Disinformation » Health

Smart Drugs To Make Your Brain Function Better

majestic — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 01:33:25 +0000

The intrepid Ari Levaux tests so-called “smart” nootropic drugs so that you don’t have to (including Joe Rogan’s Alpha Brain), for The Atlantic:

Hunters will go to great lengths to gain an edge over their prey. You never know where the margin between success and failure may lie, so you wake up extra early, say a prayer, spray bottled deer piss on your boots, and do whatever else you think might increase your odds. My schedule recently got more demanding thanks to a new baby. With less time to kill and another mouth to feed, I’ve had to step up my game.

Hunting can be physically demanding but, assuming that you’re prepared, it’s mostly mental. Staying sharp is how opportunities are created. I ordered a bottle of nootropic pills, in case it might help.

Nootropic (new-tro-pik) is the term for supplements, also known as smart drugs, that improve brain function. They can be food substances like phenethylamine and L-Theanine, found in chocolate and green tea, respectively. Nootropics also include extracted and purified components of medicinal plants, as well as substances synthesized from chemical precursors, such as piracetam, the world’s first official nootropic (piracetam was created in 1964 in Belgium by a team of scientists whose leader, Dr. Corneliu E. Giurgea, coined the term). Since then piracetam has been widely used as a cognitive enhancer and to treat neurological diseases like Alzheimer’s.

Some people consider stimulants to be a form of nootropic, while others distinguish them from the likes of caffeine, and Adderall — of which there’s currently a nationwide shortage. Most legal users of this attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) drug are children; it’s prescribed sparingly in adults for fear of abuse. The FDA caused the shortage by halting delivery to drug manufacturers of the drug’s active ingredient, an amphetamine, for months, arguing that enough Adderall had already been produced to satisfy all legal demand. The agency argued that abusers of Adderall are responsible for the shortage. That’s a group that includes students and professionals using Adderall to help boost productivity during stressful times.

I chose the nootropic pills I ordered, a formulation called Alpha Brain, mainly because their ingredients are extracted rather than synthesized. I swallowed some the day they arrived, and waited to become mentally sharp. I wanted fireworks bright enough to eliminate all doubt about whether they worked.

Nothing happened until I was falling asleep, when I became distinctly aware that I was falling asleep. I monitored the entire process and remained lucid, with a measure of free will, as I dreamed, and woke up surprisingly refreshed. While I remembered many of my dreams, some of which were quite long, I couldn’t recall how my underpants ended up around my ankles…

[continues in The Atlantic]

Sugar Should Be Regulated As A Toxin

majestic — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 01:18:41 +0000

Personally I’d prefer to see the likes of aspartame, saccharin, sucralose and the other artificial sweeteners outlawed (not to mention the ubiquitous High-Fructose Corn Syrup) … From Live Science via Yahoo News:

A spoonful of sugar might make the medicine go down. But it also makes blood pressure and cholesterol go up, along with your risk for liver failure, obesity, heart disease and diabetes.

Sugar and other sweeteners are, in fact, so toxic to the human body that they should be regulated as strictly as alcohol by governments worldwide, according to a commentary in the current issue of the journal Nature by researchers at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF).

The researchers propose regulations such as taxing all foods and drinks that include added sugar, banning sales in or near schools and placing age limits on purchases.

Although the commentary might seem straight out of the Journal of Ideas That Will Never Fly, the researchers cite numerous studies and statistics to make their case that added sugar — or, more specifically, sucrose, an even mix of glucose and fructose found in high-fructose corn syrup and in table sugar made from sugar cane and sugar beets — has been as detrimental to society as alcohol and tobacco…

[continues at Live Science via Yahoo News]

‘Magic Mushroom Therapy’ Clinical Trials May Begin This Year In U.K.

JacobSloan — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 13:00:47 +0000

We may be just a few years away from going to our neighborhood pharmacies for our monthly supply of medicinal mushrooms. From the Independent:

Magic mushrooms could one day be prescribed for depression after Professor David Nutt, the controversial sacked government drugs advisor, claimed research on healthy volunteers proved what a mistake it was to abandon therapeutic psychedelic drugs more than 50 years ago.

The first clinical trial into magic mushroom therapy could start by the end of the year after two small studies suggested the active chemical, psilocybin, had a profound affect on key regions of the brain.

Professor Nutt’s team, at Imperial College London, hope to test the hallucinogen on depressed patients who have not benefited from antidepressants or behavioural therapy.

Psilocybin would be infused into their bloodstreams before a psychotherapy session, tailored to elicit positive memories. If funding is approved by the Medical Research Council it would represent a major step towards mainstream rehabilitation for such drugs since LSD was banned in 1966.

The first study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, involved scanning the brains of 30 people given the drug intravenously to measure changes in blood flow and activity. Unexpectedly, the MRI scans showed the drug caused activity to decrease in hub areas with dense connections to other areas. It disconnected two key hubs: the medial prefrontal cortex, which is hyperactive in people with depression, and the posterior cingulate cortex, thought to play a role in self-awareness.

