O projeto de Promoção da Saúde Terrapia, coordenado pela Dra. Maria Luiza Branco, pesquisadora da FioCruz, completou 10 anos fazem duas semanas. Ligado à Escola Nacional de Saúde Pública, o projeto celebrou seu aniversário em meio a 150 pessoas, entre voluntários, estudantes, empresários e pesquisadores.
A reeducação alimentar, somada a hábitos de conscientização corporal e ainda trabalhos de sensibilização junto à Natureza, já colaboraram na promoção da saúde de centenas de participantes.
O projeto diferencia-se da maneira como nos relacionamos com médicos e com a nossa própria saúde. Não espere encontrar a prescrição de remédios como maneira de curar as doenças, é somente a prática de uma nova maneira de vivermos que pode nos levar à auto-promoção da saúde. E é exatamente isso que é ensinado no projeto.
Os trabalhos são coletivos e os alunos aprendem a relacionar-se de maneira diferente com a alimentação e com a Natureza. São feitas oficinas e palestras ensinando aos alunos a alimentação "Viva", onde os alimentos não são cozidos, as sementes são germinadas e cruas, e as hortaliças de preferência orgânicas. Não há a ingestão de produtos animais, aditivos químicos alimentares ou quaisquer elementos que possam ser prejudiciais ao organismo.
A partir da mudança nos hábitos alimentares, os estudantes passam a perceber demais valores associados ao corpo, à natureza e à sua própria mente. O trabalho realizado pelo Terrapia, conta ainda com o carinho e gratidão de seus alunos e voluntários. Com certeza uma nova maneira de promover a saúde e não combatê-la.
Para saber mais mande um e-mail para: jumalhardes@yahoo.com.br
Clarissa Taguchi.
segunda-feira, 30 de julho de 2007
sábado, 28 de julho de 2007
A revolução do cérebro
A máquina mais complexa do Universo está na sua cabeça. Agora que começamos a entender como ela funciona,descobrimos capacidades que nem imaginávamos. Saiba quais são esses superpoderes - e o que fazer para adquiri-los
Texto Rafael Kenski para SuperInteressante de Junho de 2006
Texto Rafael Kenski para SuperInteressante de Junho de 2006
O seu cérebro é capaz de quase qualquer coisa. Ele consegue parar o tempo, ficar vários dias numa boa sem dormir, ler pensamentos, mover objetos a distância e se reconstruir de acordo com a necessidade.
Parecem superpoderes de histórias em quadrinhos, mas são apenas algumas das descobertas que os neurocientistas fizeram ao longo da última década. Algumas dessas façanhas sempre fizeram parte do seu cérebro e só agora conseguimos perceber.
Outras são fruto da ciência: ao decifrar alguns mecanismos da nossa mente, os pesquisadores estão encontrando maneiras de realizar coisas que antes pareciam impossíveis. O resultado é uma revolução como nenhuma outra, capaz de mudar não só a maneira como entendemos o cérebro, mas também a imagem que fazemos do mundo, da realidade e de quem somos nós.
Clique no título e acompanhe toda a matéria.
Tudo do que você lembra é verdade?
Super Interessante, março de 2005
Natalia Yudenitsch
Não. Nem sempre a sua lembrança de um fato é garantia de que ele aconteceu. As experiências que vivemos são processadas por grupos de neurônios em diferentes partes do cérebro. Esses neurônios classificam nossas memórias por critérios visuais, olfativos, tácteis e auditivos. Por exemplo, uma fruta como a tâmara seria fichada por sua cor ocre, seu gosto agridoce, seu formato alongado e casca rígida. "O registro de onde está cada pedaço que forma a memória fica numa área do cérebro chamada hipocampo. Depois de algum tempo, o cérebro não precisa mais recorrer a ele e a ativação de qualquer uma das partes pode levar à reconstrução da rede toda, ou seja, à lembrança do fato", explica a neurocientista Suzana Herculano-Houzel. Só que a forma como essa reconstituição é feita pode alterar sua lembrança. Se ao ver uma tâmara pela primeira vez você estava tomando suco de laranja, por exemplo, o córtex pode puxar a lembrança desse sabor e fazer você pensar que tâmaras têm gosto cítrico.
Elementos externos, como a pressão de uma autoridade, também podem confundir a reconstituição. Digamos que alguém viu um crime, mas não enxergou claramente o criminoso. Se essa pessoa estiver amedrontada e o interrogador fizer perguntas como "ele tinha uma tatuagem no braço?", ela pode "lembrar-se" de algo que não aconteceu. "Diante de uma sugestão forte, podemos criar algo com tamanha riqueza de detalhes que a ativação interna do cérebro confunde essas imagens com fatos reais, criando a memória falsa", diz Suzana.
Nas décadas de 1980 e 90, quando cientistas ainda não sabiam da existência de memórias falsas, um método conhecido como terapia de recuperação da memória, que consistia em fazer regressões ou hipnoses em supostas vítimas, foi muito utilizado em investigações policiais. Um exemplo dos resultados desastrosos da técnica foi o caso da Escola Base, em São Paulo, quando professores foram acusados de molestar alunos a partir de memórias sugeridas às crianças por pais e terapeutas. Não é à toa que hoje lembranças que surgem em terapias ou interrogatórios só valem no tribunal após uma longa investigação.
Raw for 30 days
Um filme independente Norte-Americano sobre 6 pessoas diabéticas acostumadas a se alimentar de fast-food entram no desafio de se curar através da alimientação vegan, orgânica, crua e sem aditivos e preservativos por 30 dias. O filme foi inspirado na Dieta do Palhaço, onde o oposto foi feito por um indivíduo saudável.
Está em inglês, mas confira o trailer abaixo.
