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I saw Dr. Fuhrman on TV in 2003. I was really fired up about his eating program and told my friend. My friend was thrilled I was showing concern for my health so she brought me a copy of Eat to Live. I read the book from cover to cover! To this day, I still carry Eat to Live with me! It is my second Bible. I really LIVE by the book, passages are underlined, notes are in the margins, etc. Yes, I experienced headaches, and cravings the first 5–7 days, but because I could eat without weighing food or counting calories, I felt it was an “even” exchange.
After a few weeks I truly felt energized! My poor body was getting some sound nutrition! I finally got weighed and confirmed that I weighed 448 ½ pounds. During the next 8 weeks, I lost 34 ½ pounds. From that moment on, I never looked back!
Week after week, I continued to lose weight. Eight and half months later, (July 2004), I lost my first 100 pounds. By the following August, 2005 I lost my second 100 pounds. By the summer of 2006, I lost another 50 pounds. Of course, as I am approaching my ideal weight, the weight is coming off more slowly. I now belong to a gym and have incorporated walking and weight training into my weekly routine.
Today, I embrace my new high nutrient eating lifestyle. I don’t eat cheese, bread of any type, rice, or pasta. I only eat veggies, fruits, raw nuts, and beans. People are confused when they see how I eat. Many are astonished by the facts; for instance, 100 calories of broccoli offers more protein than 100 calories of meat. People question how I eat so much food and still lose weight or how I am satisfied eating salads and vegetables.
I have purchased and given Eat to Live to many people. My own family doctor is amazed at my transformation.
Wow, yes my life has changed! I literally lived in my own isolated world before I committed to losing weight. Ironically, the bigger I became, the more invisible I became to the people around me! I went from a world of being ALL alone with a good friend or two (who saw the real me hiding under all that weight) to this world of so many people. I am still adjusting to this, too, as it can be overwhelming. Previously, I shopped late at night to avoid people making comments about me during "normal" shopping hours. I could only buy clothes from big women's magazines. The clothes had no style and were just big baggy dresses. I avoided restaurants. I could not fit into a booth and having a chair pulled to the end of a table was so embarrassing. I could never use a public bathroom because I could not fit in the stall. I could go on and on and probably will when I write the book everyone keeps encouraging me to write.
I owe my life to the Eat to Live lifestyle. Dr. Fuhrman saved me from literally eating myself to death. How grateful and blessed I am. Whatever lies ahead, I am ready for it!
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A stress test is not an accurate test for determining the risk of a heart attack. A stress test only identifies obstructions, it doesn't identify vulnerable plaque—the plaque that is likely to throw a clot. A stress test can only detect a blockage of more than 80% and the propensity of plaque to rupture has nothing to do with the amount of obstruction…Now, Jane E. Brody of The New York Times talks to Dr. Todd D. Miller, a cardiologist and co-director of the Mayo Clinic’s Nuclear Cardiology Laboratory in Rochester, Minn., about the shortcomings of stress tests. Take a look:
…Stress tests are big money-makers for doctors. They identify those people with large blockages who qualify as candidates for costly angioplasty or bypass surgery. However, drugs and medical procedures reduce risk only slightly.
Mr. Russert’s treadmill test may have put him in the low-risk category, Dr. Miller said, “but that doesn’t mean no risk.”Criticism for stress tests is not new. In 2007, Karen Dente, M.D., a medical journalist based in Brooklyn, New York, stated that as stress-testing and coronary angiograms may no longer be the true gold standard for detecting coronary stenosis. Via Medscape:
“Maybe 3 patients in 1,000 with a low-risk test will die from heart disease within a year,” he said. “Among those deemed at high risk, more than 3 patients in 100 would die within a year.”
Furthermore, when the stress test is used for people who are at low risk for heart disease, an abnormal finding is most often a false positive that prompts further testing that is far more costly, Dr. Miller said.
The stress test’s main advantages are its rapidity and low cost — one-fifth to one-quarter the cost of more definitive and often more time-consuming tests like a nuclear stress test, CT coronary angiogram or standard angiogram. Medicare pays about $150 for a standard stress test, though hospitals typically charge three to four times that when the test is done on younger patients.
"Conventional stress-testing and angiogram gives you no information on whether a plaque is going to rupture," David DuBois, MD, an attendee at the symposium and emergency medicine specialist from Pinehurst, North Carolina, told Medscape. "[With these tests] there are a lot of false-positives and false-negatives," he said.Sadly, this information can’t help Tim Russert, but doctors and patients should now take note that traditional testing procedures might be lulling us into a false sense of security by not revealing crucial life-saving data.
One of the hottest current discussions in the evaluation of acute coronary syndromes is centered around the use of computed tomography coronary angiography. "CT technology is advancing at a very fast rate," said Amal Mattu, MD, associate professor and program director of emergency medicine residency at the University of Maryland, explaining the technology's improved detection in plaque composition and remodeling compared with conventional diagnostic tests.
