Health & WellnessS


Cow

Milk off shelves as China's safety scandal grows

Gillian Wong
Associated Press
Fri, 19 Sep 2008 20:09 UTC
China's food safety crisis widened Friday after the industrial chemical melamine was found in milk produced by three of the country's leading dairy companies - prompting stores, including Starbucks, to yank milk from their shelves.

The recalls come as evidence is mounting that adding chemicals to watered-down milk was a widespread practice in China's dairy industry.

Sipping from a carton of milk at a news conference, the chief financial officer of one of the companies, Mengniu, apologized for the tainted milk. But he insisted only a small portion of the company's inventory had been contaminated and said the tainted milk came from small-scale dairy farmers.
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Arrow Down

HHS 'Conscience Rule' Threatens Reproductive Choice

Donald Rankin III
OpEdNews.com
Fri, 19 Sep 2008 14:42 UTC
Occasionally the Bush Administration proves it's never too busy destroying nations to harass the least among us.
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Health

Understanding Emotions Improves Our Food Choices


Science Daily
Fri, 19 Sep 2008 13:58 UTC
Menus and advertising affect our emotions, and if we understand those emotions, we make better food choices, according to a new study in the Journal of Consumer Research.

hot fudge sundaes
©iStockphoto/Franklin Lugenbeel
Pictures of hot fudge sundaes arouse consumers.

Authors Blair Kidwell, David M. Hardesty, and Terry L. Childers (all University of Kentucky) examined the "emotional intelligence" of consumers, including obese people. They found that people who made the healthiest choices had high correlations between their emotional intelligence and confidence in their emotional intelligence - what the authors call "emotional calibration."

"When perusing a restaurant menu, many consumers may not be aware of the subtle implicit feelings of arousal elicited by visually appealing presentations of unhealthy food choices," the authors write. Faced with choices between healthy and unhealthy food options, individuals who are confident that they can appropriately interpret and employ their emotions, but who do not actually possess these emotional abilities, are likely to make low-quality decisions."
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Info

More than skin deep: There's no such thing as a 'safe' suntan, researchers warn

Melanie Thomson
EurekAlert
Thu, 18 Sep 2008 09:49 UTC
There may be no such thing as a 'safe' tan based on ultraviolet (UV) radiation, according to a series of papers published in the October issue of Pigment Cell & Melanoma Research, the official journal of The International Federation of Pigment Cell Societies (IFPCS) and the Society for Melanoma Research.

The authors of the three review papers - leading researchers in the fields of cell biology, dermatology and epidemiology - have examined the effects on skin of UV radiation, including that from indoor tanning beds. As well as highlighting the need for greater research into this area, they have called for the use of such beds by under-18s to be banned, along with any publicity that claims that tanning beds are safe.
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Syringe

Flashback Olmsted on Vaccination and Autism: No Child By Two

Dan Olmsted
Age of Autism
Mon, 11 Aug 2008 23:24 UTC
I've got an idea: Let's not vaccinate kids until they turn two, at the earliest. Of course, I'm not a zealot like the industry-funded Every Child By Two folks who made themselves look like paranoid idiots in New York City last week. I'm just someone who has heard enough from parents and read enough simple science to know that, for starters, some children are vulnerable in ways we don't understand to neurological problems after vaccination; some vaccines given too early can trigger asthma; some vaccines -- HepB and chickenpox, to name two -- are unnecessary; and the whole kit-and-kaboodle has never been studied in toto on human infants, but when it was tested on primates, those little monkeys got really sick and developed features that resemble autism.
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Health

Scientists link chemical used in plastics to health problems

Lyndsey Layton
The Washington Post
Wed, 17 Sep 2008 19:30 UTC
The first large study in humans of a chemical widely used in everyday plastics has found that people with higher levels of bisphenol A had higher rates of heart disease, diabetes and liver abnormalities, a finding that immediately became the focus of the increasingly heated debate over the safety of the chemical.

The research, published Tuesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association by a team of British and American scientists, compared the health status of 1,455 men and women with the levels of the chemical, known as BPA, in their urine.
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Syringe

Stunning New Link Between Vaccines and Autism Rates


Age of Autism
Wed, 17 Sep 2008 06:57 UTC
Editor's note: We received the following information and charts from someone who wishes to maintain a low profile. This very compelling data is well worth looking at and we welcome thoughts about its significance. Below are excerpts from several e-mails she exchanged with us. The charts and notes (HERE) are dy-noh-MITE! As we've said before, smart, concerned and informed citizen-scientist-parents are the CDC's worst nightmare -- and the best hope for getting to the bottom of the epidemic of autism and related disorders. We hope this low-key stay-at-home mom continues to match her very sharp wits against the vaccine apologists. We'll keep you posted. -- Dan Olmsted
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Pills

Can nutrients improve anti-social behaviour?


BBC News
Tue, 16 Sep 2008 06:17 UTC
One thousand young offenders from three prisons in England and Scotland are being recruited for a major trial to see if nutritional supplements can improve behaviour.
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Health

Autism 'may be missed in girls'


BBC News
Tue, 16 Sep 2008 01:20 UTC


Image
©Unknown
Girls may show different symptoms

Girls with mild autism are less likely to be identified and diagnosed than boys, a study suggests.

Researchers examined 493 boys and 100 girls with autistic spectrum disorders.

They found the girls showed different symptoms, and fewer signs of symptoms traditionally associated with autism, such as repetitive behaviour.
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Health

Is Re-emerging Superbug The Next MRSA?


Science Daily
Tue, 16 Sep 2008 16:23 UTC
Dr. Ed Corboy had no idea what was afflicting his 80-year-old mother, Joan Corboy. All he knew for certain was that since being treated for what was a routine diarrheal infection, she seemed to be wasting away and none of her doctors or other health specialists could explain why.

"She lost almost 55 pounds between July Fourth and Christmas in 2006," said Corboy, a resident of Wilmette. "She was so sick, so weak and despite the best care of her doctors, she was getting weaker. It was clear she was in big trouble."

Afraid that his mother was running out of time, Corboy called the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta for advice. Dr. Clifford McDonald told him the infection his mother probably had was of the NAP1 type of the bacteria Clostridium difficile, a virulent strain of a common intestinal bacteria currently plaguing hospitals that now rivals the superbug Methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) as one of the top emerging disease threats to humans.

"Disease caused by Clostridium difficile can range from nuisance diarrhea to life-threatening colitis that could lead to the surgical removal of the colon, and even death," said Dr. Stuart Johnson, associate professor of medicine, division of infectious diseases, Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine. "It's a very hardy strain and it seems to persist."
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