Women may believe that eating the placenta after childbirth, or taking pills made from a dried-out version of this organ that nourishes the fetus, can help with problems such as postpartum depression and breast-feeding difficulties. However, there's no scientific evidence to support these claims, according to a new review of previous studies.

Interest in consuming placenta (also called the afterbirth) has perhaps been spurred by celebrities who tout the benefits of the practice, researchers said.

"Yummy...PLACENTA pills!" Kourtney Kardashian wrote in an Instagram post on Jan. 10. "No joke...I will be sad when my placenta pills run out. They are life changing!"

Some women eat the placenta raw, others may dry out the organ or cook it. There are companies that will take the placenta and process it into capsules, and also instructions online for women who want to do this themselves.

In the new review, researchers found that the "the primary motivation for most women for consuming placenta is to prevent postpartum depression," said study co-author Cynthia Coyle, a clinical psychologist at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago. "But are women making the choice to do this, and forgoing other scientifically proven treatments? We don't know the answer to that."

There is some evidence from animal studies that for mice, eating placenta could reduce pain during labor or delivery, Coyle said. But there's no evidence that it works the same way in women, and most women don't consume placenta for this reason anyway, Coyle said.

Some women may take placenta pills for cosmetic reasons, thinking that the pills will tighten aging skin or help with regulating hormones during menopause, according to the review.

Coyle and her colleagues looked at 10 studies done to date on why women are interested in eating the placenta, as well as how "placentophagy," or eating the placenta, may affect health.

(Ho hum, not again)

A number of people have written to me pointing out an outbreak of mass hysteria in the UK press about statins protecting against cancer. I suspect this hysteria has been repeated around the world. Here are the headlines from the eponymous Daily Mail

Statins slash risk of death by cancer: They slow tumour growth

by up to 50% reveal major studies

Experts say there is 'overwhelming' evidence that statins can treat cancer

Study showed they cut death rates for bone cancer patients by 55 per cent

GPs should make patients aware of pills' new benefits, researchers say

I have been aware of claims that statins protect against cancer for many years. They pop up on a pretty regular basis. I have tended to ignore them on the basis that, anyone who is stupid enough to believe such research, deserves all the statins they can get.

However, such is the overblown hype this time, that I feel the need to rouse myself from my slumber, and explain why this is just complete rubbish. I don't need to read the original studies to do this. I have read enough of these over the years. I hope this does not sound too arrogant, but I will happily apologise if any single thing I write here proves to be wrong.

Terminally ill cancer patients have seen miracle reversals, with some tumors completely disappearing, thanks to new drugs, which follow trials with "spectacular" results. Doctors now promise to save tens of thousands of lives.

The test results, announced on Sunday at the American Society of Clinical Oncology's annual conference in Chicago, have had scientists completely awe-struck, proving the technique of immunotherapy is adept at curing a whole range of cancers, including ovarian, lung, womb and bowel types.

The evidence, according to experts at Yale, is so overwhelming that it's the strongest seen in favor of a new treatment. Doctors are promising results within this decade, following the British-led trial.

Are readers aware that what most consumers revere, and totally believe without a doubt as 'science based', actually is the third verifiable cause of death, especially in the USA? After coming to a similar association or conclusion many years ago, I've given it a new disease classification: the "white coat syndrome," which, I contend, refers to the inefficiencies and prostituted sciences of allopathic medicine, Big Pharma, their acolytes and the entire legalized 'medical' system in the USA, including public health agencies at all levels. They ALL are part and parcel of the legal killing machine in the U.S. healthcare system, if you can call it that!

I'm not the only one to point out that stupefying reality, even though I've been 'pontificating' that since the 1980s when I worked to get a Healthcare Rights Amendment to the U.S. Constitution passed and which would have precluded the horrors we now face with healthcare mandates at all levels of governance and life. Back then I coined this phrase:

You can't be born, go to school, get married, or die without a note from your doctor.

(To read about Jon's mega-collection, Power Outside The Matrix, click here.)

"After any agreement is achieved between high-level criminals, there are two basic phases. First, conflicts arise, and the settlements are crude and sometimes painful. Second, the criminal parties realize, like the 'gentlemen' they are, that the jackpot they are sharing is big enough for everyone. So they unify their stance. They focus in on their real target: the public." —The Underground, Jon Rappoport

Question: "Who said that drug was safe? Where did that assessment come from? People are dropping like flies."

Answer: "We all said it was safe. Remember? All twelve members of the TPP. We all agreed. So now we have to stick to our guns. Admit nothing. Keep your mouth shut."

This "trade treaty," the TPP, will, if passed, eventually morph into a close-knit international collective of government agencies that collaborate on medical-drug "safety."

Translation: the US FDA and Health Canada, and the Australian TGA, and the New Zealand MEDSAFE, and the medical regulatory agencies of Singapore, Vietnam, Brunei, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, and Peru will: declare dangerous drugs to be safe. Together. On behalf of the corporations who manufacture them.

Two people have reportedly died from Middle East Respiratory Syndrome in South Korea, becoming the first lethal cases in the current outbreak. At least 682 people, who had come into contact with those infected with MERS virus, were previously isolated.

A 58-year-old woman, who passed away on Monday, became South Korea's first fatality related to the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome after testing positive for the virus, the Health Ministry said.

The female, whose identity has been withheld, was listed as a suspected case after coming into contact with the country's first MERS patient, a 71-year-old male, who also died.

The health authorities announced six more cases of the virus on Tuesday, bringing the number of afflicted people to 25.

