Health & WellnessS


Health

Doctors more likely to misdiagnose patients who act like jerks

Julia Belluz
Vox
Sat, 19 Mar 2016 17:28 UTC
doctor
© Reuters/Toby Melville
Going to see the doctor can bring out the worst in people. Being sick and fitting an appointment into an overcrowded schedule can be stressful. So can a long sit in the colorless cube of a waiting room.

But if you've ever given a doctor attitude, next time you might want to think twice — or risk being misdiagnosed.

That's the implication of two new studies published in the journal BMJ Quality & Safety.Separately, the authors demonstrated that clinicians are more likely to make errors of judgment when they're treating frustrating and difficult patients.

Comment: Doctors are human and like most humans they react negatively to jerks. However, even agreeable patients who are involved participants in their care run the risk of being misdiagnosed and receiving subpar care. That's just the nature of allopathic medicine.

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Question

Are you suffering from a Dopamine imbalance?

Dan Fries
Collective Evolution
Sat, 19 Mar 2016 16:47 UTC
brain health
You know how it feels.

That unmatchable sense of satisfaction you get after you accomplish something that you had always wanted to.

Whether it's breaking the weightlifting record at your gym, getting into an energetic mode and completing eight hours of work in five hours, or achieving a long-term goal that your friends (and even your Dad) thought you'd never do, that feeling can be highly motivating to take the next big step in your life.

That feeling is dopamine rushing down your spine.

What is Dopamine? It's a chemical compound present in the body as a neurotransmitter. It acts as a messenger between brain cells. Despite being generated by just a handful of brain cells, it acts as a powerful stimulant for many major physical and cognitive functions, including memory, movement, motivation, and pleasurable reward.

Comment: Healthy ways to increase your brain's dopamine levels

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Clock

Research study: Women need more sleep than men because their brains are more complex

Hailey Eber
news.com.au
Mon, 14 Mar 2016 16:30 UTC
women sleep
© techinsider.io
Researchers at Loughborough University's Sleep Research Centre in Leicestershire, England say women need more sleep than men because their brains are more complex.

"Women's brains are wired differently ... so their sleep need will be slightly greater," says Professor Jim Horne, the director of the Sleep Research Centre. 'Women tend to multi-task — they do lots at once and are flexible — and so they use more of their actual brain than men do."
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Arrow Up

UC Berkeley study finds organic diet cuts pesticide exposure in children

Alison F. Takemura
Santa Cruz Sentinel
Sun, 14 Feb 2016 14:40 UTC
organic food
© Kevin Johnson - Santa Cruz SentinelCamila Torres feeds her daughter Lily, 1, a spoonful of carrots with mango organic baby food at Boulder Creek Elementary with her 6-year-old daughter Bella on Saturday. Torres, a Boulder Creek resident, makes her own organic baby food.
Organic food matters to Camila Torres, so grappling with its higher prices has made her resourceful.

When the Boulder Creek resident makes baby food for her 1-year-old, Liliana, she tosses prepackaged, frozen, organic vegetables from Trader Joe's into a blender, adds a little water, then purées and warms up the mush before "airplaning" a spoonful into her daughter's mouth.

Torres wants her two girls to grow up on organic food - and frozen products help her afford it.

"I try to find any way within my means to keep potentially harmful things from entering their little bodies," said Torres, 28, an independent contractor who works with a company that captions videos.

Comment: The myth of safe pesticides & the negative effects on children
There are studies showing that organophosphate pesticides damage other tissues, including the myelin (the protective covering of nerve cells), and key nerves such as the optic nerve, causing permanent damage to eyesight including blindness. Other studies show genetic damage to the cell chromosomes. This is usually regarded as a sign of a precancerous condition.


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Info

The Glycemic Index? Forget about it!

Kelly Brogan, MD
Natural Blaze
Sat, 19 Mar 2016 21:03 UTC
fad diets
We are so saturated with information. With stimulus. With advice. With authoritative edicts on health. A chain of gurus have come before me seeking to guide patients into the light of wellness. People are blinded by it, however. They feel confused, skeptical, and disenfranchised. And then they default to consensus and conformity around FDA standards of disease-care. There is a better way.

It involves awakening your inner guru. Getting in touch with your own inner compass.

This is necessary because there is no one just like you out there. No one has walked your path, accumulated your exposures. Grown and changed in response in quite the same way.

Modern medicine doesn't acknowledge the vital importance of biochemical individuality. About how we are a unique collective of organisms, an ecology within that is connected to an environment without like a snowflake in a winter sky.

Comment: GI Blues: What's wrong with the glycemic index?

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Cow

Have dairy products set your body on fire?

Kelly Brogan, MC
Natural Blaze
Fri, 18 Mar 2016 00:00 UTC
inflammation dairy, milk, dairy
I used to be a dairy addict. When my naturopath asked me to give up gluten and dairy 6 years ago, it was approximately 2 more years before I stopped fantasizing about cheese, milk, ice cream, ricotta (yes, I'm Italian), and yogurt. It turns out we have a decent explanation for the deep pleasure associated with dairy and its best friend, wheat, and it's the exorphin compounds from these foods that interact with opiate receptors in the brain and other bodily tissues.

There is a burgeoning literature in psychiatry that supports immune responses to the protein casein in dairy, primarily cow, as playing a role in pathologies ranging from depression to schizophrenia.

This is not to say that dairy is a problem for everyone, or that all dairy is a problem for some. In my experience, reintroduction of dairy after a month of elimination is enough to tell you which camp you fall in. In fact, I have had patients report vomiting upon re-exposure - to something they have eaten daily for decades!

Comment: Consumption of all forms of dairy - including all milk products, cheese, cottage cheese, yogurt, kefir and ice-cream is related to a myriad of diseases including cardiovascular diseases, autoimmune diseases, cancer, allergies, asthma, digestive diseases, thyroid problems, and neurological diseases among others.

