© PAVEL VENENO
This current state of medical practice is both tragic and criminal. Pediatricians are not evil individuals, but they are greatly misinformed in their training and highly influenced by the pharmaceutical companies. [1]
Health & Wellness
This current state of medical practice is both tragic and criminal. Pediatricians are not evil individuals, but they are greatly misinformed in their training and highly influenced by the pharmaceutical companies. [1]
Without a nighttime reset, synapses could burn out like an outlet with too many appliances plugged in
Ah, to sleep, perchance ... to shrink your neural connections? That's the conclusion of new research that examined subtle changes in the brain during sleep.
The researchers found that sleep provides a time when the brain's synapses — the connections among neurons—shrink back by nearly 20 percent. During this time, the synapses rest and prepare for the next day, when they will grow stronger while receiving new input—that is, learning new things, the researchers said.
© Ian Cuming Getty Images
The researchers found that sleep provides a time when the brain's synapses — the connections among neurons—shrink back by nearly 20 percent. During this time, the synapses rest and prepare for the next day, when they will grow stronger while receiving new input—that is, learning new things, the researchers said.
Drinking Guidelines
The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism uses three tiers to identify the different drinking levels:
- Moderate consumption - up to 1 drink per day for women and up to 2 drinks per day for men.
- Binge drinking - 5 or more alcoholic drinks for males or 4 or more alcoholic drinks for females on the same occasion (i.e., at the same time or within a couple of hours of each other) on at least 1 day in the past month.
- Heavy alcohol use - binge drinking on 5 or more days in the past month.
Binge drinking effects over 20% of the US population, according to a recent report published by the U.S. surgeon general. The 2015 National Survey on Drug Use and Health (USDUH) estimates this to be even higher at 27%. Alcohol misuse in the U.S. contributes to over 88,000 deaths each year. Globally, deaths in 2012 attributed to alcohol consumption stacked up to 3.3 million.
© YouTube/Newcastle University
A test subject reacts to the sound of eating during research conducted by Newcastle University.
A test subject reacts to the sound of eating during research conducted by Newcastle University.
"I can only describe it as a feeling of wanting to punch people in the face when I heard the noise of them eating - and anyone who knows me will say that doesn't sound like me," the 29-year-old who lives in Kent, England is quoted as saying in a Newcastle University press release about new research into why some people's brains are sent into overdrive by the sounds of eating or breathing.
When Tansley-Hancock sought help, her family doctor laughed at her and counselling made it worse, she says. So she searched the internet and found the term misophonia.
She's now part of a research project into discovering why some people are so sensitive to sound. Scientists report the first evidence of clear changes in the structure of the brain's frontal lobe in those with misophonia in Friday's edition of Current Biology.
Dr. Tim Noakes
An American may not be able to grasp what Tim Noakes means to South Africa since no equivalent to Professor Noakes exists in the U.S. In South Africa, Noakes is a nationally famous exercise scientist and physician who has transformed the practice of sport by challenging most commonly held beliefs. And yet, Noakes' own university and colleagues, along with the medical establishment, have suddenly turned against him in what he describes as his "final crusade." Having demolished dogma on subjects as diverse as hydration, motivation and fatigue, Noakes may have gone a step too far. He took on carbs.
On the surface, the Tim Noakes controversy looks like a simple turf war between the renegade scientist and a few South African dietitians. That story goes something like this: in February 2014, the world-renowned exercise physiologist and M.D. tweeted that babies should be weaned onto low-carbohydrate diets. Then Claire Julsing Strydom, the president of South Africa's dietetics association, ADSA, reported Noakes for unprofessional conduct. Noakes chose to fight back and defend his dietary advice even though he no longer practices medicine and could just as well have given up his license. And finally, after dozens of hours of hearings, South Africa's council for health professionals will decide whether Noakes will keep his medical license.
It feels like we've seen this story a thousand times before. Entrenched interests attempt to protect their industry from renegade outsiders empowered by the internet. It looks like the taxi industry vs. Uber, or ACSM vs. CrossFit affiliates. To get any deeper, you have to do a little bit of investigation.
Comment: Here are some of the tweets that led to this travesty. Hysteria wins again.
© Lucas Jackson / Reuters
Researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) found that "habitual e-cigarette use was associated with a shift in cardiac autonomic balance toward sympathetic predominance and increased oxidative stress, both associated with increased cardiovascular risk."
Their new study on the implications for cardiovascular risk among regular e-cigarette users was published this week in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Working with the hypothesis that regular e-cigarette users would exhibit high oxidative stress, researchers included in the study 23 people considered habitual e-cigarette users between the ages of 21 and 45. The participants were not current tobacco cigarette smokers, and did not have known health issues or take prescription medications. The control group included 19 self-identified healthy non-smokers.