"If you have a radiologist that can give you an accurate reading with the new 64-head multidetector CT scans, you can detect occlusions better," according to Dr. Dubois. But we are still a long way from having the new technology replace standard coronary angiography for the detection of large coronary stenoses, he said. "It is not going to change the [current] practice any time soon."
Here are their top 10 tips for healthy aging - along with the percentage of how many said the tip is "very important" (they could call more than one tip "very important"):Great tips, especially eating right! Long-lived people don’t eat fast food and beef jerky. Japanese super-centenarian Tomoji Tanabe eats rice, seaweed, and miso soup. And this 72-year old gym-rat and centenarian in the making, eats a diet based on fruits, vegetables, beans, and nuts.
"If I could leave any message, never stop learning. Period," centenarian Maurice Eisman says in the poll report.
- Stay close to your family and friends: 90%
- Keep your mind active: 89%
- Laugh and have a sense of humor: 88%
- Stay in touch with your spirituality: 84%
- Continue looking forward to each new day: 83%
- Keep moving and exercising: 82%
- Maintain a sense of independence: 81%
- Eat right: 80%
- Keep up with news and current events: 63%
- Keep making new friends: 63%
"We just felt it was important to provide some choice in our menu," said Will Kussell, president and chief brand officer.That stuff his healthy? This is a really hard sell, especially since Dunkin Donuts used to hock a doughnut-inspired BREAKFAST CEREAL! It came in two flavors, Chocolate and Glazed Style. Via ioffer.com:
The new menu will be called DDSmart and will include all current and new items that either have 25 percent few calories, sugar, fat or sodium than comparable products or contain ingredients that are "nutritionally beneficial," the company said.
Current products that will join the new sandwiches on the menu include a multigrain bagel and a reduced-fat blueberry muffin.
Kussell said Dunkin' will continue to add products to the menu and is currently developing several new offerings, but would not disclose any details.
Kussell said Canton, Mass.-based Dunkin' Brands Inc. will spend several million dollars marketing the new menu.
A number of restaurants have added better-for-you options to their menus in the past few years to take advantage of a trend toward healthier eating.
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He said the biofuels industry is working hard to ensure it is responsible and sustainable - claiming other industries are lagging far behind their efforts.
"Government should stop hiding behind tabloids and have the courage to encourage an industry that has done more than anybody to put the safeguards in place and to make a real contribution," Mr Hilton added.
Environmental Data Interactive Exchange wants to know what our readers think about Mr Hilton's argument.
Is the "fuel or food" debate redundant? Is it hijacking the debate about biofuels when there are other more important issues that should be discussed? Or are food prices a central concern when it comes to biofuels?
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"Mr. Johnson has consistently chosen special interests over the American people's interests in protecting health and safety," Sen. Barbara Boxer of California told reporters. "He has become a secretive and dangerous ally of polluters and we cannot stand by and allow more damage to be done."
Boxer, who heads the environment committee, said Johnson had made damaging decisions on mercury, lead, toxic chemicals, drinking water standards, ozone air pollution and global warming.
She said these decisions were "harmful to the American people."
Boxer noted that last year, Johnson denied California's request for federal permission -- known as a waiver -- to impose tough new limits on climate-warming carbon dioxide emissions from cars and light trucks. That decision effectively blocked as many as 18 other states from doing the same.
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Derek Mueller, a research at Trent University, was careful not to blame global warming, but said it the event was consistent with the theory that the current Arctic climate isn't rebuilding ice sheets.
"We're in a different climate now," he said. "It's not conducive to regrowing them. It's a one-way process."
Mueller said the sheet broke away last week from the Ward Hunt Ice Shelf off the north coast of Ellesmere Island in Canada's far north. He said a crack in the shelf was first spotted in 2002 and a survey this spring found a network of fissures.
The sheet is the biggest piece shed by one of Canada's six ice shelves since the Ayles shelf broke loose in 2005 from the coast of Ellesmere, about 500 miles from the North Pole.
Formed by accumulating snow and freezing meltwater, ice shelves are large platforms of thick, ancient sea ice that float on the ocean's surface. Ellesmere Island was once entirely ringed by a single enormous ice shelf that broke up in the early 1900s.
The yearlong moratorium -- which the mayor still must sign into law -- is intended to give the city time to attract restaurants that serve healthier food. The action is believed to be the first of its kind by a major city to protect public health.Clearly city officials' hearts are in the right place, but I think better educating people on why NOT to eat fast food is a better approach. Then again, that hasn't work so far. So, what would you do?
"Our communities have an extreme shortage of quality foods," City Councilman Bernard Parks said.
Representatives of fast-food chains said they support the goal of better diets but believe they are being unfairly targeted. They say they offer healthier food items on their menus.
"It's not where you eat, it's what you eat," said Andrew Pudzer, president and chief executive of CKE Restaurants, parent company of Carl's Jr. "We were willing to work with the city on that, but they obviously weren't interested."