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Newspaper

General Mills to label products with GMO ingredients

Alyssa Navarro
Tech Times
Sat, 19 Mar 2016 17:37 UTC
cereals
© Mike Mozart | FlickrGeneral Mills on Friday said it will start putting labels on all its U.S. products that contain genetically modified organisms as ingredients. The changes will hit grocery stores over the next several weeks.
American food manufacturer General Mills announced on Friday that it will begin labelling all its products in the United States that has genetically modified organisms as ingredients. The move was prompted by a new state law in Vermont, which requires companies to put such information starting July 1.

However, the company cannot label products for only one state without driving up costs for consumers, said General Mills Vice President Jeff Harmening, so the company's response is to put up labels nationwide.

Still, Harmening said one thing is needed to tackle the issue of genetically modified food: a national solution.

"All sides of this debate, 20 years of research, and every major health and safety agency in the world agree that GMOs are not a health or safety concern," said Harmening. "At the same time, we know that some consumers are interested in knowing which products contain GMO ingredients."

Comment: Overly processed, sugar-laden foods shouldn't be consumed whether they contain GMOs or not -- but thanks anyway, General Mills.

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Shoe

More doctors are prescribing exercise instead of medication

Rodrique Ngowi
Seattle Times
Tue, 15 Mar 2016 17:09 UTC
doctors prescribe exercise
© www.kwtx.com
Doctors treating chronic health problems increasingly are urging patients to think of physical activity as their new drug.

When Dr. Michelle Johnson scribbles out prescriptions, the next stop for many of her patients is the gym, not the pharmacy.

Doctors treating chronic health problems increasingly are prescribing exercise for their patients — and encouraging them to think of physical activity as their new medication.

In one such program run by a health center in Boston's Roxbury neighborhood, primary care physicians, internists and psychologists prescribe access to a gym for $10 a month, including free child care, classes and kids programs. Providing affordable gym access for patients ensures compliance, said Gibbs Saunders of Healthworks Community Fitness, a nonprofit gym in Dorchester that has partnered with several health care providers to help low-income residents fill their exercise prescriptions.

Comment: The Health & Wellness Show: The Benefits of Exercise and Play

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Life Preserver

Signs and symptoms of a deficiency in each of the B vitamins

Mark Sisson
Mark's Daily Apple
Wed, 09 Mar 2016 00:00 UTC
vitamin b
When it comes to obtaining sufficient amounts of certain micronutrients, you're hyper vigilant. Magnesium? You're eating spinach, throwing back magnesium glycinate, and adding Trace Mineral drops to your water. Iodine? You're making dulse "bacon." To bask in the holy triumvirate of vitamin K2, vitamin D3, and vitamin A, you're willing to eat fermented cod liver oil and stinky natto. But as omnivores drawing upon a broad spectrum of plant and animal foods, Primal people tend to assume they have the B vitamins covered. It's no wonder: punch a slab of beef chuck steak or a few ounces of liver into the USDA nutrient database and that whole B vitamin section seems to fill up.

Let's take a look. You may be right. You may be totally fine. But it's always nice to refresh your focus.

Comment: One major factor that could increase one's need for B vitamins is stress, which can deplete B vitamins (along with magnesium and zinc), in which case one might benefit from supplementing with B vitamins and using stress reduction tools; sufferers of adrenal fatigue often require more B vitamins due to prolonged stress. Other factors could be environmental toxins and various types of physiological damage, including inflammation, that need B vitamins to repair, which could increase one's needs for a period of time, after which maintenance doses would be sufficient to meet one's needs. Leaky gut and poor absorption and utilization are also factors that could affect one's need for B vitamins. In addition, when one is deficient in one B vitamin, often times they're deficient in some or all of them as well, though this may not be the case in every instance.

Either way, liver from pastured animals is likely a good addition to one's diet, due to its abundance of nutrients, with egg yolks being a good second choice. Eggs may need to be approached with caution however, due to the possibility of egg allergies or intolerances. Those with iron overload or hemochromatosis should also exercise caution with liver and egg yolks, due to their iron content.

For those who don't like liver, try making liver pate, or adding onions and garlic and maybe ginger to mask the flavor a bit, and make sure not to overcook the liver. Or just get over it and eat the liver because it's good for you.

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Red Flag

The Stephan family faces criminal prosecution & loss of children for not vaccinating

Terri LaPoint
Health Impact News
Sat, 19 Mar 2016 15:32 UTC
anti vaccine family
© Prayers for Ezekiel Facebook page The Stephan family. Ezekiel will always be in their hearts.
As we have reported frequently here at Health Impact News, State governments in the U.S. and countries around the world are trying to eliminate vaccine exemptions, and make all vaccinations mandatory, by force if necessary.

In those situations where legislative efforts fail, could vaccine extremists now have a different strategy by using the courts to prosecute parents who choose to not vaccinate their children, and then later their child comes in contact with an illness from which there is a vaccine in the market to allegedly prevent? If a child is found to have contracted chickenpox, for example, and their parents had chosen not to administer the chickenpox vaccine believing that natural immunity was better than the vaccine, could the threat of being criminally prosecuted for failing to vaccinate become a de facto method of forcing everyone to comply with mandatory vaccines?

In this report out of Canada, this exact scenario is being tried in the courts this week, where the tragic death of one family's child is viewed by some as setting a precedent for the extremist pro-vaccine lobby. The Stephan family, leaders in the alternative health field in Canada, face time in prison and the removal of their remaining children for simply refusing to vaccinate their child who later died in a hospital that failed to save him. The authorities want the court to rule that his death was preventable by a simple vaccine, something that could never be proven scientifically.
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