Regular exercise, including walking, significantly reduces the chance that a frail older person will become physically disabled, according to one of the largest and longest-running studies of its kind to date.

The results, published on Tuesday in the journal JAMA, reinforce the necessity of frequent physical activity for our aging parents, grandparents and, of course, ourselves.

While everyone knows that exercise is a good idea, whatever your age, the hard, scientific evidence about its benefits in the old and infirm has been surprisingly limited.

Waste water associated with fracking is also polluting the sources from which millions get their water.

Field studies conducted by the U.S. Government have revealed that hydrofracking fluids are responsible for the deaths of four field workers since 2010.

The report, recently released by the National Institute for Occupational Safety, suggests that workers could be exposed to hazardous levels of toxic volatile hydrocarbons found in waste fracking fluids.

"According to our information, at least four workers have died since 2010 from what appears to be acute chemical exposures during flow back operations at well sites in the Williston Basin (North Dakota and Montana)," government researchers wrote. "While not all of these investigations are complete, available information suggests that these cases involved workers who were gauging flow back or production tanks or involved in transferring flow back fluids at the well site."

In the world of low carb weight loss, Jimmy Moore has become both a role model and an inspiration. We interviewed him to get his insights on how he used a high fat low carb ketogenic diet to lose 180 pounds - and keep them off. His books include "LIVIN' LA VIDA LOW-CARB: My Journey From Flabby Fat to Sensationally Skinny in One Year," "21 Life Lessons From Livin' La Vida Low-Carb: How The Healthy Low-Carb Lifestyle Changed Everything I Thought I Knew," and "Cholesterol Clarity: What The HDL Is Wrong With My Numbers?"

Jimmy points out that evaluating success on a diet goes beyond a number on a scale.

"I know people are enamored by weight loss, but that's perhaps the least interesting way to measure how well you are doing in your nutritional plan," he says. "Yes, I lost 180 pounds in 2004 on the Atkins diet, saving me from being a 400+ pound man on three prescription medications for high cholesterol, high blood pressure and breathing problems."

However, Jimmy notes, "coming off of all those drugs and permanently shifting my thinking on food forever has been the lasting impact of that experience. Nevermore will I look at sugar, grains, starch or fat in the same way ever again."

As a result of his weight loss, Jimmy feels empowered. "I know what those foods do to me when I eat them and that knowledge is incredible power that far too many people have lost control of in this day and age."

Mercury tests conducted on vaccines at the Natural News Forensic Food Lab have revealed a shockingly high level of toxic mercury in an influenza vaccine (flu shot) made by GlaxoSmithKline (lot #9H2GX). Tests conducted via ICP-MS document mercury in the Flulaval vaccine at a shocking 51 parts per million, or over 25,000 times higher than the maximum contaminant level of inorganic mercury in drinking water set by the EPA.(1)

The tests were conducted via ICP-MS using a 4-point mercury calibration curve for accuracy. Even then, the extremely high level of mercury found in this flu shot was higher than anything we've ever tested, including tuna and ocean fish which are known for high mercury contamination.

In fact, the concentration of mercury found in this GSK flu shot was 100 times higher than the highest level of mercury we've ever tested in contaminated fish. And yet vaccines are injected directly into the body, making them many times more toxic than anything ingested orally. As my previous research into foods has already documented, mercury consumed orally is easily blocked by eating common foods like strawberries or peanut butter, both of which bind with and capture about 90% of dietary mercury.

A new study finds a link between prenatal maternal stress (PNMS) and the development of symptoms of asthma and autism in children.

A team of scientists from The Douglas Mental Health University Institute and from McGill University has been studying women who were pregnant during the January 1998 Quebec ice storm since June of that year and observing effects of their stress on their children's development (Project Ice Storm). The team examined the degree to which the mothers' objective degree of hardship from the storm and their subjective degree of distress explained differences among the women's children in asthma-like symptoms and in autism-like traits.

Results reported in the journal Psychiatry Research show that the greater the mothers' objective hardship from the ice storm (such as more days without electricity), and the greater the mothers' distress about the ice storm 5 months later, the more severe their children's autistic-like traits at 6½ years of age.

The team emphasizes that the children in Project Ice Storm are not autistic; the results describe normal variations among children.

These traits include difficulty making friends, being clumsy, speaking in odd ways, etc. The effect of the mothers' ice storm stress was especially strong when the ice storm happened in the first trimester of pregnancy.