The California Restaurant Association and its members will consider a legal challenge to the ordinance, spokesman Andrew Casana said.
Jessie got the first injection in July 2007.Very sad, but not surprising because a couple weeks ago we found out that FDA and CDC have received 7,802 instances of people having an adverse reaction to Gardasil. Certainly more testing needs to be conducted, especially since this flimsy drug only protects against 4 of the 100 strains of HPV.
After her second shot in September, she complained of a pain in the back of her head, fatigue and soreness in some joints, said her mom, Lisa.
On Feb. 20, while on winter break from school, she got her third and final dose of the vaccine.
The next night, "she told me the spot on the back of her head was bothering her again," her mom said.
The next morning, Feb. 22, Lisa, a hospital technician, left for work just after 5 a.m., leaving Jessie asleep.
Jessie never showed up for the class she was taking at Jefferson Community College.
When her mom got home at 3:20 p.m., she found Jessie sprawled on her back on the bathroom floor, with blood spots on her head where it had hit a flowerpot.
Jefferson County Medical Examiner Samuel Livingstone is stumped.
"She was essentially dead by the time she hit the floor. Whatever it was, it was instantaneous," Livingstone said.
Japanese eat about 3 ounces (85 grams) of fish a day on average, while Americans eat fish perhaps twice a week. Nutritional studies show that intake of omega-3 fatty acids from fish averages 1.3 grams per day in Japan, compared to 0.2 grams per day in the United States.Outstanding news for omega-3’s, but fish is not your only source of these beneficial fats. Foods like soybeans, tofu, and flaxseed are also rich in omega-3 fatty acids. Here’s some info from Dr. Fuhrman:
Earlier studies by Akira Sekikawa, assistant professor of epidemiology at the University of Pittsburgh, showed that Japanese men had significantly less cholesterol build-up in their arteries despite similar blood cholesterol and blood pressure readings, similar rates of diabetes and much higher rates of smoking…
…In this study, Sekikawa's team recruited 868 randomly selected men aged 40 to 49. Of these, 281 were Japanese from Kusatsu in Japan, 306 were white men from Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, and 281 were third or fourth generation Japanese-Americans from Honolulu, Hawaii.
"Our study clearly demonstrated that whites and Japanese-Americans have similar levels of atherosclerosis, which are much higher than in the Japanese in Japan," Sekikawa said.
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When we have insufficient omega-3 fat, we do not produce enough DHA, a long-chain omega-3 fat with anti-inflammatory effects. High levels of arachidonic acid and low levels of omega-3 fats can be a contributory cause of heart disease, stroke, autoimmune diseases, skin diseases, depression, and possibly increased cancer incidence.1 Most Americans would improve their health if they consumed more omega-3 fats and less omega-6 fats. I recommend that both vegetarians and nonvegetarians make an effort to consume one to two grams of omega-3 fat daily.I eat flaxseed and walnuts everyday, but I also eat fish—like salmon and steelhead trout—so I think I’m covered in the omega-3 department—are you?
Critics believe the chemicals are linked to reproductive problems, including low sperm counts.Now we need watchdogs to monitor whatever replacement concoction the plastics producers come out with next.
Certain phthalates were banned for use in children's products in Europe in 1999 and in California last year. The states of Washington and Vermont have since passed legislation on use of the chemicals.
The Wall Street Journal said some of the chemicals would be banned only temporarily under the new legislation while more research is conducted.
"Chemical additives should not be placed in products that can impact health adversely until they are tested and found to be benign," sponsor Senator Dianne Feinstein of California told the Post.
Chemical industry groups, which had financed a large-scale effort to stop the ban, criticised the move saying it could allow less-tested chemicals to be used instead.
CONCLUSIONS: Regular consumption of sugar-sweetened soft drinks and fruit drinks is associated with an increased risk of type 2 diabetes mellitus in African American women. While there has been increasing public awareness of the adverse health effects of soft drinks, little attention has been given to fruit drinks, which are often marketed as a healthier alternative to soft drinks.
CONCLUSIONS: Higher plasma vitamin C level and, to a lesser degree, fruit and vegetable intake were associated with a substantially decreased risk of diabetes. Our findings highlight a potentially important public health message on the benefits of a diet rich in fruit and vegetables for the prevention of diabetes.
CONCLUSIONS: A low-fat dietary pattern among generally healthy postmenopausal women showed no evidence of reducing diabetes risk after 8.1 years. Trends toward reduced incidence were greater with greater decreases in total fat intake and weight loss. Weight loss, rather than macronutrient composition, may be the dominant predictor of reduced risk of diabetes.For more, check out Steven Reinberg's report in HealthDay News: Diet Key to Diabetes Risk.
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"We need to reaffirm the principle of predictability," George David, chairman of United Technologies Corp, told the House of Representatives Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming.
"We need to say to our world that we are going to have a cost of carbon, whether it's cap-and-trade or a carbon tax," he told a hearing in Hartford, Connecticut, where United Tech, the world's largest maker of elevators and air conditioners, is headquartered. "There's got to be an understanding that the cost of energy is going to be high for a long time."
