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No benefit seen in sharp limits on salt in diet

Gina Kolata
New York Times
Tue, 14 May 2013 10:21 UTC
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© Tony Cenicola/The New York Times
As sodium levels plunge, triglyceride levels increase, insulin resistance increases, and the activity of the sympathetic nervous system increases. Each of these factors can increase the risk of heart disease.
In a report that undercuts years of public health warnings, a prestigious group convened by the government says there is no good reason based on health outcomes for many Americans to drive their sodium consumption down to the very low levels recommended in national dietary guidelines.

Those levels, 1,500 milligrams of sodium a day, or a little more than half a teaspoon of salt, were supposed to prevent heart attacks and strokes in people at risk, including anyone older than 50, blacks and people with high blood pressure, diabetes or chronic kidney disease - groups that make up more than half of the American population.

Some influential organizations, including the American Heart Association, have said that everyone, not just those at risk, should aim for that very low sodium level. The heart association reaffirmed that position in an interview with its spokesman on Monday, even in light of the new report.

But the new expert committee, commissioned by the Institute of Medicine at the behest of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said there was no rationale for anyone to aim for sodium levels below 2,300 milligrams a day. The group examined new evidence that had emerged since the last such report was issued, in 2005.
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Bacon n Eggs

5 brain nutrients found only in meat, fish and eggs (NOT plants)

Kris Gunnars
Authority Nutrition
Mon, 13 May 2013 09:14 UTC
Image
The human brain is the most complex object in the universe.

It is also the organ that consumes by far the most energy, compared to its weight.

The brain is only about 2% of our body weight, but uses 20% of the energy.

This remarkable organ has evolved over millions of years. During this time, humans were omnivores. We ate both meat and plants.

There are many nutrients in these foods that are absolutely critical for the proper function of this very delicate system.

Unless proper care is taken to supplement, going vegan and eschewing animal foods may lead to a deficiency in some of these important substances.

Here are 5 nutrients that are very important for the brain and only found in animal foods.

Comment: For more information see

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Bacon n Eggs

Lectins & the paleo diet

Suz
The Paleo Network
Sun, 12 May 2013 08:27 UTC
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No matter what type of food we eat, we can't avoid lectins as they are in absolutely everything we consume on a daily basis. Lectins are proteins which are found in animals, plants and our very own bodies and they have a number of functions which offer a means of protection to us. They can help to control the protein levels in humans but are also protective for plants as well. It is also thought that the right lectins can also be beneficial in acting as a defense mechanism against serious illnesses, such as cancer.

Lectins can be useful for the body, but they can also be damaging, depending on the type of lectin. There are many different types of lectins found in different foods, so it is important to ensure we are taking in the right ones which offer the best benefits to our bodies. The function of lectins also depend a lot of the individual and how sensitive their digestive system is as to how they will react to specific types of lectins. The foods which contain particularly harmful lectins include grains and legumes, which is why they are forbidden on the Paleo diet. These foods have the potential to destroy all of the good nutrients and vitamins in your body which makes you more susceptible to suffering from serious illnesses, such as heart disease and obesity.

If you consume the wrong lectins and your body rejects these, it will also start rejecting all the good foods you eat, which means they will be of no benefit to you whatsoever. In order for the body to function effectively, it is essential that we absorb the right minerals and nutrients, which is why it is important to avoid legumes and grains on the Paleo diet. There are plenty of foods which contain lectins which are good for our body and act as a way of protecting it, so it is important to be aware of the right foods to eat in order to get the most out of our bodies and feel as healthy as we can.

Comment: For more information on this topic see:

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Arrow Down

Revealed: Big Pharma tested dangerous new drugs on unknowing Germans


Raw Story
Sun, 12 May 2013 16:18 UTC
Vial Blood
© Shutterstock
A doctor examines a vial of blood.
Western drug companies tested pharmaceuticals on more than 50,000 people in the former communist East Germany, often without the knowledge of patients, several of whom died, the Spiegel news weekly reported Sunday.

Some 600 clinical trials were carried out in more than 50 hospitals until the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall, the report said, citing previously unpublished documents of the East German health ministry, pharmaceutical institute and Stasi secret police.

Many major drug companies from Germany, Switzerland and the United States took part, offering up to 800,000 West German marks (about 400,000 euros, $520,000 at today's exchange rate) per study, a boost for East Germany's underfunded health care system, Spiegel said.

