Health Archive

Magnesium: The Mineral We Can’t Live Without

Magnesiumby Katherine Czapp, via Weston A. Price Foundation,

Magnesium is an alkaline earth metal, the eighth most abundant mineral found in the earth’s crust. Because of its ready solubility in water, magnesium is the third most abundant mineral in sea water, after sodium and chloride. In the human body, magnesium is the eleventh most plentiful element by mass—measuring about two ounces. Most magnesium contained in the body is found in the skeleton and teeth—at least 60 to 65 percent of the total. Nearly the entire remaining amount resides in muscle tissues and cells, while only one percent is contained in our blood.

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Are Diet Sodas a Health Risk?

via Springer Media,

The unexpected health risks of diet sodaIndividuals who drink diet soft drinks on a daily basis may be at increased risk of suffering vascular events such as stroke, heart attack, and vascular death.

This is according to a new study by Hannah Gardener and her colleagues from the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine and at Columbia University Medical Center. However, in contrast, they found that regular soft drink consumption and a more moderate intake of diet soft drinks do not appear to be linked to a higher risk of vascular events. The research appears online in the Journal of General Internal Medicine, published by Springer.

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The Hidden Risk and Cost of Mercury Pollution

By Robert Lalasz, via Grist.org,

Wood thrush. (Photo by Jeff Whitlock.)Mercury pollution — nothing to worry about if I don’t live in the rural Northeast and don’t eat tons of fish, right?

Guess again, says a new report done by the Biodiversity Research Institute (BRI) in conjunction with The Nature Conservancy. The report, “Hidden Risk,” details the widespread and deep impacts of mercury pollution in terrestrial nature — particularly on animals such as songbirds and bats. Researchers are discovering how mercury is causing big declines in reproductive success among these species, as well as physiological oddities — like developmental asymmetries and an inability of some birds to hit high notes.

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Michele Simon: Cracking the Politics of Food

Food politicsMichele Simon has made it her life’s work to dive in and fully confront the sometimes complex political issues behind the food system—and to make it possible for those attempting to bring about sustainable changes to survive and create a difference in this arena. A public health attorney, she has taught Health Policy at the University of California, Hastings College of the Law, and is a frequent lecturer on corporate tactics and policy solutions. She has written extensively on the politics of food, and in 2006 published her first book, Appetite for Profit: How the Food Industry Undermines Our Health and How to Fight Back.

Like many of us, Simon didn’t become fully aware of these issues until she researched them herself. “I’m a public health lawyer, which means I have both a master’s in public health and a law degree,” Simon told Organic Connections. “But I didn’t really get interested in food until after I graduated from law school. I made some personal changes in my diet and started reading all about the powerful impacts of our diets, not only on our health, but on the environment, on animals, and on almost every aspect of society.

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Paula Deen and the Diabetes Epidemic

by Mark Hyman, MD, via The Huffington Post,

Paula DeenIn a spate of recent media appearances, Paula Deen, the unapologetic queen of culinary excess and indulgence would have us believe that she didn't eat herself into type 2 diabetes -- that it was just Russian Roulette. Genes do matter, but just a little. Sorry Paula, but type 2 diabetes, and in fact over 90 percent of chronic disease, happens because of bad choices, not bad genes. New research proves that type 2 diabetes is nearly 100 percent reversible without medication or gastric bypass.

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School Lunches and Children’s Health: Fixing Both

by Chef Ann Cooper, via The Huffington Post,

Chef Ann Cooper and customersI never imagined myself cooking for kids. I spent most of my first three decades as a chef, not knowing or caring what kids ate, and not really wanting to feed them. In fact, as a restaurant chef, my worst nightmare was the host coming into the kitchen on a Saturday night, saying, "Chef, there's a screaming kid on table 19. What do I do?"

My response: "Tell them to leave. Why did they bring kids here on a Saturday night, anyway?"

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Why Are Kids Suddenly So “Mentally Ill?”

by Prof. Allen Frances, via The Huffington Post,

BigPharma targeting kidsThe three major "epidemics" of psychiatric illness occurring during the past 15 years -- childhood bipolar, autism and attention deficit disorder -- have all mainly involved children. And two new DSM-5 proposals that also apply mostly to youngsters -- "psychosis risk" and "temper dysregulation" -- may trigger the next fads in psychiatric mislabeling. Giving a name to difficult problems that are poorly understood provides a kind of false comfort, but the label often doesn't really add to the understanding and may carry risks of its own -- especially unnecessary treatment, stigma and wasted resources.

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Poor Urban Design and America’s Health

by Scott Carlson, via The Chronicle of Higher Education,

Subdivision housingResearchers can have revelatory moments in remarkable places—the African savannah, an ancient library, or the ruins of a lost civilization. But Richard J. Jackson's epiphany occurred in 1999 in a banal American landscape: a dismal stretch of the car-choked Buford Highway, near the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.