Fried Food Not A Cause Of Heart Disease

majestic — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 14:30:53 +0000

The Telegraph’s Stephen Adams reports on a new study belittling the “myth” that regularly eating fried foods causes heart attacks:

They say there is mounting research that it is the type of oil used, and whether or not it has been used before, that really matters.

The latest study, published in the British Medical Journal, found no association between the frequency of fried food consumption in Spain – where olive and sunflower oils are mostly used – and the incidence of serious heart disease.

However, the British Heart Foundation warned Britons not to “reach for the frying pan” yet, pointing out that the Mediterranean diet as a whole was healthier than ours.

Spanish researchers followed more than 40,000 people, two-thirds of whom were women, from the mid 1990s to 2004.

At the outset they asked them how often they ate fried foods, either at home or while out. They then looked to see whether eating fried foods regularly increased the likelihood of falling ill from having coronary heart disease, such as a heart attack or angina requiring surgery.

Dividing participants into four groups, from lowest fried food intake to highest, they found no significant difference in heart disease.

There were 606 incidents linked to heart disease in total, but they were split relatively evenly between the four groups.

The authors concluded: “In a Mediterranean country where olive and sunflower oils are the most commonly used fats for frying, and where large amounts of fried foods are consumed both at and away from home, no association was observed between fried food consumption and the risk of coronary heart disease or death.”…

[continues in the Telegraph]

Twenty Percent Of Americans Had Mental Illness In Last Year

majestic — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 00:01:18 +0000

A shocking statistic, made worse when you learn that 60% of the mentally ill did not receive any treatment. From MedPage Today:

About 20% of American adults reported having had a mental illness during the preceding year, a government survey found.

The figure rose to almost 30% of those in the 18 to 25 age group, compared with 14.3% of patients 50 and older, according to researchers from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA).

And of the nearly 46 million U.S. adults who reported having had a mental, behavioral, or emotional disorder when surveyed in 2010, some 60% didn’t receive any treatment for the condition.

The most common reason for not getting mental healthcare was not being able to afford it.

The researchers noted that although the 20% figure is “relatively high,” just 5% reported having serious issues that interfered with their normal activities.

Although more of those with serious mental illness reported receiving treatment, a large proportion — 39% — didn’t receive any mental health services.

The unemployed, Medicaid beneficiaries, and those living below the poverty level were more likely to have mental illness in the preceding year, as were younger patients. Women appeared to be at greater risk than men (23% versus 16.8%)…

[continues at MedPage Today]

Tuberculosis Strain Totally Resistant To Antibiotics Spreads In India

majestic — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 13:50:12 +0000

Sputum sample containing Mycobacterium tuberculosis

Are we approaching the end of the wondrous age of antibiotics? Scientists have nothing to combat this strain of TB, as Eryn Brown reports for the LA Times:

At least a dozen people in India are infected with a type of tuberculosis that is resistant to all antibiotics used to treat the disease.

In December, the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases published an online report that documented four of the cases. This weekend, news outlets in India reported that there were actually at least 12 people with the drug-resistant lung disease.

Officials fear that what they’ve seen so far is just the beginning, and that many more cases are lurking undetected.

“It’s estimated that on average, a tuberculosis patient infects 10 to 20 contacts in a year, and there’s no reason to suspect that this strain is any less transmissible,” study co-author Zarir Udwadia of the Hinduja National Hospital and Medical Research Centre in Mumbai told New Scientist. “Short of quarantining them in hospitals with isolation facilities till they become non-infectious – which is not practical or possible – there is nothing else one can do to prevent transmission.”

Patients with TB must take antibiotics for a long time to cure the disease. Many don’t get the right medications, or don’t take their medications properly, which allows the evolution of drug-resistant strains.

Over time, TB-causing bacteria have become resistant to more and more types of antibiotics — and, now, apparently, all antibiotics…

[continues in the LA Times]

Bacon Shown To Increase Cancer Risk By 19%

majestic — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 13:43:34 +0000

Yet another item to scratch off the menu (and the same goes for other processed meats, to perhaps no disinformation reader’s surprise). From the Press Association via The Guardian:

Eating two rashers of bacon a day can increase the risk of pancreatic cancer by 19% and the risk goes up if a person eats more, experts have said.

Eating 50g of processed meat every day – the equivalent to one sausage or two rashers of bacon – increases the risk by 19%, compared to people who do not eat processed meat at all.

For people consuming double this amount of processed meat (100g), the increased risk jumps to 38%, and is 57% for those eating 150g a day. But experts cautioned that the overall risk of pancreatic cancer was relatively low – in the UK, the lifetime risk of developing the disease is one in 77 for men and one in 79 for women.

