All Entries in the "Wellness" Category
Michael Pollan’s New ‘Food Rules’: 64 Easy Steps to Better Health
Pollan’s new book is a set of straightforward, memorable, everyday rules for eating that aim to nudge people onto a healthier and happier path.
The idea for this book came from a doctor–a couple of them, as a matter of fact. They had read my last book, “In Defense of Food”, which ended with a handful of tips for eating well: simple ways to navigate the treacherous landscape of modern food and the often-confusing science of nutrition. “What I would love is a pamphlet I could hand to my patients with some rules for eating wisely,” they would say. “I don’t have time for the big nutrition lecture and, anyway, they really don’t need to know what an antioxidant is in order to eat wisely.” Another doctor, a transplant cardiologist, wrote to say “you can’t imagine what I see on the insides of people these days wrecked by eating food products instead of food.” So rather than leaving his heart patients with yet another prescription or lecture on cholesterol, he gives them a simple recipe for roasting a chicken, and getting three wholesome meals out of it — a very different way of thinking about health.
Make no mistake: our health care crisis is in large part a crisis of the American diet — roughly three quarters of the two-trillion plus we spend on health care in this country goes to treat chronic diseases, most of which can be prevented by a change in lifestyle, especially diet. And a healthy diet is a whole lot simpler than the food industry and many nutritional scientists — what I call the Nutritional Industrial Complex — would have us believe. After spending several years trying to answer the supposedly incredibly complicated question of how we should eat in order to be maximally healthy, I discovered the answer was shockingly simple: eat real food, not too much of it, and more plants than meat. Or, put another way, get off the modern western diet, with its abundance of processed food, refined grains and sugars, and its sore lack of vegetables, whole grains and fruit.
Full Story Michael Pollan’s New ‘Food Rules’: 64 Easy Steps to Better Health | Health and Wellness | AlterNet.
Creative Exercises to Burn off the Holiday Excess
The holidays are behind us, and that means one thing – dreams of sugarplums dancing in our heads have turned to nightmares of cellulite chasing our posteriors. Because even the best eater is going to sample a homemade white chocolate chip mocha cookie when it’s offered piping hot from the stove, right? (This is me, raising my hand.) And the best eater might even have another cookie – or six. Who’s to say?
And besides all the awesome baked goods we may or may not have consumed over the holidays, there are also the quick dinners we might have grabbed between shopping and wrapping and generally trying not to go insane. And maybe, just maybe, this food arrived to you through a drive through window with grease seeping through its paper bag – a paper bag you later threw away in an anonymous dumpster on the side of the road. Perhaps?
But not to worry! We’ve got a quick guide to a quick way to burn off the bad stuff. Every wonder how many crunches it takes to burn off a Big Mac from McDonald’s? Or how many miles you have to run to burn off a large French fries from Wendy’s?
Full Story Creative Exercises to Burn off the Holiday Excess | EcoSalon.
Fat and Kids: How to keep your kid from getting fat
If you’re like me, you considered it your duty, as a good father, to eat more than your share of rich fatty sugar-laden foods over the holidays, as a way of protecting your family from obesity. The instinct to protect one’s offspring is hardwired throughout the animal kingdom and a noble calling, so if you’ve gained 10-15 pounds since Thanksgiving, you are to be commended.
Now, Pork-Boy, it’s time to take your New Years’ resolutions seriously and lose a few pounds, particularly if part of your stay-at-home dad’s duties is to buy and prepare foods for your family. Odds are, you’re not the only one in your family who gained weight, or needs to shed it, including your kids.
I won’t bother you with a lot of statistics about the ongoing obesity epidemic (two thirds of adults and about forty percent of all children in this country are overweight) or what the health costs are (diabetes, hypertension, chronic heart disease etc) — if you don’t know this stuff already, you’ve been in a coma for the last ten years.
Kidding aside, it’s important. Bad eating habits are learned young – rarely do fat kids come from thin parents. If you really want to protect your kids, implement the following changes:
Full Story Fat and Kids: How to keep your kid from getting fat | Stay-at-Home Dads.
Juicy and Tender, Seitan Is Quite Possibly the Best Fake Meat — But There Is a Downside
What if the next big thing to revolutionize the lives of vegans and vegetarians was waiting in the wings? What if this next big thing was amazingly high in protein, amazingly low in fat and carbs, relatively low in sodium, and cholesterol-free, yet with a taste and texture more like real meat than those of any other analogue ever devised? What if the next big thing was chewy and exuded meaty juices and sometimes even required a knife to cut?
Imagine, then, its power as a secret weapon to convert carnivores and to solace those guilt-ridden vegans and vegetarians who still dream of bacon, brisket, sloppy joes, beef Stroganoff, souvlaki, pepperoni, pigs-in-blankets, corned-beef hash and chicken drumsticks: things that tofu cannot replicate, not even with the best imagination in the world.
Tofu is not God’s gift to herbivores, though this feels blasphemous to say. It’s slippery. It rushes down the throat so bland and unobtrusive as to be the gastronomical equivalent of an apology. It’s also made of soybeans. And while at least one recent Journal of the American Medical Association report credits soy foods with reducing the risk of death and recurrence among breast-cancer patients, soy still hasn’t emerged unscathed from the wave of bad press that has blamed it, these last few years, for hormone imbalances and health problems ranging from thyroid dysfunction to Alzheimer’s disease to gynecomastia, aka man-boobs. My doctor, an anti-big-pharma, pro-nutrition kind of guy, always rails against tofu because it’s a processed food. And seriously: How much of whatever is essential about the soybean really reaches you once it has been soaked for sixteen-plus hours, ground, boiled repeatedly to make it into milk, mixed with coagulants, curdled and drained? The preferred coagulant among major tofu manufacturers is calcium sulfate, aka gypsum, which is the main ingredient in plaster-of-Paris.
Gluten: What You Don’t Know Might Kill You
Something you’re eating may be killing you, and you probably don’t even know it!
If you eat cheeseburgers or French fries all the time or drink six sodas a day, you likely know you are shortening your life. But eating a nice dark, crunchy slice of whole wheat bread–how could that be bad for you?
Well, bread contains gluten, a protein found in wheat, barley, rye, spelt, kamut, and oats. It is hidden in pizza, pasta, bread, wraps, rolls, and most processed foods. Clearly, gluten is a staple of the American diet.
What most people don’t know is that gluten can cause serious health complications for many. You may be at risk even if you don’t have full blown celiac disease.
In today’s blog I want to reveal the truth about gluten, explain the dangers, and provide you with a simple system that will help you determine whether or not gluten is a problem for you.
Full Story Mark Hyman, MD: Gluten: What You Don’t Know Might Kill You.
15 Best Foods to Boost Your Metabolism and Lose Weight
Remember the days when your metabolism was like a caffeinated mouse in a wheel? Yeah, me neither. If you aren’t one of those lucky gals who can eat whatever she wants and burn it off thanks to an annoyingly fast metabolism, look to these helpful foods for a metabolic boost. (And check out this post on additional tips to speed up a sluggish metabolism.)
Grapefruit
This diet super fruit lowers the insulin levels in your body that trigger your system to store fat. Plus, it is rich in fiber, and your body must burn extra calories in order to break it down.
Green Tea
Green tea is the main source of epigallocatechin gallate, known better as EGCG. This healthy catechin speeds up your brain and nervous system, causing your body to burn more calories.
Full Story 15 Best Foods to Boost Your Metabolism and Lose Weight | EcoSalon.
15 Reasons Never to Let Anyone You Love Near a McDonald’s
Reasons and Ways to Avoid McDonalds and Other Fast Food
The Golden Arches: the ultimate American icon. Super Size Me taught us that fast food culture brings obesity, heart disease, hypertension and a whole slew of other problems. How bad do you really want that Big Mac? Here are 15 reasons you’ll never let anyone you love get near those Golden Arches.
Real food is perishable. With time, it begins to decay. It’s a natural process, it just happens. Beef will rot, bread will mold. But what about a McDonald’s burger? Karen Hanrahan saved a McDonald’s burger from 1996 and, oddly enough, it looks just as “appetizing” and “fresh” as a burger you might buy today. Is this real food?
You would have to walk 7 hours straight to burn off a Super Sized Coke, fries and Big Mac. Even indulging in fast food as an occasional treat is a recipe for weight gain…unless you’re planning to hit each treadmill in the treadmill bay afterwards.
Full Story Reasons and Ways to Avoid McDonalds and Other Fast Food | EcoSalon.
Top 10 Healing Foods Of The Decade
Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food. — Hippocrates, father of medicine, 431 B.C.
Eat Food. Not Too much. Mostly Plants. — Michael Pollan, renowned food expert and journalist, 2007 A.D.
The healing properties of food have been reported by cultures worldwide throughout history. However, the past decade has presented an explosion of clinical research to show specifically what health benefits individual foods can offer, identifying the various nutrients and phytochemicals associated with these benefits.
Many fruits, vegetables, and unprocessed whole foods have properties that can benefit our health. Studies in the past decade have taken nutritional research beyond protein, carbohydrates, fats, vitamins and minerals. Chemicals in the plants called phytochemicals have been a specific focus in the past decade, offering benefits such as cancer prevention, cholesterol reduction, and hormone regulation, to name a few.
There is truly a cornucopia of nutritional benefits that have been discovered. Here are a few “superfoods” that have received a lot of press in the past decade for their research-supported health benefits:
Full Story Dr. Patricia Fitzgerald: Let Food Be Thy Medicine: Top 10 Healing Foods Of The Decade.
7 Surprising Truths About What Makes Us Happy
In my new book The Happiness Project I describe the year I spent test-driving the wisdom of the ages, the current scientific studies, and the lessons from popular culture about how to be happier — from Aristotle to Thoreau to Seligman to Oprah. Here on the Huffington Post, I’ve recounted some of my adventures and conclusions in pursuit of happiness.
I’m describing my happiness project, but of course, the point of The Happiness Project is to encourage you to start your own happiness project. I’ve heard from many readers who have tried my suggestions themselves — such as keeping a daily one-sentence journal, making their bed, or joining a group — to happy effect.
To take just one small example, I’ve written about my idea of the abstainer/moderator split: when it comes to resisting temptation, some people find it much easier to abstain altogether, while others do better exercising moderation. (Here’s a quiz to tell you which camp you’re in.) Abstainers and moderators judge each other harshly; abstainers think moderators constantly cheat, and moderators think abstainers have a rigid, unhealthy attitude.
Full Story Gretchen Rubin: A Year In The Pursuit Of Happiness: 7 Surprising Truths About What Makes Us Happy.
Tylenol Arthritis Caplet Voluntary Recall Expanded
J&J expands voluntary recall of Tylenol Arthritis Caplets, cites nausea from moldy smell
Johnson & Johnson is expanding a voluntary recall of Tylenol Arthritis Caplets due to consumer reports of a moldy smell associated with nausea and stomach pain.
The New Brunswick, N.J., company says it is now recalling all product lots of the Arthritis Pain Caplet 100 count bottles with the red EZ-Open Cap.
Full Story Tylenol Arthritis Caplet Voluntary Recall Expanded – ABC News.
