The way that oil and gas fracking is practiced in the US is dangerous to public health exposing people living around wells to respiratory infections, cancer and a reduction in brain activity, David O. Carpenter, environmental health expert, told RT.

Scientists have discovered dangerously high level of cancer-causing chemicals in the air around fracking wells in five different states in the US. A report revealed that levels of benzene, hydrogen sulfide and formaldehyde were many times above American air pollution limits and were detected within residential areas near to fracking sites.

RT spoke with David O. Carpenter, author of the study to find out how dangerous fracking is for health.

David Carpenter: I don't think fracking has to be dangerous to our health but fracking in the way it's practiced right now in the US - at least in these five states - is extraordinary dangerous. We focused a lot in our report on two chemicals that cause cancer - benzene and formaldehyde - and their levels were sky high, much higher than it is regulated in other industries. They are both known human carcinogens, according to the World Health Organization. They should not be released in this fashion. It isn't that the fracking per say is something that is necessarily dangerous but clearly there is a release of all of these organic chemicals, including these carcinogens, benzene is released, formaldehyde is formed. That's just not acceptable because these [chemicals] are very dangerous for public health.

According to research published on Thursday, Brits are more likely to be grumps because they possess a "short form" version of a gene that produces serotonin - the neurochemical which controls happiness levels in the brain.

In contrast, the researchers at Warwick found that the Danes possessed the longer form of the gene, and are therefore more likely to be happy.

According to Professor Andrew Oswald, the economist and social scientist who led the research, happiness levels had little to do with wealth or material gains or good weather, as people who possessed the shorter length gene would still be more prone to unhappiness.

"Among the nations we studied, Denmark and the Netherlands appeared to have the lowest percentage of people with the short version of the serotonin gene," he told the Times.

In a new study, scientists have found that seizures and migraines may actually be linked as they could be produced by a single gene mutation.

The two brain events have always been considered separate physiological phenomena in the brain, as seizures are marked by electrical hyperactivity, while migraine auras, based on an underlying process called spreading depression, are marked by a silencing of electrical activity in part of the brain. Also, seizures spread rapidly, but migraines propagate slowly.

However, a team of engineers and neuroscientists looked at the brain from a physics viewpoint and discovered a link between the two. Steven J. Schiff, director of the Penn State Center for Neural Engineering, said that they realized that no one had ever kept proper track of the neuronal energy being used and all of the ions, the charged atoms, going into and out of brain cells.

Modern medicine would have you believe that genetically, we are all predetermined to have poor health or some type of disease sooner or later in life. That it's "out of our hands", with the only available means of treatment being what they deem to be "scientifically sound" ...Pharmaceutical drugs. FDA approved, of course!

It is funny to me how there is one major component conveniently missing when "medical healthcare experts" discuss major diseases like cancer and heart disease. The poisons that we are exposed on a daily basis!

Lifestyles full of bad diets with plenty chemical-ridden processed foods, chemical-ridden processed meats, unnatural amounts of processed artificial sugars, dangerous diet myths promoting low fat and man-made replacement foods (touted as healthier than what nature has provided), along with little to no real exercise, and topped off with every form of stress imaginable. And don't forget about pollution, pharmaceutical-ridden tap water, mercury and oil saturated oceans, and on and on... !!

So, how can we really believe that cancer, diabetes, heart disease and autoimmune disorders could be genetically driven?

A new lawsuit filed by a "consumer watchdog" group says most Americans are not vitamin deficient and don't benefit from supplements. Huh?

Earlier this month we told you about international pharmaceutical company Bayer AG's battle with the Federal Trade Commission over whether its marketing statements about its probiotic colon supplement are unsubstantiated disease claims (not allowed) or structure/function claims (allowed). This week, the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) filed a class action lawsuit in federal court against Bayer because of its "false claims on ads and labels" for its One A Day Vitamins. The group is asking for an injunction against specific marketing statements, and seeking refunds to consumers.

According to CSPI, the multivitamin's claims - "supports heart health," "supports immunity," and "supports physical energy" - amount to "illegal disease prevention claims designed to deceive consumers." Bayer, on the other hand, contends these are structure/function claims. The landmark Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994 created special protections for structure/function claims - and they do not require preapproval by the FDA.

Researchers at the University of Washington have developed a way to use sound to create cellular scaffolding for tissue engineering, a unique approach that could help overcome one of regenerative medicine's significant obstacles. The researchers will present their technique at the 168th meeting of the Acoustical Society of America (ASA), held October 27-31, 2014, at the Indianapolis Marriott Downtown Hotel.

The development of the new technique started with somewhat of a serendipitous discovery. The University of Washington team had been studying boiling histotripsy - - a technique that uses millisecond-long bursts of high-intensity ultrasound waves to break apart tissue - - as a method to eliminate cancerous tumors by liquefying them with ultrasound waves. After the sound waves destroy the tumors, the body should eliminate them as cellular waste. When the researchers examined these 'decellularized' tissues, however, they were surprised by what the boiling left intact.