Nevertheless, the disease is deadly – it is frequently diagnosed at an advanced stage and kills 80% of people in under a year. Only 5% of patients are still alive five years after diagnosis…

[More from the Press Association via The Guardian]

Moderate Marijuana Smoking Doesn’t Hurt Lungs

majestic — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 21:20:10 +0000

Good news for those who partake via AP/Fox News:

Smoking a joint once a week or a bit more apparently doesn’t harm the lungs, suggests a 20-year study that bolsters evidence that marijuana doesn’t do the kind of damage tobacco does.

The results, from one of the largest and longest studies on the health effects of marijuana, are hazier for heavy users – those who smoke two or more joints daily for several years. The data suggest that using marijuana that often might cause a decline in lung function, but there weren’t enough heavy users among the 5,000 young adults in the study to draw firm conclusions.

Marijuana is an illegal drug under federal law although some states allow its use for medical purposes.

The study by researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, and the University of Alabama at Birmingham was released Tuesday by the Journal of the American Medical Association.

The findings echo results in some smaller studies that showed while marijuana contains some of the same toxic chemicals as tobacco, it does not carry the same risks for lung disease…

[continues at AP/Fox News]

Truly Free Healthcare: Is it Possible?

Jin_TheNinja — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 15:30:40 +0000

Krista Simpson describes a student-run, multi-discipline health care center, that requires no ID, no insurance, and no fees, for Torontoist. Is this a possible future model, not just for a marginalised identity-less population, but for Canada and the world at large?

At IMAGINE, a clinic organized and run by U of T students, multidisciplinary teams provide medical care to patients who would otherwise go without.

The life of someone studying in a medical field is a busy one, but for a group of University of Toronto students, even the hectic schedule does not stop them from taking on an extra project.

They are volunteers at a clinic called IMAGINE, an acronym for Interprofessional Medical and Allied Groups for Improving Neighbourhood Environments, which runs out of the Queen West Community Health Centre (168 Bathurst Street) on Saturdays. Patients do not need a health card or identification to be seen. Most who come through their doors are homeless or are new immigrants.

The clinic is organized and run by students who see patients under the supervision of a professional in their field. Neither the students nor their preceptors get paid for their hours. They do not accumulate any school credit. But for them, the experience is worth it.

“We’re serving people. We’re serving the population that needs it most. And we’re potentially changing people’s lives and allowing them to get even that first point of access into their lives and seeing what can be changed,” explains Yick Kan Cheung, a 23-year-old student of social work who is one of IMAGINE’s current co-directors…

Smart Contact Lenses To Monitor Your Health And Treat Disease

majestic — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 12:13:07 +0000

This is so Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol! From CBS Pittsburgh:

Forty-million Americans wear contact lenses. In the not so distant future, contacts may do a lot more than just help you see.

What if the lenses could look inside of you to diagnose, monitor and even treat disease? Sound far-fetched? Well, it may not be too far away.

The new generation of contact lenses is being called “smart lenses,” and they are packed with circuits, sensors and wireless technology – all designed to keep an eye on your health.

“There’s a possibility to develop a really, really important new tool for medicine,” said Babak Parviz, PH.D., the developer of the Smart Lens.

A team of researchers at the University of Washington built and are testing the smart lens. They believe it could one day replace the standard blood test…

[continues at CBS Pittsburgh]

Mountain Dew Will Dissolve Rats On Contact

ralph — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 07:14:13 +0000

If you like soft drinks the way I do, that is, looking like my conception of nuclear waste, this is really good news. From the Smoking Gun:

Defending itself from a lawsuit claiming that an Illinois man found a dead mouse inside a can of Mountain Dew, PepsiCo contends that a rodent would have disintegrated and been transformed into a “jelly-like” substance between the time of the soft drink’s bottling and the day the plaintiff reportedly purchased the soda from a vending machine at his office.

In a court response to a motion filed by Ronald Ball–who claims to have found the dead mouse in a Mountain Dew can about three years ago–PepsiCo filed a fascinating/revolting affidavit from Lawrence McGill, a veterinarian who noted that he was “familiar with the effects an acidic fluid, such as common soda drinks including Mountain Dew, will have on mice and other animals.”

According to McGill, if a mouse is submerged in Mountain Dew between four and seven days, the rodent “will have no calcium in its bones and bony structures.” During those days of soft drink immersion, “the mouse’s abdominal structure will rupture.” Additionally, “its cranial cavity (head) is also likely to rupture within that time period,” McGill noted.

Broken Hearts Lead To Heart Attacks

majestic — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 13:50:05 +0000

Fibonacci (CC)

Yup, that’s right, a figurative broken heart is now positively linked to increased risk of a physical heart attack. Alice Park reports for Time:

Grief is a powerful emotion, and the latest research shows just how damaging it can be, especially for the heart.

The sobering results, appearing in the journal Circulation, is the first to compare how grief affects an individual’s heart disease risk within a period of time. Previous studies have documented that people losing loved ones tend to have more heart problems than those who aren’t bereaved. In the current analysis, lead author Elizabeth Mostofsky and her colleagues took a unique approach by calculating an individual’s “average loss” of loved ones over a year, by asking how many people study participants had lost in the past year, and comparing that figure to the number of loved ones that same person lost during the study period in question, which included the most recent day and week preceding a heart attack. Because all of the participants were heart attack patients, that allowed her to calculate the effect that losing a loved one had on each individual’s heart attack risk.

