Health & WellnessS


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Allergic Response Tied To Lipid Molecules In Cell Membrane

A team of Penn State University researchers is the first to demonstrate that lipid molecules in cell membranes participate in mammals' reactions to allergens in a living cell. The finding will help scientists better understand how allergy symptoms are triggered, and could contribute to the creation of improved drugs to treat them. The work will be reported in the 14 March issue of the Journal of Biological Chemistry.

Health

Blood thinners like aspirin may fight cancer: study

WASHINGTON - Blood-thinning drugs such as aspirin may help fight cancer by denying shelter to wandering tumor cells, U.S. researchers reported on Friday.

Experiments in mice showed that combining aspirin with an experimental anti-clotting drug slowed the growth and spread of breast and melanoma tumors.

People

More Than 60,000 Iraq, Afghanistan Vets Diagnosed With PTSD

Jonathan Schulze was awarded two Purple Hearts in 2005 after a lengthy tour of duty in Iraq.

But the Marine veteran couldn't escape the war inside his head.

Drugs and alcohol temporarily numbed his pain. Yet the guilt he carried around with him having been one of a handful of soldiers in his unit to survive combat was impossible to run away from.

Syringe

Deal in an Autism Case Fuels Debate on Vaccine

Washington - Study after study has failed to show any link between vaccines and autism, but many parents of autistic children remain unconvinced. For the skeptics, the case of 9-year-old Hannah Poling shows that they have been right along.

Hannah Polling and her parents
©W.A. Harewood/Associated Press
Hannah Poling and her parents, Terry and Jon Poling, on Thursday at a news conference in Atlanta about her autism.

Comment: Despite the claims of the disease control centers, there is a large number of evidence linking vaccines to autism. Read:

The Age of Autism: 'A pretty big secret'
Vaccines and Autism: Every American Should Read This
New fears over MMR link to autism
Vaccinated Children Two and a Half Times More Likely to Have Neurological Disorders Like ADHD and Autism, New Survey in California and Oregon Finds


Smiley

The vitamin D miracle: Is it for real?

In the summer of 1974, brothers Frank and Cedric Garland had a heretical brainwave.

The young epidemiologists were watching a presentation on death rates from cancer county by county across the United States. As they sat in a lecture hall at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore looking at the colour-coded cancer maps, they noticed a striking pattern, with the map for colon cancer the most pronounced.

Counties with high death rates were red; those with low rates were blue. Oddly, the nation was almost neatly divided in half, red in the north and blue in the south. Why, they wondered, was the risk of dying from cancer greater in bucolic Maine than in highly polluted Southern California?

Health

Iowa, US: 22 Children At One School Have Mysterious Illness

Twenty-two children from Cattell Elementary School were taken to a downtown Des Moines hospital on Thursday afternoon after they became sick, school officials said.

No immediate cause for the illness was reported, but authorities said they had ruled out exposure to carbon monoxide.

Phil Roeder, a spokesman for the Des Moines Public Schools, said that around 1:30 p.m. a group of mostly fifth-graders in a physical education class began to demonstrate symptoms that ranged from lightheadedness to nausea to vomiting. He said a couple adults also showed symptoms.

Attention

The Associated Press Probe Finds Drugs in Drinking Water

A vast array of pharmaceuticals - including antibiotics, anti-convulsants, mood stabilizers and sex hormones - have been found in the drinking water supplies of at least 41 million Americans, an Associated Press investigation shows.

To be sure, the concentrations of these pharmaceuticals are tiny, measured in quantities of parts per billion or trillion, far below the levels of a medical dose. Also, utilities insist their water is safe.

But the presence of so many prescription drugs - and over-the-counter medicines like acetaminophen and ibuprofen - in so much of our drinking water is heightening worries among scientists of long-term consequences to human health.

Question

Probe into mysterious child deaths in Senegal

Health authorities in Senegal are looking into the unexplained deaths of about 20 small children in a poor suburb of Dakar, a regional medical chief said Friday.

"Investigations have begun to find out many (children) and what happened," Khemes Ngom told AFP, confirming press reports that 18 to 20 children, aged three to five, died in the fishing district of Thiaroye-sur-Mer.

Beer

Drunken stars fuel culture of booze, says pubs boss

The chairman of the JD Wetherspoon pub chain today criticised the binge culture in Britain and blamed heavy-drinking celebrities.

Drinking
©Unknown
Excess all areas: drinking antics of stars like Lily Allen 'are being copied by the public'

Comment: The problems that lead to drinking are socio-economical and psychological. Unless the quality of life for people improves, unless the everyday living and making ends meet stressors are eliminated, people would continue drinking as self-medication. And this is unlike to happen in pathocratic societies.


Butterfly

Flashback Learning to Walk: Are Shoes Harmful?

"No shirt, no shoes, no service." It's a common enough sign in store windows and other establishments, though, who would ever be seen without shoes? Shoes are essential to civilized life, and they bring with them a distinctly civilized manner of walking: lock the knee, and brace a controlled fall on the heel; roll the foot forward, rocking into another locked-knee heel-fall. It's difficult to walk any other way while wearing shoes, and you'll often find this described as the way humans walk. But of course, humans are not born with shoes on, nor did we evolve in shoes. Every human begins walking a different way, and needs to be meticulously trained to walk like this.