When María (a pseudonym) was diagnosed with gestational diabetes during her first pregnancy, and again during her second, some might have blamed it on her food choices or lifestyle. She blamed it on her broken heart.

Having migrated to the Bronx in the mid-1990s from rural Puebla, a state in Mexico, María was separated from her mother back in Mexico. Immigration status kept them from being able to see each other. She knew that if she had been in her hometown, her mother would have lovingly nurtured her throughout her pregnancies, preparing home-cooked meals and drawing on a wealth of remedies for every ache or pain. Instead, María suffered in silence. Sadly, her mother was also suffering: She, too, had been diagnosed around 2010 with the initial symptoms of diabetes. But within a few years, the disease would rage out of control, causing her kidneys to fail, her leg to be amputated, and, within a decade, her death. Lacking any known genetic predisposition to diabetes, María and her mother saw the disease as a product of their estrangement.

Global health experts are clear that noncommunicable diseases, such as diabetes, heart disease, and kidney disease, are a critical threat to humanity, causing 72 percent of premature deaths in 2016. Conventional wisdom tends to blame these "diet-related chronic diseases" on individual behavior, specifically food choices and exercise. Even some who suffer from them tend to blame themselves, imagining that if they had more discipline, ate better, or were more active, their health would improve.

While we all have the power to make changes that can improve our lives, the facile pointing of fingers at the victims of chronic disease overlooks all the important factors that are not directly under our control to change: our food system and the larger social, political, and economic landscapes in today's globalized society. Human appetites and exercise have changed less in the last quarter century than our food systems and economic arrangements. Globalization has enabled a near total diffusion of industrialized and processed foods into the most economically and socially marginalized places in the world, while also disrupting agrarian ways of life and small-scale agriculture.

More people than ever are on the move globally-like María, they are often displaced from their home communities, their land, and their extended families, and impeded by borders. These changes not only wreak havoc on eating habits, they also generate stress and trauma, which have been shown to play major roles in the onset and progression of chronic diseases.

Blaming personal behavior is just a convenient evasion. The mismatch between "bad" foods that move freely-and people who cannot-is the real culprit behind a global health crisis.

What would you think about eating a mushroom that looks a little like the scruff of a lion? Not totally convinced about lion's mane mushroom? What if I told you that it's associated with major brain repair, potential cancer-fighting power and is undergoing research on dozens of other health benefits?

Lion's mane mushroom is a nootropic food very popular in traditional Chinese medicine. A large body of research has focused around this brain-boosting mushroom in the last few years, and the results are nothing short of astounding.

Eleven terrified passengers were rushed from the airport for hospital checks as paramedics in hazmat gear boarded the flight from provincial outposts in west Mongolia.

A Mongolian domestic flight was intercepted at Ulaanbaatar airport as emergency workers wearing hazmat suits rushed to board the plane the instant it landed, acting on reports of a husband and wife dying of Bubonic plague in the region where the flight originated.

The man named Citizen T, aged 38, died after hunting and eating marmot meat; his pregnant wife, 37, died soon after, reported The Siberian Times.

Some 158 people were placed under intensive medical supervision in Bayan-Ulgii province after coming into contact directly or indirectly with the deceased couple.

According to the World Health Organisation, Bubonic plague can kill an adult in less than 24 hours unless timely treatment is at hand.

A cruise ship with nearly 300 passengers and crew was ordered quarantined in the Caribbean port of St. Lucia after a case of measles was confirmed on board, island health officials said Wednesday.

One female crew member has a confirmed case and St. Lucian authorities said they've been working in close consultation with the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) and Caribbean Public Health Agency (CARPHA).

The ship has been under quarantine since Monday morning, officials said.

New research has found it is not just what you eat, but when you eat that is important, knowledge which could improve the health of shift workers and people suffering from jet lag.

The Medical Research Council (MRC)-funded study, published today in the journal Cell, is the first to identify insulin as a primary signal that helps communicate the timing of meals to the cellular clocks located across our body, commonly known as the body clock.

