Health & WellnessS


Cheeseburger

What's Really in That Burger? E.coli and Chicken Feces Both Allowed by USDA

Mike Adams
NaturalNews
Fri, 06 Nov 2009 00:00 UTC
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© Goggle Images
There are 14 billion hamburgers consumed each year in the United States alone. The people who eat those burgers, though, have little knowledge of what's actually in them. Current USDA regulations, for example, openly allow beef contaminated with E. coli to be repackaged, cooked and sold as ready-to-eat hamburgers.

This simple fact would shock most consumers if they knew about it. People assume that beef found to be contaminated with E. coli must be thrown out or destroyed (or even recalled), but in reality, it's often just pressed into hamburger patties, cooked, and sold to consumers. This practice is openly endorsed by the USDA.

But E. coli may not be the worst thing in your burger: USDA regulations also allow chicken feces to be used as feed for cows, meaning your hamburger beef may be made of second-hand chicken poop, recycled through the stomachs of cows.
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Study Suggests Handedness May Affect Body Perception

Barbara Isanski
Medical News Today
Fri, 06 Nov 2009 00:00 UTC
There are areas in the brain devoted to our arms, legs, and various parts of our bodies. The way these areas are distributed throughout the brain are known as "body maps" and there are some significant differences in these maps between left- and right-handed people. For example, in left-handed people, there is an equal amount of brain area devoted to the left and right arms in both hemispheres. However, for right-handed people, there is more cortical area associated with right arm than the left.

Psychologists Sally A. Linkenauger, Jonathan Z. Bakdash, and Dennis R. Proffitt of the University of Virginia, along with Jessica K. Witt from Purdue University, and Jeanine K. Stefanucci from The College of William and Mary wanted to see if this difference in body maps leads to differences in how we perceive the length of our arms. For this study, volunteers were brought to the lab and estimated their perceived arm length and how far they could reach with their arms. To estimate arm length, the volunteers would hold out each arm while a researcher standing in front of them would adjust a tape measure - the volunteers had to indicate when they thought the tape was the same length as their arm. To see how far volunteers could reach with each arm, they sat at a table with a plastic chip on it. The volunteers would instruct the experimenter to move the position of the chip to estimate how far they could reach.
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Bacteria Expect The Unexpected


ScienceDaily
Fri, 06 Nov 2009 00:00 UTC
Bactera
© Hubertus J. E. BeaumontWithin a generation, genetically identical offspring is produced that varies in the degree of adaptation to the current environment. Anticipating drastic changes of the environmental conditions in future, some variants have an increased chance to survive if the event occurs. This ensures the survival of the species as a whole.
Organisms ensure the survival of their species by genetically adapting to the environment. If environmental conditions change too rapidly, the extinction of a species may be the consequence. A strategy to successfully cope with such a challenge is the generation of variable offspring that can survive in different environments. Even though a portion of the offspring may have a decreased chance to survive, the survival of the species as a whole is guaranteed.

For the first time scientists have now observed the evolution of such a strategy under lab conditions in an experiment with the bacterial species Pseudomonas fluorescens: A bacterial strain exposed to rapidly changing environmental conditions developed the ability to generate variable offspring without additional mutations. This new strategy ensured the survival of the bacterial strain. The results were published in Nature.
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How Saturated Fatty Acids 'Anger' the Immune System (and How to Stop Them)


ScienceDaily
Fri, 06 Nov 2009 00:00 UTC
Researchers have new evidence to explain how saturated fatty acids, which soar in those who are obese, can lead the immune system to respond in ways that add up to chronic, low-grade inflammation. The new results could lead to treatments designed to curb that inflammatory state, and the insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes that come with it.

One key, according to the report in the November Cell Metabolism, a Cell Press publication, is an immune receptor (called Toll-like receptor 4 or Tlr4) at the surface of blood cells, including a particularly "angry" class of macrophages known to pump out toxic molecules and spur inflammation. It now appears that fatty acids may in essence "hijack" those immune cells via Tlr4.

"Tlr4 is out there to sense bacterial products, but one of those looks a lot like fatty acids," said the study's senior author Jerrold Olefsky of the University of California, San Diego. "They don't know it's not bacteria."

That bacterial product is something called lipopolysaccharide (LPS) found in bacterial membranes. Olefsky notes, however, that they have not yet fully demonstrated that fatty acids bind Tlr4 directly.
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Beer

Alcohol gravest threat to society, claims sacked scientist

Richard Alleyne, Cassandra Jardine and Richard Edwards
Telegraph.Co.UK
Fri, 06 Nov 2009 00:08 UTC
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© Photo: PA Professor David Nutt said alcohol was the biggest gateway drug to harder substances and increasing the minimum age from 18 to 21 would save lives
The minimum drinking age should be increased to 21 and the price of alcohol tripled in order to tackle what will soon be the "biggest killer" in modern society, claimed the sacked head of the government's drug advisory body.