While oil prices have quadrupled in the last four years, he noted past price spikes have been followed by sharp declines.
David declined to back a particular approach for assigning a cost to emissions of carbon dioxide, the primary greenhouse gas associated with global climate change.
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Solar heat absorbed through windows and roofs can increase your air conditioner use. Incorporating shading concepts into your landscape design can help reduce this solar heat gain, reducing your cooling costs.
Shading and evapotranspiration (the process by which a plant actively moves and releases water vapor) from trees can reduce surrounding air temperatures as much as 9° F (5°C). Because cool air settles near the ground, air temperatures directly under trees can be as much as 25°F (14°C) cooler than air temperatures above nearby blacktop.
Using shade effectively requires you to know the size, shape, and location of the moving shadow that your shading device casts. Also, homes in cool regions may never overheat and may not require shading. Therefore, you need to know what landscape shading strategies will work best in your regional climate and your microclimate.
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If you cannot get a recycle bin from the sanitation department, you may be able to purchase one from your local health food store or by visiting a recycling center in your area. Making sure that everyone in your family participates will help to do wonders for conserving natural resources not only in your city, but also around the world.
When trash is picked up from your home or business, it is taken to a landfill, where it is sometimes sorted so that sanitation workers can bring the 'good trash' back to factories. This process is rather tedious and sometimes empty glass bottles or paper plates and cups that should have been recycled go unnoticed. When you use your recycle bin, you are already separating the products that can be used again to make recycled grocery bags, coffee cups and glass products.
Getting your family or co-workers involved in recycling is a great way to reduce global warming as well. When trash is taken from your home and needs to be disposed of, it is often burned in order to be easier to work with. The gases that are given off during this process negatively affect the ozone layer, and make the layer weaker. This means that over time, humans could be even more exposed to the hazardous rays of the sun. This exposure causes more incidences of skin cancer and affects our produce crops, so learning to reuse products can eventually help preserve our world.
The challenges of caring for these patients begin early. “We perform an anatomical survey of the fetus, but in an extremely obese woman, the ultrasound signal often can’t penetrate through all the tissue,” Dr. Mark Chames, an obstetrician at the University of Michigan Health System in Ann Arbor, says. He must use a vaginal probe instead. A thorough examination is especially important in obese women, Chames said, because they are at greater risk of having babies with neural-tube defects and other malformations.Getting fat and pregnant is a dangerous cliché. Clearly, an obese mom is not eating healthfully—bad idea! According to Dr. Fuhrman a pregnant mother’s diet is vitally important to a developing baby’s health. He explains:
Birth brings more difficulties. The fetuses of obese women are often too large to fit through the birth canal; their mothers are about twice as likely as normal-weight women to need a Caesarean section. Longer surgical instruments are required, as are extra-wide operating-room tables, reinforced to support hundreds of additional pounds.
To head off such problems, patients at the bariatric obstetric clinic at St. Louis University in Missouri are counseled not to put on any pounds at all during pregnancy, and are even encouraged to lose weight. Dr. Raul Artal, the chairman of the ob-gyn department and the clinic’s director, acknowledges that the notion of weight loss during pregnancy can be startling. “It goes against everything we were taught in medical school, everything we’ve always told our patients,” he says. Some scientists warn that we still know little about the potential dangers of this approach. Emerging evidence, however, suggests that obese women who maintain or lose weight during pregnancy experience significantly fewer complications and deliver healthier babies.
We know that children have sensitive vulnerabilities that are quite distinct from adults. Their exposure to chemicals in our environment is more potentially damaging than the same exposure at a later age. It is important to realize that the diet a woman eats during her pregnancy and even before her pregnancy effects the adult health of her future offspring. For example, a recent study shows a strong association in children who develop brain tumors with the mother’s consumption of hotdogs during pregnancy.1 Scientific evidence suggests that cigarette smoking during pregnancy is associated with testicular cancer in sons thirty-five to fifty years later.2 We may get away with risky behaviors when we imbibe in our later years, but when we gamble with our children, the stakes are much higher and the damage more profound.Maybe I’m going out on a dangerous limb here, but, if you’re pregnant and eating unhealthfully. You’re perpetrating a tremendous act of irresponsibility and selfishness. Am I wrong on this?
The study involved more than 33,000 licensed pesticide applicators enrolled in the Agricultural Health Study, who provided information about lifetime exposure and their medical history. An analysis of the data revealed that exposure to 7 pesticides—aldrin, chlordane, heptachlor, dichlorvos, trichlorfon, alachlor, and cyanazine—increased the workers' odds of developing diabetes and that the incidence of diabetes increased with cumulative days of exposure.Dale Sandler, PhD, chief of the NIEHS’s epidemiology branch, points out that pesticide exposure is just another factor that contributes to diabetes, like obesity, lack of exercise and family history. Here’s the actual study, via Epidemiology: Incident Diabetes and Pesticide Exposure among Licensed Pesticide Applicators.