Raw for 30 Days is an independent documentary film that chronicles six McDonald's-munching Americans with diabetes who switch to a diet consisting entirely of vegan, organic, live, raw foods in order to reverse diabetes naturally. The six participants are challenged to give up meat, dairy, sugar, alcohol, nicotine, caffeine, soda, junk food, fast food, processed food, packaged food, and even cooked food – as well as go without their loved ones and many of their creature comforts – for 30 days.
Can foods heal? Can diabetes be reversed or cured through diet? Can a diabetic thrive without insulin and other drugs? Can people subsisting on a Standard American Diet (SAD) give up their favorite foods and favorite vices for 30 days? Can six strangers of diverse ages, races, and backgrounds support and nurture each other through this life-altering challenge?
Sumiço de abelhas e caos no trânsito
GILBERTO DUPAS*
Aprendiz de feiticeiro, nossa civilização só desperta para os perigos de seus caminhos tecnológicos quando tragédias acontecem
OQUE tem a ver o recente sumiço das abelhas em várias partes do mundo com os imensos congestionamentos que infernizam a vida dos cidadãos das grandes cidades? Mais do que parece. O caos do trânsito, resultado da primazia do transporte individual, tem dramáticos efeitos sobre o tempo e a saúde das pessoas. Ao lado da emissão de gases e toxinas industriais, a poluição do ar por veículos é variável crítica tanto do aquecimento global e dos efeitos no clima como de doenças.
A British Air Foundation conduziu pesquisas provando que bastam seis horas pedalando no tráfego intenso para causar danos aos vasos sangüíneos, tornando-os menos flexíveis, reduzindo proteínas que previnem coágulos e favorecendo riscos cardíacos. O Laboratório de Poluição Atmosférica da USP estima que a poluição ambiental encurte em média dois anos da vida do paulistano.
O índice de abortos também aumenta, porque o fluxo arterial na placenta diminui; e há suspeitas de efeitos severos na fertilidade. Dados do banco de sêmen do hospital Albert Einstein confirmam que a concentração de espermatozóides no sêmen dos paulistanos caiu significativamente nos últimos dez anos. Entre as hipóteses estão poluição, excessivo consumo de produtos industrializados, estresse, medicamentos, produtos para queda de cabelo, exposição à radiação, substâncias tóxicas dos plásticos de embalagem, pesticidas e outros venenos da vida moderna.
"São coisas que as pessoas vão incorporando em sua dieta e fazem um estrago tremendo nas mitocôndrias e no DNA, causando não só a morte celular como também danos à motilidade e à morfologia", afirma Dirceu Mendes Pereira, da Sociedade Brasileira de Reprodução Humana. Porém, o século 21 ficará conhecido como a era do automóvel popular. Carros de US$ 6.000, produzidos no padrão chinês, abarrotarão o mundo e farão crescer a degradação ambiental gerada ao fabricá-los e usá-los. Logo agora, quando questões vitais relativas ao clima e à saúde humana exigiriam o abandono radical do transporte individual em benefício do coletivo.
Mas, como convencer o cidadão chinês, indiano ou brasileiro de que a festa vai acabar justo quando ela chega à sua porta? Ou as grandes corporações globais, que já fazem os cálculos dos lucros em grande escala propiciados por essa nova fronteira de acumulação no "mercado dos pobres"? Mas o que têm abelhas com isso? Muito. No último outono do hemisfério Norte, elas deram para desaparecer. O mesmo fenômeno foi notado em vários países, inclusive no Brasil, causando perplexidade entre cientistas, apicultores -que chegaram a perder 50% de suas colméias- e ecologistas, todos alarmados com os danos ao ambiente e à agricultura se uma crise permanente ocorrer.
Afinal, abelhas são os grandes polinizadores naturais que viabilizam a formação de frutos e sementes. Cientistas da Universidade Harvard fazem hipóteses que incluem intoxicação por inseticidas, infecções por vírus e até radiação de telefones celulares. Quanto aos pesticidas, há inúmeras tragédias humanas que alguns já causaram. Por que não atingiriam as abelhas? Nos anos 1970-80, utilizados nos bananeirais da América Central, esterilizaram 30 mil homens.
Na ilha de Kyushu, no Japão, milhares de pessoas que consumiram óleo de arroz contaminado por dibromo cloropropano ficaram doentes e 112 morreram de intoxicação aguda, câncer e outras afecções; seus filhos herdaram distúrbios imunológicos e do desenvolvimento. A OMS estimou em 3 milhões o número de casos de contaminação desse tipo no mundo. Resíduos tóxicos como metais pesados são encontrados em animais das regiões mais distantes do mundo, numa poluição sistêmica global que atinge vegetais e humanos.
Quanto às ondas magnéticas, o planeta se tornou um imenso emissor delas, produto das múltiplas transmissões de rádio, TV, celular e radar, cujas conseqüências exatas sobre o meio ambiente e a saúde humana estamos longe de conhecer. Basta imaginar a brutal quantidade de emissão de ondas que poluem o espaço para que funcionem os 2 bilhões de celulares que abarrotam nosso globo. É razoável supor que afetem as abelhas?
Aprendiz de feiticeiro, nossa civilização só desperta para os perigos de seus caminhos tecnológicos quando tragédias acontecem. O sumiço temporário das abelhas pode ser mais um grave sintoma para que fiquemos em estado de alerta.
----------------------------------------------------------
GILBERTO DUPAS*, 64, é presidente do Instituto de Estudos Econômicos e Internacionais (IEEI) e coordenador-geral do Grupo de Conjuntura Internacional da USP. É autor de "O Mito do Progresso", entre outras obras.
Aprendiz de feiticeiro, nossa civilização só desperta para os perigos de seus caminhos tecnológicos quando tragédias acontecem
OQUE tem a ver o recente sumiço das abelhas em várias partes do mundo com os imensos congestionamentos que infernizam a vida dos cidadãos das grandes cidades? Mais do que parece. O caos do trânsito, resultado da primazia do transporte individual, tem dramáticos efeitos sobre o tempo e a saúde das pessoas. Ao lado da emissão de gases e toxinas industriais, a poluição do ar por veículos é variável crítica tanto do aquecimento global e dos efeitos no clima como de doenças.
