Health & WellnessS


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British Researcher Says Facebook a Brain Drain

Robert Mitchum
Chicago Tribune
Wed, 25 Feb 2009 23:00 UTC
Minds might be 'infantilized,' baroness testifies in House of Lords.

This is your brain.

This is your brain on Facebook.

It's an advertisement you might see someday, if testimony given to the British House of Lords this month is to be believed. In remarks that have stirred up a tempest in the British media and on the Internet, Baroness Susan Greenfield, a neuroscientist at the University of Oxford, warned that the instant feedback and impersonal communication offered by social networking sites could drive human brains and behavior in negative directions.

"As a consequence, the mid-21st Century mind might almost be infantilized, characterized by short attention spans, sensationalism, inability to empathize and a shaky sense of identity," Greenfield said Feb. 12.
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Heart - Black

Everyday Products Are Filled With Toxins - And We're Not Doing a Thing About It

Amy Goodman
AlterNet
Wed, 25 Feb 2009 13:00 UTC
Is your lipstick laden with lead? Is your baby's bottle toxic? The American Chemistry Council assures us that "we make the products that help keep you safe and healthy."

But U.S. consumers are actually exposed to a vast array of harmful chemicals and additives embedded in toys, cosmetics, plastic water bottles and countless other products. U.S. chemical and manufacturing industries have fought regulation, while Europe moves ahead with strict prohibitions against the most harmful toxins. The European Union says regulation is good for business, inspiring consumer confidence and saving money over the long term.

Most people would be surprised to learn that the cosmetics industry in the United States is largely unregulated. Investigative journalist Mark Schapiro is the author of Exposed: The Toxic Chemistry of Everyday Products and What's at Stake for American Power. In the absence of oversight, researchers and journalists like Schapiro and grass-roots organizations have stepped into the breach.

Schapiro told me, "Whether it is your nail polish, eye shadow, shampoo, essentially personal-care products [are] not regulated by the [Food and Drug Administration]. ... Numerous times in the Senate, over the last 50 years, there have been efforts to expand the purview of the FDA, and it's been repeatedly beaten back by the cosmetics industry." Details on the toxins are hard to come by. Schapiro continued, "The reason I even know what kind of material is in cosmetics is not because the FDA has told us; it's actually because the European Union has taken the action to remove that stuff, and they have a list."
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Cheeseburger

What is the best Diet? Low fat? Low carb?

Madison Park
CNN
Thu, 26 Feb 2009 09:06 UTC
fat
© Getty Images FileDiets targeted at carbohydrates, proteins or fats result in similiar results, as long as calorie intake was reduced.
The dieting world screams with contradictory advice: Carbs are evil; carbs are good for you. "Good fat" is healthy; "good fat" has tons of calories.

Researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health and the Pennington Biomedical Research Center put four popular diets -- high carb, high fat, low-fat and high protein -- to the test to see which of the regimens resulted in more weight-loss success.

After two years of monitoring the participants, "all the diets were winners," said study co-author Dr. Frank Sacks, a professor of cardiovascular disease prevention at the Harvard School of Public Health. "All produced weight loss and improvements in lipids, reduction in insulin.

"The key really is that it's calories. It's not the content of fat or carbohydrates, it's just calories," said Sacks. The findings are published in the latest edition of the New England Journal of Medicine.

For the study, 811 overweight adults in Boston, Massachusetts, and Baton Rouge, Louisiana, were assigned to one of four diets.
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Syringe

US: Company Knowingly Shipped Tainted Syringes That Killed Five


News Inferno
Wed, 25 Feb 2009 05:18 UTC
A manhunt is underway for the owner of a North Carolina company that knowingly shipped tainted pre-filled syringes. The syringes, shipped by AM2PAT Inc. resulted in a massive recall, hundreds of illnesses and at least five deaths.

As we reported previously, in 2007 numerous infections from Serratia marcascens bacteria were traced to heparin-filled syringes made by AM2PAT. In December 2007 and January 2008, Sierra Pre-filled and B. Braun syringes were recalled by AM2PAT because of the contamination issues.
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Nuke

Radioactive contamination in steel: a wake-up call

K.S. Parthasarathy
The Hindu
Thu, 26 Feb 2009 05:06 UTC
Regulatory authorities have identified Indian steel products contaminated with cobalt-60 in the U.S., Germany, France and Sweden. The events occurred at disturbingly high rates.

"Overall, 123 shipments of contaminated goods have been denied entry to U.S. ports since screening began in 2003, according to Homeland Security data.

