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Researchers find vitamin D receptor is disrupted by environmental chemicals


Phys.org
Mon, 02 Jul 2018 00:01 UTC
vitamin d receptor
© Scientific Reports (2018). DOI: 10.1038/s41598-018-27055-3Structure-based molecular docking using Glide and the human VDR structure (PDB code 1S19): (a) Docking results for all compounds with their associated XP docking and eModel scores, mechanism and experimental AC50 values; (b) Binding modes of calcipotriol (red) and proflavine hydrochloride (blue) superimposed in the binding site.
New research from North Carolina State University sheds light on the ways in which environmental chemicals can affect vitamin D receptors (VDR). The work shows that compounds identified as possible VDR disruptors in the Tox21 database interact with VDR in vitro and supports the efficacy of high throughput screening programs to identify compounds of interest.

"Most people think of vitamin D as only a vitamin, but in the body vitamin D is converted to a hormone, so VDR is part of the endocrine system which regulates hormonal function," says Seth Kullman, professor of biological sciences at NC State. "If something - an endocrine disrupting chemical, for example - interferes with the hormone's function at different times of development or aging, it could drastically alter physiology of a number of important systems."

Kullman is interested in exploring the effects of environmental chemicals on vitamin D receptors. He, along with a team of researchers from NC State and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) looked at compounds that the Tox21 database had flagged as potential VDR disruptors.

Comment: The importance of vitamin D cannot be overstated. If environmental toxicity can interfere with the normal metabolism of vitamin D, this is yet another threat to human health.

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Cupcake Choco

UK: World's first local hospital calls for its community to ditch sugar and processed foods

Marika Sboros
FoodMed.net
Mon, 02 Jul 2018 00:01 UTC
sugar cubes bowl
© Getty
You know the dietary times really are a-changin' when a UK hospital calls on a community to stop eating sugar and processed foods.

And when mayors, MPs and celebrities support it. Tameside Hospital in Greater Manchester has issued a world-first 70-day challenge to the 250,000 people it serves to go sugar-free.

The DITCH SUGAR! call comes on the eve of the 70th anniversary of the NHS (National Health Service). It highlights soaring levels of obesity and type 2 diabetes in the UK as linked chronic health conditions - which doctors now call "diabesity". Tameside is also holding a symposium on Wednesday, July 4. Those who register will receive a free guide to kickstart their sugar-free challenge by email. It is based on UK consultant cardiologist Dr Aseem Malhotra's bestseller The Pioppi Diet and includes a freeview of his groundbreaking doccie, The Big Fat Fix, with filmmaker Donal O'Neill.

Comment: Eliminating sugar is one of the best things one can do to begin to see improvements in health. Good on Tameside hospital and Dr. Malhotra for encouraging their community to take back their health. Hopefully, other hospitals will follow suit in ditching the official dietary guidelines and encouraging all to participate in a diet of real food!

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Health

Pediatrician put on probation for giving a vaccine exemption

Rachel Blevins
The Free Thought Project
Sat, 30 Jun 2018 15:46 UTC
vaccine doctor
In an alarming decision that could be used to set the standard for doctors who choose not to follow the state's strict vaccine schedules for infants and toddlers, the Medical Board of California has suspended a pediatrician who claims that he approved a 2-year-old's vaccine exemption, after the child showed a severe adverse reaction.

Dr. Robert Sears has been the subject of controversy ever since the board threatened to revoke his medical license altogether when he was accused of "wrongfully writing" a doctor's note for a 2-year-old boy that exempted him from required vaccinations, after the boy's mother told him that previous immunizations made the boy's body limp, and caused him to lose urinary functions.

Because he took the mother's word and believed her testimony of her son's condition, Dr. Sears is now under probation for the next 35 months, which means that every decision he makes as a pediatric doctor will be strictly scrutinized by other medical professionals, he must notify all hospital and medical facilities where he practices that he is on probation, and he is not allowed to supervise physician assistants or nurse practitioners.

Comment: Medical journalist Del Bigtree interviews pediatrician Dr. Bob Sears while touring the nation in the VaxXed bus. Dr. Bob Sears' concern: 'Informed consent and freedom to choose without penalties' - "No matter how much you like vaccines as a doctor don't you want that decision to be between you and your patient?"