When Tyler Mann first started getting cluster headaches a little over a decade ago, he'd crawl into his bathroom, turn off the lights, shut the door, and scream as loud as he could for up to an hour until the pain went away. Sometimes he'd pass out before that happened. Other times he'd contemplate suicide.
"I've had headaches where I was literally considering hanging myself from the shower rod," Mann told me. "Literally, I wanted to just wrap a belt around my neck and make it stop, several times. That's why I don't own a gun."
In the beginning, he'd get the headaches as often as six times per day, for months at a time. His doctors offered no explanation. So, like many people with more symptoms than solutions, he turned to the internet for help. That's when he discovered a Facebook group where thousands of others said they suffered from the same condition—a little-known neurological disease called cluster headaches, for which there is very little research and no known cure. They referred to themselves as "cluster heads," and each was more desperate for relief than the next. Many of them, frustrated with the lack of clinical studies, had turned to extreme methods of treatment.
Comment: Read more about the use of 'magic mushrooms' as an alternative healing modality
- Magic mushrooms: How they affect the brain's emotion centers
- Cancer patients using mystical visions induced by magic mushrooms to conquer fear
- Scientists discover compound in psilocybin mushrooms that could cure severe depression
Tired of turmeric latte sipping hipsters and health nuts lauding the anecdotal health benefits of this legendary golden spice, the Mainstream Media strikes back with the anvil of hard Science (capital "S")...
Forbes just published an op-ed titled, "Everybody Needs To Stop With This Turmeric Molecule," intended to warn consumers and scientists alike that curcumin (the primary polyphenol in turmeric), and presumably turmeric itself, is a "waste of time and money."
What is their seeming unequivocal conclusion based on? According to the assessment of Forbes writer Sam Leminick, a new paper published in the Journal of Medicinal Chemistry entitled, The Essential Medicinal Chemistry of Curcumin, reveals:
"...there's really no evidence that curcumin (and a couple related compounds lumped in for convenience) does anything for you health-wise."What Mr. Leminick is referring here to as "evidence," or the lack thereof, is the randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, human clinical trial (RCT). The RCT has become the epistemiological holy grail of Scientism and the Medical Monotheism it informs. In this belief system, it doesn't matter if something has had cross-cultural validation as a healing agent, even after thousands of years of safe human use; nor does it matter if you personally have experienced (N-of-1) direct and measurable health benefits from consuming it. This is essentially a pyramidal control system: the RCT situated on top, and your first-hand experience and associated "anecdotal claims" on bottom, completely worthless. What's considered 'really real' is what has been externally validated through the RCT. Also worthless within this view are the thousands of cell (in vitro) and animal (in vivo) studies that exist indicating therapeutic properties may exist. This Scientism-based belief system is so powerful and all-consuming that sometimes I describe it as the 'Religion that devours all others.'
© NYU School of Medicine
Thanks to changes at the FDA, risks presented by new prescription drugs are heightening. Drugs that once would have been rejected by regulators due to their alarming safety profiles are now rushed through, like the blood thinner Pradaxa—already linked to more than 542 bleeding deaths. Drug approvals are also, increasingly, expedited or "fast-tracked"—like Vioxx, which "received a six-month priority review," admitted the FDA, and went on to cause 140,000 heart events. Merck's bone drug Fosamax was approved in just six months and was soon linked to esophageal cancer and deaths in medical journals.
Finally, the new FDA commissioner, Robert Califf, has received money from 23 drug companies including giants like Johnson & Johnson, Lilly, Merck, Schering Plough and GSK according to a disclosure statement on the website of Duke Clinical Research Institute, erasing any semblance of a government/industry firewall.
© garycycles8/Flickr, CC BY 2.0
We thought in the 1940s that OPs, DDT, endosulfan, etc., were beneficial for large-scale agriculture, then we switched to OPs alone in the 1960s because they degraded faster, and then we found that DDT and its ilk were deadly for the environment, and now we’re finding that OPs cause diabetes.
We thought in the 1940s that OPs, DDT, endosulfan, etc., were beneficial for large-scale agriculture, then we switched to OPs alone in the 1960s because they degraded faster, and then we found that DDT and its ilk were deadly for the environment, and now we’re finding that OPs cause diabetes.
In 2010, an American researcher found that when young rats were exposed to very small amounts of compounds that contained molecules of a substance called organophosphates (OPs), they developed early signs of diabetes. Specifically, he found that the onset of pre-diabetes happened as a result of a metabolic dysfunction. Now, a new study by researchers at the Madurai Kamaraj University has elucidated the precise mechanism of action - the chain of events that begins with exposure to OPs and results in diabetes.
An important aspect of their study is that, according to Ganesan Velmurugan, "All the previous toxicological reports with these insecticides are at acute and large doses. Ours is the first report to replicate the exposure level at day to day life." Velmurugan works at the department of microbiology in Madurai Kamaraj University, Madurai, and led the study.
Comment: Vaccines: Could this be driving the epidemic of sudden infant deaths (SIDS)?