Of those, 67 originated in India, 23 came from China and 20 were from Canada" (The Los Angeles Times, November 13, 2008). We cannot ignore this wake-up call.
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Family

Girl, 3, raised by dogs in her home after her alcoholic mother neglected her

Will Stewart
Mail Online
Wed, 25 Feb 2009 22:01 UTC
neglect
Neglected: Madina, was found naked and crawling on the ground on all fours after being neglected by her alcoholic mother.

A three-year-old girl has been found being cared for by dogs while her alcoholic mother neglected her.

Social workers discovered the girl in her mother's house in Russia, naked and walking on all fours, gnawing bones with the dogs who she clung to for warmth.

The child, called Madina, only knows two words - yes and no - and growls like a dog when people come too close, Russian media reported.

Madina, from Ufa in central Russia, was shunned by other local children in her neighbourhood.
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Antibiotic-Resistant Meningitis Reported in U.S.


Bio-Medicine
Wed, 25 Feb 2009 20:00 UTC
Health officials worry that overuse of antibiotics may be to blame.

The first U.S. cases of meningitis bacteria resistant to a widely used antibiotic have caused public health agencies to increase surveillance efforts, change preventive measures in one area of the country, and emphasize warnings about overuse of all antibiotics.

A toddler in North Dakota who recovered, a Minnesota adult who died and a Minnesota college student who survived were found to have been infected with meningitis bacteria resistant to ciprofloxacin, said a report in the Feb. 26 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.
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Blackbox

Why do some people kill themselves?

Robert Pool
New Scientist
Wed, 25 Feb 2009 22:02 UTC
Image
© UnknownGlobal tragedy

For a few months in late 2006 and early 2007, the woman who called herself kristi4 was one of the best-known members of the pro-anorexia community. As the administrator of a blog on LiveJournal.com, she dispensed advice, encouraged others and wrote candidly about her own struggles. Then, late one Friday night, after a series of entries describing what she was planning to do, kristi4 killed herself with an overdose of prescription sleeping pills, muscle relaxants and painkillers.

Her death was just one tragic data point in one of the most striking statistics in all of psychology. It has long been known that anorexia has the highest death rate of any mental illness: one out of every five people with anorexia eventually die of causes related to the disease. What has only now been recognised, however, is that a huge number of those deaths are from suicide rather than starvation. Someone who develops anorexia is 50 to 60 times more likely to kill themselves than people in the general population. No other group has a suicide rate anywhere near as high (Archives of General Psychiatry, vol 60, p 179).

Recently, psychologists have tried to explain why anorexia and suicide are so intimately connected, something which is helping to answer the wider question of why anyone would commit suicide. If this explanation holds up, it will give psychiatrists a new tool for screening patients and determining which of them are most likely to kill themselves, perhaps saving lives.
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Syringe

FDA ignored red flags at syringe firm

Tracy Staton
Fierce Pharma - Associated Press
Wed, 25 Feb 2009 19:17 UTC
The FDA is taking its licks in North Carolina today, where a leading newspaper reports the agency ignored reports of contamination at a syringe facility. Not just any facility, but AM2PAT, whose tainted heparin and saline syringes were linked with five deaths before they were pulled from the market.

The Raleigh News & Observer reports that the FDA received "numerous complaints" about sediment and debris in the medicine, beginning as early as 2005. Besides the five patients who died, another 100 were sickened after receiving the IV drugs. The complaints continued in 2007; in one case, "food particles" were reported to be floating in the liquid drug. The bacterial infections surfaced in December 2007 and January 2008.

According to an FDA spokesperson, inspection reports show the plant was visited by FDA inspectors in June 2005, January 2006 and December 2007.
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Health

Arsenic And Old Toenails


Terra Daily - SPX
Wed, 25 Feb 2009 18:37 UTC
toes
© UnknownThe researchers are definitely NOT requiring people to send in their toenail clippings. Neither can you assess arsenic contamination simply by looking at your toenails.

Scientists from Leicester and Nottingham have devised a method for identifying levels of exposure to environmental arsenic - by testing toenail clippings. Arsenic occurs naturally in the environment and people can be exposed to it in several ways, for example through contaminated water, food, dust or soil. The risk of exposure is greater in certain areas of the UK where the natural geology and historic mining activities have led to widespread contamination of the environment with arsenic.

Long term exposure to arsenic is associated with increases in lung, liver, bladder and kidney cancers and skin growths. Previous studies using hair have suggested high levels of arsenic in the bodies of King George III and Napoleon Bonaparte. Now doctoral research at the British Geological Survey by Mark Button of the University of Leicester has used toenail clippings to find fresh evidence of exposure to environmental arsenic within a UK population living close to a former arsenic mine.
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