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FDA asked big pharma to self-police on dangerous chemicals


Alliance for Natural Health
Tue, 20 May 2014 09:08 UTC
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Phthalates are synthetic chemicals used in plastics, lubricants, insect repellants, nail polish, perfumes, and, yes, even in prescription drugs.

Phthalates are also:
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Pills

Documentary looks at military suicides - 'The Hidden Enemy' explores psychiatric meds

Stacy M. Brown
The Washington Informer
Wed, 21 May 2014 00:18 UTC
The conquests of the United States military remain awe-inspiring.
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“Producers of the film said military suicide rates among active duty soldiers and veterans also have soared to record numbers and the documentary counts as the first to expose psychiatry’s role in the devastating effects upon the armed forces.”
From the Colonial wars of the 1600s and 1700s, to the Theater of Wars in the 1900s to the War on Terrorism that began in 2001, America's soldiers have toppled the opposition.


Comment: They better check Evidence of Revision (The Assassination of America) for a reality check.


Still, the most pressing question remains as to why the military cannot defeat its most insidious enemy: suicide.

"Suicide is now the leading cause of injury death in the United States and, among young adults, it ranks as the second or third leading cause of death," said Silvia M. Dutchevici, president and founder of the Critical Therapy Center in New York and a member of the National Association of Social Workers in Northeast Washington, D.C.


Comment: They are not only chemically lobotomizing the military, but the population at large too, including the babies... See
SOTT EXCLUSIVE: 10,000 2-3 year olds are on psychotropic drugs for 'ADHD'.

For some real and proved effective solutions, see: Mass nervous breakdown: Millions of Americans on the brink as stress pandemic ravages society.

For more information, see:

-Honey, they shrunk my brain - Study confirms antipsychotics decrease brain tissue.
-The Total Failure of Modern Psychiatry
-SOTT Talk Radio: Good Science, Bad Science - Psychology and Psychiatry (transcript available).
-WWII veterans lobotomy story: Tragic but not scandalous?

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Pills

SOTT EXCLUSIVE: 10,000 American 2-3 year olds are on psychotropic drugs for 'ADHD'

Shane LaChance
Sott.net
Thu, 22 May 2014 12:17 UTC
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© Dustin Chambers for The New York Times
Dr. Susanna Visser presented a CDC report Friday to the Georgia Mental Health Forum in Atlanta on the drugging of young children for ADHD.
The CDC has shocked parents and many of the country's child welfare experts with it's release of a disturbing report showing the high number of very young children being prescribed mind-altering drugs. The report states that some 10,000 toddlers across the US are being diagnosed and medicated with psychotropic drugs like Ritalin and Adderall.

"It's absolutely shocking, and it shouldn't be happening," said Anita Zervigon-Hakes, a mental health consultant for children from the Carter Center. "People are just feeling around in the dark. We obviously don't have our act together for little children."

In interviews with the New York Times and NBC, Dr. Lawrence H. Diller, a behavioral pediatrician in California, thought the news was outrageous:
"People prescribing to 2-year-olds are just winging it. It is outside the standard of care, and they should be subject to malpractice if something goes wrong with a kid."

"We're giving Adderall to 2-year-olds? I mean, that's nuts," said Diller. "There's no evidence that it works. There's no evidence that it's safe. These are desperate measures."
According to Diller the U.S. uses 70 percent of the world's Adderall and Ritalin even though we only make up 4 percent of the world's population.

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Arrow Up

Minnesota becomes first state to ban triclosan, controversial ingredient in antibacterial soaps

Aaron Rupar
blogs.citypages.com
Tue, 20 May 2014 08:33 UTC
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© botanicskinessentials.com
Triclosan is in roughly 75 percent of antibacterial soaps and body washes.
Tucked into an environment bill signed into law by Gov. Mark Dayton on Friday was a measure banning triclosan, a controversial antibacterial agent found in a wide array of consumer products.

Minnesota is the first state to ban triclosan, which is currently being reviewed by the Food and Drug Administration.

The ban, which was approved by the Legislature with broad bipartisan support, has drawn the ire of the D.C.- based American Cleaning Institute.