1. BARN: Slurry of manure is washed and scraped from cow stalls into a series of sewage pipes that run under the barn. The manure is mixed with other food wastes.No doubt, working at one of these facilities will land you on an episode of Dirty Jobs with Mike Rowe.
2. DIGESTER: The slurry is heated to around 37 degrees and kept at that level for the five days needed for the microbes to decompose the cow dung. This process gives off methane gas, which bubbles through the slurry and is collected at the top.
3. DIESEL GENERATOR: The gas runs to the generator, where it is burned to produce electricity to power the digester and the farm, and to feed into the grid.
4. SOLIDS SEPARATOR: Leftover liquids are used as fertilizer and the solids are strained to make a material to be used as bedding for the cows.
"What I learned about those first two seasons is they are long. They are a grind, especially with the Western Conference not getting any easier,'' Roy said.
Roy hired a trainer, Ron Tate, who focuses heavily on stretching in addition to weight lifting. He also forces Roy to drink a gallon of water every day before 2 p.m.
In previous summers, Roy would play basketball nearly every day. Now he plays maybe twice a week, even though the Blazers would prefer it was one or less.
"I think I have gotten smarter with the way I work,'' Roy said. "It's not so much pound, pound, pound. It's more stretching and lifting with lighter weight but more reps.''
“What they are doing is developing their own system for evaluating things,” said Dr. Warwick L. Morison, professor of dermatology at Johns Hopkins and chairman of the Skin Cancer Foundation’s photobiology committee, which tests sunscreens for safety and effectiveness. “Using this scale to say a sunscreen offers good protection or bad protection is junk science.”
Dr. Morison has no financial ties to sunscreen makers, and his work with the Skin Cancer Foundation is unpaid.
Sonya Lunder, a senior analyst with the Environmental Working Group, said the database and rating system were based on an extensive review of the medical literature on sunscreens. Of nearly 1,000 sunscreens reviewed, the group recommends only 143 brands. Most are lesser-known brands with titanium and zinc, which are effective blockers of ultraviolet radiation. But they are less popular with consumers because they can leave a white residue.
Olympic host city Beijing was shrouded in haze on Monday 11 days before the Games begin, raising anxieties about whether it can deliver the clean skies promised for the world's top athletes.
The city's chronic pollution, a sometimes acrid mix of construction dust, vehicle exhaust and factory and power plant fumes, has been one of the biggest worries for Games organizers.
Beijing has ordered many of its 3.3 million cars off roads and halted much construction and factory production in an effort to cut pollution before the Games open on August 8.
But a sultry haze persisted on Monday, and state media said Beijing might be forced to restrict more cars and shut more factories if the pollution persists.
"At baseline, before they were supposed to be following a diet or exercise plan, we found on weekends, people gained weight," study author Susan Racette, an assistant professor at Washington University in St. Louis said. During the week, the weight would decline. But the weekend effect was strong. "If you translate it out to a year, it could have increased weight by 9 pounds."
Before the intervention, participants ate an average of 2,257 calories on Saturday compared to just 2,021 during the week. But the average activity on weekends overall didn't differ much from average weekday activities. So, it was the food, not the lack of activity, that was to blame, Racette said.
Racette monitored the participants for a year after they started the intervention, and the weekend indulgences continued. The calorie restriction group stopped losing weight on weekends, while the physical activity group gained slightly (about .17 pounds). There were not significant weight changes in the controls on weekends.
Four years ago, ahead of the Athens Olympics, the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) removed caffeine from its list of banned substances in sport. This was "presumably because WADA considered (caffeine's) performance-enhancing effects to be insignificant," notes Mark Stuart in a commentary published in the journal BMJ Clinical Evidence.
Stuart, a BMJ editor, has worked with doping control for past Olympic Games and helped train medical staff for the upcoming Beijing Olympics.
Despite questions about caffeine's effects on athletic prowess, Stuart points out, studies indicate that many athletes still use the stimulant. In a study published last month, for example, researchers found that of 193 UK track-and-field athletes they surveyed, one-third used caffeine to enhance performance -- as did 60 percent of 287 competitive cyclists.
Numbers like those, coupled with ads for sleep aids, persuaded yoga instructor Shanon Buffington that the time was right for a workshop she developed.
"Most of us don't sleep like babies anymore," the instructor said as participants gathered last month for her "Yoga for Better Sleep" workshop at Dallas Surya Center for Yoga.
"We're typically tired, and when we do rest, we don't sleep well.
"My goal," she said, "is to give you a toolbox of techniques." These include breathing techniques, relaxing restorative poses and an introduction to Yoga Nidra, a guided visualization.
These yoga tools work, Buffington says, by calming the autonomic nervous system, specifically by nudging the body toward the parasympathetic, or "rest and digest," state as opposed to the sympathetic, or "fight or flight," state.