High Fructose Corn Syrup Proven to Cause Human Obesity
You’ve heard it before: a calorie is a calorie is a calorie. If people are fat, it’s their own fault for eating too much.
These words are usually spouted by PR hacks for the corn refiner’s association – or the dietitians paid by them. They may not, as it turns out, be true.
We finally have the smoking corn cob, as it were: the study processed-food foes have been waiting for, indicating that high fructose corn syrup may be the cause of the huge upswing in childhood obesity and diabetes.
American consumption of all sugars is much higher than it should be for our health, but high fructose corn syrup has become a larger share of our sugar consumption due to the fact that much of our ingestion of this super cheap, highly processed sugar is involuntary. That’s because it’s not just used as a sweetener in cookies and sodas but as a food additive in things like bread, ketchup and other condiments, pasta sauce and coatings for frozen fried foods.
Full Story High Fructose Corn Syrup Proven to Cause Human Obesity | EcoSalon.
Acetaminophen For Mental Health Relief
A provocative new research study investigates the possibility that over-the-counter pain relief drugs may be helpful for treatment of depression and anxiety.
Use of OTC medications for physical aches and pain has been commonplace for decades.
A research team led by psychologist C. Nathan DeWall of the University of Kentucky College of Arts and Sciences Department of Psychology has uncovered evidence indicating that acetaminophen (the active ingredient in Tylenol) may blunt social pain.
Full Story Acetaminophen For Mental Health Relief | Psych Central News.
Putting the Science of Happiness Into Practice
Countries around the world are beginning to apply the science of well-being to the decisions they make. News from the 5th International Conference on Gross National Happiness.
The study of happiness is experiencing a boom. Its practitioners include economists who believe that gross domestic product (GDP) is too limited a tool to measure the success of societies, psychologists and sociologists who feel that their disciplines have focused too much on neuroses and social problems and not enough on determining what kind of activities and policies actually contribute to happier societies, and political leaders who want to know how to make use of their findings.
During the 5th International Gross National Happiness Conference, held last week in Brazil, happiness proponents from around the world were able to come together and compare notes about the practical application of “happiness science.”
The Science of Happiness
Not surprisingly, that science has found that beyond a certain minimum level of income, greater happiness comes from strong and plentiful human connections, a sense of control over one’s life and employment, meaningful work, good health, basic economic security, trust in others and in government, and other factors less directly connected with monetary remuneration.
Full Story John de Graaf :: News from the 5th International Conference on Gross National Happiness.
Smoking marijuana will not cure diabetes or obesity but endocanabinoids might
Researchers at the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and at Kyushu
University in Japan reported that endocanabinoids are a major regulator of physiochemical response to “sweet” tastes.
Endocanabinoids are a naturally produced human body chemicals that are very closely related to THC, the active substance in marijuana.
A basic rule of Chemistry is “structure determines function.”
Sweet taste receptors, like those in the tongue, are also located in the intestine and pancreas.
Two types of receptors located in the same cell are necessary to experience the sweet taste.
Full Story Smoking marijuana will not cure diabetes or obesity but endocanabinoids might.
Welcome To The Era Of Personalized Medicine
There are certain ideas that hover in the ether, hinting at some perfect future where our cars will fly and robots will fetch our slippers. Personalized medicine is one of these – an idea that someday, somehow, we will all enjoy customized medical care that keeps us healthier and enables us to live better and longer. In the meantime, though, we’re stuck with the healthcare we have now: an inefficient system with cookie-cutter predictions and trial-and-error treatments.
Part of the problem, so far, is that personalized medicine has often been understood as mostly about drugs – specifically, the idea that one day pharmaceuticals will be tailored to us, individually. This has been slow to happen. Aside from a few cancer drugs like Gleevec and Tamoxifen, the science of pharmacogenomics (the term for matching drugs to specific genetic traits) has been largely a disappointment. And until more personalized drugs emerge from the pharmaceutical pipeline, the thinking goes, personalized medicine will remain a pipedream.
But personalized medicine isn’t just about drugs. It’s also about data – our personal data, the stuff in our medical records, as well as less clinical information like how much sleep we get or how often we exercise. All this data can personalize our healthcare right now, today – it can be worked back into the equation of how we care for our health, improving decisions like what we eat, how to reduce our risk factors for disease, and what we get tested for (and when). When you start thinking about our healthcare this way, it starts to look like a series of choices, opportunities we have to make better decisions to affect and improve our health. Line all these choices up in sequence from prevention to diagnosis to treatment, and it takes the form of a Decision Tree – which is what I’ve called my forthcoming book.
Full Story Thomas Goetz: Welcome To The Era Of Personalized Medicine.
Maine to consider cell phone brain cancer warning
A Maine legislator wants to make the state the first to require cell phones to carry warnings that they can cause brain cancer, although there is no consensus among scientists that they do and industry leaders dispute the claim.
The now-ubiquitous devices carry such warnings in some countries, though no U.S. states require them, according to the National Conference of State Legislators. A similar effort is afoot in San Francisco, where Mayor Gavin Newsom wants his city to be the nation’s first to require the warnings.
Maine Rep. Andrea Boland, D-Sanford, said numerous studies point to the cancer risk, and she has persuaded legislative leaders to allow her proposal to come up for discussion during the 2010 session that begins in January, a session usually reserved for emergency and governors’ bills.
Full Story Maine to consider cell phone brain cancer warning | Raw Story.
Quitting Meat Is at the Heart of 2009′s Health Zeitgeist, And Author Kathy Freston Is Leading the Debate
Author Kathy Freston promotes a body/mind/spirit approach to health and happiness that includes a concentration on healthy diet, emotional introspection, spiritual practice, and loving relationships. Over a dozen of her most popular articles for AlterNet this year concern the health benefits of a meat-free or vegan diet. Freston is a New York Times best-selling author, and her latest book is The Quantum Wellness Cleanse: A 21 Day Essential Guide to Healing Your Body, Mind and Spirit. You can find more of her work at kathyfreston.com.
Each of Freston’s essays were read by tens of thousands of people on AlterNet. Here are 10 of her most popular from 2009:
Guess What? Casual Sex Won’t Make You Go Insane
Many cling to the notion that casual sex must be damaging. Recent research — and a little historical perspective and common sense — shows otherwise.
Casual sex: even the phrase sounds a little suspect. And its connections to STDs, unplanned pregnancy, depression, and even alcoholism? Well, those are just a given, discussed endlessly by pundits, and in books with titles like, Hooking Up: Sex, Dating and Relationships on Campus, Hooked: New Science on How Casual Sex is Affecting Our Children, and even, Unhooked: How Young Women Pursue Sex, Delay Love and Lose at Both. Add to this the unrelentingly dire warnings about “premarital” sex given by abstinence programs and many religious groups, and it can be hard to make a case for any kind of non-monogamous-non-matrimonial-non-procreative intimacy. But what if the links between casual sex (an ill-defined term, which seems to refer to anything from a one-night stand to sex between committed domestic partners) and the troubles of the world aren’t as straightforward as people would have you believe?
Some recent research makes this seem pretty likely. Last week, for example, researchers from the University of Minnesota announced the findings of a study looking at the effect of casual sex on young adults. After studying 1,311 sexually active 18- to 24-year-olds, researchers were somewhat surprised to discover that, “young adults engaging in casual sexual encounters do not appear to be at increased risk for harmful psychological outcomes as compared to sexually active young adults in more committed relationships.” And back in 2007, another study at the same institution found that despite what many people believe, non-marital sex doesn’t negatively affect a teen’s mental health or make a young person more prone to depression.
Full Story Guess What? Casual Sex Won’t Make You Go Insane | Sex and Relationships | AlterNet.
Does Aspartame Cause Tumors and Pose Cancer Risks? The Jury Is Still Out
“Sweet taste is a quality of some chemical substances that the human race has always associated with pleasure,” wrote George E. Inglett in the 1984 book Aspartame: Physiology and Biology, about the controversial artificial sweetener marketed in powder form under popular brands like NutraSweet and Equal. Initially approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 1974, aspartame is now “consumed by over 200 million people in more than 6,000 products,” according to the Calorie Control Council’s dedicated site Aspartame.org. “As a result, high value has been placed on materials exhibiting sweetness,” Inglett wrote.
Not just high value, but high risk, according to scientists who have watched the hyperconsumptive human race incorporate sugar, and its replacements, more inextricably into their diet than ever before. The jury is already in when it comes to the ravages of sugar, especially in sodas. The escalating use of sugar has engendered diabetes and obesity epidemics worldwide. But after years of intrigue touching on everything from its approval process to its possible carcinogenicity, the jury is out on the still-controversial aspartame. It could be responsible for increases in various cancers and even Gulf War Syndrome, or, it could not. And that uncertainty is fueling both aspartame’s increasing consumption, and possibly its mounting menace.
“Because of a 1970s-era study that suggested that it caused brain tumors in rats, and because it causes headaches or dizziness in a small number of people, a cloud of doubt has long hung over aspartame,” explained Dr. Michael F. Jacobson, executive director of Center for Science in the Public Interest in Washington DC.
Full Story Does Aspartame Cause Tumors and Pose Cancer Risks? The Jury Is Still Out | Health and Wellness | AlterNet.
Natural Organic Aphrodisiac Foods for Great Healthy Sex
If you’ve got sex on the brain but your body’s feeling unsexy, put away the blue pill! You don’t need Viagra, you need food. (Just not potato chips.) Sexual health and energy is synonymous with a healthy, energized you. An active lifestyle, balanced diet and self-confidence are the best ways to get the sexual charge you need – but that doesn’t mean there aren’t a few foods out there that can give you that extra…boost you’re looking for.
Full Story Natural Organic Aphrodisiac Foods for Great Healthy Sex | EcoSalon.
Too Fat to Serve: How Our Unhealthy Food System Is Undermining the Military
Americans have become so overweight that a large percentage of young people no longer qualify for military service. How did we get here?
Michael Pollan coined the term “vegetable-industrial complex” to describe our corporate-driven food system decades after President Eisenhower warned us of the “military-industrial complex.” For much of that time, one served the other. President Truman created the National School Lunch Program in 1948 to ensure that young men were healthy enough for military service and as a subsidy to agribusiness. Feeding hungry children was not reason enough to justify the creation of the program.
Mark Winne, author of Closing the Food Gap: Resetting the Table in the Land of Plenty says, “That so many young men had such substandard diets that they were unfit for military service [during World War II] was a matter of national chagrin and a threat to national security. This was the impetus for the creation of the national meal program to feed malnourished children and thus to ensure the nation’s future soldiers were fit to fight its battles.”
America has come a long way since then. Nowadays, diet-related diseases are due to eating too much food, not too little. As such, the vegetable-industrial complex and the military-industrial complex have collided head on. Many of today’s would-be recruits are too fat to serve, according to a new report by the non-profit Mission: Readiness. The report found that 75 percent of young people ages 17 to 24 are unable to enlist in the United States military. Over one-third of those unable to serve are unfit because they are overweight. The military turns away 15,000 potential recruits every year because they are too heavy. The U.S. spends more on defense than the entire rest of the world combined, and while much of our military largesse consists of machinery and contractors, the military still relies on a steady stream of recruits. This is particularly true now, as troops cycle through Iraq and Afghanistan again and again until many are no longer physically or mentally capable of returning for another tour of duty.