ACI spokesman Brian Sansoni argues research on triclosan hasn't shown that the agent has any negative health impact on humans.

"For members of the public who want to choose these products, they should certainly be able to have access to them," Sansoni tells us. "This particular chemical has been in use for over 40 years, primarily in health care and then in the consumer space, and it has been safely used. We use it to wash our hands and in other applications too, and it continues to be safely used, and it's been more researched than just about any other ingredient that's used in consumer products."

Comment: Read more about the growing concerns of antibacterial products with triclosan:

The Dangers of Triclosan: A Common Anti-Bacterial Ingredient
Scientists: Chemical in antibacterial hand soaps poses health risks
Freaky Clean: Chemical in antibacterial soap weakens muscle function
Why You Don't Want to Use Antibacterial Soap Anymore
Triclosan May Be Harmful to Health, Says FDA

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Pills

Doctors ignore guidelines and prescribe antibiotics that don't work

John Tozzi
Bloomberg Business Week
Tue, 20 May 2014 17:25 UTC
Doctor and Patient
© Shutterstock
Medical researchers concluded years ago that antibiotics don't cure acute bronchitis. The drugs might reduce your coughing symptoms slightly, but the antibiotics also increase your risk of side effects such as diarrhea and nausea. And overuse of antibiotics breeds bacteria resistant to the current cures.

Yet patients who show up to clinics or emergency rooms with bronchitis still receive antibiotics about 70 percent of the time, according to a new review of prescribing data published in JAMA: The Journal of the American Medical Association. And the rate even increased slightly between 1996 and 2010 despite efforts to educate doctors and establish guidelines against antibiotics.

Comment: See also:

Overuse of Antibiotics

Doctors Told to Stop Giving Antibiotics for Colds

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Magnify

Functional nerve cells from skin cells


ScienceDaily
Wed, 21 May 2014 13:59 UTC
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© Fahad Ali
These are mature nerve cells generated from human cells using enhanced transcription factors.
A new method of generating mature nerve cells from skin cells could greatly enhance understanding of neurodegenerative diseases, and could accelerate the development of new drugs and stem cell-based regenerative medicine.

The nerve cells generated by this new method show the same functional characteristics as the mature cells found in the body, making them much better models for the study of age-related diseases such as Parkinson's and Alzheimer's, and for the testing of new drugs.

Eventually, the technique could also be used to generate mature nerve cells for transplantation into patients with a range of neurodegenerative diseases.

By studying how nerves form in developing tadpoles, researchers from the University of Cambridge were able to identify ways to speed up the cellular processes by which human nerve cells mature. The findings are reported in the May 27th edition of the journal Development.

Stem cells are our master cells, which can develop into almost any cell type within the body. Within a stem cell, there are mechanisms that tell it when to divide, and when to stop dividing and transform into another cell type, a process known as cell differentiation. Several years ago, researchers determined that a group of proteins known as transcription factors, which are found in many tissues throughout the body, regulate both mechanisms.
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Hearts

Midwifery units provide better experiences than hospitals for women with low-risk pregnancies


Medicalexpress.com
Mon, 19 May 2014 13:47 UTC
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Women who planned to give birth in a freestanding midwifery unit rather than in the local hospital obstetric unit were more likely to report a good experience, according to researchers at City University London.

The study - which is published in the journal Midwifery - found that women who went to the midwifery unit in labour were significantly more likely to experience one-to-one care and have the same midwife with them throughout their labour. They were also more likely to report that staff were kind and understanding and treated them with respect and dignity.
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Muffin

Does gluten have any effect on non-celiacs?

Mark Sisson
Marksdailyapple.com
Wed, 21 May 2014 00:00 UTC
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© Unknown
The headlines are everywhere: gluten sensitivity doesn't actually exist, and anyone who thinks they have it is a liar, delusional, dumb, or all three. The message isn't a new one, but the stories do point to a new study from a group of researchers who previously found that removing wheat from the diet improved symptoms in people with IBS. In the new paper, the researchers tested whether isolated gluten - rather than wheat - exacerbated IBS symptoms. It did not. The IBS patients in the latest study showed no reaction to isolated gluten, and the only dietary variable that increased their symptoms was wheat. This could suggest that at least for some people (with IBS), gluten sensitivity may actually be wheat sensitivity triggered by the fermentable FODMAP fibers found in the grain.