Dr. Jackson, who was then the head of the National Center for Environmental Health at the CDC, was rushing to a meeting where leading epidemiologists would discuss the major health threats of the 21st century. On the side of the road he saw an elderly woman walking, bent with a load of shopping bags. It was a blisteringly hot day, and there was little hope that she would find public transportation.

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High Fructose Consumption by Teens May Put Them at Cardiovascular Risk

Fructose consumptionEvidence of cardiovascular disease and diabetes risk is present in the blood of adolescents who consume a lot of fructose, a scenario that worsens in the face of excess belly fat, researchers report.

An analysis of 559 adolescents age 14-18 correlated high-fructose diets with higher blood pressure, fasting glucose, insulin resistance and inflammatory factors that contribute to heart and vascular disease.

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Shale-Shocked: How Fracking Got “Occupied”

by Ellen Cantarow, via The Huffington Post,

Fracking well. (Abrahm Lustgarten/ProPublica)This is a story about water, the land surrounding it, and the lives it sustains. Clean water should be a right: there is no life without it. New York is what you might call a “water state.” Its rivers and their tributaries only start with the St. Lawrence, the Hudson, the Delaware, and the Susquehanna. The best known of its lakes are Great Lakes Erie and Ontario, Lake George, and the Finger Lakes. Its brooks, creeks, and trout streams are fishermen’s lore.

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Personal Care Chemicals and Childhood Obesity

Childhood obesityResearchers from the Children's Environmental Health Center at The Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York have found an association between exposure to the chemical group known as phthalates and obesity in young children – including increased body mass index (BMI) and waist circumference.

Phthalates are man-made, endocrine-disrupting chemicals that can mimic the body's natural hormones. They are commonly used in plastic flooring and wall coverings, food processing materials, medical devices, and personal-care products. While poor nutrition and physical inactivity are known to contribute to obesity, a growing body of research suggests that environmental chemicals – including phthalates – could play a role in rising childhood obesity rates.

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EPA Begins Water Delivery to Fracking Contaminated Town

by Abrahm Lustgarten, via ProPublica.org,

Dimock, Pa. resident Craig Sautner shows off his water. Photo: hudsonriverkeeper / via FlickrFirst, the earth around the rural town of Dimock, Pa., was cracked open as gas drillers used fracking to tap the vast energy supplies of the Marcellus Shale.

Then, in April 2009, residents there lost their access to fresh drinking water. Wells turned fetid. Some blew up. Tap water caught fire.

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GMO Labels Matter to Moms

Robyn O’Brien, mother, activist and founder of the AllergyKids Foundation shares her story on why she wants the FDA to label genetically engineered foods.

Join her — and over half a million Americans — in contacting the FDA to require the labeling of genetically engineered (GE) foods?

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Did the FDA Suppress Evidence of Mercury-Tainted High-Fructose Corn Syrup?

by Tom Philpott, via Grist.org,

Want some mercury with that sweet bun?High-fructose corn syrup rose from obscurity to ubiquity starting in the late 1970s, borne up by an informal public-private partnership between grain-processing giant Archer Daniels Midland and the federal government. For me, HFCS is at best a highly processed, lavishly subsidized, calorie-heavy, nutritional vacuum.

I visited a public high school in Boone, N.C. The main hall literally hummed with machines peddling variations on Coca-Cola's formula for success: fizzy water with artificial flavor, artificial color, added caffeine, and a jolt of HFCS. Other machines displayed snack "foods" tarted up with HFCS. Why are we feeding our kids this crap?

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Next-Gen GMOs: A Larger Danger?

by Tom Laskawy, via Grist.org,

Proposed GMO labelDid a recent scientific study just change the way we should think about the safety of genetically modified foods? According to Ari Levaux at the Atlantic, the answer is a resounding yes.

The study in question, performed by researchers at China's Nanjing University and published in the journal Cell Research, found that a form of genetic material -- called microRNA -- from conventional rice survived the human digestive process and proceeded to affect cholesterol function in humans.

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Seattle Chefs Help Upgrade School Lunches

by Claire Thompson, via Grist.org,

Seattle Schools hopes its new menu offerings will make students less skeptical of school lunch. Photo: USDASchool lunch in Seattle has come a long way since I was a public school student. In the ‘90s, lunch was only a dollar, and the cafeteria served up square, rubbery pizza, scoops of mushy spaghetti, and Belgian waffles (everyone's favorite!). Fast-forward more than a decade: Elementary school lunch now costs $2.75, and for several years the Seattle School District has inched toward healthier offerings.

For most of public-school history, cafeteria food was something to be endured and then forgotten immediately upon graduating. But in recent years, many parents, health advocates, and doctors have targeted school lunch as one of the aspects of our food system most in need of scrutiny and reform.

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Why Twinkies Are Cheaper than Carrots

Why are Twinkies cheaper than carrots? Because we as taxpayers have already paid for the ingredients!