The new cases included South Korea's first tertiary infections, as two of the patients had contracted the virus from a secondarily-infected patient, the ministry added.

At least 682 people, who had contact with these patients, both family members and medical staff who treated them, are in isolation in their homes or in quarantine facilities to prevent the spread of the disease, Health Ministry official Kwon Jun-wook told reporters.

South Korean President Park Geun-Hye has slammed health officials for their "insufficient" response to the virus outbreak.

"The initial response to MERS... was insufficient," Park said, calling to increase government efforts to prevent any further spread of the virus.

Sleep may be a missing piece in the Alzheimer's disease puzzle.

Scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, have found compelling evidence that poor sleep -- particularly a deficit of the deep, restorative slumber needed to hit the save button on memories -- is a channel through which the beta-amyloid protein believed to trigger Alzheimer's disease attacks the brain's long-term memory.

"Our findings reveal a new pathway through which Alzheimer's disease may cause memory decline later in life," said UC Berkeley neuroscience professor Matthew Walker, senior author of the study to be published in the journal Nature Neuroscience.

Excessive deposits of beta-amyloid are key suspects in the pathology of Alzheimer's disease, a virulent form of dementia caused by the gradual death of brain cells. An unprecedented wave of aging baby boomers is expected to make Alzheimer's disease, which has been diagnosed in more than 40 million people, one of the world's fastest-growing and most debilitating public health concerns.

The good news about the findings, Walker said, is that poor sleep is potentially treatable and can be enhanced through exercise, behavioral therapy and even electrical stimulation that amplifies brain waves during sleep, a technology that has been used successfully in young adults to increase their overnight memory.

"This discovery offers hope," he said. "Sleep could be a novel therapeutic target for fighting back against memory impairment in older adults and even those with dementia."

• Vessels directly connecting brain, lymphatic system exist despite decades of doctrine that they don't
• Finding may have substantial implications for major neurological diseases
• Game-changing discovery opens new areas of research, transforms existing ones
• Major gap in understanding of the human body revealed
• 'They'll have to change the textbooks'

In a stunning discovery that overturns decades of textbook teaching, researchers at the University of Virginia School of Medicine have determined that the brain is directly connected to the immune system by vessels previously thought not to exist. That such vessels could have escaped detection when the lymphatic system has been so thoroughly mapped throughout the body is surprising on its own, but the true significance of the discovery lies in the effects it could have on the study and treatment of neurological diseases ranging from autism to Alzheimer's disease to multiple sclerosis.

"Instead of asking, 'How do we study the immune response of the brain?' 'Why do multiple sclerosis patients have the immune attacks?' now we can approach this mechanistically. Because the brain is like every other tissue connected to the peripheral immune system through meningeal lymphatic vessels," said Jonathan Kipnis, PhD, professor in the UVA Department of Neuroscience and director of UVA's Center for Brain Immunology and Glia (BIG). "It changes entirely the way we perceive the neuro-immune interaction. We always perceived it before as something esoteric that can't be studied. But now we can ask mechanistic questions."

"We believe that for every neurological disease that has an immune component to it, these vessels may play a major role," Kipnis said. "Hard to imagine that these vessels would not be involved in a [neurological] disease with an immune component."

In the last 40 years, fructose, a simple carbohydrate derived from fruit and vegetables, has been on the increase in American diets. Because of the addition of high-fructose corn syrup to many soft drinks and processed baked goods, fructose currently accounts for 10 percent of caloric intake for U.S. citizens. Male adolescents are the top fructose consumers, deriving between 15 to 23 percent of their calories from fructose--three to four times more than the maximum levels recommended by the American Heart Association.

A recent study at the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology at the University of Illinois found that, matched calorie for calorie with the simple sugar glucose, fructose causes significant weight gain, physical inactivity, and body fat deposition.

The paper, "Fructose decreases physical activity and increases body fat without affecting hippocampal neurogenesis and learning relative to an isocaloric glucose diet," was published in Scientific Reports.

"The link between increases in sugar intake, particularly fructose, and the rising obesity epidemic has been debated for many years with no clear conclusions," said Catarina Rendeiro, a postdoctoral research affiliate at the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology and lead author on the study. "The reality is that people are not only consuming more fructose through their diets, but also consuming more calories in general.

Bacon-lovers, you're in luck: a new study from researchers at ETH Zurich has revealed that niacin (aka Vitamin B3) could help you live longer! The niacin-rich food menu includes not only bacon, but also Marmite, sun-dried tomatoes, paprika, and peanuts; so, this pretty much sounds like the most delicious recipe for long life ever.

Energy Metabolism Prof Michael Ristow and his team decided to feed roundworms a bunch of niacin, and discovered that the new element in the worms' diet saw them living one-tenth longer than their Vitamin B3-free peers. This evidence is surprising to the science community, because niacin promotes the formation of "free radicals," which have long been theorized to actually cause aging in organisms.

Ristow's findings go against the largely accepted theory that food rich in antioxidants can prevent aging by eliminating free radicals. "The claim that intake of antioxidants, especially in tablet form, promotes any aspect of human health lacks scientific support," said Ristow. Instead, the Zurich scientists posits that "[c]ells can cope well with oxidative stress and neutralise it."

Basically, Ristow is suggesting that niacin is perfect for every couch potato who hates fruit. "Niacin tricks the body into believing that it is exercising - even when this is not the case," said Ristow. Next up for Ristow's team is testing the theory on mice.

So, for now, just know that pretty much everything you eat either does or does not cause aging. Perfect!