Records showed that two people died in East Berlin during testing of Trental, a drug that improves blood circulation developed by then West German company Hoechst, which has since merged with Sanofi, the report said.
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Cell Phone

Rapid toggling between tasks makes you dumb

Bob Sullivan and Hugh Thompson
The newyork Times
Fri, 03 May 2013 00:00 UTC
Mind distraction
© Typography
Technology has given us many gifts, among them dozens of new ways to grab our attention. It's hard to talk to a friend without your phone buzzing at least once. Odds are high you will check your Twitter feed or Facebook wall while reading this article. Just try to type a memo at work without having an e-mail pop up that ruins your train of thought.

But what constitutes distraction? Does the mere possibility that a phone call or e-mail will soon arrive drain your brain power? And does distraction matter - do interruptions make us dumber? Quite a bit, according to new research by Carnegie Mellon University's Human-Computer Interaction Lab.

There's a lot of debate among brain researchers about the impact of gadgets on our brains. Most discussion has focused on the deleterious effect of multitasking. Early results show what most of us know implicitly: if you do two things at once, both efforts suffer.

In fact, multitasking is a misnomer. In most situations, the person juggling e-mail, text messaging, Facebook and a meeting is really doing something called "rapid toggling between tasks," and is engaged in constant context switching.

As economics students know, switching involves costs. But how much? When a consumer switches banks, or a company switches suppliers, it's relatively easy to count the added expense of the hassle of change. When your brain is switching tasks, the cost is harder to quantify.
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Stop

Corexit: Deadly dispersant in oil spill cleanup


Government Accountability Project
Sun, 12 May 2013 06:08 UTC
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The BP spill was the worst environmental disaster in American history, but the government's consent to BP's use of Corexit has caused long-term human and ecological tragedies that may be worse than the original spill.
On April 19, 2013, GAP released "Deadly Dispersants in the Gulf: Are Public Health and Environmental Tragedies the New Norm for Oil Spill Cleanups?" The report details the devastating long-term effects on human health and the Gulf of Mexico ecosystem stemming from BP and the federal government's widespread use of the dispersant Corexit, in response to the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

GAP teamed up with the nonprofit Louisiana Environmental Action Network (LEAN) to launch this effort in August 2011 after repeatedly hearing from Gulf residents and cleanup workers that official statements from representatives of BP and the federal government were false and misleading in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon disaster. Over the next 20 months, GAP collected data and evidence from over two dozen employee and citizen whistleblowers who experienced the cleanup's effects firsthand, and GAP studied data from extensive Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. Taken together, the documents and the witnesses' testimony belie repeated corporate and government rhetoric that Corexit is not dangerous. Worse than this, evidence suggests that the cleanup effort has been more destructive to human health and the environment than the spill itself.

Conclusions from the report strongly suggest that the dispersant Corexit was widely applied in the aftermath of the Deepwater Horizon explosion because it caused the false impression that the oil disappeared. In reality, the oil/Corexit mixture became less visible, yet much more toxic than the oil alone. Nonetheless, indications are that both BP and the government were pleased with what Corexit accomplished.

The report is available here: Part One, Part Two, Part Three. You can download an Executive Summary of the report here.
Additional report exhibits are on file with GAP.

Comment: For more information on this topic and how to detoxify see The Day the Water Died: Detoxing after the Gulf Oil Spill

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Pills

Cholesterol research: The possible reason for statins side effects


Science Codex
Fri, 10 May 2013 03:42 UTC
Image
© Linda Restifo/University of Arizona
Of 1,040 drugs tested, only four caused nodules to form inside the neurites, resembling beads on a string. All four drugs were statins.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration and physicians continue to document that some patients experience fuzzy thinking and memory loss while taking statins, a class of global top-selling cholesterol-lowering drugs.

A University of Arizona research team has made a novel discovery in brain cells being treated with statin drugs: unusual swellings within neurons, which the team has termed the "beads-on-a-string" effect.

The team is not entirely sure why the beads form, said UA neuroscientist Linda L. Restifo, who leads the investigation. However, the team believes that further investigation of the beads will help inform why some people experience cognitive declines while taking statins.

"What we think we've found is a laboratory demonstration of a problem in the neuron that is a more severe version for what is happening in some peoples' brains when they take statins," said Restifo, a UA professor of neuroscience, neurology and cellular and molecular medicine, and principal investigator on the project.

Restifo and her team's co-authored study and findings recently were published in Disease Models & Mechanisms, a peer-reviewed journal. Robert Kraft, a former research associate in the department of neuroscience, is lead author on the article.

Restifo and Kraft cite clinical reports noting that statin users often are told by physicians that cognitive disturbances experienced while taking statins were likely due to aging or other effects. However, the UA team's research offers additional evidence that the cause for such declines in cognition is likely due to a negative response to statins.

