Tag Archives | Health

The Extraordinary Science of Addictive Junk Food

Michael Moss pulls back just a fraction of the curtain on how giant food corporations collude to control your diet in a lengthy piece for the New York Times Magazine:

On the evening of April 8, 1999, a long line of Town Cars and taxis pulled up to the Minneapolis headquarters of Pillsbury and discharged 11 men who controlled America’s largest food companies. Nestlé was in attendance, as were Kraft and Nabisco, General Mills and Procter & Gamble, Coca-Cola and Mars. Rivals any other day, the C.E.O.’s and company presidents had come together for a rare, private meeting. On the agenda was one item: the emerging obesity epidemic and how to deal with it. While the atmosphere was cordial, the men assembled were hardly friends. Their stature was defined by their skill in fighting one another for what they called “stomach share” — the amount of digestive space that any one company’s brand can grab from the competition.

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Sacred Healing and O.B.E.

Down deep inside each of us there lives another. Not an altogether different other but an-other nonetheless and who not so easily met is patiently waiting, ever ready and eagerly willing to be known. That is, if the right conditions for the meeting are set.

This is the story of one such meeting. The conditions prepared, the time just right, and the hope of something completely different than any meeting at all was the goal…

man on a mission

It’s Martin Luther King Day 2007 and while working out at the gym I feel a terrible pain in my right foot. Fast forward seven days later and both of my ankles are swollen to the size of softballs and my knees were immensely swollen which left me on crutches at best or in pain in bed otherwise (which was most of the time). I could barely lift my right arm and the worst of all was my right hand pinky finger swelling to twice its size.… Read the rest

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Woman Dies From Drinking Too Much Coca-Cola

Coca-Cola Glas mit EisLet’s face it, drinking Coke just isn’t good for you. Not many people are going to die from it, but on the other hand why risk damaging your health at all? BBC News reports on the Kiwi who took her addiction to Coca-Cola way too far:

Drinking large quantities of Coca-Cola was a “substantial factor” in the death of a 30-year-old woman in New Zealand, a coroner has said.

Natasha Harris, who died three years ago after a cardiac arrest, drank up to 10 litres of the fizzy drink each day.

This is twice the recommended safe limit of caffeine and more than 11 times the recommended sugar intake.

Coca-Cola had argued that it could not be proved its product had contributed to Ms Harris’ death.

The coroner’s verdict came on the day Coca-Cola Sales said sales in Europe and China fell in the last quarter of 2012, and warned of a “volatile” year to come.

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Oxford University Study Shows Vegetarian Diet Reduces Heart Disease Risk by up to a Third

If you’re at all concerned about heart disease, you need to consider making plant foods most your diet. The film Planeat from Disinformation affiliate True Mind highlighted the groundbreaking work of doctors T. Colin Campbell and Caldwell Esselstyn, in which they demonstrated the benefits of plant-based diets for treating heart disease (not just reducing risk). Now Channel 4 News reports that in the biggest ever study of its kind in the UK, researchers from Oxford University have found a vegetarian diet dramatically reduces the risk of heart disease:

Fancy a burger tonight? A new report might make you think again about your dinner. Researchers from the University of Oxford have analysed the diets of almost 45,000 volunteers in England and Scotland, to compare the rates of heart disease in those who do, and don’t eat meat and fish.

The study, published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, found that vegetarians had a 32 per cent lower risk of falling ill or dying from heart disease.

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The Aspartame Epidemic

Photo: Bukowsky18 (CC)

[disinfo ed.'s note: this original essay was first published by disinformation on May 14, 2001. Some links and contact information may have changed.]

A worldwide epidemic is raging. The cause is a poisonous chemical sweetener, aspartame (marketed as NutraSweet, Equal, Spoonful), the most controversial food additive ever approved. In reality it is a drug which interacts with other drugs and changes brain chemistry.