“We compared these patients’ losses in the recent past of the last day or week before their heart attack, to the loss we would have expected to see based on their loss [pattern] over the past six months,” says Mostofsky. “People who have a heart attack are more likely to have lost a person in the recent past than would have been expected based on the number they lost over the past six months to a year.”…

[continues at Time]

The Fake Sugar Rush

majestic — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 15:12:22 +0000

Can ingesting so many sugar wannabes be a good thing? Remember that saccharin and aspartame were once touted as safe and calorie free before they were found to be totally toxic. Anne Marie Chaker reports for the Wall Street Journal:

At the Whole Foods Market in Silver Spring, Md., the self-serve coffee counter offers four types of milk and nearly every imaginable alternative to granulated sugar. There’s unrefined sugar, evaporated cane juice, agave nectar—and a no-calorie sugar substitute called Truvia.

The green packets are tucked behind the cash register; if you want it, you have to ask. That’s because they have a way of disappearing. “People take a lot more than they need,” says Liz Burkhart, a Whole Foods spokeswoman.

Truvia’s maker, agricultural giant Cargill Inc., of Minneapolis, is aware that consumers often stock up on Truvia packets at coffee bars and in restaurants. Zanna McFerson, vice president and business director for Cargill Health and Nutrition, says Cargill is developing a dispenser that would limit the number of packets a consumer can take at once.

One reason Truvia is so appealing is its position as a “natural” alternative to aspartame, saccharin and other chemically derived sugar substitutes. Fans say they think Truvia’s taste and texture are closer to sugar than those of older entries. It’s true that Truvia pours out of the packet in convincing crystal-like granules, not in a powder. And when sprinkled on top of foods such as cereal, Truvia crunches.

Some detractors, though, complain of a Truvia aftertaste, especially when it is used in coffee. And many customers blanch at the price. A 40-count box of Truvia packets retails for $4.29 at the Giant Foods supermarket in Silver Spring, compared with $2.99 for a 50-count box of Splenda.

Few consumer products have been a greater marketing challenge than no-calorie sweeteners. Companies have devoted teams of scientists to trying to develop better-tasting sugar-substitutes. “I don’t think anyone’s cracked the code,” says Allen Adamson, managing director of the New York office of brand-consulting firm Landor Associates. Consumers resist, whether complaining about taste or worrying about safety.

Taste “used to be the only thing [marketers] had to worry about,” Mr. Adamson says. “Does it taste good? Is there an aftertaste?” Now, he says, “the new challenge is to alleviate the lingering concerns . . . . Did they really test it on enough rats over a long enough period of time?”…

[continues in the Wall Street Journal]

Mystery Kidney Disease Epidemic in Central America

Good German — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 01:55:08 +0000

Kate Sheehy reports for PRI’s The World:

In the western lowlands of Nicaragua, in a region of vast sugarcane fields, sits the tiny community of La Isla.The small houses are a patchwork of concrete and wood. Pieces of cloth serve as doors.

Maudiel Martinez emerges from his house to greet me. He’s pale, and his cheekbones protrude from his face. He hunches over like an old man — but he is only 19-years-old.

“The way this sickness is — you see me now, but in a month I could be gone. It can take you down all of a sudden,” he says. Maudiel’s kidneys are failing. They do not perform the essential function of filtering waste from his body. He’s being poisoned from the inside. When he got ill two years ago, he was already familiar with this disease and how it might end. “I thought about my father and grandfather,” he says. Both died of the same condition. Three of his brothers have it too.

All of them worked in the sugarcane fields.

You Can Remotely Hack Someone’s Insulin Pump To Kill Them

JacobSloan — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 19:00:51 +0000

A McAfee researcher has shown that it is possible to remotely hijack an insulin pump implanted in someone’s body. We may someday have internal devices that keep our organs functioning into super-old age, but will live in fear of computer viruses that explode hearts by sending pacemakers into hyperdrive, et cetera. The Register writes:

In a hack fitting of a James Bond movie, a security researcher has devised an attack that hijacks nearby insulin pumps, enabling him to surreptitiously deliver fatal doses to diabetic patients who rely on them.

The attack on wireless insulin pumps made by medical devices giant Medtronic was demonstrated Tuesday at the Hacker Halted conference in Miami. It was delivered by McAfee’s Barnaby Jack, the same researcher who last year showed how to take control of two widely used models of automatic teller machines so he could to cause them to spit out a steady stream of dollar bills.

“With this device I created and the software I created, I could actually instruct the pump to perform all manner of commands,” Jack told The Register. “I could make it dispense its entire reservoir of insulin, which is about 300 units. I just scan for any devices in the vicinity and they will respond with the serial number of the device.”