Comment: Some additional resources on the dangers of gluten:

Beyond Celiac disease: The universal toxicity of wheat, Part I
Wheat contains over 23,000 potentially harmful proteins
Gluten - Biohazard and pathogen

      Read More...
2 + 2 = 4

Always hungry? Here's why

David S. Ludwig and Mark I. Friedman
The New York Times
Fri, 16 May 2014 10:49 UTC
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© Sarah Illenberger
For most of the last century, our understanding of the cause of obesity has been based on immutable physical law. Specifically, it's the first law of thermodynamics, which dictates that energy can neither be created nor destroyed. When it comes to body weight, this means that calorie intake minus calorie expenditure equals calories stored. Surrounded by tempting foods, we overeat, consuming more calories than we can burn off, and the excess is deposited as fat. The simple solution is to exert willpower and eat less.

The problem is that this advice doesn't work, at least not for most people over the long term. In other words, your New Year's resolution to lose weight probably won't last through the spring, let alone affect how you look in a swimsuit in July. More of us than ever are obese, despite an incessant focus on calorie balance by the government, nutrition organizations and the food industry.

But what if we've confused cause and effect? What if it's not overeating that causes us to get fat, but the process of getting fatter that causes us to overeat?

The more calories we lock away in fat tissue, the fewer there are circulating in the bloodstream to satisfy the body's requirements. If we look at it this way, it's a distribution problem: We have an abundance of calories, but they're in the wrong place. As a result, the body needs to increase its intake. We get hungrier because we're getting fatter.

Comment: For more information, see:

-The key to automatic weight loss!
-Increasing Adiposity: Consequence or Cause of Overeating?

No wonder the ketogenic diet has proved most effective in weight loss! See:

-The Ketogenic Diet - An Overview
-Beyond weight loss: a review of the therapeutic uses of very-low-carbohydrate (ketogenic) diets
-Low-carb, high-fat ketogenic diet fuels rapid weight loss

      Read More...
Key

The key to automatic weight loss!

Mark Hyman, MD
Dr. Mark Hyman
Mon, 19 May 2014 10:34 UTC
Why are we fat? Is it gluttony, or is your fat actually hungry?

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Carbs are the culprits!
What if everything you ever learned about weight loss was wrong? What if losing weight has nothing to do with calories - counting them or cutting them out by sheer willpower? What if, in fact, most health professionals (including doctors and dietitians), our own government and especially the food industry are giving us weight loss advice guaranteed to make us fat?

Here's their mantra: "Eat less and exercise more. The secret to weight loss is energy balance. There are no good or bad calories. It's all about moderation."

If you doubt that this advice could be wrong, just look around. We have tripled our obesity rates since 1960, and in the last decade, cases of type 2 diabetes in children have increased by over 30 percent. In 1980, there were no children with type 2 diabetes (formerly known as adult onset diabetes), and now, there are over 50,000. Seven out of ten Americans are overweight. The advice is not working. Could it be the wrong advice?

Nobody wakes up in the morning saying, "Hey, I want to gain weight today. I am going to overeat. I want to be fat."

Rather, we have a $60 billion weight loss industry. It specializes in helping people count calories, eat less and exercise more. When are we going to realize that that our approach - as a scientific community and as policy makers - is failing miserably at stemming the tsunami of obesity and related health, social and economic costs?

Could it be we have it all wrong? Could it be the world is round, not flat, even though it looks flat, just as it seems that if you eat fewer calories than you burn, you will lose weight?

The answer is yes. Our focus on calories has missed the mark entirely. Even if you held the Guinness world record for calorie counting, you could easily be off by 100 calories a day. Do that for 30 years, and you will be 20 to 30 pounds overweight.

Comment: For more information, see:

- Always hungry? Here's why
-Increasing Adiposity: Consequence or Cause of Overeating?
-The Ketogenic Diet - An Overview
-Beyond weight loss: a review of the therapeutic uses of very-low-carbohydrate (ketogenic) diets
-Low-carb, high-fat ketogenic diet fuels rapid weight loss

      Read More...
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