A British Air Foundation conduziu pesquisas provando que bastam seis horas pedalando no tráfego intenso para causar danos aos vasos sangüíneos, tornando-os menos flexíveis, reduzindo proteínas que previnem coágulos e favorecendo riscos cardíacos. O Laboratório de Poluição Atmosférica da USP estima que a poluição ambiental encurte em média dois anos da vida do paulistano.
O índice de abortos também aumenta, porque o fluxo arterial na placenta diminui; e há suspeitas de efeitos severos na fertilidade. Dados do banco de sêmen do hospital Albert Einstein confirmam que a concentração de espermatozóides no sêmen dos paulistanos caiu significativamente nos últimos dez anos. Entre as hipóteses estão poluição, excessivo consumo de produtos industrializados, estresse, medicamentos, produtos para queda de cabelo, exposição à radiação, substâncias tóxicas dos plásticos de embalagem, pesticidas e outros venenos da vida moderna.
"São coisas que as pessoas vão incorporando em sua dieta e fazem um estrago tremendo nas mitocôndrias e no DNA, causando não só a morte celular como também danos à motilidade e à morfologia", afirma Dirceu Mendes Pereira, da Sociedade Brasileira de Reprodução Humana. Porém, o século 21 ficará conhecido como a era do automóvel popular. Carros de US$ 6.000, produzidos no padrão chinês, abarrotarão o mundo e farão crescer a degradação ambiental gerada ao fabricá-los e usá-los. Logo agora, quando questões vitais relativas ao clima e à saúde humana exigiriam o abandono radical do transporte individual em benefício do coletivo.
Mas, como convencer o cidadão chinês, indiano ou brasileiro de que a festa vai acabar justo quando ela chega à sua porta? Ou as grandes corporações globais, que já fazem os cálculos dos lucros em grande escala propiciados por essa nova fronteira de acumulação no "mercado dos pobres"? Mas o que têm abelhas com isso? Muito. No último outono do hemisfério Norte, elas deram para desaparecer. O mesmo fenômeno foi notado em vários países, inclusive no Brasil, causando perplexidade entre cientistas, apicultores -que chegaram a perder 50% de suas colméias- e ecologistas, todos alarmados com os danos ao ambiente e à agricultura se uma crise permanente ocorrer.
Afinal, abelhas são os grandes polinizadores naturais que viabilizam a formação de frutos e sementes. Cientistas da Universidade Harvard fazem hipóteses que incluem intoxicação por inseticidas, infecções por vírus e até radiação de telefones celulares. Quanto aos pesticidas, há inúmeras tragédias humanas que alguns já causaram. Por que não atingiriam as abelhas? Nos anos 1970-80, utilizados nos bananeirais da América Central, esterilizaram 30 mil homens.
Na ilha de Kyushu, no Japão, milhares de pessoas que consumiram óleo de arroz contaminado por dibromo cloropropano ficaram doentes e 112 morreram de intoxicação aguda, câncer e outras afecções; seus filhos herdaram distúrbios imunológicos e do desenvolvimento. A OMS estimou em 3 milhões o número de casos de contaminação desse tipo no mundo. Resíduos tóxicos como metais pesados são encontrados em animais das regiões mais distantes do mundo, numa poluição sistêmica global que atinge vegetais e humanos.
Quanto às ondas magnéticas, o planeta se tornou um imenso emissor delas, produto das múltiplas transmissões de rádio, TV, celular e radar, cujas conseqüências exatas sobre o meio ambiente e a saúde humana estamos longe de conhecer. Basta imaginar a brutal quantidade de emissão de ondas que poluem o espaço para que funcionem os 2 bilhões de celulares que abarrotam nosso globo. É razoável supor que afetem as abelhas?
Aprendiz de feiticeiro, nossa civilização só desperta para os perigos de seus caminhos tecnológicos quando tragédias acontecem. O sumiço temporário das abelhas pode ser mais um grave sintoma para que fiquemos em estado de alerta.
----------------------------------------------------------
GILBERTO DUPAS*, 64, é presidente do Instituto de Estudos Econômicos e Internacionais (IEEI) e coordenador-geral do Grupo de Conjuntura Internacional da USP. É autor de "O Mito do Progresso", entre outras obras.
US: A Sick Way to Prop Up an Ailing Economy
Two Trillion Spent on Healthcare Each Year: A Sick Way to Prop Up an Ailing Economy
By Joshua Holland, AlterNet. Posted July 28, 2007.
Between 2001 and 2006, the healthcare sector added 1.7 million jobs while the rest of the economy added none. So how well is the economy really doing?
For the first four years after the dot-com bust in 2001, a weak economy in most sectors was masked by an explosion in real estate sales, rocketing home values and a surge of consumer spending as people taking advantage of super-low interest rates and easy credit grabbed chunks of equity out of their newly high-priced digs and went shopping.
In the summer of 2005, the New York Times reported that the real estate biz -- "everything from land surveyors to general contractors to loan officers" -- had added 700,000 jobs to the American economy during the previous four years, while the rest of the work force had lost 400,000 jobs over the same period. Technically the economy was in "recovery," when in fact most of it remained soft.
A few economists sounded a warning about having all our eggs in one economic basket. People like Yale's Robert Shiller and Dean Baker at the Center for Economic Policy and Research pointed out that home values weren't syncing up with the fundamentals of the market, and that we were headed for an "adjustment" -- either a real estate crash leading to a recession or, in the best case scenario, a "soft landing."
But while there were some voices of caution, other economists told us that everything was going gangbusters. This was the New Economy in action: American manufacturing may have been gutted during the previous few decades, but the service sector is where more "value" is added anyway -- where the big profits are -- and Americans would be just fine selling each other houses, insurance and the occasional cheeseburger until the Next Big Thing came along.
