Health & WellnessS


Alarm Clock

Despite the EPA's own evidence of risk it decides not to ban chlorpyrifos pesticides

Dan Charles
NPR
Wed, 29 Mar 2017 23:18 UTC
pesticides
© Jim West/Science SourcePesticide warning sign in an orange grove. The sign, in English and Spanish, warns that the pesticide chlorpyrifos, or Lorsban, has been applied to these orange trees.
The EPA says it's reversing course and keeping chlorpyrifos on the market.

That's despite the agency's earlier conclusion, reached during the Obama administration, that this pesticide could pose risks to consumers. It's a signal that toxic chemicals will face less restrictive regulation by the Trump administration.

In its decision, the EPA didn't exactly repudiate its earlier scientific findings. But the agency did say that there's still a lot of scientific uncertainty about the risks of chlorpyrifos, and it said that because of that uncertainty, the court had no right to set a firm deadline for a decision. A federal court had ordered the EPA to decide by midnight on Friday whether to ban chlorpyrifos. The Obama administration proposed this ban back in 2015.

The EPA says it will keep studying the chemical.

Patti Goldman, from the environmental group Earth Justice, calls the decision "unconscionable," and says that her group will fight it in court.

New EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt made his reputation opposing the agency's regulations, and many farm organizations expected him to renounce the proposed ban. But doing so would mean disregarding a substantial pile of scientific evidence that his agency has assembled on the risks of this chemical.

Comment: EPA won't ban pesticide chlorpyrifos

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Bulb

The food you eat directly affects your brain

Dr. Kelly Brogan
kellybroganmd.com
Sat, 15 Apr 2017 23:37 UTC
sugar
Food is the best medicine. All your cells, bones, signaling molecules, and tissues are built from what you eat. For example, dietary fats are the building blocks of brain tissue and help balance hormones, and muscles are built from protein. Different vitamins and minerals are used to create energy and send electrical impulses along neurons so that we can move, think, and feel. A nourishing diet is the best strategy against depression.

The food we eat affects both our human and microbial cells. Numerous studies have shown that food changes the collection of trillions of beneficial bacteria in our guts, called the microbiome (1). In the name of convenience, flavor, or simply habit, so many of us consume inflammatory foods on a daily basis that increase intestinal permeability (leaky gut), harm the microbiome, and create chronic inflammation that can lead to depression.

Many studies have shown that people who eat an anti-inflammatory diet have significantly lower risks of depression (2-5). A recent study that tracked about 6,500 women over 12 years showed that women eating an anti-inflammatory diet had a 20% lower risk of developing depression than their peers (6). These anti-inflammatory diets consist of healthy fats, vitamins and antioxidants, and plenty of high-quality protein. On the other hand, many foods in the Standard American Diet (SAD) create chronic inflammation. These five inflammatory foods are the most frequent offenders I see when treating patients for depression.

Comment: Are you inflamed? How to stop the body from attacking itself

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Syringe

Vaccines and the rise in chronic diseases in children: A link?

Catherine J Frompovich
Natural Blaze
Tue, 18 Apr 2017 20:22 UTC
toddler boy
Is there a "cause and correlation" effect relative to children's chronic health issues surrounding the overwhelmingly accelerating negative health demographics seemingly related following the inordinate mandated number of multi-valent vaccines recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), as administered by pediatricians since the 1990s?

That's a unique and valid question apparently no one in federal health agencies, specifically the CDC and FDA, wants neither to investigate nor find statistically valid data and answers either to substantiate or disprove using science-based methods.

Since the introduction of CDC's hyper-vaccine schedule, which saw children's vaccines schedules increase from 10 to 69 vaccines after the 1986 National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act was passed into law, very young children are contracting chronic "old age type" diseases early in life—an anomaly heretofore not experienced demographically.
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Health

800 British women go to court over 'barbaric' vaginal mesh implants


RT
Tue, 18 Apr 2017 19:06 UTC
vaginal mesh
© dukehealth.org
Over 800 women are taking the makers of a vaginal mesh implant and the National Health Service (NHS) to court after the contraption left them with chronic pain, as well as being unable to walk or have sex.