"In some of our experiments, we discovered that some of the stromal tissue and vasculature was being left behind," said Yak-Nam Wang, a senior engineer at the University of Washington's Applied Physics Laboratory. "So we had the idea about using this to decellularize tissues for tissue engineering and regenerative medicine."

A drug being newly tested as a fast-acting antidepressant has shown it can help lift heavy depression within 40 minutes.

Researchers at the National Institute of Mental Health have been testing the effects of a single dose of ketamine on people with bipolar disorder.

When depressed, bipolar patients find it difficult to seek out and experience rewards - they feel there is nothing to look forward to.

The drug works by changing how people think about rewards.

Dr. Carlos Zarate, who led the study, said:

"Our findings help to deconstruct what has traditionally been lumped together as depression.

We break out a component that responds uniquely to a treatment that works through different brain systems than conventional antidepressants - and link that response to different circuitry than other depression symptoms."

Milk is the only beverage still aggressively pushed on children as a health promoting food when it is the exact opposite - a disease promoting food. Drinking pasteurized milk is not nearly as good for general health or bones as the dairy industry has made it out to be. In fact, this fairy tale of "milk doing a body good" is being exposed more frequently by many independent scientists and researchers who have had just about enough of the propaganda.

According to a large scale study of thousands of Swedish people, cow's milk has a deteriorating effect on health when consumed in the long-term. The research was published in The BMJ.

The study, which tracked 61,433 women aged 39 to 74 over 20 years, and 45,339 men of similar age for 11 years, found that the more cow's milk people drank, the more likely they were to die or experience a bone fracture during the study period. The risks were especially pronounced for women, a group advised to drink milk to help avoid bone fractures that result from osteoporosis.

Women who said they drank three or more glasses of milk a day had almost double the chance of dying during the study period as those who reported drinking only one. A glass is defined as a 200 milliliter serving. They also had a 16 percent higher chance of getting a bone fracture anywhere in the body.

Many factors, both genetic and environmental, have been blamed for increasing the risk of a diagnosis of schizophrenia. Some, such as a family history of schizophrenia, are widely accepted. Others, such as infection with Toxoplasma gondii, a parasite transmitted by soil, undercooked meat and cat feces, are still viewed with skepticism.

A new study by Gary Smith, professor of population biology and epidemiology at the University of Pennsylvania's School of Veterinary Medicine, used epidemiological modeling methods to determine the proportion of schizophrenia cases that may be attributable to T. gondii infection. The work, published in the journal Preventive Veterinary Medicine, suggests that about one-fifth of cases may involve the parasite.

"Infection with Toxoplasma is very common, so, even if only a small percentage of people suffer adverse consequences, we could be talking about problems that affect thousands and thousands of people," Smith said.

In the United States, just over a fifth of the population is infected with T. gondii. The vast majority aren't aware of it. But there are some populations that need to be concerned. For example, if a woman becomes infected for the first time during pregnancy, her fetus can die or suffer serious developmental problems. People with HIV or other diseases that weaken the immune system are susceptible to a complication of T. gondii infection called toxoplasmic encephalitis, which can be deadly.

Though the medical community has long believed that most healthy people suffer no adverse effects from a T. gondii infection, recent studies have found evidence of worrisome impacts, including an association with schizophrenia because the parasite is found in in the brain as well as in muscles. Other work has shown that some antipsychotic drugs can stop the parasite from reproducing. In addition, field and laboratory studies in mice, rats and people have shown that infection with T. gondii triggers changes in behavior and personality.

Fluorine is an element. It is a gas, never occurring in its free state. In microscopic amounts complexed with other minerals, it is often listed as a trace mineral, a nutrient for human nutrition.

The fluoride added to 90% of drinking water is hydrofluoric acid which is a compound of fluorine that is a chemical byproduct of aluminum, steel, cement, phosphate, and nuclear weapons manufacturing.

Such fluoride is manmade. In this form, fluoride has no nutrient value whatsoever. It is one of the most caustic of industrial chemicals. Fluoride is the active toxin in rat poisons and cockroach powder.

Hydrofluoric acid is used to refine high octane gasoline, to make fluorocarbons and chlorofluorocarbons for freezers and air conditioners, and to manufacture computer screens, fluorescent light bulbs, semiconductors, plastics, herbicides, - and toothpaste.

It also has the ability to burn flesh to the bone, destroy eyes, and sear lungs so that victims drown in their own body fluid.

Once in the body, fluoride is a destroyer of human enzymes. It does this by changing their shapes. In human biochemistry, thousands of enzymes are necessary for various essential cell reactions that take place every second we're alive. Without enzymes, we'd die instantaneously.