It was a hot debate, but something else was going on at the same time that got less attention: There was the emergence of what could be called the healthcare economy. As Michael Mandel wrote in Businessweek last September, "Without [the health sector], the nation's labor market would be in a deep coma." Between 2001 and 2006, 1.7 million new jobs were added in the healthcare sector. Meanwhile, the rest of the private sector added exactly zero new jobs (net) during that period.
(The conventional wisdom is that the economy needs to add about 150,000 jobs per month to keep up with the growth of the working-age population.)
If current trends continue, 30 percent to 40 percent of all new jobs created in the United States over the next 25 years will be in the healthcare business. Mandel argued that this trend is partly responsible for the United States' low overall unemployment rate. "Take away healthcare hiring in the U.S.," he wrote, "and quicker than you can say cardiac bypass, the U.S. unemployment rate would be 1 to 2 percentage points higher."
One could argue that this is precisely how a vibrant economy should work. A dynamic industry takes off and compensates for weaknesses in other sectors. When it cools, another field will explode, perhaps one we can't even conceive of today.
What's more, healthcare jobs have increased at the same time as we've shed millions of relatively high-paying manufacturing jobs. Wages in the health sector vary widely, but the average is slightly higher than the average income in the private sector as a whole. Healthcare is labor-intensive, so a lot of the more than $2 trillion we'll spend this year in the Unites States will end up in healthcare workers' pockets. It's also an industry in which offshoring and outsourcing are uncommon; you might be able to schedule your colonoscopy with a guy at a call center in Mumbai, but ultimately your ass has to be in the same country as the personnel who do it.
By Joshua Holland, AlterNet. Posted July 28, 2007.
Between 2001 and 2006, the healthcare sector added 1.7 million jobs while the rest of the economy added none. So how well is the economy really doing?
For the first four years after the dot-com bust in 2001, a weak economy in most sectors was masked by an explosion in real estate sales, rocketing home values and a surge of consumer spending as people taking advantage of super-low interest rates and easy credit grabbed chunks of equity out of their newly high-priced digs and went shopping.
In the summer of 2005, the New York Times reported that the real estate biz -- "everything from land surveyors to general contractors to loan officers" -- had added 700,000 jobs to the American economy during the previous four years, while the rest of the work force had lost 400,000 jobs over the same period. Technically the economy was in "recovery," when in fact most of it remained soft.
A few economists sounded a warning about having all our eggs in one economic basket. People like Yale's Robert Shiller and Dean Baker at the Center for Economic Policy and Research pointed out that home values weren't syncing up with the fundamentals of the market, and that we were headed for an "adjustment" -- either a real estate crash leading to a recession or, in the best case scenario, a "soft landing."
But while there were some voices of caution, other economists told us that everything was going gangbusters. This was the New Economy in action: American manufacturing may have been gutted during the previous few decades, but the service sector is where more "value" is added anyway -- where the big profits are -- and Americans would be just fine selling each other houses, insurance and the occasional cheeseburger until the Next Big Thing came along.
It was a hot debate, but something else was going on at the same time that got less attention: There was the emergence of what could be called the healthcare economy. As Michael Mandel wrote in Businessweek last September, "Without [the health sector], the nation's labor market would be in a deep coma." Between 2001 and 2006, 1.7 million new jobs were added in the healthcare sector. Meanwhile, the rest of the private sector added exactly zero new jobs (net) during that period.
(The conventional wisdom is that the economy needs to add about 150,000 jobs per month to keep up with the growth of the working-age population.)
If current trends continue, 30 percent to 40 percent of all new jobs created in the United States over the next 25 years will be in the healthcare business. Mandel argued that this trend is partly responsible for the United States' low overall unemployment rate. "Take away healthcare hiring in the U.S.," he wrote, "and quicker than you can say cardiac bypass, the U.S. unemployment rate would be 1 to 2 percentage points higher."
One could argue that this is precisely how a vibrant economy should work. A dynamic industry takes off and compensates for weaknesses in other sectors. When it cools, another field will explode, perhaps one we can't even conceive of today.
What's more, healthcare jobs have increased at the same time as we've shed millions of relatively high-paying manufacturing jobs. Wages in the health sector vary widely, but the average is slightly higher than the average income in the private sector as a whole. Healthcare is labor-intensive, so a lot of the more than $2 trillion we'll spend this year in the Unites States will end up in healthcare workers' pockets. It's also an industry in which offshoring and outsourcing are uncommon; you might be able to schedule your colonoscopy with a guy at a call center in Mumbai, but ultimately your ass has to be in the same country as the personnel who do it.
New WHO report tackles children's environmental health
27 JULY 2007 GENEVA -- The World Health Organization (WHO) is today releasing the first ever report highlighting children's special susceptibility to harmful chemical exposures at different periods of their growth.
This new volume of the Environmental Health Criteria series, Principles for Evaluating Health Risks in Children Associated with Exposure to Chemicals, is the most comprehensive work yet undertaken on the scientific principles to be considered in assessing health risks in children. It highlights the fact that in children, the stage in their development when exposure occurs may be just as important as the magnitude of the exposure.
The scientific principles proposed in the document for evaluating environmental health risks in children will help the health sector, researchers and policy makers to protect children of all ages through improved risk assessments, appropriate interventions and focused research to become healthy adults.
"Children are not just small adults" said Dr Terri Damstra, WHO’s team leader for the Interregional Research Unit. "Children are especially vulnerable and respond differently from adults when exposed to environmental factors, and this response may differ according to the different periods of development they are going through. For example, their lungs are not fully developed at birth, or even at the age of eight, and lung maturation may be altered by air pollutants that induce acute respiratory effects in childhood and may be the origin of chronic respiratory disease later in life."
Air and water contaminants, pesticides in food, lead in soil, as well many other environmental threats which alter the delicate organism of a growing child may cause or worsen disease and induce developmental problems. Over 30% of the global burden of disease in children can be attributed to environmental factors.