The hack he has devised would allow an attacker to manipulate the diabetic’s insulin injections and could possibly be used to kill the pump user. Radcliffe said that at first he thought it was cool for a tech standpoint and then since he uses an insulin pump he had an instance of “sheer terror” that there is no security on the devices.

An attacker according to Radcliffe could intercept wireless signals and broadcast a stronger signal to change the readout causing the person to adjust their dose. He also said that a person could do this from quite far away such as a few hundred feet away the attacker could do this from the same floor of a hospital or from the same airplane.

Study: Marijuana Legalization Reduces Traffic Deaths

JacobSloan — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 16:46:02 +0000

Legalizing pot across the nation would save many lives. The University of Colorado Denver Newsroom explains:

A groundbreaking new study shows that laws legalizing medical marijuana have resulted in a nearly 9 percent drop in traffic deaths and a 5 percent reduction in beer sales.

“Our research suggests that the legalization of medical marijuana reduces traffic fatalities through reducing alcohol consumption by young adults,” said Daniel Rees, professor of economics at the University of Colorado Denver who co-authored the study with D. Mark Anderson, assistant professor of economics at Montana State University.

The researchers collected data from a variety of sources including the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, and the Fatality Analysis Reporting System.

The study is the first to examine the relationship between the legalization of medical marijuana and traffic deaths.

“We were astounded by how little is known about the effects of legalizing medical marijuana,” Rees said. “We looked into traffic fatalities because there is good data, and the data allow us to test whether alcohol was a factor.”

Anderson noted that traffic deaths are significant from a policy standpoint. “Traffic fatalities are an important outcome from a policy perspective because they represent the leading cause of death among Americans ages five to 34,” he said.

The economists analyzed traffic fatalities nationwide, including the 13 states that legalized medical marijuana between 1990 and 2009. In those states, they found evidence that alcohol consumption by 20- through 29-year-olds went down, resulting in fewer deaths on the road.

Norway’s Low-Carb, High-Fat Diet Fad Has Caused a Butter Shortage

bluemana — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 05:00:35 +0000

Nick Carbone writes in TIME:

Denmark is trying to wean its people off butter by imposing a hefty “fat tax,” but their neighbors across the Skagerrak in Norway can’t get enough of the golden goodness. A diet fad in the Scandinavian country has depleted the nation’s supply of butter. While we’d use the term “diet” lightly, the newest craze is a low-carb, high-fat feeding frenzy that has put a strain on Norway’s butter supply.

“Sales all of a sudden just soared,” Lars Galtung, head of communications at TINE, the country’s biggest farmer-owned cooperative, told Reuters. “Twenty percent in October then thirty percent in November.” The fat fad coupled with a summer that saw a major reduction in milk production spells empty supermarket dairy fridges. This year’s wet summer ruined animal feed, reducing cows’ outputs to 25 million liters less than last year. As a result, this year’s hot Christmas item isn’t the iPad or an Angry Birds game; it’s much more primitive: butter …

A Vaccination Against Social Prejudice

Good German — Sun, 11 Dec 2011 04:30:10 +0000

Via ScienceDaily:

Evolutionary psychologists suspect that prejudice is rooted in survival: Our distant ancestors had to avoid outsiders who might have carried disease. Research still shows that when people feel vulnerable to illness, they exhibit more bias toward stigmatized groups. But a new study in Psychological Science, a journal published by the Association for Psychological Science suggests there might be a modern way to break that link.

“We thought if we could alleviate concerns about disease, we could also alleviate the prejudice that arises from them,” says Julie Y. Huang of the University of Toronto, about a study she conducted with Alexandra Sedlovskaya of Harvard University; Joshua M. Ackerman of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; and Yale University’s John A. Bargh. The group found that the sense of security derived through measures such as vaccination and hand washing can reduce bias against “out” groups, from immigrants to the obese.

The researchers conducted three experiments. The first two (with 135 and 26 participants, respectively) looked at people’s reactions to threats of the flu …

Lifestyle Causes 40% Of Cancers

majestic — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 13:58:06 +0000

OK, so now that you know you can drastically reduce your chances of developing cancer, will you change your lifestyle? Michelle Roberts reports for BBC News that you should:

Nearly half of cancers diagnosed in the UK each year – over 130,000 in total – are caused by avoidable life choices including smoking, drinking and eating the wrong things, a review reveals.

Tobacco is the biggest culprit, causing 23% of cases in men and 15.6% in women, says the Cancer Research UK report.

Next comes a lack of fresh fruit and vegetables in men’s diets, while for women it is being overweight.

BBC News

The report is published in the British Journal of Cancer.

Its authors claim it is the most comprehensive analysis to date on the subject.

Lead author Prof Max Parkin said: “Many people believe cancer is down to fate or ‘in the genes’ and that it is the luck of the draw whether they get it.

“Looking at all the evidence, it’s clear that around 40% of all cancers are caused by things we mostly have the power to change.”

For men, the best advice appears to be: stop smoking, eat more fruit and veg and cut down on how much alcohol you drink.