Full Story Too Fat to Serve: How Our Unhealthy Food System Is Undermining the Military | Health and Wellness | AlterNet.
OPS: So, Fast Food becomes a matter of National Security?
Long-term physical activity has an anti-aging effect at the cellular level
Intensive exercise prevented shortening of telomeres, a protective effect against aging of the cardiovascular system, according to research reported in Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association.
Researchers measured the length of telomeres — the DNA that bookends the chromosomes and protects the ends from damage — in blood samples from two groups of professional athletes and two groups who were healthy nonsmokers, but not regular exercisers.
The telomere shortening mechanism limits cells to a fixed number of divisions and can be regarded as a “biological clock.” Gradual shortening of telomeres through cell divisions leads to aging on the cellular level and may limit lifetimes. When the telomeres become critically short the cell undergoes death. The 2009 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded to researchers who discovered the nature of telomeres and how chromosomes are protected by telomeres and the enzyme telomerase.
“The most significant finding of this study is that physical exercise of the professional athletes leads to activation of the important enzyme telomerase and stabilizes the telomere,” said Ulrich Laufs, M.D., the study’s lead author and professor of clinical and experimental medicine in the department of internal medicine at Saarland University in Homburg, Germany
Full Story Long-term physical activity has an anti-aging effect at the cellular level.
Diagnosis and Treatment of Vitamin D Deficiency Seminar
Vitamin D Action – Seminar – November 2009
Implicit evidence that 10,000 IU/day of vitamin D is safe, because it matches the potential effect of UV light exposure.
Introduction to Vitamin D
by Reinhold Vieth Ph.D.
What’s a Vitamin D Deficiency?
by Robert P. Heaney, M.D.
Viewing Breast Cancer as a Deficiency Disease
by Cedric F. Garland, Dr.P.H.
MOre……
Full Story GrassrootsHealth | Vitamin D Action – Seminar – November 2009.
Coffee May Lower Risk of Aggressive Prostate Cancer
Drinking regular or decaffeinated coffee is associated with a reduced risk of advanced prostate cancer, new research suggests.
“Coffee has effects on insulin and glucose metabolism as well as sex hormone levels, all of which play a role in prostate cancer,” said Kathryn M. Wilson, PhD, a postdoctoral fellow at the Channing Laboratory in Boston.
She and her colleagues found that men who drank the most coffee had a 59% decreased risk of either lethal or advanced prostate cancer compared with men who drank no coffee. The magnitude of risk reduction was more pronounced in men who never smoked; in this group, the biggest coffee consumers had an 89% decreased risk compared with men who did not drink coffee.
Dr. Wilson, who presented study findings at the American Association for Cancer Research Frontiers in Cancer Prevention Research Conference in Houston, said caffeine is not the key factor in this association.
Full Story Coffee May Lower Risk of Aggressive Prostate Cancer – Renal and Urology News.
11 Toxic Cosmetic Ingredients You Must Avoid
The greener we become, the more we have to scrutinize. I for one have cleaned up my home, my diet, my cleaning products and ““ of utmost importance ““ the products I put on my skin. I’m an avid ingredient reader and do the research ““ after all, my skin is the largest organ in my body! Here’s a list of some common skin and hair care chemicals we all need to avoid.
Coal Tar: Coal tar is used to treat eczema, psoriasis and other skin disorders and can be found in anti-itch creams and scalp treatments. It’s also a known carcinogen.
Diethanolamine (DEA): A lathering agent in soaps and shampoos, DEA isn’t carcinogenic by itself, but can react with other chemicals in products to create a carcinogen readily absorbed into the skin. Look for DEA in many forms, such as Cocamide DEA, Oleamide DEA and Lauramide DEA.
Formaldehyde: A frighteningly common ingredient in a variety of beauty products. Formaldehyde can irritate your eyes, nose and throat, dry out and irritate your skin and even cause asthma and cancer with repeated exposure.
more……….
Full Story 11 Toxic Cosmetic Ingredients You Must Avoid | EcoSalon.
Go Go Hamsters pose potential health risk, says US watchdog
Consumer testing lab finds high levels of toxic chemical on top Christmas toy, as manufacturer insists product is safe
Parents desperate to treat their children to this year’s must-have Christmas present – a lifesize, robotic hamster – have been warned that the toy may contain excessive levels of a toxic chemical.
The Mr Squiggle Go Go Hamster contains potentially dangerous levels of a toxic chemical which has been linked to cancer, according to a US safety watchdog.
But British distributors and US manufacturers both rejected allegations that the popular toy, which is being rationed by retailers, could be dangerous to children.
Full Story Go Go Hamsters pose potential health risk, says US watchdog | Life and style | guardian.co.uk.
The 6 Weirdest, Scariest Processed Foods
Once upon a time, some brave scientists had a noble dream of ridding our food of the plague of nutrients.
Today, at the start of the 21st century, the miracle of food processing has brought that dream closer to reality than ever before. From vitamin-free “blueberry bits” to spray-can cheese to avocado-free guacamole, food scientists have worked tirelessly to bring us new and exciting foods that contain as little nutrition as possible. Even apparently “healthy” foods such as soups have been ingeniously overloaded with so much salt you feel as if you’re eating French fries.
In this article, we’ll provide a handy guide to six uniquely unnatural processed foods that will hopefully serve as a blueprint for humanity’s eventual triumph over the tyrannical fist of Mother Nature.
Full Story The 6 Weirdest, Scariest Processed Foods | Health and Wellness | AlterNet.
The Recession Is Taking a Bite Out of Meat Consumption
More than half of Americans have cut back on meat. Martha Stewart broadcasts a meatless Thanksgiving show. What gives?
The recession is having one positive effect. The national cholesterol is going down.
More than half of Americans have cut back on meat, many becoming “recession-bred flexitarians,” says Gourmet magazine–people who use meat as a condiment not as a meal anchor.
Even the doyenne of taste and nutrition, Martha Stewart, broadcast a vegetarian Thanksgiving show last week.
A small drop in meat exerts big consequences on your health says Katherine Tallmadge of the American Dietetic Association because red meat is the “primary source of saturated fat, which can boost levels of bad LDL cholesterol and inflammation.”
Full Story The Recession Is Taking a Bite Out of Meat Consumption | Corporate Accountability and WorkPlace | AlterNet.
7 Ways to Prevent Heartburn
When Sandy Bush, 35, of Canyon Country, California, went to see his doctor complaining of extreme heartburn, it seemed like the least of his problems. His wife had just left him for another man, and he was trying to help their two young children through the messy divorce.
Yet heartburn, while not as catastrophic as the dissolution of a family, can be pretty miserable. It hurts like crazy, robs you of sleep, and can be terrifying when mistaken for a heart attack. And it’s exacerbated by stress (as in, divorce). One version, gastroesophageal reflux disease, or GERD–the result of chronic, untreated heartburn–has even been linked to cancer.
This irksome condition has become epidemic: Half of all Americans experience the occasional bout, and 15 percent–that’s 43 million people–get it frequently enough to consult a doctor. In fact, heartburn is so common that the leading medications, Prilosec and other proton pump inhibitors (PPIs), are among the world’s most frequently prescribed drugs. The New York Times reported that last year, Prilosec (a.k.a. “the purple pill”) racked up U.S. sales of $4.6 billion–more than the profits for McDonald’s, Wendy’s, KFC, Taco Bell, and Pizza Hut combined.
Full Story 7 Ways to Prevent Heartburn | Healthy and Green Living.
10 Signs Vegetarianism Is Catching On
Martha Stewart promotes a vegetarian Thanksgiving? Recently, much attention has been lavished on the horrors of factory farming and the advantages of a meatless diet.
On Thanksgiving, I spent some time taking stock of my life and the world around me and, as we’re supposed to do over the holiday, giving thanks for all the joys — little and big — in my life. One of the larger joys for which I am giving thanks is all of the recent attention that has been lavished on a topic that is near and dear to my heart — the cruelty and environmental harm involved in raising animals for food.
I struggled to cohesively construct an article about some of the many recent and important developments on this topic, but there is just too much. Instead, I decided on a top ten list (a tip of the hat to David Letterman) — the 10 most interesting articles on the farmed animal welfare front.
So without further ado:
1. World Bank scientists conclude that eating meat causes more than half of global warming (conservatively).
Full Story 10 Signs Vegetarianism Is Catching On | Health and Wellness | AlterNet.
The Culture of Food: A Radio Documentary on the Healthy Food Crisis
On this Thanksgiving Day, many families are sitting down to a dinner made with fresh foods from a local grocery store. Yet there are many communities where there is no local grocery. And you don’t have to look far. These places exist in cities all over the country. Even in our nation’s capital, there are huge sections of the city where fresh, nutrient-rich food is hard to find.
In this documentary, ten youth explore the culture of eating in a city where some of the most iconic foods are the half-smoke: an extra large sausage split down the middle and usually topped with chili, and something called mambo sauce, which looks like ketchup but more gelatinous. They also looked at the challenges of some communities’ access to healthy, affordable food in their neighborhood. Their search took them from the local carry-out, to their schools vending machines to the soil in their own backyards.
Click below to listen to the documentary which will be Aired on Free Speech Radio News and the Pacific Radio Network.
Full Story The Culture of Food: A Radio Documentary on the Healthy Food Crisis.
47,000 Women Could Die As a Result of the New Mammogram Guidelines
By George Lakoff –
Cost-benefit analysis can kill. Scaling back on mammograms, as a government task force suggested, could result in 47,000 unnecessary deaths.
Cost-benefit analysis can kill. The failure to distinguish statistics from arithmetic can kill. In the current debate over mammograms, the number of women projected to be at risk of death due to cost-benefit analysis is about 47,000.
That is the approximate number projected to die by the United States Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF), if its recommendations on scaling back mammograms had been accepted. It is the task force’s number, if you do the arithmetic, which it apparently did not.
USPSTF statistics say that the life of “only” one woman in 1,900 will be saved if mammograms start at age 40 instead of age 50. In other words, a 40-year-old woman’s “risk” of dying from breast cancer in the next 10 years is only 1 in 1,900. That seems like no risk at all. 1 divided by 1,900 equals .000526. About half a woman per 1,000. Minuscule, right?
Now, how many women in America would be affected?
5 Bad Things That Immediately Happen to Your Body When You Eat Sugary Junk
Sugary food tastes great going down, but the effects it has on our insides are far less appetizing.
At this point, most people understand the basic effects of subsisting on junk food. We’d be hard pressed to find someone who thinks eating a bowl of broccoli is the same as eating a bowl of candy (though doing either will undoubtedly wreak havoc on the human digestive system). But simply knowing that junk food is bad — or even knowing how it’s bad — doesn’t make it any less tempting. Humans have a natural predilection for high-fat, high-sugar foods, and if those ingredients are combined into one magical dish, resistance is practically futile.
Even the healthiest among us have to give in to a cake craving every now and then; it’s normal and won’t do much damage in moderation. The only problem is when we take the craving too far (i.e., eat too much) and end up feeling less than optimal. What happens within our bodies when we eat an excess of sugar that causes such extreme reactions?