Children have different susceptibilities during different life stages, due to their dynamic growth and developmental processes. Some examples of health effects resulting from developmental exposures prenatally and at birth include miscarriage, still birth, low birth weight and birth defects; in young children, infant mortality, asthma, neurobehavioural and immune impairment; and in adolescents, precocious or delayed puberty. Emerging evidence suggests that an increased risk of certain diseases in adults such as cancer and heart disease can result in part from exposures to certain environmental chemicals during childhood.
The vulnerability of children is increased in degraded and poor environments. Neglected and malnourished children suffer the most. These children often live in unhealthy housing, lack clean water and sanitation services, and have limited access to health care and education. For example, lead is known to be more toxic to children whose diets are deficient in calories, iron and calcium. One in five children in the poorest parts of the world will not live longer than their fifth birthday, mainly because of environment-related diseases.
This central focus of this new study is on the child including developing embryo, fetus, infant and adolescent, and on the need to have a good understanding of the interactions between exposure, biological susceptibility, and socioeconomic and nutritional factors at each stage of a child’s development.
The work was undertaken by an Advisory group of 24 scientific experts, representing 18 countries, and convened to provide insight, expertise, and guidance, and to ensure scientific accuracy and objectivity. Once the text was finalized, it was then sent to over 100 contact points throughout the world for review and comment, and also made available on WHO's International Programme of Chemical Safety (IPCS) web site for external review and comment for a period of 2 months.
For further information contact:
Ms. Nada Osseiran
Communications and Advocacy officer
Public Health and the Environment
WHO, GenevaTel.: +41 22 791 4475Fax: +41 22 791 4127
E-mail: osseirann@who.int
Gregory Hartl
Communications AdvisorHealth and Sustainable Development
WHO, GenevaMobile: +41 79 20 36 715
E-mail: hartlg@who.int
This new volume of the Environmental Health Criteria series, Principles for Evaluating Health Risks in Children Associated with Exposure to Chemicals, is the most comprehensive work yet undertaken on the scientific principles to be considered in assessing health risks in children. It highlights the fact that in children, the stage in their development when exposure occurs may be just as important as the magnitude of the exposure.
The scientific principles proposed in the document for evaluating environmental health risks in children will help the health sector, researchers and policy makers to protect children of all ages through improved risk assessments, appropriate interventions and focused research to become healthy adults.
"Children are not just small adults" said Dr Terri Damstra, WHO’s team leader for the Interregional Research Unit. "Children are especially vulnerable and respond differently from adults when exposed to environmental factors, and this response may differ according to the different periods of development they are going through. For example, their lungs are not fully developed at birth, or even at the age of eight, and lung maturation may be altered by air pollutants that induce acute respiratory effects in childhood and may be the origin of chronic respiratory disease later in life."
Air and water contaminants, pesticides in food, lead in soil, as well many other environmental threats which alter the delicate organism of a growing child may cause or worsen disease and induce developmental problems. Over 30% of the global burden of disease in children can be attributed to environmental factors.
Children have different susceptibilities during different life stages, due to their dynamic growth and developmental processes. Some examples of health effects resulting from developmental exposures prenatally and at birth include miscarriage, still birth, low birth weight and birth defects; in young children, infant mortality, asthma, neurobehavioural and immune impairment; and in adolescents, precocious or delayed puberty. Emerging evidence suggests that an increased risk of certain diseases in adults such as cancer and heart disease can result in part from exposures to certain environmental chemicals during childhood.
The vulnerability of children is increased in degraded and poor environments. Neglected and malnourished children suffer the most. These children often live in unhealthy housing, lack clean water and sanitation services, and have limited access to health care and education. For example, lead is known to be more toxic to children whose diets are deficient in calories, iron and calcium. One in five children in the poorest parts of the world will not live longer than their fifth birthday, mainly because of environment-related diseases.
This central focus of this new study is on the child including developing embryo, fetus, infant and adolescent, and on the need to have a good understanding of the interactions between exposure, biological susceptibility, and socioeconomic and nutritional factors at each stage of a child’s development.
The work was undertaken by an Advisory group of 24 scientific experts, representing 18 countries, and convened to provide insight, expertise, and guidance, and to ensure scientific accuracy and objectivity. Once the text was finalized, it was then sent to over 100 contact points throughout the world for review and comment, and also made available on WHO's International Programme of Chemical Safety (IPCS) web site for external review and comment for a period of 2 months.
For further information contact:
Ms. Nada Osseiran
Communications and Advocacy officer
Public Health and the Environment
WHO, GenevaTel.: +41 22 791 4475Fax: +41 22 791 4127
E-mail: osseirann@who.int
Gregory Hartl
Communications AdvisorHealth and Sustainable Development
WHO, GenevaMobile: +41 79 20 36 715
E-mail: hartlg@who.int
segunda-feira, 23 de julho de 2007
MSG: Nicotine for Food
By Dr. Ralph Wilson
For Biophile.co.za
For the last fifty years, the medical community has been baffled by the rise in cases of Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder (ADHD) and autism. These two diseases, unheard of before 1950, have been striking an increasing number of children. Physicians have been unable to explain to parents why their children are suffering these maladies despite there not being any family history of the disorder.
Finally these parents will know one possible answer. Thanks to John Erb, a developmental disorder researcher and author of the book The Slow Poisoning of America, one possible cause of ADHD and Autism is no longer a mystery."These diseases appear to be caused by a food additive commonly known as MSG or Monosodium Glutamate," John Erb explains. "MSG is added to food because of its addictive qualities, it is nicotine for food. It is highly reactive in the human brain and other organs."
MSG and its related ingredients have been found in increasing amounts in processed and fast foods. Almost every restaurant and most processed foods from snacks and soups to ready-made meals have glutamate in them in some form or another. MSG has no nutritional value. Scientific studies have shown that food laced with the MSG cause people to eat more of it, and faster, than food without it.