A new study has found that high bone mineral density (BMD) predicts a greater likelihood of developing breast cancer, independent of how high her risk is on the often-used Gail model.
The two measurements together might be used in tandem to better predict breast cancer risk, the researchers said.
The findings, which were expected to be published in the Sept. 1 issue of Cancer, follow closely on the heels of other research linking different aspects of bone health with breast cancer risk. One study presented at the American Society of Clinical Oncology annual meeting in May found that Zometa (zoledronic acid), a drug used to treat osteoporosis, lowered the risk of breast cancer recurrence in premenopausal women.
And another study released this spring found that women with breast cancer who have a vitamin D deficiency at the time of their diagnosis were more likely to have a recurrence or to die from their disease. Vitamin D is also critical to bone health.
Fitness and exercise have been shown to slow age-related changes in the brain in healthy people. The latest finding suggests people with early Alzheimer's disease may still benefit.
"The message is essentially if you have Alzheimer's disease, it's not too late to become physically fit," Dr. Sam Gandy, chairman of the Alzheimer's Association's Medical and Scientific Advisory Council, said in a statement.
Researchers at the University of Kansas Medical Center in Kansas City studied the relationship between fitness and brain volume in 56 healthy adults and 60 adults with early Alzheimer's disease. All were over the age of 60.
Herberman is basing his alarm on early unpublished data. He says it takes too long to get answers from science, and he believes that people should take action now, especially when it comes to children.I’m not a big cell phone guy. In fact, I only recently got into text messaging. Nevertheless, the report's popularity tempted me to ask Dr. Fuhrman for his thoughts. Here’s what he had to say about Dr. Herberman’s alarm:
"Really at the heart of my concern is that we shouldn't wait for a definitive study to come out but err on the side of being safe rather than sorry later," Herberman said.
No other major academic cancer research institutions have sounded such an alarm about cell phone use. But Herberman's advice could raise concern among many cell phone users and especially parents.
In the memo he sent to about 3,000 faculty and staff Wednesday, he says children should use cell phones only for emergencies because their brains are still developing.
Adults should keep the phone away from the head and use the speakerphone or a wireless headset, he says. He even warns against using cell phones in public places such as a bus, because it exposes others to the phone's electromagnetic fields.
The issue that concerns some scientists -- though nowhere near a consensus -- is electromagnetic radiation, especially its possible effects on children. It is not a major topic in conferences of brain specialists.
The bottom line is we don’t know. I always laugh at those media pronouncements that cell phones do not cause brain tumors when the quote the results of studies that follow users for 3 to 5 years. Cancer causation is a 20 to 50 year process. What we do in childhood creates adult cancers. So we have to follow young people for more than twenty to thirty years to really have answers here. I doubt these long-term studies are even being done.So, as someone who stills owns a VCR and doesn’t play Xbox, I’ll consider this cell phone-cancer report flimsy hocus pocus and this video—witchcraft! See for yourself:
Several years ago, researchers proposed the provocative idea that bacteria living in the human stomach could be responsible for the development of some stomach ulcers — and the doctors found that treating those bacteria, H. pylori, with antibiotics could reduce ulcer risk. New research suggests, however, that those bacteria may not be all bad — they could help prevent the development of childhood asthma.Here’s some of the abstract to Dr. Blaser’s study from The Journal of Infectious Disease. Take a look:
Writing in the Journal of Infectious Diseases, the scientists report that children between the ages of 3 and 13 are nearly 59 percent less likely to have asthma if they have the bacterium in their gut. The children were also 40 percent less likely to have hay fever and associated allergies such as eczema and rash.
The cause for the link isn't exactly clear, though the researchers believe that people with the bacteria have more immune cells called regulatory T cells. They say the surplus cells prevent the immune system from overreacting to allergens, which can trigger asthma and allergies like hay fever.
Methods: We conducted cross-sectional analyses, using data from 7412 participants in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) 1999–2000, to assess the association between H. pylori and childhood asthma.Perhaps all these antibiotics we’re shoveling down our throats are REALLY working against us. Again, Dr. Blaser thinks this might be the case. For more, check out the audio to the NPR report: Stomach Bacteria Could Prevent Asthma.
Conclusions: This study is the first to report an inverse association between H. pylori seropositivity and asthma in children. The findings indicate new directions for research and asthma prevention.
The results of prior research has suggested that the impulsivity and poor behavioral regulation that is common in children with ADHD may promote certain eating patterns that increase the risk of obesity, co-authors Molly E. Waring and Dr. Kate L. Lapane, from Brown Medical School in Providence, Rhode Island, note.I think most mental disorders could lead to weight-gain. When I was depressed and self-loathing I was over 60 pounds heavier than I am now—food is a great crutch.
To investigate further, the researchers analyzed data from 62,887 children and adolescents included in the 2003-2004 National Survey of Children's Health.
Children with ADHD were identified based the response of the parent to the question: "Has a doctor or health professional ever told you that your child has attention-deficit disorder or attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, that is, ADD or ADHD?"