This Is Your Body on Cake
When it comes to celebrating, nothing completes the occasion like a rich, perfectly sweet slice of cake. Each bite tastes great going down, but the effects it has on our insides are far less appetizing.
Full Story 5 Bad Things That Immediately Happen to Your Body When You Eat Sugary Junk | | AlterNet.
Meditation Halves Risk of Heart Attack
and works as well as drugs
Meditation can cut the risk of heart attack, stroke, and death by almost 50% in patients with existing coronary heart disease, according to a new clinical trial. The findings indicate that relaxation and mental focusing can be as effective as powerful new drugs in treating heart disease.
Over the past 4 decades, scientists have found many hints that transcendental meditation–the most widely used meditation technique–can confer a variety of health benefits. The technique, which was invented by an Indian guru named Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and grew to popularity after the Beatles practiced it in the 1960s, requires the practitioner to focus on repetitions of a single sound or mantra, such as a phrase from Hindu scripture. Transcendental meditation has been shown to decrease blood pressure, reduce stress, and improve mental focus in college students. It's unclear, however, whether any of these benefits translate to overall health.
In the first study to test the effect of transcendental meditation on the risk of heart attack, preventive medicine specialist Robert Schneider of the Maharishi University of Management in Fairfield, Iowa, collaborated with endocrinologist Theodore Kotchen of the Medical College of Wisconsin in Milwaukee. They enlisted 201 patients with narrowed coronary arteries–a risk factor for heart attack and stroke. All volunteers were African American, a high-risk group for heart disease.
The patients were randomly assigned to two groups, both of which were given a standard treatment of prescription drugs for high blood pressure and atherosclerosis, as well as an educational course in cardiovascular health. The team asked one of the groups to also practice transcendental meditation for 15 to 20 minutes a day, following instructions from meditation experts.
Full Story Meditation Halves Risk of Heart Attack — Wang 2009 (1116): 1 — ScienceNOW.
Why Exercise Makes You Less Anxious
Researchers at Princeton University recently made a remarkable discovery about the brains of rats that exercise. Some of their neurons respond differently to stress than the neurons of slothful rats. Scientists have known for some time that exercise stimulates the creation of new brain cells (neurons) but not how, precisely, these neurons might be functionally different from other brain cells.
In the experiment, preliminary results of which were presented last month at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience in Chicago, scientists allowed one group of rats to run. Another set of rodents was not allowed to exercise. Then all of the rats swam in cold water, which they don’t like to do. Afterward, the scientists examined the animals’ brains. They found that the stress of the swimming activated neurons in all of the brains. (The researchers could tell which neurons were activated because the cells expressed specific genes in response to the stress.) But the youngest brain cells in the running rats, the cells that the scientists assumed were created by running, were less likely to express the genes. They generally remained quiet. The “cells born from running,” the researchers concluded, appeared to have been “specifically buffered from exposure to a stressful experience.” The rats had created, through running, a brain that seemed biochemically, molecularly, calm.
Full Story Phys Ed: Why Exercise Makes You Less Anxious – Well Blog – NYTimes.com.
Women can wait until age 21 for cervical cancer test, group says
Women can delay having their first Pap test for cervical cancer until they turn 21 and many can wait longer to go back for follow-up screenings, according to new guidelines released Friday by a major medical group.
The American College of Obstetrics and Gynecologists (ACOG) recommended the change after concluding that more frequent testing did not catch significantly more cancers and often resulted in girls and young women experiencing unnecessary stress, anxiety and sometimes harmful treatments because of suspicious growths that would not cause problems.
“We really felt that the downsides of more frequent screening outweighed any benefits,” said Alan G. Waxman, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of New Mexico who led the revision of the guidelines. “More testing is not always more intelligent testing.”
Full Story Women can wait until age 21 for cervical cancer test, group says – washingtonpost.com.
OPS: Insurance Companies trying to save profit at teh cost of women’s lives?
The Most Obese Counties In America: Is Yours On The List?
The first county-by-county survey of obesity reflects past studies that show the rate of obesity is highest in the Southeast and Appalachia.
High rates of obesity and diabetes were reported in more than 80 percent of counties in the Appalachian region that includes Kentucky, Tennessee and West Virginia, according to the new research from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The same problem was seen in about 75 percent of counties in Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Georgia and South Carolina.
The five counties with the highest rates were Greene and Dallas counties in Alabama and Holmes, Humphreys and Jefferson counties in Mississippi. All are small, rural counties in the west central areas of each state, and each reported obesity rates of around 44 or 43 percent. The national adult obesity rate is roughly 26 percent.
Full Story The Most Obese Counties In America: Is Yours On The List?.
Integrative Mental Health: A New Model For Depression Relief
Dr. Andrew Weil:
The World Health Organization has predicted that by 2030, more people will be affected by depression than any other health problem. Yet of all the dysfunctions of modern medicine, the way we treat depression may be the worst.
As I outlined in “Are You Depressed, Or Just Human?” normal changes in mood are often labeled as depression, leading to an overdiagnosis of the condition. But even if the patient is truly depressed, the prescribed treatment is almost always limited to a potent pharmaceutical. In other words, a complex, multifaceted problem is frequently treated with an oversimplified, expensive therapy that, sadly, is often ineffective.
The reason? Money. Our profit-driven medical system makes it difficult for doctors to spend enough time with patients to make a correct diagnosis and to craft truly individualized treatments. Also, patients themselves often demand the drugs they have seen advertised, and overworked, harried doctors frequently go along.
There is another reason for this regrettable situation. Many physicians are not trained in other treatment options for depression, though these can be safe, inexpensive and highly effective. So even if both physician and patient favor an alternative to drugs, they often lack the knowledge to employ it.
Full Story Dr. Andrew Weil: Integrative Mental Health: A New Model For Depression Relief.
Movie Popcorn Has Shocking Amount Of Calories Fat In It
CBS reports on a study by the Center for Science and Public Interest that analyzed nutritional makeup iof movie popcorn; the results are eye-opening. Consuming a medium size popcorn and soda is the equivalent of eating three Quarter Pounders from McDonald’s, along with 12 pats of butter.
The caloric and fat content of this theater staple will have you thinking twice before you order:
the concessions from Regal, the country’s biggest movie chain, have 1,160 calories and three days worth – 60 grams – of fat. Regal said that the medium popcorn had 720 calories and the large had 960, but CSPI’s tests found those numbers to be understated. A small popcorn at Regal had 670 calories – the same as a Pizza Hut Personal Pepperoni Pan Pizza. Even if you share a small popcorn – it’s still about a day’s worth of saturated fat per person, according to CSPI.
In related news, a study sponsored by the United Health Foundation, Partnership for Prevention, and American Public Health Association found that 40 percent of the U.S. will be obese by 2018: “the states most in danger of a ballooning obesity epidemic are: Kentucky, Maryland, Mississippi, Ohio, Oklahoma and South Dakota.”
Full Story Movie Popcorn Has Shocking Amount Of Calories Fat In It.
Federal panel recommends reducing number of mammograms
Potential harm of frequent mammograms outweighs benefit, task force says
Women in their 40s should stop routinely having annual mammograms and older women should cut back to one scheduled exam every other year, an influential federal task force has concluded, challenging the use of one of the most common medical tests.
In its first reevaluation of breast cancer screening since 2002, the independent government-appointed panel recommended the changes, citing evidence that the potential harm to women having annual exams beginning at age 40 outweighs the benefit.
Coming amid a highly charged national debate over health-care reform and simmering suspicions about the possibility of rationing medical services, the recommendations immediately became enveloped in controversy.
via Federal panel recommends reducing number of mammograms – washingtonpost.com.
What You Don’t Know About Osteoporosis
This time we’ll look at one of the most controversial and misunderstood treatments for osteoporosis — hormone replacement therapy. We’ll also answer the question as to whether being obese can actually reduce your risk of osteoporosis.
Bioidentical Hormones for Women
Prior to the publication of the Womens Health Initiative (WHI) study, hormone replacement therapy was the first choice in preventing and reversing osteoporosis. After WHI the bisphosphonates became number one (such as Fosamax, Boniva, Actonel and for those with bone cancers, Zometa). And this is for good reason. These drugs are effective in reducing risks of fracture in well conducted studies.
But long term studies of bisphosphonates have also revealed side-effects which, though only occurring in a small minority of patients, can be serious. These include jaw bone deterioration and ulceration of the esophagus. One comprehensive long term study of over 12,000 women with osteoporosis also showed it would be necessary to treat approximately 66 women to prevent one fracture (1).
Other, though possibly less effective, medications are also available for use if the bisphosphonates are unsuccessful.
But what about hormones? Why did they fall out of favor when they consistently helped prevent fractures?
via Joseph Sciabbarrasi, M.D.: What You Don’t Know About Osteoporosis.
Fish consumption linked to lower cognition
GRANADA, Spain, Nov. 13 (UPI) — Children who eat fish more than three times per week show decreased performance in cognition, researchers in Spain found.
Researcher Carmen Freire Warden, led by Professors Nicolas Olea and Marieta Fernandez Serrano Cabrera of the University of Granada, analyzed the exposure to environmental contaminants through water, air and diet in a sample of 220 children in the geographic healthcare area of San Cecilio University Hospital in Granada, Spain.
Concentrations were higher than those found in other pediatric populations with a lower consumption of fish, but lower than levels found in high-consuming areas.
Important exposure factors were: place of residence, maternal age, passive exposure to tobacco smoke and consumption of oily fish.
Full Story Fish consumption linked to lower cognition – UPI.com.
Quitting Meat Is a Process — Almost Impossible to Do All at Once
When it comes to meat, change is almost always cast as an absolute. You are a vegetarian or you are not. It’s a strange formulation, and it’s distracting.
Mark Twain said that quitting smoking is among the easiest things one can do; he did it all the time. I would add vegetarianism to the list of easy things. In high school I became a vegetarian more times than I can now remember, most often as an effort to claim some identity in a world of people whose identities seemed to come effortlessly. I wanted a slogan to distinguish my mom’s Volvo’s bumper, a bake sale cause to fill the self-conscious half hour of school break, an occasion to get closer to the breasts of activist women. (And of course I did also think it was wrong to harm animals and destroy the environment.) Which isn’t to say that I refrained from eating meat. Only that I refrained in public. Privately, the pendulum swung. Many dinners of those years began with my father asking, “Any dietary restrictions I need to know about tonight?”
I first became a vegetarian when I was nine, in response to an argument made by a radical babysitter. My great change — which lasted a couple of weeks — was based on the very simple instinct that it’s wrong to kill animals for food. I imagine most children have some version of this instinct at some point, and while it says nothing at all about the rightness or wrongness of meat, the overcoming of it can, itself, leave a mark. Parental explanations almost always come in the form of half-truths, glossings over, or worse — “Animals live long, happy lives in the sun, and when they one day die, they share their meat with us.” Kids are even better at recognizing such bullshit than adults, even if, because they need a stable world, they don’t pursue it. Whether or not something is learned about food, something is learned.