The team also has found that removing statins results in a disappearance of the beads-on-a-string, and also a restoration of normal growth. With research continuing, the UA team intends to investigate how genetics may be involved in the bead formation and, thus, could cause hypersensitivity to the drugs in people. Team members believe that genetic differences could involve neurons directly, or the statin interaction with the blood-brain barrier.

Comment: For more information on the devastation caused by lowering cholesterol drugs see Statin Nation by Justin Smith.

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2 + 2 = 4

Why water births work

Hannah Dahlen
Dailyadvertiser.com
Thu, 25 Apr 2013 13:18 UTC
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"Women aren't dolphins" is a phrase often bandied about by those who question the idea of water births. Of course, they forget that we're not mountain goats or birds, but that doesn't stop us from rock climbing or hang gliding.

As more scientific evidence emerges about the benefits of water immersion in labour and birth, hospitals and birth centres are increasingly adding large baths to their delivery rooms. The New South Wales Department of Health has even given a directive that "all maternity services offer access to water immersion in labour (target 100 per cent by 2015)", in an attempt to stem the rising caesarean section rate.
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People 2

Brain Diseases Affecting More People and Starting Earlier Than Ever Before


Public Health
Fri, 10 May 2013 09:48 UTC
Professor Colin Pritchard's latest research published in journal Public Health has found that the sharp rise of dementia and other neurological deaths in people under 74 cannot be put down to the fact that we are living longer. The rise is because a higher proportion of old people are being affected by such conditions -- and what is really alarming, it is starting earlier and affecting people under 55 years.

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© Colinda McKie / Fotolia
Scientists have found that the sharp rise of dementia and other neurological deaths in people under 74 cannot be put down to the fact that we are living longer. The rise is because a higher proportion of old people are being affected by such conditions -- and what is really alarming, it is starting earlier and affecting people under 55 years.
Of the 10 biggest Western countries the USA had the worst increase in all neurological deaths, men up 66% and women 92% between 1979-2010. The UK was 4th highest, men up 32% and women 48%. In terms of numbers of deaths, in the UK, it was 4,500 and now 6,500, in the USA it was 14,500 now more than 28,500 deaths.

Professor Pritchard of Bournemouth University says: "These statistics are about real people and families, and we need to recognise that there is an 'epidemic' that clearly is influenced by environmental and societal changes."

Tessa Gutteridge, Director YoungDementia UK says that our society needs to learn that dementia is increasingly affecting people from an earlier age: "The lives of an increasing number of families struggling with working-age dementia are made so much more challenging by services which fail to keep pace with their needs and a society which believes dementia to be an illness of old age."

Bournemouth University researchers, Professor Colin Pritchard and Dr Andrew Mayers, along with the University of Southampton's Professor David Baldwin show that there are rises in total neurological deaths, including the dementias, which are starting earlier, impacting upon patients, their families and health and social care services, exemplified by an 85% increase in UK Motor Neurone Disease deaths.
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Pills

Chronic back pain could be caused by bacterial infections and cured by antibiotics rather than surgery

Ian Sample
The Guardian
Tue, 07 May 2013 15:30 UTC
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© Alamy
Scientists in Denmark found that 20% to 40% of chronic lower back pain was caused by bacterial infections.
Scientists hail medical breakthrough by which half a million UK sufferers could avoid major surgery and take antibiotics instead

Up to 40% of patients with chronic back pain could be cured with a course of antibiotics rather than surgery, in a medical breakthrough that one spinal surgeon says is worthy of a Nobel prize.

Surgeons in the UK and elsewhere are reviewing how they treat patients with chronic back pain after scientists discovered that many of the worst cases were due to bacterial infections.

The shock finding means that scores of patients with unrelenting lower back pain will no longer face major operations but can instead be cured with courses of antibiotics costing around £114.

One of the UK's most eminent spinal surgeons said the discovery was the greatest he had witnessed in his professional life, and that its impact on medicine was worthy of a Nobel prize.

"This is vast. We are talking about probably half of all spinal surgery for back pain being replaced by taking antibiotics," said Peter Hamlyn, a consultant neurological and spinal surgeon at University College London hospital.

Hamlyn recently operated on rugby player Tom Croft, who was called up for the British and Irish Lions summer tour last month after missing most of the season with a broken neck.

Specialists who deal with back pain have long known that infections are sometimes to blame, but these cases were thought to be exceptional. That thinking has been overturned by scientists at the University of Southern Denmark who found that 20% to 40% of chronic lower back pain was caused by bacterial infections.

In Britain today, around 4 million people can expect to suffer from chronic lower back pain at some point in their lives. The latest work suggests that more than half a million of them would benefit from antibiotics.
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