Health & WellnessS


Health

US: House Committee Urges Probe of Uniforms Posing Health Problems

Steve Vogel
The Washington Post
Fri, 03 Apr 2009 02:17 UTC
Complaints that new uniforms are causing rashes and other irritations for Transportation Security Administration officers who screen passengers at airports have triggered an inquiry by the House Committee on Homeland Security.

In a letter to TSA Administrator Kip Hawley, the committee chairman, Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) called the complaints "very troublesome" and requested that the agency fully investigate the issue and report back with proposed solutions to any problems found.

According to unions representing federal workers, hundreds of transportation security officers, or TSOs, have complained about the uniforms, most reporting skin rashes but others complaining of runny or bloody noses, lightheadedness, red eyes and swollen and cracked lips.
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Health

Flashback Who's Afraid of GMOs? Me!

Neil E. Levin, CCN, DANLA
saynotogmos.org
Fri, 03 Jun 2005 02:04 UTC
In your article, Who is Afraid of GMOs? (by Lindsey Partos), the author tries to persuade us that genetically modified (also known as GMO, GM, GE, and biotech) foods can feed the world's hungry and that foes of this technology are selfish, greedy idealists who abet the starving of millions of people.

In fact, the foes of genetic crops are the heroes who are fighting greedy, huge agribusiness interests that are slowly destroying our environment and exposing us all to uncertain dangers for their own gain.

Instead of focusing on the (yet) uncertain health risks and accepting by faith that GMO food can better feed the hungry, the author should have zeroed in on the scientifically unsubstantiated safety issues and the clear environmental dangers of GMO crops. The lack of evidence of harm to date may simply be the result of a lack of resources to look at potential problems from GMOs.
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Health

Marijuana Chemical May Fight Brain Cancer

Kelli Miller Stacy
Web MD
Wed, 01 Apr 2009 00:35 UTC
Active Component In Marijuana Targets Aggressive Brain Cancer Cells, Study Says

The active chemical in marijuana promotes the death of brain cancer cells by essentially helping them feed upon themselves, researchers in Spain report.

Guillermo Velasco and colleagues at Complutense University in Spain have found that the active ingredient in marijuana, THC, causes brain cancer cells to undergo a process called autophagy. Autophagy is the breakdown of a cell that occurs when the cell essentially self-digests.
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Bulb

New York county ban on baby bottle chemical is official

Karen Matthews
Associated Press/ Yahoo News
Thu, 02 Apr 2009 23:53 UTC
New York - A suburban New York county has adopted the nation's first ban on the chemical found in plastic baby bottles and sippy cups.

The measure banning the sale of baby bottles containing BPA was signed by Suffolk County Executive Steve Levy on Thursday after county legislators passed it last month.

Several states including California, Oregon and Hawaii are considering bans the chemical formally known as bisphenol A, but Suffolk County, on Long Island, is the first place in the nation to enact one.
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Pills

Big Pharma's Latest Insanity? A "PolyPill" Combining Five Different Drugs Into One Pill

Mike Adams
NaturalNews
Tue, 31 Mar 2009 15:00 UTC
What do you get when you combine cholesterol medication, three different blood pressure drugs and aspirin into a single pharmaceutical pill? If you believe the drug company that funded its own study on this chemical cocktail, you get a wonder drug that has all the "benefits" of five different drugs with no more side effects than a single drug!

That's the story from Bangalore, India, anyway, where 2000 citizens of India were recruited into a clinical trial to test these drugs. The use of low-income citizens in developing nations as guinea pigs is now a common Big Pharma practice, by the way. It's cheaper than using Americans as guinea pigs, and the risk of lawsuits from harm or death is much lower in such countries.
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Alarm Clock

Irradiated Foods Cause Severe Neurological Damage

Sherry Baker
NaturalNews
Wed, 01 Apr 2009 14:47 UTC
In a study just published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, scientists from the University of Wisconsin-Madison (UW-Madison) report on cats developing severe neurological symptoms due to a degradation of myelin, the fatty insulator of nerve fibers called axons. Because myelin facilitates the conduction of nerve signals, when it is lost or damaged there can be impairment of sensation, movement, thinking and other functions, depending on what particular nerves are affected. This loss of myelin is found in several disorders of the central nervous system in humans -- the best known being multiple sclerosis (MS).

So what caused the cats to develop neurological problems? Although the researchers' statement to the media practically buries the fact, a close read shows the animals were fine until fed irradiated food. What's more, when they were taken off the irradiated diet, the animals' nervous systems began healing.
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Bad Guys

US: Psychiatric Hospital Operates Like Prison, with Sex Abuse and Violent Assaults

David Gutierrez
Natural News
Thu, 02 Apr 2009 11:55 UTC
A federal Justice Department investigation has concluded that the psychiatric ward of Brooklyn's Kings County Hospital Center (KCHC) has been a place where patients are regularly abused by staff and other patients, and where treatment needs are ignored in favor of restraint and control.

"Substantial harm occurs regularly due to K.C.H.C.'s failure to properly assess, diagnose, supervise, monitor and treat its mental health patients," the department's 58-page report reads.

The report documents an environment where assault is regularly perpetrated between patients, where suicidal warning signs are ignored, and where staff regularly restrain patients instead of treating them. Among the more egregious cases cited are a physical fight between six patients resulting in one of them needing surgery, a 16-year old patient forcing a 14-year old patient to perform oral sex, and other incidents of sexual assault and rape.
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Bandaid

US: 1 in 5 Medicare patients readmitted within month

Stephanie Nano
Associated Press
Wed, 01 Apr 2009 22:36 UTC
New York - One in five Medicare patients end up back in the hospital within a month of discharge, a large study found, and that practice costs billions of dollars a year. The findings suggest patients aren't told enough about how to take care of themselves and stay healthy before they go home, the researchers said. A few simple things - like making a doctor's appointment for departing patients - can help, they said.

The study found that a surprising half of the non-surgery patients who returned within a month hadn't even seen a doctor between hospital stays.
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Attention

Insomnia Linked to Suicidal Thoughts, Attempts


HealthDay News
Thu, 02 Apr 2009 03:37 UTC
But researchers say it's not clear if one causes the other

New research provides more evidence of a link between sleeplessness and suicidal thoughts or attempts, although it's not clear whether insomnia actually makes people want to kill themselves.

Still, the findings suggest that "persistent sleep problems might be an important contributor to suicidal thinking," said study author Dr. Marcin Wojnar, a research fellow at the University of Michigan and an associate professor of psychiatry at the University of Warsaw in Poland.

Researchers have connected insomnia to suicide before. But the new study, said to be the most comprehensive of its kind, looks at the population as a whole, not mentally ill people in particular.
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Ambulance

Fainting in America Can Carry a $10,000 Price Tag

Kirk Nielsen
Miller-McCune
Mon, 30 Mar 2009 00:23 UTC
Image
© Kenn Kiser
There's really no good time or place for a blackout, though some are significantly worse than others. Mine, one subzero evening in downtown St. Paul, Minn., last December, fell solidly on the inauspicious side of the spectrum.

The Level 2 lobby of the Ordway Center for the Performing Arts was teeming with people waiting for the second half of a fine production of Irving Berlin's White Christmas to begin. I was standing with my mom, sister and her three young-adult kids. Through the windows of a dazzling curtain-wall that spans the front of the trapezoidal building, I was admiring the golden lights on the canopy of trees in the park across the street. On the warm side of the glass, a professional trio of carolers had just finished a short intermission set. I was in a good mood; a fantastic woman in Duluth was expecting my call after the show to finalize plans for our first date the next night.
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