Full Story Quitting Meat Is a Process — Almost Impossible to Do All at Once | Food | AlterNet.
Chemicals in Our Food, and Bodies – BPA
Your body is probably home to a chemical called bisphenol A, or BPA. It’s a synthetic estrogen that United States factories now use in everything from plastics to epoxies — to the tune of six pounds per American per year. That’s a lot of estrogen.
More than 92 percent of Americans have BPA in their urine, and scientists have linked it — though not conclusively — to everything from breast cancer to obesity, from attention deficit disorder to genital abnormalities in boys and girls alike.
Now it turns out it’s in our food.
Consumer Reports magazine tested an array of brand-name canned foods for a report in its December issue and found BPA in almost all of them. The magazine says that relatively high levels turned up, for example, in Progresso vegetable soup, Campbell’s condensed chicken noodle soup, and Del Monte Blue Lake cut green beans.
Full Story Op-Ed Columnist – Chemicals in Our Food, and Bodies – NYTimes.com.
Are Your Food Allergies Making You Fat?
Your digestive system may be making you fat. It’s hard to believe – but very true!
Today, I’m going to explain the bugs in your digestive tract, why they upset your gut’s immune system, and how they just might be behind those extra pounds.
I have observed this phenomenon in hundreds of patients. Recently, remarkable new research has confirmed this phenomenon. I have developed very effective treatments for it, based on understanding the way in which all the body’s systems — the gut, the immune system, detoxification system, hormones and more — are connected.
There’s powerful evidence that addressing these key causes of weight gain and illness can help you shed pounds.
Full Story Mark Hyman, MD: Are Your Food Allergies Making You Fat?.
Tests Find Wide Range of Bisphenol A in Canned Soups, Juice, and More
Consumer Reports’ latest tests of canned foods, including soups, juice, tuna, and green beans, have found that almost all of the 19 name-brand foods tested contain measurable levels of Bisphenol A (BPA). The results are reported in the December 2009 issue and also available online. BPA, which has been used for years in clear plastic bottles and food-can liners, has been restricted in Canada and some U.S. states and municipalities because it has been linked to a wide array of health effects including reproductive abnormalities, heightened risk of breast and prostate cancers, diabetes, and heart disease. I’ve reported on BPA over at Civil Eats here, here, and here.
Federal guidelines currently put the daily upper limit of safe exposure at 50 micrograms of BPA per kilogram of body weight. But that level is based on a handful of experiments done in the 1980s rather than hundreds of more recent animal and laboratory studies indicating that serious health risks could result from much lower doses of BPA. Several animal studies show adverse effects, such as abnormal reproductive development, at exposures of 2.4 micrograms of BPA per kilogram of body weight per day, a dose that could be reached by a child eating one or a few servings daily or an adult daily diet that includes multiple servings of canned foods containing BPA levels comparable to some of the foods Consumer Reports tested.
Full Story Naomi Starkman: Tests Find Wide Range of Bisphenol A in Canned Soups, Juice, and More.
Restless Vagina Syndrome
By promoting the idea that ‘normal’ women have explosive sex all the time, BigPharma helped launch ‘female sexual dysfunction’ (FSD).
It’s not your fault, ladies (and certainly not your partner’s), that you don’t orgasm every time you have intercourse, or that you lack the libido of a 17-year-old boy. You have a disease: female sexual dysfunction (FSD), and the pharmaceutical industry wants to help.
You are among the “43 percent of American women [who] experience some degree of impaired sexual function,” according to a Journal of the American Medical Association article. The FDA’s evolving definition of FSD includes decreased desire or arousal, sexual pain and orgasm difficulties—but only if the woman feels “personal distress” about it.
So, convincing women to feel distress is a key component of the drug company strategy to market a multi-billion-dollar pill that will cure billions of women of what may not ail them.
Full Story Restless Vagina Syndrome — In These Times.
There Is a Way to Help Avoid Heart Disease and Diabetes: You Are What You Eat!
A plant-based diet is both preventative and healing, whereas a diet high in animal protein is destructive to our health.
“If the truth be known coronary artery disease is a toothless paper tiger that need never, ever exist and if it does exist it need never, ever progress.”
So says Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn, who was a researcher and clinician at the Cleveland Clinic for over 35 years. In 1991, Dr. Esselstyn served as the president of the American Association of Endocrine Surgeons, and organized the 1st National Conference on the Elimination and Prevention of Heart Disease. In 2005, he became the 1st recipient of the Benjamin Spock Award for Compassion in Medicine. Dr. Esselstyn is also an Olympic gold medalist in rowing, and he was awarded the Bronze Star as an army surgeon in Vietnam.
In this series of interviews I’ve conducted with extraordinary nutritional researchers and medical doctors, I’ve sought to understand the link between diet and the most common and dreaded diseases that are prevalent in our culture. What I’m hearing over and over is that a plant-based diet is both preventative and healing, whereas a diet high in animal protein is destructive to our health – this is the case with cancer, type 2 diabetes, and heart disease.
The great news is that there is very real hope in shifting the course of our health. What is becoming very apparent through various peer reviewed studies is that by changing our diet – eliminating that which causes havoc in the body (animal protein) and adding in plant based proteins and eating lots of vegetables, legumes, beans, and whole grains, we can not only prevent disease, but also heal from it once it is already in motion. Following is a fascinating conversation I had on diet and heart health.
Got Raw Milk? Think Twice Before You Drink It
Evidence is piling up that drinking raw milk may lead to autism and asthma, but clear scientific proof of its dangers is lacking.
Mention raw milk to some people, and you’ll have to wait for them to stop yelling before you can have a conversation about it. Few foods provoke such strong reactions (for and against it) as raw milk.
Some people credit it with beneficial health effects, but others believe it’s so risky it ought to be banned. The issue of raw milk — milk that has not been pasteurized — also raises a number of questions about our government’s role in regulating foods when that is in conflict with individuals’ freedom to choose foods that they consider important to their diets.
Those who drink raw milk go to great lengths to obtain it — paying $5 to $10 per gallon for it — sometimes even buying a share of a cow or regularly driving several hours to pick it up from a dairy.
via Got Raw Milk? Think Twice Before You Drink It | Health and Wellness | AlterNet.
Excess Hormone-Grown Meat? Don’t Worry, the Kids Will Eat it
Whether it’s the surplus chicken from a factory farm snuck into your kids meal in the form of chicken nuggets or the cheese made from hormone-laden milk made acceptable on WIC food lists, it’s really no secret: the role of the USDA’s Food Distribution Programs (FDPs) since the Great Depression has been to get rid of surplus agricultural commodities by passing them on to those who need nutritional foods the most.
While FDPs have claimed to prevent nutritional deficiencies among low-income populations, that goal would seem difficult to come by when the focus has been more on maintaining government ties with the big agricultural industries than it has been on actually seeking to make Americans healthier. Through its FDPs and under the label of “entitlement commodities” or “bonus commodities”, the USDA has managed to redistribute more than a billion pounds of conventional surplus foods each year. Even White House Chef Sam Kass caught on to the government’s long-standing loyalties a while ago.
While I’m the first person in support of minimizing food waste, the way in which the USDA goes about choosing surplus commodities is extremely suspect. It shouldn’t come as a surprise to you that our government is using food distribution programs from School Lunches to Disaster Assistance to support conventional meat and dairy industries as well the sectors of GMO-grown sugarbeets, corn, canola, rice, and soybeans. Notoriously, under ex-USDA Secretary Dan Glickman, the USDA bought 8 million pounds of beef and pork, costing us about $9 million. It is outrageous that our government has been dumping its hormone-laden, obesity-causing foods on our children and our nation’s most disenfranchised groups. When did food distribution programs become our nation’s trashcan?
via Excess Hormone-Grown Meat? Don’t Worry, the Kids Will Eat it.
Exercise makes cigarettes less attractive to smokers
Exercise can help smokers quit because it makes cigarettes less attractive. A new study from the University of Exeter shows for the first time that exercise can lessen the power of cigarettes and smoking-related images to grab the attention of smokers. The study is published in the journal Addiction. The study involved 20 moderately heavy smokers, who had abstained from cigarettes for 15 hours before the trial. During two visits to our laboratory participants began by being shown smoking-related and neutral images, and then spent either 15 minutes sitting or exercising on a stationary bike at a moderate intensity. Afterwards, they were again shown the images.
While the participants were shown the images, the research team used the latest eye tracking technology to measure and record their precise eye movements. They were able to show not only the length of time people looked at smoking-related images but also how quickly pictures of cigarettes could grab their attention, compared with non-smoking matched images.
The study showed an 11% difference between the time the participants spent looking at the smoking-related images after exercise, compared with the after sitting. Also, after exercise, participants took longer to look at smoking-related images. Exercise, therefore, appears to reduce the power of the smoking-related images to grab visual attention.
via Exercise makes cigarettes less attractive to smokers | Eureka! Science News.
Could a High-Fat Diet Make You Healthy and Prevent Cavities?
What if the secret to better health isn’t so much a matter of more fruits and vegetables, but a steady flow of butter and lard?
Susan Fallon founded the Weston A. Price Foundation 10 years ago with the goal of “providing accurate information about nutrition and showing scientific validation of tradition foodway,” she said.
Specifically, her foundation advocates for diets high in animal fat and stresses the importance of it particularly for pregnant women and young children.
Bring on the butter! And no, this isn’t your typical low-carb, Atkins-diet-style approach (although there are similarities). Her organization is based on the work of Weston Price (1870-1948), who was a Cleveland dentist. He spent the later part of his life traveling the world in search of remote populations so he could study their teeth and find out what ultimately leads to dental decay.
via Could a High-Fat Diet Make You Healthy and Prevent Cavities? | Health and Wellness | AlterNet.
Can cooking with and for others prevent depression?
In a study published earlier this month, Spanish researchers looked at the diets of 10,000 people and found those who mainly ate a Mediterranean diet had lower depression rates than those who did not. The study compiled data from Spanish people who reported their dietary intake on a questionnaire between 1999 and 2005.
After an average follow-up of 4.4 years, the overall incidence of depression for those who followed the diet was 30 percent lower than for those who mostly did not follow the diet. Even lower rates of depression were associated with intake of specific elements of the Mediterranean diet, such as fruits, vegetables and olive oil.
After an average follow-up of 4.4 years, the overall incidence of depression for those who followed the diet was 30 percent lower than for those who mostly did not follow the diet. Even lower rates of depression were associated with intake of specific elements of the Mediterranean diet, such as fruits, vegetables and olive oil.
via Can cooking with and for others prevent depression? | EcoSalon.
Fight Off Back Aches & Pains This Winter With Extra Vitamin D
It’s no wonder that many people feel extra soreness and aches in their backs during winter months — they’re often not getting enough vitamin D. The body makes vitamin D from the sun’s ultraviolet rays, so it’s known as the sunshine vitamin. However, even in the sunniest parts of America, this essential vitamin for keeping bones healthy is in short supply during late fall and winter.
Up to 8 out of 10 persons will have back pain in their lifetimes. In many cases, there is no evidence of any injury, disease, or bone problem like a slipped disk. An extensive review of clinical research in a report from Pain Treatment Topics found that help may be available from a surprising champion of pain relief Vitamin D.