As we move into 2012, the subject of the Farm Bill and agricultural subsidies will again come to the fore. Here's a great video that makes the case against what has become the cash "cow" of the Big Ag world. We as taxpayers are paying for these subsidies, making these ingredients artificially cheap. About one third of the billions in farm subsidy funds go to corn alone, which is why high-fructose corn syrup is in almost any processed food we eat.

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FDA Acts to Limit an Antibiotic in Livestock

by Gretchen Goetz, via Food Safety News,

Cattle in a feedlotThe Food and Drug Administration announced Wednesday [January 5, 2012] that it will be restricting the use of cephalosporin—a type of antibiotic—in food animals in order to prevent the growth of antibiotic-resistant strains of human diseases.

The cephalosporin class of drugs is used to treat a variety of serious conditions, including skin infections, urinary tract infections, pneumonia, abdominal infections, bone infections, pelvic inflammatory disease and meningitis.

Of all drugs prescribed to outpatients, 14 percent are from the cephalosporin class.

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Avoid Hydrogenated Anything Says Doctor

Does junk food cause brain damage?by Joe Satran, via The Huffington Post,

It seems like there's a new study relating nutrition and brain development every week. Sometimes, health experts tell us to eat grilled tuna, high in omega-3s, to ward off Alzheimer's disease -- and then, a new report on mercury levels reveals just how risky tuna can be for brain health. Clinical studies that have tried to administer certain nutrients to promote better neurological health have almost always failed. The haziness of all this data makes it hard to place your faith in any one diet.

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Luis Pacheco, MD: Facing the Hispanic Health Crisis

Luis Pacheco, MD: Facing the Hispanic Health Crisis

When Dr. Luis Pacheco throws a health fair in East L.A., people come. Mainly it’s women, but the men come too, joining a long line to see the good doctor. When they finally get their face time, the news is usually bad. The majority are overweight and bordering on diabetic, if they aren’t already. For those who lack health insurance (most), it’s their only chance to see a physician. Plus, everyone knows Dr. P. is the best.

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The Lappés: Big Solutions for a Small Planet

The Lappés: Big Solutions for a Small Planet

Despite the billions of dollars spent by mega-corporations in an effort to promote and keep the unsustainable industrial food system in place, there is growing recognition of the need to radically change the way we produce and consume food. A good part of the responsibility for that insight rests squarely on the shoulders of pioneers such as author, speaker and self-described “possibilist” Frances Moore Lappé. Frances sowed the seeds of a food revolution with her best-selling Diet for a Small Planet back in 1971 and has published some 17 books since that time, in addition to having traveled and spoken all over the world. Frances’s daughter, Anna Lappé, has become a best-selling author, speaker and food activist in her own right. Anna’s most recent book, Diet for a Hot Planet, empowers readers to fight climate change with their dietary choices and advocacy for sustainable food systems.

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A Doctor’s Hopes for 2012

by Alan Sosin, MD,

20121. Doctors spending more time with patients

The average office visit for established patients in most practices runs 7-15 minutes, and 30 minutes for new patients. That is barely enough time to get right down to business, do a cursory exam and write a prescription, with no opportunity to learn about the patient's lifestyle, family difficulties and other stresses. Physicians may be scheduled to see 30-40 patients a day. Being in such a rush stresses the doctor, leads to wrong diagnoses and wrong therapies. It also leads to more drug prescribing and more tests, as the quickest way to dispose of a patient is to write a prescription or order a test. Discussion invariably suffers from neglect.

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Food Support Reform Needed to Fight Obesity

by Alvin Powell, via The Harvard Gazette,

Food stamps for sodasEvery day, the government’s food stamp program buys Americans 20 million servings of soda, paying billions for a program that fosters the obesity that the government then has to pay again for in increased health care expenditures.

“That is arguably the single largest contributor to obesity,” said David Ludwig, a pediatrics professor at Harvard Medical School (HMS) and Harvard-affiliated Children’s Hospital Boston and professor of nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH). “It makes no sense … especially when we might wind up paying for that as a society in obesity and diabetes.”

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Supersized Fast Food Marketing Makes Supersized Nations

via University of Michigan School of Public Health,

Fast food leads to obesityNew research from the University of Michigan suggests obesity can be seen as one of the unintended side effects of free market policies.

A study of 26 wealthy nations shows that countries with a higher density of fast food restaurants per capita had much higher obesity rates compared to countries with a lower density of fast food restaurants per capita.

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Glow and Be Recognized

Fluorescent molecules with an open scaffolding called a metal-organic framework (MOF)by David Chandler, via MIT News Office,

Researchers at MIT have developed a new way of revealing the presence of specific chemicals — whether toxins, disease markers, pathogens or explosives. The system visually signals the presence of a target chemical by emitting a fluorescent glow.

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