The implants, which are used to treat incontinence and pelvic prolapse, lifting the organ and anchoring it back in place, are made of polypropylene, a plastic substance also used in water bottles and food containers.

The mesh, which is often used as a recovery procedure for childbirth incontinence, can however pierce through the vagina, causing serious distress.

The BBC Victoria Derbyshire show found that several women had to give up their jobs due to the discomfort and pain caused by the malfunctioning implants. Other women recounted how the cuts had been so deep their partners injured themselves during sex.

Childminder Kate Langley told the program that the first surgeon to examine her after she complained "could see the [mesh] tape had come through my vagina - protruding through.
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Attention

Garda$ell: Snake oil with a bite

Jamie Deckoff-Jones, MD
Greenmedinfo.com
Thu, 26 Mar 2015 23:26 UTC
gardasil

Gardasil (HPV vaccine) has never been proven to prevent a single case of cervical cancer, but as the most profitable vaccine ever created it is increasingly being mandated despite having an atrocious safety record.

At the present time, there are over 100 bills in play around the country which seek to mandate or eliminate exemptions for vaccines. In NY state, there is a bill to mandate HPV vaccine for all students entering the 6th grade. HPV vaccination is already mandated in Virginia and the District of Columbia.

Our children are sicker than they have ever been, plagued by immune dysfunction and neurodevelopmental disorders. Meanwhile, in the name of stamping out infectious diseases, which has succeeded exactly once in over 80 years of trying, the CDC is recommending that all children be protected against viruses that might cause a very few of them to get cancer in 30 or 40 years. In the process, they must get 3 injections containing a big slug of an aluminum adjuvant, plus foreign DNA.
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Alarm Clock

Groundbreaking study warns: Israelis are suffering from acute iodine deficiency

Ruth Schuster
Haartz
Mon, 27 Mar 2017 18:17 UTC
iodine
© Eyal TouegA lab at Ariel University.
Acute iodine deficiency is costing Israelis IQ points and all we need to do to prevent neuro-damage is iodize salt like rest of world, say doctors.

For the first time, Israelis have been surveyed for iodine levels and the discovered deficiencies have shocked scientists: 85 percent of pregnant women have insufficient iodine intake and the same goes for 62 percent of school-age children. Perhaps the chronic deficiency is even a cause behind the embarrassingly low scores by Israeli pupils in international exams.

The median iodine concentration found in urine of the test subjects indicate that the iodine status in Israel is amongst the lowest in the world, writes the team.

"Most of the world adds iodine to salt. We don't," explains researcher Prof. Aron Troen to Haaretz. Another issue is that arid Israel drinks a great deal of desalinated water, which could be exacerbating the problem of mineral deficiencies, including iodine.

Iodine deficiency can lead to hypothyroidism, a condition slowing the metabolism. In newborns, it can lead to neurological impairment, warns the international group of scientists from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Maccabi Healthcare Services, Barzilai University Medical Center in Ashkelon and ETH Zurich in Switzerland, with support of the Iodine Global Network.

Comment: Iodine deficiency - an old epidemic is back

Read more about the benefits of Iodine:

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Syringe

Mercury in vaccines is safe? New Center for Disease Control research debunks agency's assertion

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
EcoWatch
Mon, 17 Apr 2017 18:04 UTC
mercury
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) once again advised pregnant women to curb consumption of fish in order to limit fetal exposures to neurotoxic mercury. This warning raises the baffling query: How can the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) justify its recommendations that pregnant women get flu shots which are laden with far more mercury than what's found in a can of tuna?

The CDC has long answered that nettlesome question with the controversial claim that ethylmercury in vaccines is not toxic to humans. Now, two CDC scientists have published research decisively debunking that assertion. As it turns out, there is no "good mercury" and "bad mercury." Both forms are equally poisonous to the brain.