For women, again, the reviews says the best advice is to stop smoking, but also watch your weight…

[continues at BBC News]

How The Food Industry Eats Your Kid’s Lunch

majestic — Sun, 04 Dec 2011 14:07:35 +0000

Lucy Komisar, who contributed the essay “Dirty Money and Global Banking Secrecy” to the disinformation anthology Everything You Know Is Wrong, contributes a major op-ed to this Sunday’s New York Times:

An increasingly cozy alliance between companies that manufacture processed foods and companies that serve the meals is making students — a captive market — fat and sick while pulling in hundreds of millions of dollars in profits. At a time of fiscal austerity, these companies are seducing school administrators with promises to cut costs through privatization. Parents who want healthier meals, meanwhile, are outgunned.

Each day, 32 million children in the United States get lunch at schools that participate in the National School Lunch Program, which uses agricultural surplus to feed children. About 21 million of these students eat free or reduced-price meals, a number that has surged since the recession. The program, which also provides breakfast, costs $13.3 billion a year.

Sadly, it is being mismanaged and exploited. About a quarter of the school nutrition program has been privatized, much of it outsourced to food service management giants like Aramark, based in Philadelphia; Sodexo, based in France; and the Chartwells division of the Compass Group, based in Britain. They work in tandem with food manufacturers like the chicken producers Tyson and Pilgrim’s, all of which profit when good food is turned to bad.

Here’s one way it works. The Agriculture Department pays about $1 billion a year for commodities like fresh apples and sweet potatoes, chickens and turkeys. Schools get the food free; some cook it on site, but more and more pay processors to turn these healthy ingredients into fried chicken nuggets, fruit pastries, pizza and the like. Some $445 million worth of commodities are sent for processing each year, a nearly 50 percent increase since 2006…

[continues in the New York Times]

Laptop Wi-Fi Said to Nuke Sperm …?

phunkychic666 — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 04:28:11 +0000

Reports Reuters via Yahoo News:

The digital age has left men’s nether parts in a squeeze, if you believe the latest science on semen, laptops and wireless connections. In a report in the venerable medical journal Fertility and Sterility, Argentinian scientists describe how they got semen samples from 29 healthy men, placed a few drops under a laptop connected to the Internet via Wi-Fi and then hit download.

Four hours later, the semen was, eh, well-done. A quarter of the sperm were no longer swimming around, for instance, compared to just 14 percent from semen samples stored at the same temperature away from the computer.

And nine percent of the sperm showed DNA damage, three-fold more than the comparison samples. The culprit? Electromagnetic radiation generated during wireless communication, say Conrado Avendano of Nascentis Medicina Reproductiva in Cordoba and colleagues.

Sex Addiction – A Real Epidemic?

majestic — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 13:55:03 +0000

Newsweek devotes some serious column inches to the “epidemic” that has made its way into popular awareness via notable celebrities such as Tiger Woods and Domenique Strauss-Kahn:

Valerie realized that sex was wrecking her life right around the time her second marriage disintegrated. At 30, and employed as a human-resources administrator in Phoenix, she had serially cheated on both her husbands—often with their subordinates and co-workers—logging anonymous hookups in fast-food-restaurant bathrooms, affairs with married men, and one-night stands too numerous to count. But Valerie couldn’t stop. Not even after one man’s wife aimed a shotgun at her head while catching them in flagrante delicto. Valerie called phone-sex chat lines and pored over online pornography, masturbating so compulsively that it wasn’t uncommon for her to choose her vibrator over going to work. She craved public exhibitionism, too, particularly at strip clubs, and even accepted money in exchange for sex—not out of financial necessity but for the illicit rush such acts gave her.

For Valerie, sex was a form of self-medication: to obliterate the anxiety, despair, and crippling fear of emotional intimacy that had haunted her since being abandoned as a child. “In order to soothe the loneliness and the fear of being unwanted, I was looking for love in all the wrong places,” she recalls.

After a decade of carrying on this way, Valerie hit rock bottom. Facing her second divorce as well as the end of an affair, she grew despondent and attempted to take her life by overdosing on prescription medication. Awakening in the ICU, she at last understood what she had become: a sex addict. “Through sexually acting out, I lost two marriages and a job. I ended up homeless and on food stamps,” says Valerie, who, like most sex addicts interviewed for this story, declined to provide her real name. “I was totally out of control.”

“Sex addiction” remains a controversial designation—often dismissed as a myth or providing talk-show punchlines thanks to high-profile lotharios such as Dominique Strauss-Kahn and Tiger Woods. But compulsive sexual behavior, also called hypersexual disorder, can systematically destroy a person’s life much as addictions to alcohol or drugs can. And it’s affecting an increasing number of Americans, say psychiatrists and addiction experts. “It’s a national epidemic,” says Steven Luff…

[continues at Newsweek]

EU Bans Airport X-Ray Scanners Over Health Concerns

HAL9000 — Sat, 26 Nov 2011 23:30:08 +0000

Reports Julia Whitty on Mother Jones:

Citing health concerns, the European Union banned from European airports this week the same kind of X-ray scanners used by TSA in airports across the US. Here’s the EU’s wording:

In order not to risk jeopardising citizens’ health and safety, only security scanners which do not use X-ray technology are added to the list of authorised methods for passenger screening at EU airports.