"Corporations use this knowledge to sell their products. Their competition uses MSG, so they keep adding it in larger amounts to keep up with them," John Erb comments. The FDA has no limits on how much MSG can be added to foods, even though as little as two tablespoons of it has been shown to cause epileptic convulsions and death in animals such as dogs.
MSG is a highly reactive amino acid. It is used by scientists in studies to purposely cause death to areas of the brain and is fed to rodents to make a strain of obese and pre-diabetic test subjects. MSG is classified as a neurotoxin: too much of it introduced to the brain can cause rapid cell death. It is this kind of destruction that John Erb states is the cause of ADHD and Autism. He came to this conclusion after reviewing hundreds of medical journal articles detailing the ways in which glutamate affects organs such as the brain.
According to John Erb, "When a woman becomes pregnant, the placental barrier is not fully formed in the first month of fetal development. The chemicals the mother eats can go directly to the developing child. The glutamate stimulates rapid growth in the brain, creating ADHD symptoms. Too much glutamate over-stimulates areas of the brain, resulting in neuronal cell death. This destruction to the neurons results in the symptoms categorized as Autism."
MSG is used in almost every mass produced food to increase its palatability. Women are being exposed to a major toxin that can cause irreparable damage to their child even before they discover they are pregnant.
John Erb took his discovery to Dr. Susan Bryson, head of the Autism Research Centre in Halifax, and one of the leading Autism scientists in Canada. She was amazed by his findings, and confirmed that current studies being done by the National Institute of Health (NIH) show that the cause of Autism has been linked to a toxin invading the embryo's brain stem at as early as twenty days after conception. The NIH had not yet identified the toxin, but thanks to John Erb's discovery, they now know the direction in which to focus their research.
"The sooner people know that MSG can cause ADHD and Autism in their unborn children, the sooner they can take steps to avoid being another victim of the steadily increasing numbers of these disorders," John Erb states.
Autism, unheard of before 1950, (MSG was introduced to the American diet in 1948) has now risen to epidemic proportions with one in every 200 children born with the affliction.
"There may be a genetic component deciding who is stricken with ADHD and Autism, otherwise when you consider the rampant use of MSG in today's diet, every child would be born with either ADHD or Autism. But if the growth curve keeps going the way it has, it won't be long before this is the case."
For Biophile.co.za
For the last fifty years, the medical community has been baffled by the rise in cases of Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder (ADHD) and autism. These two diseases, unheard of before 1950, have been striking an increasing number of children. Physicians have been unable to explain to parents why their children are suffering these maladies despite there not being any family history of the disorder.
Finally these parents will know one possible answer. Thanks to John Erb, a developmental disorder researcher and author of the book The Slow Poisoning of America, one possible cause of ADHD and Autism is no longer a mystery."These diseases appear to be caused by a food additive commonly known as MSG or Monosodium Glutamate," John Erb explains. "MSG is added to food because of its addictive qualities, it is nicotine for food. It is highly reactive in the human brain and other organs."
MSG and its related ingredients have been found in increasing amounts in processed and fast foods. Almost every restaurant and most processed foods from snacks and soups to ready-made meals have glutamate in them in some form or another. MSG has no nutritional value. Scientific studies have shown that food laced with the MSG cause people to eat more of it, and faster, than food without it.
"Corporations use this knowledge to sell their products. Their competition uses MSG, so they keep adding it in larger amounts to keep up with them," John Erb comments. The FDA has no limits on how much MSG can be added to foods, even though as little as two tablespoons of it has been shown to cause epileptic convulsions and death in animals such as dogs.
MSG is a highly reactive amino acid. It is used by scientists in studies to purposely cause death to areas of the brain and is fed to rodents to make a strain of obese and pre-diabetic test subjects. MSG is classified as a neurotoxin: too much of it introduced to the brain can cause rapid cell death. It is this kind of destruction that John Erb states is the cause of ADHD and Autism. He came to this conclusion after reviewing hundreds of medical journal articles detailing the ways in which glutamate affects organs such as the brain.
According to John Erb, "When a woman becomes pregnant, the placental barrier is not fully formed in the first month of fetal development. The chemicals the mother eats can go directly to the developing child. The glutamate stimulates rapid growth in the brain, creating ADHD symptoms. Too much glutamate over-stimulates areas of the brain, resulting in neuronal cell death. This destruction to the neurons results in the symptoms categorized as Autism."
MSG is used in almost every mass produced food to increase its palatability. Women are being exposed to a major toxin that can cause irreparable damage to their child even before they discover they are pregnant.
John Erb took his discovery to Dr. Susan Bryson, head of the Autism Research Centre in Halifax, and one of the leading Autism scientists in Canada. She was amazed by his findings, and confirmed that current studies being done by the National Institute of Health (NIH) show that the cause of Autism has been linked to a toxin invading the embryo's brain stem at as early as twenty days after conception. The NIH had not yet identified the toxin, but thanks to John Erb's discovery, they now know the direction in which to focus their research.
"The sooner people know that MSG can cause ADHD and Autism in their unborn children, the sooner they can take steps to avoid being another victim of the steadily increasing numbers of these disorders," John Erb states.
Autism, unheard of before 1950, (MSG was introduced to the American diet in 1948) has now risen to epidemic proportions with one in every 200 children born with the affliction.
"There may be a genetic component deciding who is stricken with ADHD and Autism, otherwise when you consider the rampant use of MSG in today's diet, every child would be born with either ADHD or Autism. But if the growth curve keeps going the way it has, it won't be long before this is the case."
MSG has been hidden in food ingredient lists as hydrolyzed vegetable protein, autolyzed yeast extract, soy protein isolate, and many other names. Every year, the amount of this substance hidden in foods rises astronomically. Just because the name MSG does not appear on the label does not mean that the food does not contain the excitotoxin glutamate.
