Health & WellnessS


Sun

Can Cherries Relieve The Pain Of Osteoarthritis?


Science Daily
Sat, 21 Mar 2009 00:01 UTC
Science Daily Cherries
© Science DailyRipe tart cherries (sour cherries).

For the estimated 27 million Americans who suffer from osteoarthritis, pain relief may come with a cherry on top. According to researchers with the Baylor Research Institute, tart cherries, in pill form, may be a promising pain-reliever for this common and debilitating form of arthritis.

More than half of the patients enrolled in a 2007 pilot study at the Baylor Research Institute experienced a significant improvement in pain and function after taking the cherry pills for eight weeks. Osteoarthritis, the most common type of arthritis, is considered degenerative and typically affects the hands, feet, spine, and large weight-bearing joints, such as the hips and knees. Patients with osteoarthritis of the knees were enrolled in this pilot study to assess potential efficacy of the tart cherry pills.
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Mr. Potato

No Chairs: Students 'Get The Wiggles Out ' On Exercise Balls

Kristen Wyatt
USA Today
Wed, 04 Mar 2009 19:51 UTC
Image
© Ed Andrienski, APJoe Rademacher, 9, left center, says he learns better sitting on a stability ball rather than a traditional chair in his fourth-grade class at Bauder Elementary School in Fort Collins, Colo.
Fort Collins, Colorado - Talk about a teacher's dream: No more slouching, no more wiggly little boys and no more snoozing at desks.

All teachers have to do is ditch the classroom chair. A growing number are replacing them with exercise stability balls more associated with Pilates classes than schoolroom lectures as an innovative way to improve student posture and attention.

"They're awesome," said 10-year-old James Howell, a fourth grader at Bauder Elementary School whose class switched to purple stability balls in January. "They help you focus, they help you keep your structure. And sometimes you get to bounce on them, get the wiggles out."
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Sherlock

What's The Food Safety Modernization Act of 2009?

Mike Adams
Natural News
Fri, 20 Mar 2009 08:31 UTC
The health-conscious community is rightly concerned over the pending passage of HR 875, the Food Safety Modernization Act of 2009, which hammers small family farms with a whole new level of tyranny and oppression. The proposed law is chock full of ominous-sounding text that would allow government authorities to fine small farms $1 million a day while arresting and imprisoning their owners for refusing to spray toxic chemicals on their organic produce. (There are many other bizarre elements in this proposed law, too.)

But the law has a few other elements that no one is talking about, such as SEC 401 - Prohibited Acts, which reads, "It is prohibited (1) to manufacture, introduce, deliver for introduction, or receive in interstate commerce any food that is adulterated, mis-branded, or otherwise unsafe."
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Bad Guys

Seeds - How to criminalize them

Linn Cohen-Cole
Op-ed News
Thu, 19 Mar 2009 14:28 UTC
Wisdom says stop a bill that is broad as everything yet more vague even than it is broad.

Wisdom says stop a bill that comes with massive penalties but allows no judicial review.

Wisdom says stop a bill with everything unspecified and actually waits til next year for an unspecified "Administrator" to decide what's what.

Where we come from, that's called a blank check. Who writes laws like that? "Here, do what you want about whatever you want and here's some deadly punishments to make it stick."

Wisdom says know who wrote that bill and be forewarned.

Wisdom says wake up.

Here's the bill. Let's use our imaginations and extrapolate from the little bit it reveals and from the reality we know.
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Health

One Soldier's Tale of How War Drove Him Crazy

Penny Coleman
AlterNet
Sat, 21 Mar 2009 00:24 UTC
"When it got really bad, I dumped 5 tons of sand into my basement to remind me of Afghanistan," Jim told me. "I would just spend the entire day down there in my sandbox, smoking marijuana and working on peace of mind. It made me realize that you can close as many doors as you want, but ghosts walk through walls."

Jim speaks with apparent ease about his war experiences and what they cost him. His stories are punctuated with vivid detail and bemused laughter, mostly at his own expense: How could he have been so naïve ... how could he have failed to see what was going on around him?

He rubs his hands up and down his thighs frequently. It's a kind of nervous gesture that he explains is a result of a spinal injury he sustained in an IED explosion -- his legs still go numb from time to time. "But they don't get numb to the point where I fall down anymore, so I won't complain about progress," he said.
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Magnify

Acetaldehyde in Alcohol - No Longer Just The Chemical That Causes a Hangover


PhysOrg
Fri, 20 Mar 2009 20:08 UTC
A new study published today in the journal Addiction shows that drinking alcohol is the greatest risk factor for acetaldehyde-related cancer. Heavy drinkers may be at increased risk due to exposure from multiple sources.