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2 + 2 = 4

Low B-12 and folate in mature adults are 'of concern'

Maria Cohut, Fact checked by Jasmin Collier
Medical News Today
Sun, 01 Jul 2018 14:59 UTC
A large population study conducted in Ireland has found that a worrying number of adults aged 50 and over have vitamin B-12 and folate deficiencies, which may expose them to poor health in the long run.
man visiting doctor
Researchers from the Irish Longitudinal Study on Ageing (TILDA) at Trinity College Dublin in Ireland have analyzed the medical information of 5,290 adults from Ireland aged 50 older.

They did this to establish whether the general levels of two key nutrients - vitamin B-12 and folate - were adequate among the mature population.
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Hourglass

Poor sleep hygiene: New study shows what disrupted sleep does to your mental health

Alanna Ketler
Collective Evolution
Sun, 24 Jun 2018 15:31 UTC
insomnia
We all know just how important it is to have a good nights rest, unfortunately for many of us, this is a fleeting dream. New research has emerged showing just how impactful a disrupted body clock and natural circadian rhythm can be for our mental health.

Researchers from the U.K. came to this conclusion after studying the circadian rhythm, which is our natural waking and sleeping patterns throughout the 24-hour sleep cycle.

Lead author of the study, Laura Lyall, a research associate in mental health and well-being at Glasgow University said in a statement, "In the largest such study ever conducted, we found a robust association between disruption of circadian rhythms and mood disorders.

"Previous studies have identified associations between disrupted circadian rhythms and poor mental health, but these were only small samples."

Comment: The Health & Wellness Show: Robbed of Sleep, Robbed of Health: The Importance of Catching Winks

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Eggs Fried

Medicaid plan offers food as medicine

Phil Galewitz
KHN
Thu, 28 Jun 2018 17:13 UTC
food volunteers
© Phil Galewitz/Kaiser Health NewsVolunteers at MANNA make sandwiches using whole wheat bagels and hummus.
Feliciano Pagan stood at his front door when the MANNA food truck pulled up to his two-story brick row home.

Pagan, 48, greeted the driver with a smile as he carried in two large bags filled with frozen dinners and fresh fruit that would last a week. Among the goods were chicken fajitas with brown rice and zucchini; chicken dumplings, carrots and beets; and sweet-and-sour pork chops with turkey noodle soup.

These medically tailored meals - all with limited salt and carbohydrates - are designed to keep Pagan, who has congestive heart failure, out of the hospital. Health Partners Plans, the nonprofit company that runs the Medicaid health plan Pagan belongs to, is betting on it.

Since 2015, Health Partners has joined a small group of insurers around the country to offer some members specially designed meals to improve their health. The company paid the full cost for 560,000 meals to be delivered to more than 2,100 of its members with various conditions such as diabetes, heart disease and kidney failure.

Comment: Very noble and a good idea. However, one needs to make sure that the food being served is actually medicinal (not a bunch of whole wheat bagels). Regardless of the diagnosis, a low carb, moderate protein and high fat diet seems to go a long way in improving people's health. See: The Health & Wellness Show: Let Food Be Thy Medicine: The Magic Pill Documentary Review

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Clipboard

Guidelines on low back pain are clear: drugs and surgery should be the last resort

Sandra Grace, Roger Mark Engel & Subramanyam Vemulpad
The Conversation
Fri, 18 May 2018 12:39 UTC
back pain
© National Pain Report
Low back pain is the leading cause of disability worldwide and is becoming more common as our population ages. Most people who have an episode of low back pain recover within six weeks, but two-thirds still have pain after three months. By 12 months, pain may linger but is usually less intense.

Still, recurrence is common and in a small number of people it may become persistent and disabling. Chronic back pain affects well-being, daily functioning and social life.

A series on low back pain by the global medical journal The Lancet outlined that most sufferers aren't getting the most effective treatment. The articles state that recommended first-line treatments - such as advice to stay active and to exercise - are often overlooked. Instead, many health professionals seem to favor less effective treatments such as rest, opioids, spinal injections and surgery.

So, here's what evidence shows you need to do to improve your low back pain.