The CDC study, Alkyl Mercury-Induced Toxicity: Multiple Mechanisms of Action, appeared last month in the journal, Reviews of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology. The 45-page meta-review of relevant science examines the various ways that mercury harms the human body. Its authors, John F. Risher, PhD, and Pamela Tucker, MD, are researchers in the CDC's Division of Toxicology and Human Health Sciences, Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry.
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Health

Tap into your evolutionary strengths with environmental conditioning

Dr. Mercola
mercola.com
Sat, 15 Apr 2017 15:22 UTC
Wim Hof
Wim Hof
Effortless comfort has made us fat and sick. In this interview, Scott Carney, an investigative journalist, anthropologist and author of "What Doesn't Kill Us: How Freezing Water, Extreme Altitude and Environmental Conditioning Will Renew Our Lost Evolutionary Strength,"

The book reveals how environmental conditioning can improve your health by boosting your metabolic efficiency. A large portion of the book focuses on Dannish fitness guru Wim Hof's philosophies.1

Hof does not lead a healthy lifestyle and does not optimize his diet or other healthy lifestyle strategies, which makes these accomplishments even more impressive. Please understand this interview is not an endorsement of Hof's lifestyle.

Hof, perhaps better known as "The Iceman," has gained a fair amount of notoriety for his ability to withstand extreme cold — an ability he attributes to a specific set of techniques involving breath work and extreme temperature conditioning.
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Brain

Lancet Psychiatry needs to retract its "ADHD have altered, smaller brains" study

Michael W. Corrigan, Ed.D. & Robert Whitaker
Mad in America
Sat, 15 Apr 2017 15:24 UTC
insert page lancet
Lancet Psychiatry, a UK-based medical journal, recently published a study titled Subcortical brain volume differences in participants with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder in children and adults: A cross-sectional mega-analysis. According to the paper's 82 authors, the study provides definitive evidence that individuals with ADHD have altered, smaller brains. But as the following detailed review reveals, the study does not come close to supporting such claims.

The study is beset by serious methodological shortcomings, missing data issues, and statistical reporting errors and omissions. The conclusion that individuals with ADHD have smaller brains is contradicted by the "effect- size" calculations that show individual brain volumes in the ADHD and control cohorts largely overlapped. The authors also failed to discuss the fact that the ADHD cohort had higher IQ scores.

Despite such scientific missteps, the study made headlines in many countries around the world. Yahoo News suggested that the study was "proving the reality" of ADHD. Lancet Psychiatry should immediately retract the study and new media headlines must be aired to inform clinicians and parents of the true results from this study, including the IQ data.
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Health

Naturopathic dietary toolkit for Alzheimer's and hyperinsulinemia

Robert Kachko ND, LAc
NDNR
Wed, 13 Jul 2016 13:53 UTC
brain scan
Alzheimer's disease (AD) has the historically unique distinction of being the only common chronic disease with no known prevention or cure. This proposition becomes increasingly ominous when considering the rising tide of Alzheimer's expected to impact North America and the rest of the world in the next several decades. In the United States, 5.3 million people currently have AD (making up 75-80% of all dementia cases), and that number is expected to climb to a medically and economically unsustainable 13.8 million people by 2050.1

The idea that AD is recalcitrant to all interventions is grounded in a belief that has been largely disproven within the last decade - that the nervous system is static and categorically unchangeable. The large cost and consistency of failed drug trials over the last several decades leads us to 1 central conclusion: Alzheimer's disease is a multifactorial phenomenon which develops over several decades prior to the onset of symptoms and is, in large part, a result of lifestyle.

Fortunately, the concept of neuroplasticity is quickly becoming mainstream. A 2014 study by UCLA, though small (improvement in 9 out of 10 participants), for the first time showed a reversal of mild to moderate AD using a comprehensive approach of individualized diet and lifestyle recommendations.2 Of all of the systemic factors at play, perhaps none is more crucial to address than insulin resistance.
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