Interestingly, the children with the most severe symptoms had mothers who had had high levels of hardship from the ice storm but low levels of distress.

"We have found effects of the mothers' objective hardship from the ice storm (such as the number of days without electricity), or their degree of distress from the storm, on every aspect of child development that we have studied, said Suzanne King, PhD, the senior author of the paper. This is surprising, since the children in our study are mostly from upper class families and are generally doing extremely well in school and in life."

If you're stressed out and you can't put your finger on why, it might be worth considering the company you keep. New research shows that stress is highly contagious, not just in how you feel but in the way your body responds physically as well.

If you surround yourself with others who are stressed (either by choice or circumstance), it's probably affecting your mental and physical health. And get this... the same holds true for watching stressful situations on television.

The claim that the Green Revolution or genetic engineering feeds the world is false. Intrinsic to these technologies are monocultures based on chemical inputs, a recipe for killing the life of the soil.

We are made up of the same five elements - earth, water, fire, air and space - that constitute the Universe. We are the soil. We are the earth. What we do to the soil, we do to ourselves. And it is no accident that the words "humus" and "humans" have the same roots.

This ecological truth is forgotten in the dominant paradigm because it is based on eco-apartheid, the false idea that we are separate and independent of the earth and also because it defines soil as dead matter. If soil is dead to begin with, human action cannot destroy its life. It can only "improve" the soil with chemical fertilisers. And if we are the masters and conquerors of the soil, we determine the fate of the soil. Soil cannot determine our fate.

The new documentary Fed Up reveals how Big Food pushed the government to give out compromised health information.

The documentary Fed Up, released in theaters on May 9, untangles the roots of obesity in America's youth. Directed by Stephanie Soechtig and narrated by Katie Couric, Fed Up does not shrink from telling viewers how the government's decades-long capitulation to Big Food and its lobbyists has fostered an epidemic of excess pounds. The national focus on diet, diet foods and exercise is not abating the obesity epidemic and actually making it worse, charges the film.

Examples of capitulation to Big Food are many in the film. In 1977, the McGovern Report warned about an impending obesity epidemic and suggested revised USDA guidelines to recommend people eat less foods high in fat and sugar. The egg, sugar and other Big Food industries, seeing a risk to profits, demanded that guidelines not say "eat less" of the offending foods but rather eat more "low-fat" foods. Ka-ching. They won over the objection of Sen. McGovern.

A new vaccine study published in Molecular and Genetic Medicine is bringing to the forefront the disturbing connection between the dramatic expansion in the quantity of routine childhood vaccines administered and a corresponding increase in inflammation-associated disorders.

Titled, "Review of Vaccine Induced Immune Overload and the Resulting Epidemics of Type 1 Diabetes and Metabolic Syndrome, Emphasis on Explaining the Recent Accelerations in the Risk of Prediabetes and other Immune Mediated Diseases," the study argues that vaccine-induced immune overload is a driving factor in a number of rapidly accelerating childhood epidemics including:

• Autism
• Type 1 diabetes
• Asthma
• Food allergies
• Many autoimmune diseases
• Obesity
• Type 2 diabetes
• Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFL)
• Metabolic disease.

The paper sought to provide a theory of vaccine induced immune overload to explain many observations about the changes in the epidemics. The fundamental problem, according to the study, is that vaccinology assumes a 'one size fits all' approach that results in the majority of the vaccine recipients having overstimulated immune systems:

Rising consumer interest in healthy eating and animal welfare is beginning to scramble the US egg business.The price of egg whites has nearly tripled to record levels since early 2013 following moves by McDonald's and other fast-food giants to introduce egg-white menu items to appeal to cholesterol-focused customers.

Meanwhile, egg producers are spending millions of dollars to add more hens for producing organic and cage-free eggs. A catalyst behind that is a California law that takes effect in 2015 that aims to address inhumane conditions for the birds.

The shifts are the latest sign of the rising interest in the United States towards healthier and organic foods, evident in supermarkets and restaurants, including an initiative by leading retailer Wal-Mart to sell discounted organic foods in US stores.

Yet food experts say the trends should not be exaggerated, noting, for example, that industrial eggs remain the norm.

The organic chicken flock, which is by definition also cage-free, stood at five percent of the US market as of August 2013, while the total cage-free flock was 8.1 percent, according to the American Egg Board, a trade group.