Health & WellnessS


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US: No 'death panel' in health care bill

Former Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin says the health care overhaul bill would set up a "death panel." Federal bureaucrats would play God, ruling on whether ailing seniors are worth enough to society to deserve life-sustaining medical care. Palin and other critics are wrong.

Nothing in the legislation would carry out such a bleak vision. The provision that has caused the uproar would instead authorize Medicare to pay doctors for counseling patients about end-of-life care, if the patient wishes. Here are some questions and answers on the controversy:

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FDA Declares Mercury Amalgam Fillings Safe for All

His mercury fillings were gray
And he chewed on them every day.
But the stuff reached his brain
And it drove him insane
Now he works for the FDA
Any scientific credibility the FDA might have been clinging to in these last few years has now disintegrated with the agency's recent announcement that after reviewing 200 scientific studies, it has concluded mercury fillings are safe for human health! This ruling, as you'll read below, further demonstrates how the FDA is a rogue federal agency that respects no law and frequently operates in direct violation of the law.

Heart

Yoga Therapy can Counteract Stress and Depression

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Stressed out? Then move off the psychiatrist's couch and onto a yoga mat for the latest type of therapy

For years, yoga devotees have been telling us that bending and twisting our limbs into gravity-defying contortions is a great way to develop the perfect body. Now things have gone one step further, with a new wave of teachers claiming that yoga also offers a fast track to a beautiful mind.

Magic Wand

Are Diabetes and Insulin Resistance Really Reversable?

Diabetes is not reversible and controlling your blood sugar with drugs or insulin will protect you from organ damage and death.

That is what the medical profession would have you believe, but medication and insulin can actually increase your risk getting a heart attack or dying.

The diabetes epidemic is accelerating along with the obesity epidemic, and what you are not hearing about is another way to treat it.

Type 2 diabetes, or what was once called adult onset diabetes, is increasing worldwide and now affects nearly 100 million people -- and over 20 million Americans.

Syringe

Profits, Not Science, Motivate Vaccine Mandates

The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), a group of individuals hand-picked by members of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), recommends which vaccines are administered to American children. Working mainly in secret, ACIP members frequently have financial links to vaccine manufacturers. Dependent on federal CDC funding, administrators of state vaccination programs follow CDC directives by influencing state legislators to mandate new vaccines. Federal vaccine funds can be denied to states that do not "vigorously enforce" mandatory vaccination laws.

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Mental illness Tidal Wave Swamps New Orleans

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A mental health crisis that has swamped this city's care facilities as surely as Hurricane Katrina's flood waters washed over the Lower 9th Ward is about to become even worse, care providers say.

New Orleans already is struggling with fewer than half of the inpatient beds for the mentally ill that it had before the 2005 hurricane - even as suicide rates and the number of people with mental health problems have doubled.

That shortage is about to become even more acute with the scheduled closing Sept. 1 of the New Orleans Adolescent Hospital (NOAH), the city's only public hospital still providing inpatient services for the mentally ill.

The closure, designed to trim $14 million from the state's 2010 budget, will leave New Orleans with 133 beds for mental health inpatient care and will make the city jail - with 60 of those beds - the city's largest psychiatric ward.

Bandaid

Downplaying! Cancer Found in Young 9/11 Rescuers

Researchers say a small number of young law enforcement officers who participated in the World Trade Center rescue and cleanup operation have developed an immune system cancer.

The numbers are tiny, and experts don't know whether there is any link between the illnesses and toxins released during the disaster.

Health

Breastfeeding lowers breast cancer risk

Women with a family history of breast cancer should be "strongly encouraged" to breastfeed, an expert said today, after research shows it can cut the cancer risk.

US-based researchers reviewed the cases of more than 60,000 women who gave birth and who also took part in a major health survey from 1997 to 2005. Just over 600 cases of premenopausal breast cancer were detected in the group of women, with the illness hitting them at an average age of 46.2 years.

When the women had someone in their close family with breast cancer, they were found to have a lower risk of developing the disease if they had ever breastfed than if they had never breastfed.

Pills

Don't give kids Tamiflu: doctors

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© Tim Wimborne / Reuters
A new study released overnight in Britain warns against giving antiviral drugs like Tamiflu and Relenza to children under the age of 12. A team of researchers writing in the British Medical Journal found that the drugs may be doing more harm than good.

The British Health Department website says: "Whilst there is doubt about how swine flu affects children, we believe that a safety-first approach of offering antivirals to everyone remains the most sensible and responsible way forward".

Info

Autistic impressions

'Adam' the movie
© BBC'Adam' - a new film that portrays autism
Hollywood movies rarely deal with disability - except for autism, when characters are typically shown as having special intelligence. Why do we like to think everyone with autism is especially gifted?

In one evening, he memorised every name and number from A to G in the phone book. While waiting for a meal in a restaurant, he committed the entire tableside jukebox to memory.

A dropped box of toothpicks? One glance and he is certain that 246 have spilt on the floor.

Other films since this 1988 release have depicted similar areas of brilliance that are sometimes associated with autism, known as savant qualities.