UTC
What if I told you that America's food system is broken? What would you say?

Would you defend it by pointing out the abundance of choices offered in today's average supermarket, estimated to be over 45,000 items? Would you cite that per capita spending on food has dropped significantly over the last 50 years, freeing up incomes to improve quality of life? Would you talk about how American innovation is not only feeding our citizens, but is also feeding the world? Or would you quietly ask what a food system is?
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USA

The Revolution Will Not Be Petrochemically Fertilized

Kerry Trueman
Civil Eats
Fri, 03 Jul 2009 15:19 UTC
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If you think diabetes and obesity are the two biggest health care crises Americans face these days, you're missing the forest for the trees - literally. Because the roots of all this diet-induced disease lie in two less publicized but even more pernicious epidemics: nature deficit disorder and kitchen illiteracy.

The symptoms include a woeful lack of familiarity with that elusive culinary commodity known as "real food," or "good food," or "slow food," and total estrangement from Mother Earth - who, by the way, keeps hanging around outside pining for a glimpse of you while you remain indoors, mesmerized by your monitor or TV screen and mindlessly munching on ersatz edibles.
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Nuke

US: EPA declares health emergency in Montana

Bond Brungard
Disaster News Network
Fri, 03 Jul 2009 02:23 UTC
Montana asbestos cleanup
© ATSDRAn inspector screens a home in Libby for asbestos.

Northwest Montana, best known for its mountains, bighorn sheep, moose, and bear has also become known as a deadly place to live.

Health officials say as many as 200 people have died and another 1,000 residents - nearly 50 percent of the population of this small city -- have been sickened by asbestos-related illnesses.

Last month the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) declared a public health emergency in Libby and the surrounding area as a result of contamination created by asbestos mining in the region during the last century, and announced it will spend about $130 million to clean up the contamination and provide medical care in the region.

Residents of this northwest Montana city of about 2,600 south of the Canadian border, who have been dealing with the threat of asbestos-related illnesses and deaths for years, welcomed the news.

Eric Christiansen has been the pastor of St. John Lutheran Church for 13 years.

Of the 75 funerals he's conducted during his years in the community, Christiansen said about a dozen were attributed to asbestos. Christiansen said asbestos was so common here that it was once mixed in the soil of ball fields and in school running tracks.
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Bulb

You can really smell others' fear, claim scientists

Richard Alleyne
telegraph.co.uk
Fri, 03 Jul 2009 21:25 UTC
Researchers have shown that we subconsciously detect whether others are scared by picking up chemicals they release from their bodies.

They believe the signals can be catching and spread around a group.

Dr Bettina Pause and colleagues at the University of Dusseldorf in Germany put cotton pads under the armpits of 49 student volunteers before they were due to start a university exam.

She also collected sweat from the same group of students as they worked out on exercise bikes.

Another group of 28 volunteer students were then asked to sniff the cotton pads while their brains were monitored with an MRI scanner.
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Red Flag

Widely Used Cancer Drug Causes Potentially Deadly Holes in GI Tract

S. L. Baker
Natural News
Fri, 03 Jul 2009 18:32 UTC
Bevacizumab is the generic name for the widely used Genetech cancer drug marketed as Avastin. It inhibits tumor growth by blocking angiogenesis, the formation of new blood vessels. But according to an article just published in the June edition of The Lancet Oncology, cancer patients treated with Avastin in combination with chemotherapy are at a heightened risk of experiencing a potentially catastrophic side effect. In fact, it's a side effect that could kill them before their malignancy does -- a gastrointestinal (GI) perforation (a hole in the wall of the stomach, small intestine or large bowel).
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Bulb

Anti-Cancer Properties of Carrots Boosted by Cooking Whole

Kate Devlin
Telegraph
Wed, 17 Jun 2009 18:22 UTC
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© CLARA MOLDEN Scientists have found that cutting a carrot after boiling could boost the amount of a natural sugar called falcarinol in the vegetables by a quarter
The anti-cancer properties of carrots could be increased by cooking them whole, a new study by Newcastle University suggests.

Scientists at the university found that cutting a carrot after boiling could boost the amount of a natural sugar called falcarinol in the vegetables by a quarter.

However, if the carrots were chopped up first they lost the extra benefit.
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Butterfly

Back to Nature: Getting Kids to Rediscover the Great Outdoors

Mary Ellen Gabriel
The Capital Times
Fri, 03 Jul 2009 17:05 UTC
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Playing freely in the woods, like these kids at Glenwood Children's Park on Madison's near west side, develops the senses, stimulates the imagination and releases pent-up energy, experts say.
Sticking out of a pile of dead branches at Glenwood Children's Park is a hand-lettered sign: "These materials may be used in the park for forts and other structures."

"Yeah!"

Eight grade-school boys cheer as they set to work toting "materials" across the sandstone ravine in this back-to-nature park on Madison's near west side, just off Glenway Avenue, near the southwest bike path. As the walls to their rough teepee-like structure grow thicker, they thatch the openings with leaves. Nobody tells the boys what to do. They organize themselves, shouting "power!" whenever they need more hands on deck.
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Magic Wand

In Search of the Science Behind the Healing Powers of Art

Ron Winslow
The Wall Street Journal
Thu, 02 Jul 2009 14:05 UTC
Julia Strecher
© Myra KlarmanHeart patient Julia Strecher
Julia Strecher was 9 years old when she had her second heart transplant. Her body had rejected the first heart she received with particular vehemence: She went into cardiac arrest six times in two hours. As doctors struggled to revive her, she recalls, she could hear them debating whether to give up.

"I was trapped in my body," says Ms. Strecher, now 18. "I was trying to tell people I was alive and not to pull the plug." A few months after she went home with her second new heart, she began having nightmares in which she watched herself suffering cardiac arrest.

But then, she began writing down her thoughts about being helpless. Eventually she turned the details into poems and stories. "It was extremely emotionally healing and freeing," she said. "It helped me relieve a lot of stress and provided a distraction from pain and depression." The nightmares went away.
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Cheeseburger

Dietary Influences Of Liver Disease Examined


ScienceDaily
Wed, 01 Jul 2009 07:51 UTC
Diets high in protein and cholesterol are associated with a higher risk of hospitalization or death due to cirrhosis or liver cancer, while diets high in carbohydrates are associated with a lower risk. These findings are in the July issue of Hepatology.

There are many reasons to suspect that dietary factors influence the development of hepatic steatosis and its progression to more severe liver disease. First, poor diet may lead to obesity, insulin resistance and diabetes, which are the most important known risk factors for hepatic steatosis. Also, dietary lipids may directly affect fat in the liver. Furthermore, a high cholesterol diet has been shown to induce serious steatosis in animal studies.
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Health

Brain Tumour Now The Biggest Cancer Killer in the UK


Sky News
Fri, 03 Jul 2009 06:15 UTC
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Surgeons operate on a brain tumour
Brain tumours in young men and women are the leading cause of cancer death in the UK, according to research. They kill more men under 45 and women under 35 than any other cancer, reveals Brain Tumour Research.

And brain tumours have overtaken leukaemia as the biggest cancer killer of children in the UK, with the number of children dying from a brain tumour in 2007, up 33% on 2001.

While overall mortality rates from cancer are falling despite an actual rise in cases, survival rates for brain tumour patients are getting worse.
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