"We should demand that the food industry, both restaurants and food manufacturers, remove the added glutamate in all its forms from anything we ingest," John Erb states emphatically. "The fact that they add it to make us addicted to their food is appalling enough, but considering it is doing terrible damage to our children, for that there is no excuse. The sooner these corporations are held accountable for poisoning us, the sooner we can eradicate ADHD and Autism from the maternity wards across the nation."
MSG causes obesity
The data is in and it is staggering: scientists have been using the common food additive MSG to create fat rats and mice to experiment on. In hundreds of studies produced worldwide over the last thirty years, MSG has been injected under the skin of day old mice and rats to produce obese rats and mice with a predisposition for diabetes.
According to the Glutamate Association, a government Lobby group sponsored by many of the companies that use or produce MSG in its various forms, the reason that it is added to food is simple:
"Studies have found that adding MSG to certain foods, such as soup and mashed potatoes, has been successful in increasing the food intake in institutionalized elderly populations.
John Erb, author of the book The Slow Poisoning of America believes that MSG is the food industry's equivalent of Nicotine. "Studies have shown that people who eat food laced with MSG eat more of it, and faster than food that does not have this additive. If it makes the elderly eat more, what is it doing to our children?"
Glutamate is an amino acid that can excite almost every major organ in the body, especially the brain. It occurs naturally in milligram amounts in some harvested foods. Now, however, a person can get as much as a teaspoonful a day by eating junk and processed foods.
"When ingested by human test subjects MSG directly affects the pancreas, stimulating it to triple its standard output of insulin output. This unnatural amount of insulin finds the sugar in the blood and converts it to fat. A few hours after you eat MSG the excess insulin the MSG triggers reduces your blood sugar level so much that you become tired and even hungry again. In animal test subjects this excess insulin leads to hyperinsulinemia: the chronic overproduction of insulin. The pancreas becomes so out of control that the body starts producing killer T cells to shut it down."
Is it any wonder why diabetes, obesity and lethargy in our children are at an all time high? Junk foods, processed foods, even school foods are laced with large amounts of glutamates.
"Too much glutamate in the brain over-excites the neurons until they die. Many people who suffer from chronic headaches and migraines can trace their trigger to eating too much MSG. If it can give an adult a migraine what can it do to a developing fetus?" John Erb asks.
Having researched over five hundred studies that use MSG to create obese mice and rats, John Erb took his concern about the food additive's safety to Washington. He was invited to report his findings to Senator Tom Harkin of the Senate Agricultural Committee.
On April 19th, 2004, Mr. Erb met with the Senator's aid, Alicia Morris, at the Agricultural office in the Birksen building. Ms. Morris was shocked by the ten page report that Mr. Erb gave her. The report, titled Published Medical Studies Linking the Food Additive MSG to Obesity, outlined fifty studies from the over five hundred he has catalogued in which rats or mice were given MSG to make them obese and hyperin-sulinemic.
John Erb suggested that the Senator should take action on the information in his MSG Report before the Personal Responsibility in Food Consumption Act is passed by the Senate This act, known as The Cheeseburger Bill, would protect food manufacturers and restaurants from litigation stemming from discoveries such as Mr. Erb's: MSG has been proven to cause obesity and pre-diabetes in test subjects and is used as a food additive to make people eat more. He believes that the EDA should ban the adding of glutamates to the American diet until the food manufacturers can prove that there is no danger to the public health.
Mr. Erb concludes that "Considering that the same chemical used to make fat rats is used in uncontrolled amounts in our nation's food supply to make us eat more, it is doubtful that they could ever prove it safe for human consumption. One wonders how it was ever approved to be added to our food in the first place."
MSG may not be the only cause of obesity, but it is the chemical of choice used by scientists to create obese subjects in lab experiments.
Vício açucarado
23/07/2007
Agência FAPESP – Quando a nicotina se liga a um neurônio, como a célula consegue enviar o sinal que anuncia a presença da substância e dispara a sensação de prazer? Graças ao açúcar, de acordo com um estudo realizado por pesquisadores norte-americanos.
O grupo, da Universidade do Sul da Califórnia (USC), propõe que o açúcar seria o responsável por abrir a passagem na membrana da célula e por anunciar a chegada da nicotina. Os resultados da pesquisa serão publicados na edição on-line da revista Nature Neuroscience.
Para o biólogo estrutural Raymond Stevens, do Instituto de Pesquisa Scripps, o estudo é “um marco nos campos de biologia estrutural e comunicação neural”. Além da dependência de nicotina, Stevens destaca que a pesquisa pode indicar alvos para o desenvolvimento de fármacos relacionados ao tratamento de epilepsia, esquizofrenia e depressão.
Utilizando camundongos como modelo, o estudo fornece o primeiro olhar detalhado sobre parte do receptor de acetilcolina nicotínica (nAChR): uma das moléculas de um grande e importante grupo conhecido como proteínas de canal iônico, que permite a passagem de sinais entre neurônios.
Os resultados revelam que as moléculas de açúcar têm um papel importante na atividade dessas proteínas. “Nossos estudos preenchem uma lacuna importante na área e estabelecem um novo paradigma”, disse Lin Chen, professor associado de biologia molecular e computacional da USC.
“Várias teorias correntes, que não consideram o papel do açúcar, estão provavelmente incompletas”, disse Chen. O debate sobre como os sinais passam do exterior de uma célula para seu interior se estende há tempos, sem solução.
De acordo com Chen, alguns pesquisadores sugeriam que quando um composto químico, como a nicotina, liga-se a uma proteína de canal iônico na superfície de uma célula, a proteína inicia uma “onda conformacional” que propaga um sinal pelo corpo da proteína em direção à membrana celular.
Mas a base molecular de tal onda, em um nAChR ou em qualquer outra proteína, não foi claramente estabelecida. Em vez disso, o estudo feito pelo grupo de Chen sobre a estrutura cristalina sugere que as moléculas de açúcar que aderem à superfície do receptor têm um papel mecânico.