The prevalence of ADD or ADHD was 8.8 percent, the authors report in the journal Pediatrics, and approximately half the affected children were taking medication for the condition.
"California is a leader in promoting health and nutrition, and I am pleased to continue that tradition by being the first state in the nation to phase out trans fats," Schwarzenegger (R) said.No doubt fast food restaurants and makers of 50-year shelf-life cookies are furious—you’ve been terminated!
Trans fatty acids, or trans fats, are commonly found in partially hydrogenated oils, which became popular at fast-food restaurants and bakeries because they have a longer shelf life than other oils.
But a series of studies over the past decade has shown that trans fats can lower "good cholesterol" (high-density lipoproteins) and raise "bad cholesterol" (low-density lipoproteins), which can contribute to heart disease and other ailments.
Researchers at the Harvard University School of Public Health estimate that artificial trans fats cause 50,000 premature heart-attack deaths every year.
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Colorado: More than $1 billion in losses due to impacts on tourism, forestry, water resources and human health from a predicted drier, warmer climate.
Georgia: Multi-million dollar losses from predicted higher seas along Georgia's coast.
Kansas: Losses exceeding $1 billion from impact on agriculture of predicted warmer temperatures and reduced water supply in much of the state.
Illinois: Billions of dollars in losses from impact on shipping, trade and water resources. Warmer temperatures and lower water levels predicted for much of the state.
Michigan: Billions of dollars in losses from damage to the state's shipping and water resources. Warmer temperatures and lower water levels predicted for much of the state.
Nevada: Billions of dollars in losses from a much drier climate and pressure on scarce water resources. Water limitations could affect tourism, real estate, development and human health. Many western states may confront similar challenges.
New Jersey: Billions of dollars in losses from higher sea levels and the impact on tourism, transportation, real estate and human health.
Ohio: Billions of dollars in losses from warmer temperatures and lower water levels and the resulting impact on shipping and water supplies.
The report does not cover efforts to address the most plentiful greenhouse gas — carbon dioxide — or the biggest sources of it, transportation and electric power plants.
"If EPA wishes to reduce greenhouse gas emissions beyond this point, it needs to consider additional policy options," the report said. Persuading companies to spend money on optional activities "presents a significant challenge to using voluntary programs as the current solution to reducing greenhouse gases."
The Bush administration has been relying largely on the voluntary programs to reduce carbon intensity — the ratio of greenhouse gas emissions to economic output — by 18 percent by 2012. That goal would slow the growth of greenhouse gases, but not actually reduce them.
The White House has rejected using existing law to regulate greenhouse gases from motor vehicles and smokestacks despite a Supreme Court decision last year saying it could do so.
President Bush and other world leaders at last month's G-8 summit in Toyako, Japan, made a commitment to a voluntary 50 percent reduction in greenhouse gases worldwide by 2050 but offered no specifics on how to do it.
Check your doors for a good seal: Check the seals on your refrigerator and freezer for a good seal by closing a piece of paper in them. If you can pull the paper out, it's time to adjust or install a new seal.
Keep it cool: Allow for 2 inches of airspace around the appliance and nearby walls and cabinets. Keep your refrigerator out of direct sunlight and as far away as you can from the dishwasher, stove and heating vent.
Turn off the icemaker: We know you love the crushed iced function, but you might want to reconsider going back to old-fashioned ice cube trays. An icemaker can increase a refrigerator's energy consumption by 14 to 20 percent. Yikes.
Set the temp right: Keep your refrigerator between 37 and 40 degrees F, and the freezer between 0 and 5 degrees F.
Vacuum the condenser coils: Once a year, pull your refrigerator out from the wall and vacuum the coils behind it.
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"This is a product that we don't believe meets our high standards for the general population, particularly for small children who are more sensitive," said James Gulliford, EPA associate administrator for the office of prevention, pesticides and toxic substances. "While there is little exposure today [to the pesticide], we don't think there's a need, a reason for any exposure."
A million pounds of carbofuran are applied each year in the United States, affecting less than 1 percent of the nation's farmed acres, according to the EPA, but it is used more heavily in developing countries on crops including rice, bananas, coffee and sugar cane. The EPA had indicated earlier this year that it would not apply the ban to imported food, but yesterday it said it will.
"This could have major ramifications around the world, as there are many countries that export rice, coffee and bananas to the U.S.," said Michael Fry, director of conservation advocacy for the American Bird Conservancy. "It's one of the most widely used pesticides in the world."
Charging for plastic bags at the supermarket works--people really do bring their own. Ten weeks ago Marks & Spencer instituted a 5 pence (10 cents) charge on plastic bags at its stores. Since then customers have used 70 million fewer bags. That's an 80% decrease in use. Who would have thought! These are among the first statistics showing the impact of banning bags and they are impressive. At the same time, the company has sold ten million of its own store-brand hessian green bags-for-life; donating the 1.85pence profit made on each one to Groundwork, an environmental charity--$400,000 so far.