Professor David Nutt said that he had deliberately provoked a debate in order to force the government to curb the growing "time bomb" that is the abuse of alcohol.

Speaking to The Daily Telegraph and a press conference, he said that the government's response to the problem had been "puny" and he needed to act to stop the "tidal wave" that is engulfing the country.
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Sights and Sounds of Emotion Trigger Big Brain Responses


ScienceDaily
Tue, 03 Nov 2009 04:00 UTC
Researchers at the University of York have identified a part of the brain that responds to both facial and vocal expressions of emotion.

They used the MagnetoEncephaloGraphic (MEG) scanner at the York Neuroimaging Centre to test responses in a region of the brain known as the posterior superior temporal sulcus.

The research team from the University's Department of Psychology and York Neuroimaging Centre found that the posterior superior temporal sulcus responds so strongly to a face plus a voice that it clearly has a 'multimodal' rather than an exclusively visual function. The research is published in the latest issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

Test participants were shown photographs of people with fearful and neutral facial expressions, and were played fearful and neutral vocal sounds, separately and together. Responses in the posterior superior temporal sulcus were substantially heightened when subjects could both see and hear the emotional faces and voices, but not when subjects could both see and hear the neutral faces and voices.
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Arrow Up

Hospitals Make Small Changes for a Big Difference

Lena Brook
Civil Eats
Wed, 04 Nov 2009 16:20 UTC
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Hospitals around the country have taken a crucial first step toward building a sustainable meat production system by joining the Balanced Menus Challenge. Launched in late September, the Balanced Menus Challenge is a voluntary commitment by healthcare institutions to reduce their meat and poultry offerings in patient meals and hospital cafeterias by 20 percent in 12 months. Balanced Menus is a climate change reduction strategy that also protects the effectiveness of antibiotics and promotes good nutrition. Fourteen hospitals are already participating in the national challenge, which was developed and piloted by the San Francisco Bay Area Chapter of Physicians for Social Responsibility and nationally launched in partnership with Health Care Without Harm's Healthy Food in Healthcare Initiative.
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Health

Naturopaths' Prescribing Rights Expanded in Canada

Anna Sharratt
CBC News
Mon, 02 Nov 2009 16:04 UTC
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© CBC NewsNaturopaths are pushing for broader prescribing powers, arguing that they are trained in primary care.
After extensive lobbying efforts, naturopaths across Canada are getting governmental green lights for greater prescribing rights.

Need an antibiotic for that nasty lung infection? Your naturopath may soon be able to prescribe it.

That's because naturopathic doctors are among a group of medical professionals that are pushing for expanded prescribing rights - and they're recently seeing success.

Ontario just became the second province in Canada to get the green light for increased prescribing rights for naturopaths. British Columbia granted its naturopaths the right to prescribe a greater number of medications - as well as high-dose vitamins, amino acids, hormones, botanicals and herbs - in April 2009.

The announcement follows the granting of more powers to other health professionals, such as midwives and registered nurses.
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Cow

Dr. Samuel Epstein's 20 Year Fight Against Biotech, Cancer-Causing Milk


World-Wire.com
Wed, 28 Oct 2009 15:44 UTC
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Twenty years ago, back when Frank Young, M.D. was Commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, he received a report from Samuel S. Epstein, M.D. entitled Potential Public Health Hazards of Biosynthetic Milk Hormones, warning of the public health dangers of consuming milk from hormone-treated cows.

Injection of cows with recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone (rBGH), the genetically engineered, potent variant of the natural growth hormone produced by cows, sharply elevates levels of insulin-like growth factor (IGF-1) in milk, Dr. Epstein warned the commissioner.

IGF-1, which is readily absorbed through the small intestine, increases the risk of cancer in people who drink milk from cows treated with rBGH, he warned. In 1989, Dr. Epstein had found evidence of breast cancer resulting from IGF-1 ingestion; a few years later colon and prostate data began to emerge.
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Early Scents Really Do Get 'Etched' in the Brain


ScienceDaily
Thu, 05 Nov 2009 05:00 UTC
Smell
© iStockphoto/Olga SoloveiCommon experience tells us that particular scents of childhood can leave quite an impression, for better or for worse.
Common experience tells us that particular scents of childhood can leave quite an impression, for better or for worse. Now, researchers reporting the results of a brain imaging study online on November 5th in Current Biology, a Cell Press publication, show that first scents really do enjoy a "privileged" status in the brain.

"We found that the first pairing or association between an object and a smell had a distinct signature in the brain," even in adults, said Yaara Yeshurun of the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel. "This 'etching' of initial odor memories in the brain was equal for good and bad smells, yet was unique to odor." Sounds did not have the same effect, the research showed.

In the study, the researchers presented adults with a visual object together with one, and later with a second, set of pleasant and unpleasant odors and sounds while their brains were imaged by functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). A week later, the researchers presented the same objects inside the fMRI and tested participants' associations of those images with the scents and smells.
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