According to Stewart B. Leavitt, MA, PhD, Executive Director of Pain Treatment Topics and author of the report, “our examination of the research, which included numerous clinical studies, found that patients with chronic back pain usually had inadequate levels of vitamin D. When sufficient vitamin D supplementation was provided, their pain either vanished or was at least helped to a significant extent.”
Full Story: Fight Off Back Aches & Pains This Winter With Extra Vitamin D.
“Smart Choices” Food Labeling Program Halts Over FDA Concern
A food industry group is voluntarily halting promotion of its nutrition labeling program after federal regulators said such systems could mislead consumers, officials with the group said Friday.
Industry leaders launched the “Smart Choices” program in August to identify foods that meet certain nutritional standards and then highlight them for consumers with a green label on package fronts.
But the Food and Drug Administration said Tuesday that there are so many labeling programs with different criteria that they may mislead consumers about the health benefits of certain foods. The agency told manufacturers it will crack down on inaccurate labeling, although it did not name specific products or give a timeline for enforcement.
Full Story: “Smart Choices” Food Labeling Program Halts Over FDA Concern.
Sugar cereals are ‘Smart Choices’? FDA not so sure
Ever wondered how that “Smart Choices” sticker wound up on the front of Froot Loops or Cocoa Puffs?
Well, federal health officials are having similar thoughts, and they’re warning food manufacturers.
The Food and Drug Administration said Tuesday that nutritional logos from food manufacturers may be misleading consumers about the actual health benefits of cereal, crackers and other processed foods. The agency sent a letter to companies saying it will begin cracking down on inaccurate food labeling. The FDA did not name specific products or give a timeline for enforcement.
U.S. manufacturers, including Kellogg, Kraft Foods and General Mills, rolled out their so-called Smart Choices program last year, amid growing concern about obesity rates. The green labels appear on the front of foods that meet certain standards for calories per serving and fat content.
Full Story: Sugar cereals are ‘Smart Choices’? FDA not so sure – Yahoo! News.
Infant Formula Companies Claim They Can Make Babies ‘Smarter’ — Quite Dangerous Hype
Companies have fortified their products with synthetic versions of certain fatty acids associated with brain development. But evidence shows it may be making children sick.
If you believed a certain baby formula would make your child smarter, would you buy it?
Infant formula manufacturers are banking that you would. That’s why, since 2002, several companies have fortified their products with synthetic versions of DHA and ARA, long-chain fatty acids that occur naturally in breast milk and have been associated with brain development.
The oils are produced by Martek Biosciences Corp. from lab-grown algae and fungus and extracted with hexane, according to the company’s patent application. Hexane is a neurotoxin.
A growing number of parents and medical professional believe these additives are causing severe reactions in some babies, and it has been repeatedly shown that taking affected babies off DHA/ARA formula makes the problems go away almost immediately. The FDA has received hundreds of letters to this effect by upset parents, even as products containing the additives are being marketed as better than breast milk.
Full Story: Infant Formula Companies Claim They Can Make Babies ‘Smarter’ — Quite Dangerous Hype | Health and Wellness | AlterNet.
Homeopathy for Allergies: Nothing to Sneeze At
The word “allergy” did not even exist a century ago, and yet, respiratory allergies today are the 5th leading chronic disease in the U.S. and are the 3rd most common chronic disease among children under 18 years old. [1] It has been estimated that one in seven Americans had a respiratory allergy in 1950, but one in four have one now.
To those of us who do not believe in coincidences, it is not surprising that my father was a physician who specialized in allergy. Allergy is the medical specialty that commonly uses small doses of an allergen in order to desensitize a person to that allergen. This concept of using small doses of what might cause a problem in order to help prevent or heal the person is an ancient observation of healers/physicians all over the world, and it is the basis for a type of natural medicine called homeopathy.
Full Story: Dana Ullman: Homeopathy for Allergies: Nothing to Sneeze At.
A Primer on Current Food Safety Politics for Non Policy Geeks
No One Wants to Die From Dinner — Here’s a Quick Primer on What’s Safe to Eat and Who’s Looking Out for Your Health. Thousands are dying every year from food-borne illness and we have a confusing morass of regulations and agencies charged with enforcing them. How to sort out the mess?
On the heels of the devastating article in the New York Times about a young woman who paid dearly for the horrifying practices and lack of oversight in the meat industry, the Center for Science in the Public Interest released a list of the top 10 riskiest foods regulated by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
Some of your favorite foods are on this list, including ice cream, berries and leafy greens, with tuna being the most surprising culprit. Though meat contains some of the most virulent contaminants, like the strain of E. coli that almost killed Stephanie Smith, it’s missing from the list, because it isn’t regulated by the FDA. It’s regulated by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). Confused yet?
Thousands of people are dying every year from food-borne illness and we have a confusing morass of regulations and agencies charged with enforcing them. Clearly we need a better system, but how to sort out the mess?
Full Story: A Primer on Current Food Safety Politics for Non Policy Geeks | EcoSalon.
Is Your Digestive System Making You Sick?
There might be something wrong with your inner tube, and it could be making you sick and fat.
You may not even realize you have a problem … but if you have health concerns of any kind or you are overweight, your inner tube could be the root cause.
Of course, I’m not talking about a beach toy. I mean the inner tube of life — your digestive system!
It is likely that you suffer from (or have suffered from) some type of digestive disorder — irritable bowel syndrome, bloating, constipation, diarrhea, heartburn, reflux, gas, and other things too gross to mention in print.
And you are not alone. More than 100 million Americans have digestive problems.
Full Story: Mark Hyman, MD: Is Your Digestive System Making You Sick?.
Aluminum bottle manufacturer admits bottles leach BPA
Gaiam admits that bottles previously labeled “BPA-free” leach BPA at nearly 20 times SIGG’s levels.
Full Story: Aluminum bottle manufacturer admits bottles leach BPA | MNN – Mother Nature Network.
Barbara Boxer Tackles Toxic School Drinking Water
A California senator called on the head of the Environmental Protection Agency on Monday to disclose how the agency plans to address the widespread problem of toxic drinking water in the nation’s schools.
Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer wrote the agency in response to an Associated Press investigation showing water supplies at thousands of schools have been found to contain unsafe levels of lead, pesticides and dozens of other toxics.
Contaminants have surfaced at public and private schools in all 50 states, and in small towns and inner cities alike over the last decade. But the AP found the problem has gone largely unmonitored by the federal government, even as the number of water safety violations has multiplied.
Boxer, who chairs the Senate committee that oversees the EPA, said she took action out of “deep concern” that polluted water supplies could be harming school children as their young bodies are developing.
Full Story: Barbara Boxer Tackles Toxic School Drinking Water.
A Solution For Diabetes: A Plant-Based Diet
I’ve been researching the most common and devastating diseases Americans are dealing with, with the aim of finding a common thread running throughout both cause and reversal. As it is now, one out of every two of us will get cancer or heart disease, and one out of every three children born after the year 2000 will be diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. These are devastating diseases, certainly to those who are burdened by them, but also to a health care system that is struggling to keep up.
The extraordinary doctors and nutritional scientists I’ve talked with seem to be saying – and saying fervently – the same thing: a diet high in animal protein is disastrous to our health, while a plant-based (vegan) diet prevents disease and is restorative to our health. And they say this with peer-reviewed (the gold standard of studies) science to back them up. Even the very conservative ADA (American Dietetic Association) says: “Vegetarian diets are often associated with a number of health advantages, including lower blood cholesterol levels, lower risk of heart disease, lower blood pressure levels, and lower risk of hypertension and type 2 diabetes. Vegetarians tend to have a lower body mass index (BMI) and lower overall cancer rates.”
Diabetes does not just mean you take a pill or injection every day. It means you can lose a decade of life. And you while you inch toward that uncomfortable end, you deal with an increased risk of heart attack, blindness, amputation, and loss of kidney function. It’s a very serious disease. The good news is that diabetes can be halted and reversed in a very short time through some diet modifications.
Full Story: Kathy Freston: A Solution For Diabetes: A Plant-Based Diet.
More US schools shun sale of ‘junk food’
“The school environment is a key setting for influencing children’s food choices and eating habits,” said Howell Wechsler, director of CDC’s Division of Adolescent and School Health, in hailing a trend toward healthier food in US schools.
“By ensuring that only healthy food options are available, schools can model healthy eating behaviors, help improve students’ diets, and help young people establish lifelong healthy eating habits,” he said.
The CDC report, “Availability of Less Nutritious Snack Foods and Beverages in Secondary Schools,” found that among 34 states surveyed, 63 percent of schools now refrain from selling soda or fruit drinks that are not 100 percent juice. That was up from 38 percent the previous year.
Full Story: AFP: More US schools shun sale of ‘junk food’.
The Most Dangerous Foods (PHOTOS)
Leafy greens, such as spinach and lettuce, are the riskiest food in the United States, according to a study released Tuesday by the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI).
Three hundred and sixty-three outbreaks and 13,568 illnesses were attributed to leafy greens in the last 20 years. Eggs rank as the second riskiest food, with 352 outbreaks involving 11,163 reported cases of illness. Tuna, oysters, potatoes, cheese, ice cream, tomatoes, sprouts, and berries round out the top ten. the group’s study cites E. Coli, Salmonella, Norovirus and other potentially deadly pathogens as the top culprits of foodborne illnesses in the United States.
Various industries criticized the study’s findings due to their association with foods cited in the top ten list. In response to one of the study’s more surprising findings–that ice cream is in danger of transmitting Salmonella–the National Milk Producers Federation released a statement accusing the study of basing its findings on outdated information. “Cheese and ice cream products are among the safest, most stringently regulated foods in this country,” the federation wrote in a press release.
Full Story: The Most Dangerous Foods (PHOTOS).
Debunking the Most Popular Soy Myths
Is Soy the Ticket to Good Health or Infertility? Here’s the Scoop. Some tout soy products as a panacea for health and wellness, while others swear that soy is a sure ticket to infertility and “man boobs.” What are the facts?
By Sarah Irani, EcoSalon - The topic of soy can create a big debate among healthy folks, and the viewpoints can be extreme. Who knew a humble green bean could be so controversial? Some tout soy products as a panacea for health and wellness, while others swear that soy is a sure ticket to infertility and “man boobs”. What are the facts?
Aren’t Asian cultures particularly healthy because of consumption of soy?
Asians don’t actually eat as much soy as we think – only about 10-36 grams per day. In contrast, a cup of tofu or soy milk contains over 200 grams of soy. Besides, the most common soy foods in Asia are fermented products such as tempeh, miso and shoyu (soy sauce), while most Westerners eat unfermented, highly processed versions of soy. Unfermented soy contains enzyme inhibitors that block protein digestion (among other things we’ll get to below).
Full Story: Debunking the Most Popular Soy Myths | EcoSalon.
What If Being Fat Is Not Your Fault? America’s Obesity Epidemic May Be Fueled by Chemicals in Everyday Products
By Tara Lohan, AlterNet.
It’s hard to escape the image of Americans as slothful and overweight. But what if being fat weren’t totally our fault?