The British Government, in its upcoming Climate Change Bill, has given the other big supermarkets until next April to switch over to charging. If they don't do it, the Government will set a mandatory fee for bags. A representative of British supermarkets has called this move "a steamroller to crack a walnut". Environmentalists are concerned that the over-packaging of food is a much more important issue--one the Bill does not address.
“It’s not that all granite is dangerous,” said Stanley Liebert, the quality assurance director at CMT Laboratories in Clifton Park, N.Y., who took radiation measurements at Dr. Sugarman’s house. “But I’ve seen a few that might heat up your Cheerios a little.”
Allegations that granite countertops may emit dangerous levels of radon and radiation have been raised periodically over the past decade, mostly by makers and distributors of competing countertop materials. The Marble Institute of America has said such claims are “ludicrous” because although granite is known to contain uranium and other radioactive materials like thorium and potassium, the amounts in countertops are not enough to pose a health threat.
Indeed, health physicists and radiation experts agree that most granite countertops emit radiation and radon at extremely low levels. They say these emissions are insignificant compared with so-called background radiation that is constantly raining down from outer space or seeping up from the earth’s crust, not to mention emanating from manmade sources like X-rays, luminous watches and smoke detectors.
BACKGROUND: High isoflavone intake has been related to decreased fertility in animal studies, but data in humans are scarce. Thus, we examined the association of soy foods and isoflavones intake with semen quality parameters.Relax, don’t freak out just yet. “It's way too early to say stop eating soy foods. It's not time to worry about whether you're eating too much soy. There's not enough information to conclusively say that,” lead researcher Dr. Jorge Chavarro, M.D., a research fellow at the Harvard School of Public Health, told Steven Reinberg of HealthDay News.
METHODS: The intake of 15 soy-based foods in the previous 3 months was assessed for 99 male partners of subfertile couples who presented for semen analyses to the Massachusetts General Hospital Fertility Center. Linear and quantile regression were used to determine the association of soy foods and isoflavones intake with semen quality parameters while adjusting for personal characteristics.
RESULTS: There was an inverse association between soy food intake and sperm concentration that remained significant after accounting for age, abstinence time, body mass index, caffeine and alcohol intake and smoking. In the multivariate-adjusted analyses, men in the highest category of soy food intake had 41 million sperm/ml less than men who did not consume soy foods (95% confidence interval = -74, -8; P, trend = 0.02). Results for individual soy isoflavones were similar to the results for soy foods and were strongest for glycitein, but did not reach statistical significance. The inverse relation between soy food intake and sperm concentration was more pronounced in the high end of the distribution (90th and 75th percentile) and among overweight or obese men. Soy food and soy isoflavone intake were unrelated to sperm motility, sperm morphology or ejaculate volume.
CONCLUSIONS: These data suggest that higher intake of soy foods and soy isoflavones is associated with lower sperm concentration.
This study showed that high levels of processed soy foods, not edamame or unprocessed soy beans, may lower sperm counts in obese men.When most people think soy, they think soy ice cream or soy “meat” products. They forget about edamame beans. Edamame beans are nutritional rock stars! From Wikipedia, check this out:
The higher intake of soy foods, lowered sperm counts, but the counts were still in the normal range. Obesity increases the body’s estrogen production, and the extra pro-estrogenic effects of soy apparently was enough to reduce sperm levels, in these overweight men whose estrogen levels were already somewhat elevated due to their heightened body weight.
Fiber-rich carbohydrates such as edamame help prevent mood fluctuations by keeping blood-sugar levels steady. Edamame also contains protein, which further helps stabilize blood sugar, and omega-3 fatty acids.And besides, we already know that processed soy foods are NOT something you want to base your diet around. Dr. Fuhrman explains:
Edamame beans contain higher levels of abscissic acid, sucrose, protein than other types of soybean. They also contain a high source of vitamin A, vitamin B and calcium.
Studies have shown soy's beneficial effects on cholesterol and other cardiovascular risk factors. However, there is no reason not to expect the same results from beans of any type--it's merely that more studies have been done on soy than on any other beans. There are numerous studies indicating that soybeans are rich in various anti-cancer compounds such as isoflavones. Most beans are rich in these beneficial anti-cancer compounds, and many different flavonoids with anti-cancer effects are found in beans of various color. I always recommended the consumption of a broad variety of phytochemical-rich foods to maximize one's health. Beans are no exception--try to eat different types of beans, not just soy.
You should be aware that soy nuts, soymilk, and other processed soy products do not retain many of the beneficial compounds and omega-3 fats that are in the natural bean. The more the food is processed, the more the beneficial compounds are destroyed. Remember, though, tofu and frozen or canned soybeans are a good source of omega-3 fat and calcium.
Most of the processed soy products can be tasty additions to a plant-based diet, but they are generally high in salt and are not nutrient-dense foods, so use them sparingly. In conclu