Comment: Read the following articles to learn more about healthy alternatives for back pain:

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Attention

Lone Star tick bites triggering red meat allergies in more people across US

Madeline Farber
Fox News
Fri, 29 Jun 2018 12:00 UTC
A Lone Star tick.
© (iStock)A Lone Star tick.
Ticks are known to carry some nasty ailments, such as Rocky Mountain spotted fever and Lyme disease. But one allergist and associate professor of medicine at University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, is warning that some of these small arachnids - specifically the Lone Star tick - can cause another issue as well: an allergy to red meat.

While the allergy caused by a Lone Star tick bite is relatively rare, the number of cases has sharply increased from the roughly two dozen Dr. Scott Commins and his colleagues first studied in 2009, he told Fox News.

Commins, who was one of the first physicians to discover the connection between Lone Star tick bites and the alpha-gal meat allergy, estimated that there are currently more than 5,000 cases in the U.S, with additional cases in countries such as Sweden and South Africa. There are 30,000 reported cases of Lyme disease in the nation each year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Comment: It's interesting to note that the scope of the tick is increasing, and this is happening alongside a rise in reports of other rare, exotic and infectious diseases: Also check out SOTT radio's: The Health & Wellness Show: What is Applied Kinesiology and what can it do for you?

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Cookies

Why you cannot trust the governments' dietary data

Michael Marlow & Edward Archer
RealClear Science
Fri, 29 Jun 2018 01:58 UTC
Summary
Cereals on Shelf
© AP Photo/Candice Choi
When President Eisenhower left office in 1961, over 70% of Americans trusted the Federal Government. That figure plummeted to less than 20% by the time President Obama exited in 2017. Pundits offer myriad reasons for the decline, but the answer is simple: Americans are tired of lies. Over the past 60 years, we learned that the moving lips of a politician meant that he or she was either eating or deceiving.

In contrast, public confidence in the 'scientific community' runs at 40% and has remained stable since the 1970s. This trust, however, turns out to be seriously misplaced when it comes to the government's data on what we eat and drink. The nutrition research methods of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) are based on the naïve but politically expedient notion that a person's usual diet can be measured simply by asking what he or she remembered eating and drinking. Only the most gullible citizens would believe the answers yield anything close to the truth, but government agencies selectively slice-and-dice these anecdotal data to support political agendas, control the U.S. food economy, and indirectly determine what you can and cannot eat and drink.

For example, after the USDA began its "5-A-Day" campaign to convince Americans to buy more fruits and vegetables, the CDC began pushing the boundary of honesty by instructing survey respondents to exclude fried potatoes from their dietary reports. The CDC then declared that only "100% PURE fruit juices" were "acceptable" and instructed survey respondents to exclude drinks with less than 100% juice. Given that French fries and potato chips are in fact vegetables that provide essential nutrients, and beverages containing any percentage of fruit juice contain fruit, the CDC's methods are questionable at best. Nevertheless, this data manipulation allowed the CDC, USDA, and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to claim Americans were not consuming enough fruits and vegetables, and therefore were at risk for a host of diseases.
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SOTT Focus: The Health & Wellness Show: Let Food Be Thy Medicine: The Magic Pill Documentary Review


Sott.net
Fri, 29 Jun 2018 15:00 UTC
the magic pill
Something is off about the health of the people on this planet. Domesticated humans suffer from a wide array of illnesses not seen elsewhere in the wild animal kingdom. Autism, diabetes, seizure disorders, Alzheimer's, heart disease, cancer, obesity -- the list goes on and on and the only hope the medical industry offers is a shortened lifespan full of wallet-gouging, pill-popping and suffering. What if there was another way of living? What if, as Hippocrates said, we let food be our medicine and medicine be our food?

Today on The Health and Wellness Show we'll discuss 'The Magic Pill' documentary where the subjects involved did just that. By ditching the Standard American Diet and adopting a ketogenic, whole foods diet the subjects of the film experienced amazing and life-changing results which were nothing short of 'magic' compared to their conventional medicine treatments.

And stay tuned for Zoya's Pet Health Segment where she discusses the longevity of different animal species.

Running Time: 01:17:47

Download: MP3

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