Acetaldehyde is ubiquitous in daily life. Widely present in the environment, it is inhaled from the air and tobacco smoke, ingested from alcohol and foods, and produced in the human body during the metabolism of alcoholic beverages.

Research indicates that this organic chemical plays a significant role in the development of certain types of cancers (especially of the upper digestive tract), and it is currently classified as possibly carcinogenic by the International Agency for Research on Cancer of the World Health Organization. New research from the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) in Toronto and the Chemical and Veterinary Investigation Laboratory Karlsruhe (CVUA) in Germany recently provided the necessary methodology for calculating the risk for the ingestion of alcoholic beverages.
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Magnify

The Brain Maintains Language Skills in Spite of Alcohol Damage By Drawing From Other Regions


PhysOrg
Fri, 20 Mar 2009 20:08 UTC
Researchers know that alcoholism can damage the brain's frontal lobes and cerebellum, regions involved in language processing. Nonetheless, alcoholics' language skills appear to be relatively spared from alcohol's damaging effects. New findings suggest the brain maintains language skills by drawing upon other systems that would normally be used to perform other tasks simultaneously.

Prior neuroimaging studies have shown alcoholism-related damage to the frontal lobes and cerebellum. Yet even though these regions are involved in language processing, alcoholics' language skills appear to be relatively spared from alcohol's damaging effects. A new study suggests that alcoholics develop "compensatory mechanisms" to maintain their language skills despite alcohol's damages... compensation which may, in turn, have a restrictive effect on other processes.

Results will be published in the June issue of Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research and are currently available at Early View.
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Book

Flashback My life with a psychopath


Yorkshire Post
Wed, 17 Mar 2004 14:50 UTC
Kate Lock
© Simon HulmeChapters from the past: Kate Lock in the Blakehead Bookshop, York. Writing her book has proved a huge release and relief
Kate Lock knew her much older boyfriend had been jailed for murder but it was only after they split up and when he later committed suicide that she realised the full extent of his crime. She talks to Jill Armstrong about how writing a book has helped to finally lay the past to rest.

Kate Lock was a naive, 20-year-old undergraduate when she met the charismatic Tim Franklin. He was a mature student, 36 years her senior, recently released from prison on a life sentence.

They embarked on an intense and explosive relationship but it was not until Kate tried to leave Tim when her studies at Exeter University came to an end, that she began to realise how dangerous he was.

She had been living with a murderer and came very close to becoming another victim. Twenty years on she has written what started out as a memoir of their time together and turned into an investigation of the crime he committed and the realisation that the man she had loved was a psychopath.

Kate, now 43, is a former journalist and has written eight TV novelisations. Her own story is so incredible that as she says, you couldn't have made it up. Even after she had left Tim she still felt trapped by him and in the book she describes a chilling encounter when he wouldn't let her out of the house.
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Beer

Low To Moderate, Not Heavy, Drinking Releases 'Feel-good' Endorphins In The Brain


ScienceDaily
Fri, 20 Mar 2009 17:48 UTC
martini glass
Scientists know that alcohol affects the brain, but the specifics remain unclear. One possibility is that alcohol may increase or decrease the release and the synthesis of endogenous opioid peptides - endorphins, enkephalins and dynorphins - in distinct brain regions important for drug addiction.

For the first time, a rodent study has confirmed that low to moderate levels of alcohol alter beta-endorphin release in the midbrain/Ventral Tegmental Area (VTA) region, producing the pleasant effects that likely reinforce alcohol consumption.
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Calculator

US student Virgil Griffith does 'study' aligning musical preferences to intelligence levels

Ian Rakowski
News.com.au
Thu, 12 Mar 2009 08:47 UTC
music and intelligence
© Virgil GriffithSweet note ... Lovers of Beethoven will be pleased to know they top the pile in intelligence
If you're a fan of Lil' Wayne, chances are you're, well, stupid.

Love Beyonce? You're in major strife. And if you love the music of the Lord, the news is bad for you, too.

A California Tech student has matched music preferences to US high school marks, and come up with correlations that will send brainiacs scurrying for their iPods.

PhD student Virgil Griffith's "somewhat unscientific" study showed the smartest students listened to Beethoven, Counting Crows and Sufjan Stevens. Radiohead and Ben Folds Five also appealed to big brains.

Lil' Wayne, Beyonce and Soca took the cringeworthy honours at the other end of the scale.

But before you relax, consider this: jazz, gospel and pop were all well down the ladder - and even classical music was behind the general pack, trailing acts like Snow Patrol and Kanye West.
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