The team behind the research believe this improved understanding may lead to new ways to alleviate the ill-health associated with disruption to the body clock. These could include eating at specific times or taking drugs that target insulin signalling.

The effects of repeated WiFi exposure on human health have been widely debated. A recent study reviewed evidence from 23 controlled scientific studies which investigated the health effects of WiFi on animals, human cell lines, and humans to determine once and for all, whether WiFi has a detrimental effect on human health.

WiFi or a wireless network consists of an antenna that is connected to the internet and several wireless devices, such as laptop, phone, etc. The electromagnetic frequency of WiFi is pulsed rather than continuous. This is a critical issue, as pulsed electromagnetic frequencies have a larger biological impact.

A 2015 study argued that more pulsed an electromagnetic frequency, more harmful they are for biological specimens. Researchers have also tried to determine the dose relationship between WiFi exposure and biological effects, and found that a specific intensity range of electromagnetic pulses may produce maximum effects, and this may drop off at lower and higher intensities.

Carnivore Curious?

Last month, I had the pleasure of participating in the Boulder Carnivore Conference, the world's first meeting dedicated to the potential benefits of plant-free diets. For this special event, I created a new presentation exploring the nutritional differences between plant and animal foods, and summarizing the scientific arguments in support of all-meat diets for optimal brain health. Skeptical? You should be. This seemingly strange and extreme way of eating flies in the face of every piece of conventional nutrition advice we've been given, yet a growing number of people report remarkable benefits, including resolution of serious, chronic psychiatric symptoms. If you are curious about how this diet might help to correct chemical imbalances in the brain, please watch this video to learn more.


If you are completely new to the idea of all-meat diets, allow me to provide a bit of context, along with some additional links and resources should you care to dive a little deeper.

From the inception of mass vaccination, childhood vaccines have produced a raft of unintended consequences. One of the biggest problems-gaining steam over the past several decades-involves the vaccine-induced creation of brand-new risks and vulnerabilities that can be more serious than the condition a given vaccine might be intended to address.

The varicella (chickenpox) vaccine represents a case in point. Chickenpox, usually mild when experienced in childhood, was once a routine rite of passage. After the rollout of universal varicella vaccination, the incidence of chickenpox declined but observers began noticing a "'perverse' boom" in shingles (also called herpes zoster). Chickenpox and shingles infections both stem from varicella zoster virus-and before the advent of the varicella vaccine, children infected with chickenpox helped boost adults' immunity to shingles by inhibiting the latent virus's reactivation. Chickenpox vaccination disrupted this intergenerational protective mechanism, not only eliminating regular boosting for adults but shifting downward the average age at which shingles occurs. In addition, because varicella vaccine-induced immunity decreases by 8% with each year since vaccination, previously vaccinated young adults are at increased risk for varicella outbreaks and potential complications later in life. In short, while the reduced circulation of wild chickenpox virus may spare some healthy children a benign case of chickenpox, children now face the more serious risk of developing shingles at young ages and chickenpox at older ages.

Nagasaki University will not, in principle, hire professors or teachers who smoke, a move that apparently is a first by a state-run university.

However, university officials said exemptions to the rule will be allowed if applicants promise to quit the habit after taking up the post.

The new policy announced April 19 reflects a growing trend to ban smoking in all public spaces, including restaurants and bars, in the lead-up to the 2020 Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics.

The policy also mirrors growing efforts by private-sector organizations to implement no-smoking rules.

A new study finds that drinking tap water in California over the course of a lifetime could increase the risk of cancer.

Researchers from the environmental advocacy group Environmental Working Group estimated that the contaminants found in public water systems in California could contribute to about 15,500 cancer cases there over the course of a lifetime. These contaminants include chemicals such as arsenic, hexavalent chromium and radioactive elements such as uranium and radium. The study was published Tuesday in the journal Environmental Health.

"We need to look at contaminants as a group -- not just one at a time. It's more important to analyze co-occurring contaminants to understand the real world exposure," said lead author Tasha Stoiber, a senior scientist with EWG. She explained that cancer risks are typically determined at the individual element level.