In How Safe Are TSA’s Porno Scanners? I wrote about the risks of using ionizing radiation in routine airport screenings. Concerned scientists have noted the health risks of X-ray scanners, where even low levels of radiation increase cancer risks. They also note that TSA’s safety testing is flawed, since:

testing is not done on the skin, which receives most backscatter X-rays

the devices used for testing airport scanners are not designed for testing airport scanners

Worse, as Pro Publica points out, TSA’s safety tests are strangely obtuse:

The researchers’ names have been kept secret, and the report on the tests is so “heavily redacted” that “there is no way to repeat any of these measurements.”

Think Plastic Bottles Are Toxic? Try Canned Food

majestic — Thu, 24 Nov 2011 21:55:04 +0000

Here at disinformation we long ago dispensed with plastic water bottles in the wake of our film Tapped, but now it seems that canned foods are way more dangerous in terms of their delivery of BPAs into our bodies. Via CBS News:

Talk about stirring up controversy. A new study shows that the urine of people who consume canned soup can contain surprisingly high levels of bisphenol A (BPA), a hormone-disrupting compound linked to health problems including heart disease, diabetes, and obesity.

People who consumed one serving of canned soup a day for five days had a more than 1,000 percent increase in urinary BPA over people who consumed fresh soup for five days, the study showed.

“We’ve known for a while that drinking beverages that have been stored in certain hard plastics can increase the amount of BPA in your body,” study author Jenny Carwile, a doctoral student at Harvard School of Public Health, said in a written statement. “This study suggests that canned foods may be an even greater concern, especially given their wide use.”

BPA is used in the linings of metal food and beverage cans as well as in certain plastic bottles and dental sealants…

[continues at CBS News]

FDA Allows Meat and Produce To Be Blasted with Radioactive Nuclear Waste

Camron Wiltshire — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 04:59:36 +0000

Photo: DMKTirpitz (CC)

Ethan A. Huff writes on Natural News:

The use of pesticides and the presence of genetically-modified organisms (GMOs) are not the only major differentiating factors between conventional food and organic food. According to GreenMedInfo.com, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) allows the conventional food supply to be irradiated with nuclear waste at extremely high levels, and also treated with deadly bacteriophage virus “cocktails” in order to make it “safe” for consumers.

It is a dirty little secret of the factory food industry, and one that has remained largely veiled thanks to a lack of effective regulation concerning proper labeling. But everything from herbs and spices to vegetables and fruit is effectively murdered with Cobalt-60 gamma radiation derived from the waste of nuclear reactors before being sold to customers.

According to data listed on the FDA’s own website, fresh conventional foods are typically blasted with 1 kilogray (kGy) of gamma radiation, which is the equivalent of 16,700,000 chest X-rays, or 333 times the human lethal dose. Fresh poultry and red meat are subjected to 3 kGys and 4.5 kGys, respectively, with frozen red meat subjected to radiation blasts as high as 7 kGys.

The FDA has approved gamma radiation doses of 10 kGys for enzyme preparations, which include various food additives, solvents, preservatives, and antioxidants. And spices, herbs, and seasonings are permitted to be blasted with an astounding 30 kGys of gamma radiation, which is the equivalent of 500,000,000 chest X-rays, or 10,000 times the human lethal dose.

Parkinson’s Disease Linked To Common Chemical

majestic — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 14:27:10 +0000

The petro-chemical industry likes to portray itself as the progenitor of our rapidly-advancing technological society, but it will come as little surprise to some that there is a price to be paid, principally to the health of our planet and our selves. Neil Bowdler reports on a new study showing a six-times greater likelihood of developing Parkinson’s disease after exposure to trichloroethylene (once used as a general anesthetic), for BBC News:

An international study has linked an industrial solvent to Parkinson’s disease.

Researchers found a six-fold increase in the risk of developing Parkinson’s in individuals exposed in the workplace to trichloroethylene (TCE).

Although many uses for TCE have been banned around the world, the chemical is still used as a degreasing agent.

The research was based on analysis of 99 pairs of twins selected from US data records.

Parkinson’s can result in limb tremors, slowed movement and speech impairment, but the exact cause of the disease is still unknown, and there is no cure.

Research to date suggests a mix of genetic and environmental factors may be responsible. A link has previously been made with pesticide use.

‘Significant association’
The researchers from institutes in the US, Canada, Germany and Argentina, wanted to examine the impact of solvent exposure – specifically six solvents including TCE.

They looked at 99 sets of twins, one twin with Parkinson’s, the other without.