The narrative we pound into our heads everyday is that we live in a country where fast food rules, where morning coffee drinks can provide nearly one-quarter of your daily calories before you even get to breakfast, and where you can have pizza topped with Oreos.
And there’s the issue that less than a quarter of us exercise regularly, and on average we spend 142 hours a month lounging on our couches, our eyes glued to a TV.
So it’s no wonder that the Centers for Disease Control report that more than a staggering 60 percent of adults and 16 percent of children are obese. In the last three decades, obesity has doubled among adults and tripled among children. And experts say there are a range of issues that contribute to it — the most obvious is of course diet and exercise.
8 Reasons You Should Stop Drinking Milk Now
Living the dairy-free life is a very, very green choice
: Planet Green - What could be more American than a glass of milk? Cow’s milk, that is. In light of this common perception, the time is long overdue to add the milk mustache to that ever-growing list of American myths. Human beings are not designed to drink any milk except human milk (only during infancy, of course). As you’ll see below, consuming dairy products—milk, cheese, yogurt, sour cream, ice cream, etc.—is not green and it’s not healthy.
It’s also a nightmare for the cows themselves. Here’s a little of how the folks at GoVeg describe it: “The 9 million cows living on dairy farms in the United States spend most of their lives in large sheds or on feces-caked mud lots, where disease is rampant. Cows raised for their milk are repeatedly impregnated. Their babies are taken away so that humans can drink the milk intended for the calves. When their exhausted bodies can no longer provide enough milk, they are sent to slaughter and ground up for hamburgers.
Full Story: 8 Reasons You Should Stop Drinking Milk Now : Planet Green.
Chronic Illness-What Works? Understanding Metabolic Detoxification
Jeffrey Bland, Ph.D:
Just because a healthcare concept is not new does not mean it should be overlooked as potentially important in improving health and reducing the burden of chronic disease. Today’s post is Part Two in a series called “Chronic Illness: What Works,” and I base my observations and recommendations on my 30+ years as a nutritional biochemist and healthcare advocate. In Part One of this series I discussed the Four R Program. Today I will focus on a therapy called “Metabolic Detoxification.”
Years ago, the term “detoxification” was often only applied to a program for those with a drug or alcohol abuse issue, but today there are much broader and more significant applications of this concept in health care. What are the summary guidelines of a well-designed program that differentiates a “fad” detoxification program from a properly managed and professionally supervised metabolic detoxification program. From my experience, the characteristics of a safe metabolic detoxification program should include the following:
Full Story: Jeffrey Bland, Ph.D: Chronic Illness-What Works? Understanding Metabolic Detoxification.
40 Books About Sexuality That You Have to Read
From orgasms to organs, from contraceptives to court decisions, look to the reading list below for the can’t-miss books and articles about sex.
By Anna Clark, AlterNet.
As the new school year heats up, so does the public debate about sex education. What do we teach teenagers about sex, and what do we leave them to figure out on their own? If we can agree that few teens learn about sexuality in an accurate, age-appropriate, and comprehensive way, then where does that leave adults who came through the same school systems they did? Many of us are still full of questions that we aren’t quite sure how to articulate. Few can claim that they’ve figured sex — and its social influence — out.
If you want to graduate to the next level of sexual health, pleasure, and social awareness, now’s your chance. Get yourself schooled with a crash course in sex ed for adults. From orgasms to organs, from contraceptives to court decisions, look to the reading list below for the can’t-miss books and articles about sex.
Take your time, because there will be a test. Probably many tests, actually. And you want to be ready.
Full Story: 40 Books About Sexuality That You Have to Read | | AlterNet.
Fast Food Monstrosities: Why Would Someone Eat a 1400 Calorie Sandwich?
The KFC Double Down: This Is Why the Terrorists Hate Our Freedom
Big fast food chains are competing to build bigger, badder and more insanely calorific food. And we eat it. What the hell is wrong with us?
Some weeks ago, I was startled by a surging news item that I thought couldn’t possibly be real. There was this video — a YouTube video, in fact, and we all know how reliable those tend to be — that someone took of a television advertisement. It’s grainy and the sound is high-pitched and tinny, but still, there it was: If this ad was to be believed, Kentucky Fried Chicken was now going to sell a bacon and cheese sandwich that featured two thick slabs of fried chicken instead of bread. They call it the “Double Down.” I assumed the name to be a playful take on what happens to your lifespan after eating one of these monstrosities. It was outrageous. It was hilarious. It couldn’t honestly be real…could it? I was dubious, but then again, this is KFC we’re talking about here. This is the same restaurant chain that comic Patton Oswalt scathingly lampooned, likening their most popular dish — a tub filled with seemingly every KFC menu item covered in cheese and gravy — to a “failure pile in a sadness bowl.” But a bowl of food I can understand, if not order for myself. A mountainous double fistful of fried chicken, bacon, cheese and sauce, on the other hand, seemed so egregious as to defy human comprehension.
Full Story: The KFC Double Down: This Is Why the Terrorists Hate Our Freedom | Meat.
Lower Your Risk Of Heart Disease Without Drugs
Mark Hyman, MD:
Last week, I explained how preventing heart disease has very little to do with simply lowering cholesterol with statin drugs. Our current thinking about how to treat and prevent heart disease is at best misguided, and at worst harmful. We believe we are treating the causes of heart disease by lowering cholesterol, lowering blood pressure, lowering blood sugar with medication. But the real question is what causes high cholesterol, high blood pressure and high blood sugar in the first place. (i) It is certainly not a medication deficiency!
If you say your genes are responsible, you are mostly wrong. It is the environment working on your genes that determines your risk. In other words, it is the way you eat, how much you exercise, how you deal with stress and the effects of environmental toxins (ii) that are the underlying causes of high cholesterol, high blood pressure and high blood sugar. That is what determines your risk of heart disease, not a lack of medication.
The research clearly shows that changing how we live is a much more powerful intervention for preventing heart disease than any medication. The “EPIC” study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine studied 23,000 people’s adherence to 4 simple behaviors (not smoking, exercising 3.5 hours a week, eating a healthy diet [fruits, vegetables, beans, whole grains, nuts, seeds, and limited amounts of meat], and maintaining a healthy weight [BMI <30]). In those adhering to these behaviors, 93% of diabetes, 81% of heart attacks, 50% of strokes, and 36% of all cancers were prevented. (iii)
Full Story: Mark Hyman, MD: Lower Your Risk Of Heart Disease Without Drugs.
The Green, Clean Art of Keeping Our “Rear Ends” Hygienic: What Are We Afraid Of? | Health and Wellness | AlterNet
So, do you ever feel … not so fresh?
By Liz Langley, AlterNet. - This question is traditionally asked by young women of their mom’s on boats in douche ads, but this one is directed at everybody and the answer is probably “Yes.”
Whether it’s from being hermetically sealed in pantyhose all day, from sweating inside wooly winter wear or dripping with summer heat, feeling no-so-fresh is easier than the acres of body care products in the store would suggest.
And the fact is that most Americans aren’t as clean as they imagine themselves to be. We pay catlike attention to grooming, and yet all that Purell-ing sort of fades at the thought that we’re walking around with our nether regions shmeared with — there’s no nice way to say it — poop.
So, how can this be if Americans use about 36.5 billion rolls of toilet paper a year?
Full Story: The Green, Clean Art of Keeping Our “Rear Ends” Hygienic: What Are We Afraid Of? | Health and Wellness | AlterNet.
A Cure For Cancer? Eating A Plant-Based Diet
I have been working closely recently with a few extraordinary nutritional researchers, and I find that the information they have compiled is quite eye opening. Interestingly, what these highly esteemed doctors are saying is just beginning to be understood and accepted, perhaps because what they are saying does not conveniently fit in with or support the multi-billion dollar food industries that profit from our “not knowing”. One thing is for sure: we are getting sicker and more obese than our health care system can handle, and the conventional methods of dealing with disease often have harmful side effects and are ineffective for some patients.
As it is now, one out of every two of us will get cancer or heart disease and die from it – an ugly and painful death as anyone who has witnessed it can attest. And starting in the year 2000, one out of every three children who are born after that year will develop diabetes–a disease that for most sufferers (those with Type 2 diabetes) is largely preventable with lifestyle changes. This is a rapidly emerging crisis, the seriousness of which I’m not sure we have yet recognized. The good news is, the means to prevent and heal disease seems to be right in front of us; it’s in our food. Quite frankly, our food choices can either kill us – which mounting studies say that they are, or they can lift us right out of the disease process and into soaring health.
Full Story: Kathy Freston: A Cure For Cancer? Eating A Plant-Based Diet.
Makers of Tylenol Recall Some Kids Medicines
The makers of Tylenol are voluntarily recalling some lots of Infants’ and Children’s Tylenol as a precaution.
NBC Dallas-Fort Worth – The recall covers batches of children’s Tylenol and infant drops made between April and June 2008. (Click here to read a full list of the recalled lots. Lot numbers can be found by looking on the box or on the bottle.)
“It’s kind of scary, because you don’t know if you should buy it or not buy it,” parent Liz Hernandez said. “There’s nothing else to give him. What’s supposed to be safer than Tylenol?”
She said she gives her son children’s Tylenol when he gets sick.
McNeil Consumer Healthcare, Tylenol’s manufacturer, said that bacteria were detected in the raw material of one of the inactive ingredients.
The company said no bacteria were found in any finished Tylenol product.
Full Story: Makers of Tylenol Recall Some Kids Medicines | NBC Dallas-Fort Worth.
13 Natural Hangover Cures: Quick Remedies Or False Hope? (PHOTOS)
Hangovers happen to the very best of us. We all know the familiar story: the evening starts off innocently enough–you go to a party to unwind after a long day and knock back a few cocktails to relax the nerves. The next thing you know you’re drunk-texting your ex while dancing on top of your friend’s coffee table to music you would never listen to sober–well maybe that’s going a bit far. The next morning you wake up feeling like a miniature bomb went off inside your skull. Welcome to hangover-ville. Don’t feel too down–HuffPost Living is here to help you out by recommending a few all-natural remedies to rid you of the hangover blues. But we’ll leave it to you to decide whether these remedies are the real deal or the new-age equivalent of Milli Vanilli.
Full Story: 13 Natural Hangover Cures: Quick Remedies Or False Hope? (PHOTOS) (POLL).
Are Chicken and Fish as Unhealthy as Red Meat?
In the interest of your health, the environment and even logic, it makes more sense to leave chicken and fish off your plate. Here’s why.
Over the last couple of years, I’ve noticed some similar recurring responses that people have when I tell them I’m vegan.
They go something like this, “Oh, I’m practically a vegetarian. I mean, I don’t eat red meat.” Or, “I don’t eat any land animals, just fish.”
Maybe people equate red meat with more health risks, or maybe people can more readily identify with cows or lambs or pigs, and so they stop eating them. Whatever the reason, it seems the majority is more comfortable forgoing steak rather than sushi.
But, in the interest of logic, ethics and even your health, it makes more sense to leave chicken and fish off your plate.
Why? Well, if you’re concerned with how the animals you eat are treated, hear this: chickens are probably the most abused animals on the planet.
