Time to go back to Eby and Eby. I have an inexplicable fondness for this paper. The information is decent if a touch unorganized, and the reliance on case studies reminds me (in a pleasing way) of old fashioned papers, such as this one by John Cade about the use of lithium in mania.

When you start to untangle the effects of magnesium in the nervous system, you touch upon nearly every single biological mechanism for depression I've described so far in the archives of my blog. The epidemiological studies (1) and some controlled trials (2)(3) give us good reason to suspect that most of us are at least moderately deficient in magnesium. The animal models are promising (4). If you have healthy kidneys, magnesium supplementation is safe and generally well-tolerated (up to a point)(5), and many of the formulations are quite inexpensive. Yet there is a woeful lack of well-designed, decent-sized randomized controlled trials of various psychiatric disorders and magnesium supplementation.

Let's look at the mechanisms first. Magnesium hangs out in the synapse between two neurons along with calcium and glutamate. If you recall, calcium and glutamate are excitatory, and in excess, toxic. They activate the NMDA receptor. Magnesium can sit on the NMDA receptor without activating it, like a guard at the gate. Therefore, if we are deficient in magnesium, there's no guard. Calcium and glutamate can activate the receptor like there is no tomorrow. In the long term, this damages the neurons, eventually leading to cell death. In the brain, that is not an easy situation to reverse or remedy.

And then there is the stress-diathesis model of depression. The idea that chronic stress leads to hormonal imbalances of excess cortisol, which eventually damages the hippocampus of the brain, leading to impaired negative feedback and thus ongoing stress and depression and neurotoxicity badness. Murck shows that magnesium seems to act on many levels in the hormonal axis and regulation of the stress response. Magnesium can suppress the ability of the hippocampus to stimulate the ultimate release of stress hormone, it can reduce the release of ACTH (the hormone that tells your adrenal glands to get in gear and pump out that cortisol and adrenaline), and it can reduce the responsiveness of the adrenal glands to ACTH. In addition, magnesium can act at the blood brain barrier to prevent the entrance of stress hormones into the brain. Magnesium is the original chill pill.

One of the most challenging (and fun) aspects of my job is dispelling all the nonsense we've been fed about nutrition over the years. Most of my new clients are confused because there's so much information out there. It's understandably hard to know what to believe since so much of it is conflicting.

I think the biggest myth of our time is that fat is harmful, especially saturated fat: that it causes high cholesterol and heart disease. So many people still have fat phobia, but where have our fat free diets taken us? To bigger waistlines and higher rates of diabetes, since we now snack on fat free refined carbs high in sugar or processed flours that break down into sugars. Think pretzels, pasta, frozen yogurt, Snackwell cookies. Remember those? Gross.

Anyway, it's sugar and refined, processed foods that cause the inflammation that contributes to heart disease. AND the man-made hydrogenated fats and highly refined vegetable and seed oils - all relatively new foods, processed to be cheap. Excess sugars are converted to lipids by the liver, driving up triglycerides, which can increase inflammation and atherosclerosis. Click here to read why eating fat doesn't raise cholesterol levels. The short answer is that the body uses cholesterol for repair, so high levels indicate some kind of inflammatory response to arterial damage or atherosclerosis, and that's what needs to be addressed rather than taking a statin to force levels down without determining the underlying cause. In the case of hydrogenated fats, which are unsaturated fats altered to be solid at room temp to improve shelf life of products, the body mistakes them for the saturated fats it uses for cell membrane permeability (and overall repair), making cells impermeable so nutrients can't get in. Same hardening happens to artery walls.

A number of research studies have shown that corn gluten can create inflammatory damage to those with celiac disease and gluten sensitivity. Past articles on Gluten Free Society have addressed this issue thoroughly.

Corn Oil Linked To Villous Atrophy

A study published in the medical journal, Pediatric Research, investigated different dietary fats and their influence on gut damage and inflammation. The findings revealed that corn oil increased villous atrophy, and also caused an increased production of inflammatory chemicals. One of the mechanisms suspected as the cause is the high level of omega 6 fatty acids found in corn oils. Source: Pediatr Res. 1997 Dec;42(6):835-9.

Women who see themselves as active participants in the delivery of their first child, and prefer a collaborative role with their healthcare provider are more likely to prefer planned home birth and the care of a midwife, according to a new survey conducted by Columbia University School of Nursing's Adriana Arcia, PhD, RN, and published in the journal Midwifery.

Alternatively, when women perceive the mother's role in the birthing process more passively, and are more fearful of the of the delivery experience, they are more likely to seek the care of a physician and the hospital setting for childbirth.

A government survey of parents says 1 in 50 U.S. schoolchildren has autism, surpassing another federal estimate for the disorder.

Health officials say the new number doesn't mean autism is occurring more often. But it does suggest that doctors are diagnosing autism more frequently, especially in children with milder problems.

The earlier government estimate of 1 in 88 comes from a study that many consider more rigorous. It looks at medical and school records instead of relying on parents.

For decades, autism meant kids with severe language, intellectual and social impairments and unusual, repetitious behaviors. But the definition has gradually expanded and now includes milder, related conditions.