Because twins are genetically very similar or identical and often share certain lifestyle characteristics, twins were thought to provide a better control group, reducing the likelihood of spurious results.

The twins were interviewed to build up a work history and calculate likely exposure to solvents. They were also asked about hobbies.

The findings are presented as the first study to report a “significant association” between TCE exposure and Parkinson’s and suggest exposure to the solvent was likely to result in a six-fold increase in the chances of developing the disease…

[continues at BBC News]

OccupyWallStreet: Are You Concerned About ‘Zuccotti Lung’?

Join Or DIE — Sat, 12 Nov 2011 16:47:39 +0000

Matt Flegenheimer reports in the NY Times:

The chorus began quietly at a recent strategy session inside Zuccotti Park, with a single cough from a security team member, a muffled hack between puffs on his cigarette. Then a colleague followed. Then another.

Soon the discussion had devolved into a fit of wheezing, with one protester blowing his nose into the mulch between clusters of tents. “It’s called Zuccotti lung,” said Willie Carey, 28, a demonstrator from Chapel Hill, N.C. “It’s a real thing.”

As the weather turns, the protesters in Zuccotti Park, the nexus of the Occupy Wall Street protests in Lower Manhattan, have been forced to confront a simple truth: packing themselves like sardines inside a public plaza, where cigarettes are shared and a good night’s sleep remains elusive, may not be conducive to good health.

“Pretty much everything here is a good way to get sick,” said Salvatore Cipolla, 23, from Long Island. “It’ll definitely thin the herd.

Fetuses Can Sense Mothers’ Psychological States, Study Indicates

Good German — Sat, 12 Nov 2011 06:53:38 +0000

Via ScienceDaily:

As a fetus grows, it’s constantly getting messages from its mother. It’s not just hearing her heartbeat and whatever music she might play to her belly; it also gets chemical signals through the placenta. A new study, which will be published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, finds that this includes signals about the mother’s mental state. If the mother is depressed, that affects how the baby develops after it’s born.

In recent decades, researchers have found that the environment a fetus is growing up in — the mother’s womb — is very important. Some effects are obvious. Smoking and drinking, for example, can be devastating. But others are subtler; studies have found that people who were born during the Dutch famine of 1944, most of whom had starving mothers, were likely to have health problems like obesity and diabetes later.

Curt A. Sandman, Elysia P. Davis, and Laura M. Glynn of the University of California-Irvine study how the mother’s psychological state affects a developing fetus. For this study, they recruited pregnant women and checked them for depression before and after they gave birth. They also gave their babies tests after they were born to see how well they were developing.

They found something interesting: what mattered to the babies was if the environment was consistent before and after birth. That is, the babies who did best were those who either had mothers who were healthy both before and after birth, and those whose mothers were depressed before birth and stayed depressed afterward …

U.S. Government Glossed Over Cancer Concerns As It Rolled Out Airport X-Ray Scanners

Join Or DIE — Sun, 06 Nov 2011 21:53:07 +0000

Michael Grabell reports on ProPublica:

On Sept. 23, 1998, a panel of radiation safety experts gathered at a Hilton hotel in Maryland to evaluate a new device that could detect hidden weapons and contraband. The machine, known as the Secure 1000, beamed X-rays at people to see underneath their clothing.

One after another, the experts convened by the Food and Drug Administration raised questions about the machine because it violated a longstanding principle in radiation safety — that humans shouldn’t be X-rayed unless there is a medical benefit.

“I think this is really a slippery slope,” said Jill Lipoti, who was the director of New Jersey’s radiation protection program. The device was already deployed in prisons; what was next, she and others asked — courthouses, schools, airports? “I am concerned … with expanding this type of product for the traveling public,” said another panelist, Stanley Savic, the vice president for safety at a large electronics company. “I think that would take this thing to an entirely different level of public health risk.”

The machine’s inventor, Steven W. Smith, assured the panelists that it was highly unlikely that the device would see widespread use in the near future. At the time, only 20 machines were in operation in the entire country.

Exposure to BPA Before Birth Linked to Behavioral, Emotional Difficulties in Girls

Good German — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 17:32:52 +0000

Via ScienceDaily:

Exposure in the womb to bisphenol A (BPA) — a chemical used to make plastic containers and other consumer goods — is associated with behavior and emotional problems in young girls, according to a study led by researchers at Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH), Cincinnati Children’s Hospital and Medical Center, and Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, British Columbia.

BPA is found in many consumer products, including canned food linings, polycarbonate plastics, dental sealants, and some receipts made from thermal paper. Most people living in industrialized nations are exposed to BPA. BPA has been shown to interfere with normal development in animals and has been linked with cardiovascular disease and diabetes in people. In a 2009 study, HSPH researchers showed that drinking from polycarbonate bottles increased the level of urinary BPA.

In this study, published Oct. 24, 2011, in an advance online edition of Pediatrics, lead author Joe Braun, research fellow in environmental health at HSPH, and his colleagues found that gestational BPA exposure was associated with more behavioral problems at age 3, especially in girls.