I’m not kidding.
Full Story: Are Chicken and Fish as Unhealthy as Red Meat? | Health and Wellness | AlterNet.
Why Is Big Pharma Trying to Tell You How to Have Sex?
Female sexual dysfunction was wholly created by drug companies hoping to make even bigger money off women than they have off men.Sexual Healing – Carnal Knowledge
JoAnn Wypijewski - In the beginning there was sex. And sex begat skill, and skill (or its absence) begat judgment, and judgment begat insecurity, and insecurity begat doctors’ visits, which begat treatments, which have flourished into a multibillion-dollar industry, so that sex between men and women is today almost inconceivable without the shadow of disorder, dysfunction, the “little blue pill” or myriad other medical interventions designed to bring sex back to some longed-for beginning: a state of certified healthfulness, the illusion of normal.
Sex has been missing from the healthcare debate. A shame, because sexual health, and disputes over its meaning, reveals most nakedly the problem at the core of a medical system that requires profit, huge profit, hence sickness, or people who can come to believe they are sick or deformed or lacking and therefore in need of a pill, a procedure or device. Case in point: female sexual dysfunction (FSD), said to afflict great numbers of women–43 percent according to some, 70 percent according to others, an “epidemic” in the heterosexual bedroom according to Oprah. Ka-ching!
More on that in a moment, but first a bit about FSD’s precursor, hysteria, and the rustic science of bringing women off.
Full Story: Sexual Healing.
Risks From Toxic Ingredients In Cosmetics, And Personal Care Products
The Cancer Prevention Coalition and Organic Consumers Association warn of major risks to health from the great majority of cosmetics and personal care products.
As the Obama Administration works with Congress to pass comprehensive health care reform legislation this year, President Barack Obama told reporters at the July 10 Group of 8 news conference, “We have to bend the cost curve on health care, and there are some very specific ways of doing that – - game changers that incentivize quality as opposed to quantity, that emphasize prevention.”
Most cosmetics and personal care products on store shelves today contain five major categories of toxic ingredients. These are: frank carcinogens (cancer causing); precursors of or “hidden” carcinogens; endocrine or hormonally disruptive; penetration enhancers; and allergens.
Full Story: Samuel S. Epstein: Risks From Toxic Ingredients In Cosmetics, And Personal Care Products.
Why Cooking Matters
We need radical thinking, but we don’t need a revolution. We don’t need an overthrow of capitalism. Nor do we need to become vegetarians. We need not become spartans. We’re just going to have to learn how to cook.
Dan Barber, The Nation. - It’s impossible to overemphasize the importance of good farming for safe and nutritious food. But the campaign for food democracy needs to start with boning knives and cast-iron skillets. A lack of technique behind the stove is, in the end, as complicit in harming human health and the environment as the confinement pig or the corn-fed steer.
Yes, that sixteen-ounce rib-eye takes precious resources like water (approximately 2,500 gallons) and grain (about twelve pounds) away from feeding the poor, and the environmental havoc associated with raising beef most often affects the disenfranchised. By 2050, if we continue this gorging, livestock will be consuming as much as 4 billion people do.
These horrors of conventional animal husbandry are tied to the amount of meat we eat, which is intimately linked to the parts of the animal we choose to eat. That is, choosing the rib-eye–as opposed to choosing, say, the brisket–determines how many animals are produced.
Full Story: Why Cooking Matters.
Food Industry Is Now Calling Junk Food ‘Healthy’ – Why Could That Be?
By Jim Hightower, AlterNet. 
Food corporations are hoping to cash in on the growing public concern about nutrition by launching a program that labels some junk food healthy.
Smart is the new cool thing. There’s a smart car, cities now tout smart growth, and you can buy a smart refrigerator. Now comes another breakthrough: Even your breakfast cereal has gotten smart.
At least that’s what we consumers are being told by a group of major food corporations that are hoping to cash-in on the growing public concern about nutrition. Your concern is their concern, they say, so these eager-to-serve marketers have launched a snappy food labeling campaign to guide your nutritional choices. They’ve designated hundreds of their food products as being not just tasty, zesty and zowie — but also good for you.
You’ll know which ones to reach for on the supermarket shelf because they’ll be labeled with a snappy green checkmark on the front of their packages, along with the phrase, “Smart Choices.”
Full Story: Food Industry Is Now Calling Junk Food ‘Healthy’ – Why Could That Be? | | AlterNet.
Pollan says health-care reform will fail unless we change the way we eat
| Grist – NPR’s Guy Raz: What if health care is overhauled and it doesn’t change the American diet in any way?
Michael Pollan: We’ll go broke. If we don’t get a handle on these health care costs, the new system or the old system, we’ll go broke. And that’s why I think that really food is the elephant in the room when we’re talking about health care.
First in The New York Times last week and then on NPR this weekend, Michael Pollan made that point that if we want to fix our health-care system, we have to fix our food system.
From his op-ed in the Times:
[T]he fact that the United States spends twice as much per person as most European countries on health care can be substantially explained, as a study released last month says, by our being fatter. …
That’s why our success in bringing health care costs under control ultimately depends on whether Washington can summon the political will to take on and reform a second, even more powerful industry: the food industry. …
Cheap food is going to be popular as long as the social and environmental costs of that food are charged to the future. There’s lots of money to be made selling fast food and then treating the diseases that fast food causes. One of the leading products of the American food industry has become patients for the American health care industry.
Full Story: Pollan says health-care reform will fail unless we change the way we eat | Grist.
What’s the Deal With Vegetarianism?
Vegetarians and meat eaters clash constantly on the issue of whether or not it’s wrong to eat meat. 
There’s a range, for sure; from PETA activists to macrobiotics to self-described feminists to farmers, meat is a controversial issue. But now it’s time to know for sure: what’s the deal with vegetarianism?
The following is an excerpt from The Revolution Will Not Be Microwaved: Inside America’s Underground Food Movements by Sandor Ellix Katz. It has been adapted for the web.
: Chelsea Green - I love meat. The smell of it cooking can fill me with desire, and I find its juicy, rich flavor uniquely satisfying. At the same time, everything I see, hear, or read about standard commercial factory farming and slaughtering fills me with disgust. I hold great respect for the ideals that people seek to put into practice through vegetarianism.
Vegetarianism is the original manifestation of food activism. Since ancient times vegetarians have sought to embody ideals that they see as making the world a kinder, gentler place. A small minority of people throughout history—mostly inspired by religious ideals—have eschewed animal flesh, among them Buddhists, Hindus, Jains, Roman Catholic Trappist monks, and Essenes, an ancient Jewish sect. Historically vegetarianism has been a practice of asceticism: a rejection of material pleasure and an embrace of universal compassion. In more recent times vegetarianism has largely been motivated by political and ethical ideas, as well as the pursuit of good health, as we shall explore below.
Full Story: What’s the Deal With Vegetarianism? : Chelsea Green.
Some showerheads harbor disease-causing bacteria
What’s in your showerhead? Don’t wanna know, do you?
- USATODAY.com- Too late, you’re reading this — it’s disease-causing “mycobacteria” microbes stuck there in their own slime.
“Microbes are everywhere, so in fact finding them in showers is not a surprise,” says Laura Baumgartner of the University of Colorado, Boulder, an author of the showerhead survey study. “Finding large numbers of (disease-causing) mycobacteria was a bit of a surprise, though.”
Released Monday by the Proceedings of the National Academies of Science journal, the study looked at 45 showerheads in nine cities, including Denver and New York. Using standard genetic tests, the team looked for microbes, expecting to find harmless varieties usually seen in tap water.
Full Story: Some showerheads harbor disease-causing bacteria – USATODAY.com.
Health Reform Will Create a Dieting Revolution
Look out fast food; when insurance companies can’t dump the sick, they will have to strongly support healthy diets, or lose money.
To listen to President Obama’s speech on Wednesday night, or to just about anyone else in the health care debate, you would think that the biggest problem with health care in America is the system itself — perverse incentives, inefficiencies, unnecessary tests and procedures, lack of competition, and greed.
No one disputes that the $2.3 trillion we devote to the health care industry is often spent unwisely, but the fact that the United States spends twice as much per person as most European countries on health care can be substantially explained, as a study released last month says, by our being fatter. Even the most efficient health care system that the administration could hope to devise would still confront a rising tide of chronic disease linked to diet.
That’s why our success in bringing health care costs under control ultimately depends on whether Washington can summon the political will to take on and reform a second, even more powerful industry: the food industry.
Full Story: Michael Pollan: Health Reform Will Create a Dieting Revolution | | AlterNet.
ScienceNOW: Watch the Clock to Lose Weight
When we eat may be just as important as what we eat. A new study shows that mice that eat when they should be sleeping gain more weight than mice that eat at normal hours. Another study sheds light on why we pack on the pounds in the first place. Whether these studies translate into therapies that help humans beat obesity remains to be seen, but they give scientists clues about the myriad factors that they must take into account.
Observations of overnight workers have shown that eating at night disrupts metabolism and the hormones that signal we’re sated. But no one had done controlled studies on this connection until now. Biologist Fred Turek of Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, and graduate student Deanna Arble examined the link between a high-fat diet and what time of day mice eat. A control group of six nocturnal mice ate their pellets (60% fat by calories, mostly lard) during the night. Another group of six ate the same meal during the day, Turek says, which disrupts their circadian rhythm–the body’s normal 24-hour cycle.
After 6 weeks, the off-schedule mice weighed almost 20% more than the controls, Turek and Arble report today in Obesity, supporting the idea that consuming calories when you should be sleeping is harmful. Turek and Arble acknowledge that the disrupted mice ate a tad more and were a tad more sluggish, but the differences could not account for all of the weight gain.
Full Story: Watch the Clock to Lose Weight — Kean 2009 (903): 1 — ScienceNOW.
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If we don't change our ways soon...
A new report by the Royal Society, chaired by Nobel prize-winning biologist Sir John Sulston warns that world population must be stabilized and consumption in wealthy nations must be reduced or the entire planet is in big trouble. As the report reads: "The number of people living on the planet has never been higher, their levels of consumption are unprecedented and vast changes are taking place in the environment. We can choose to rebalance the use of resources to a more egalitarian pattern of consumption... or we can choose to do nothing and to drift into a downward spiral of economic and environmental ills leading to a more unequal and inhospitable future."This is the same warning that President Jimmy Carter gave Americans back in the 1970's - but it was ignored when Ronald Reagan came to power with a "more positive" message basically telling Americans we can do whatever we want. And then after 9/11 - Bush told us all we should go shopping and consume ever more.And now with corporations calling the shots in Washington - long-term sustainability of the planet takes a back seat to short-term profits. If we don't change our ways soon - and embrace clean, alternative energy and educate women around the plant - then we all could be headed for a rough century.-Thom(Is there any chance we will learn in time? Tell us here.) -
LEGALIZE Democracy
" We the corporations" On January 21, 2010, with its ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, the Supreme Court ruled that corporations are persons, entitled by the U.S. Constitution to buy elections and run our government. __________
MOVE to AMEND
a project of the CAMPAIGN TO LEGALIZE Democracy
Help end Corporate personhood
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The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness. 
moveon.org