The new estimate released Wednesday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention would mean at least 1 million children have autism.

The number is important - government officials look at how common each illness or disorder is when weighing how to spend limited public health funds.

It's also controversial.

Sugar-sweetened beverages are linked to more than 180,000 obesity-related deaths worldwide each year, according to new research presented this week at an American Heart Association conference.

"This means about one in every 100 deaths from obesity-related diseases is caused by drinking sugary beverages," says study author Gitanjali Singh, a postdoctoral research fellow at the Harvard School of Public Health.

Among the world's 35 largest countries, Mexico had the highest death rates from sugary drinks, and Bangladesh had the lowest, according to the study. The United States ranked third.

However, the American Beverage Association dismissed the research as "more about sensationalism than science."

When people drink too many beverages containing added sugar, such as soft drinks, fruit drinks, energy or sports beverages, they tend to put on weight. The study authors say these added pounds increase the risk of developing diabetes, cardiovascular disease and some cancers -- conditions often referred to as obesity-related diseases.

Researchers at Harvard wanted to find out how often people around the globe drank sugar-sweetened beverages and how that affected their risk of death. They looked at 114 national dietary surveys covering more than 60% of the world's population. They also used evidence from studies published in medical journals that discussed sugary drinks and other dietary habits. Their data was included in the 2010 Global Burden of Disease Study, which looks at the health and mortality of populations across the world.

1 in every 250 persons in the UK are affected by inflammatory bowel diseases. Two years ago, I was diagnosed with a type of inflammatory bowel disease called Ulcerative Colitis. It affects up to 120,000 people in the UK, that's about 1 in 500 and between 6,000 and 12,000 new cases are diagnosed every year.(i) For me it meant that I had to keep running to the bathroom up to 25 times a day. My large bowel at the worst of times would produce bloody mucus and I would have severe cramps. Due to the toxins created by the inflammation it also meant that I would be severely nauseous and could not hold down liquids, let alone food.

Over the two years, I was on a course of medication that included anti-inflammatory granules and corticosteroids to try and reduce the inflammation. However, whenever I tried to wean off the drugs, the inflammation would rapidly get worse. Getting desperate for solutions, I tried acupuncture, Chinese medicine, homeopathy, and other natural remedies - anything that might help get me into clinical remission. What had happened was that my body had become immune to the medication because I had been taking them for so long. In order to try and get the medication to suppress the symptoms, I was prescribed Mercaptopurine. This was supposed to weaken my immune system and in theory reverse the immunity to the drugs.

Every mouthful of McDonald meal contains a handful of chemicals that raise 'bad' cholesterol levels, increase diabetes risk, lower immunity, and damage DNA. In fact fast food contains so many harmful ingredients that I wouldn't even feed it to a pet because it would be cruel.

When you go to the fast-food drive-through, you are:

1. paying to harm your own health;
2. your children's health;
3. reducing your quality of life because the toxicity of eating synthetic chemicals will trigger illness;
4. put more money into the hands of the medical insurance companies.

Still lovin' it?

A favorite herbal medicine of the ancients, peppermint leaves have been found in Egyptian pyramids dating back to 1,000 BC. Modern scientific investigations have now confirmed that this remarkable plant has over a dozen healing properties.

In our continuing effort to educate folks to the vast array of healing agents found in the natural world around us, we are excited to feature peppermint, a member of the aromatic mint family that you may already have squirreled away somewhere in your kitchen cupboard. While most have experienced peppermint as a flavoring agent, or perhaps as a comforting cup of herbal tea, few are aware of its wide range of experimentally confirmed therapeutic properties.

The ancients certainly were aware of the mint family's medicinal value, having been used as herbal medicines in ancient Egypt, Greek and Rome thousands of years ago.[i] Dried peppermint leaves have even been found in several Egyptian pyramids carbon dating back to 1,000 BC.

Parents increasingly concerned about potential side effects, study shows.

A rising percentage of parents say they won't have their teen daughters vaccinated to protect against the human papilloma virus, even though physicians are increasingly recommending adolescent vaccinations, a study by Mayo Clinic and others shows. More than 2 in 5 parents surveyed believe the HPV vaccine is unnecessary, and a growing number worry about potential side effects, researchers found. The findings are published in the new issue of the journal Pediatrics.

In all, researchers looked at three vaccines routinely recommended for U.S. teens: a vaccine to protect against the sexually transmitted HPV; Tdap, for tetanus, diphtheria and acellular pertussis; and the meningococcal conjugate vaccine, or MCV4 vaccine. While the up-to-date immunization rates rose for all three vaccines, the proportion of girls fully immunized against HPV (three doses over six months) was substantially lower than the proportion for the other two vaccines.

Five years ago, 40 percent of parents surveyed said they wouldn't vaccinate their girls against HPV. In 2009, that rose to 41 percent, and in 2010, to 44 percent.

"That's the opposite direction that rate should be going," says senior researcher Robert Jacobson, M.D., a pediatrician with the Mayo Clinic Children's Center.