H.J. Roberts, M.D., describes interactions with drugs such as Coumadin, Dilantin, Inderal, methyldopa or Aldomet, insulin, and lidocaine in Aspartame (NutraSweet): Is It Safe? [1]

From the paper Effects of Aspartame on the Brain: Neurologic Effects of Aspartame? by Richard J. Wurtman and Timothy J. Maher: “Compounds that do affect physiological systems are classified as drugs by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and are subject to considerably more demanding regulatory procedures than food constituents. However, and perhaps paradoxically because food additives must be shown to be physiologically inert in order to win initial FDA approval, once they have obtained this approval they are thereafter exempted from the requirement (imposed on all drugs) that their safety continue to be monitored.… Read the rest

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Atmospheric Oxygen Levels Are Dropping Faster Than Atmospheric Carbon Levels Are Rising

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c7/Earth6391.jpg/128px-Earth6391.jpgForget rising temperatures and bigger storms, this is the big problem that neither side of the mainstream debate over environmental destruction is talking about.  Peter Tatchell reported for the Guardian back in 2008:

The rise in carbon dioxide emissions is big news. It is prompting action to reverse global warming. But little or no attention is being paid to the long-term fall in oxygen concentrations and its knock-on effects.

Compared to prehistoric times, the level of oxygen in the earth’s atmosphere has declined by over a third and in polluted cities the decline may be more than 50%. This change in the makeup of the air we breathe has potentially serious implications for our health. Indeed, it could ultimately threaten the survival of human life on earth, according to Roddy Newman, who is drafting a new book, The Oxygen Crisis.

I am not a scientist, but this seems a reasonable concern.

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20,000 Emergency Room Visits Caused By Energy Drink Consumption In 2011

Idiocracy in our midst, via USA Today:

A new government survey suggests the number of people seeking emergency treatment after consuming energy drinks has doubled nationwide during the past four years.

From 2007 to 2011, the number of emergency room visits involving the neon-labeled beverages shot up from about 10,000 to more than 20,000, according to a survey of the nation’s hospitals released late last week by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.

The report doesn’t specify which symptoms brought people to the emergency room but calls energy drink consumption a “rising public health problem” that can cause insomnia, nervousness, headache, fast heartbeat and seizures that are severe enough to require emergency care. The findings came as concerns over energy drinks have intensified following reports last fall of 18 deaths possibly tied to the drinks.

 

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Cancer Loves Antioxidants

Picture: ECEMAML (PD)

Supplement addicts beware. It may be old news that Vitamin A elevates a smoker’s risk of developing lung cancer, but until now the general wisdom was that antioxidants are generally a good cancer preventative (except maybe Vitamin E). James Watson, Nobel Prize winner and co-discoverer of DNA, has news that will make you put down the vitamin bottle and rethink your approach to what you put in your body.

io9:

Celebrated geneticist James Watson, one of several researchers who won the Nobel Prize for discovering the structure of DNA, has just published what can only be called a cancer manifesto in Open Biology. It’s full of fairly harsh criticisms for current cancer researchers, but also suggests several ways forward in the “war on cancer.” Among other claims, Watson asserts that antioxidants like vitamin C — often recommended as cancer-prevention supplements — could be causing some forms of cancer.

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‘Old’ News: Regeneration May Bring Youth to Elderly

“SMI²LE: Space Migration Intelligence² Life Extension”
- Dr Timothy Leary

From the sounds of things a Wolverine style regeneration trick might be round the corner for humanity, or at least those of us who can afford it. It’s in its early stages but tired and feeble laboratory mice have already had their elderly bodies regenerated according to The Guardian:

The surprise recovery of the animals has raised hopes among scientists that it may be possible to achieve a similar feat in humans – or at least to slow down the ageing process.

An anti-ageing therapy could have a dramatic impact on public health by reducing the burden of age-related health problems, such as dementia, stroke and heart disease, and prolonging the quality of life for an increasingly aged population.

“What we saw in these animals was not a slowing down or stabilisation of the ageing process. We saw a dramatic reversal – and that was unexpected,” said Ronald DePinho, who led the study, which was published in the journal Nature.

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When Antibiotics Fail, Fecal Transplants Work

The idea of somebody else’s feces being implanted in your body may not sound great, but on the other hand pumping chemicals into your body often proves to be fatal. Denise Grady reports for the New York Times that the “natural” cure for Clostridium difficile infections is far more effective than antibiotics:

The treatment may sound appalling, but it works.

Transplanting feces from a healthy person into the gut of one who is sick can quickly cure severe intestinal infections caused by a dangerous type of bacteria that antibiotics often cannot control.

A new study finds that such transplants cured 15 of 16 people who had recurring infections with Clostridium difficile bacteria, whereas antibiotics cured only 3 of 13 and 4 of 13 patients in two comparison groups. The treatment appears to work by restoring the gut’s normal balance of bacteria, which fight off C. difficile.

The study is the first to compare the transplants with standard antibiotic therapy.

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