“Elas servem como ligação entre o local de adesão do neurotransmissor e a região da membrana em que está a abertura de entrada”, disse Chen. “O açúcar funciona como se fosse um ‘porteiro’, que deixa a passagem aberta ou fechada.”
Ao cortar as cadeias de açúcar, a operação do portão cessou, de acordo com Chen. “O açúcar é fundamental”, afirmou. Os pesquisadores também encontraram uma molécula de água no interior do receptor – o que é significativo, porque as proteínas normalmente são preenchidas com matéria hidrofóbica (repelente da água), que ajuda a estrutura a manter sua forma.
Segundo Chen, a molécula de água pode ativar o receptor para alterar seu formato e contrabalançar a deformação ocasionada pela abertura e fechamento da entrada na membrana.
Estudos anteriores sobre homólogos do nAChR – proteínas que compartilham sua estrutura, mas não sua função de comunicação – mostram que eles são completamente hidrofóbicos. De acordo com Chen, isso apóia a teoria de que a molécula de água tem um papel funcional.
O artigo Crystal structure of the extracellular domain of nAChRa1 bound to alpha-bungarotoxin at 1.94Å resolution, de Lin Chen e outros, pode ser lido por assinantes da Nature Neuroscience em www.nature.com/neuro.
Agência FAPESP – Quando a nicotina se liga a um neurônio, como a célula consegue enviar o sinal que anuncia a presença da substância e dispara a sensação de prazer? Graças ao açúcar, de acordo com um estudo realizado por pesquisadores norte-americanos.
O grupo, da Universidade do Sul da Califórnia (USC), propõe que o açúcar seria o responsável por abrir a passagem na membrana da célula e por anunciar a chegada da nicotina. Os resultados da pesquisa serão publicados na edição on-line da revista Nature Neuroscience.
Para o biólogo estrutural Raymond Stevens, do Instituto de Pesquisa Scripps, o estudo é “um marco nos campos de biologia estrutural e comunicação neural”. Além da dependência de nicotina, Stevens destaca que a pesquisa pode indicar alvos para o desenvolvimento de fármacos relacionados ao tratamento de epilepsia, esquizofrenia e depressão.
Utilizando camundongos como modelo, o estudo fornece o primeiro olhar detalhado sobre parte do receptor de acetilcolina nicotínica (nAChR): uma das moléculas de um grande e importante grupo conhecido como proteínas de canal iônico, que permite a passagem de sinais entre neurônios.
Os resultados revelam que as moléculas de açúcar têm um papel importante na atividade dessas proteínas. “Nossos estudos preenchem uma lacuna importante na área e estabelecem um novo paradigma”, disse Lin Chen, professor associado de biologia molecular e computacional da USC.
“Várias teorias correntes, que não consideram o papel do açúcar, estão provavelmente incompletas”, disse Chen. O debate sobre como os sinais passam do exterior de uma célula para seu interior se estende há tempos, sem solução.
De acordo com Chen, alguns pesquisadores sugeriam que quando um composto químico, como a nicotina, liga-se a uma proteína de canal iônico na superfície de uma célula, a proteína inicia uma “onda conformacional” que propaga um sinal pelo corpo da proteína em direção à membrana celular.
Mas a base molecular de tal onda, em um nAChR ou em qualquer outra proteína, não foi claramente estabelecida. Em vez disso, o estudo feito pelo grupo de Chen sobre a estrutura cristalina sugere que as moléculas de açúcar que aderem à superfície do receptor têm um papel mecânico.
“Elas servem como ligação entre o local de adesão do neurotransmissor e a região da membrana em que está a abertura de entrada”, disse Chen. “O açúcar funciona como se fosse um ‘porteiro’, que deixa a passagem aberta ou fechada.”
Ao cortar as cadeias de açúcar, a operação do portão cessou, de acordo com Chen. “O açúcar é fundamental”, afirmou. Os pesquisadores também encontraram uma molécula de água no interior do receptor – o que é significativo, porque as proteínas normalmente são preenchidas com matéria hidrofóbica (repelente da água), que ajuda a estrutura a manter sua forma.
Segundo Chen, a molécula de água pode ativar o receptor para alterar seu formato e contrabalançar a deformação ocasionada pela abertura e fechamento da entrada na membrana.
Estudos anteriores sobre homólogos do nAChR – proteínas que compartilham sua estrutura, mas não sua função de comunicação – mostram que eles são completamente hidrofóbicos. De acordo com Chen, isso apóia a teoria de que a molécula de água tem um papel funcional.
O artigo Crystal structure of the extracellular domain of nAChRa1 bound to alpha-bungarotoxin at 1.94Å resolution, de Lin Chen e outros, pode ser lido por assinantes da Nature Neuroscience em www.nature.com/neuro.
'Natural Protection' To Reduce Spread Of Alzheimer's Disease Possible
Science Daily — Although numerous drugs have been developed over the years to alleviate the symptoms of Alzheimer's disease, there is still no real cure to halt this progressive, neurodegenerative disorder that causes premature death of nerve cells in the deep brain nuclei, leading to dementia and death.
A graduate student in biological chemistry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem has, however, developed an approach that holds out promise of providing natural brain protection against the spread of this disease. For his work, Erez Podoly, a joint student of Dean of Science Prof. Hermona Soreq and the head of the Wolfson Center for Applied Structural Biology, Prof. Oded Livnah, has been named one of the winners of this year's Kaye Innovation Awards, which were presented on June 6 during the 70th meeting of the Hebrew University Board of Governors.
Alzheimer's Disease afflicts 12 million people worldwide, and this figure is expected to almost double over the next 25 years, due to prolonged life expectancy. Alzheimer disease patients develop neurotoxic precipitates ("plaques"), composed of the amyloid beta (Aβ) peptide, which spread as fibrils in the brain and destroy nerve cells. (A peptide is short chain of amino acids).
The several drugs that have been developed for Alzheimer's disease serve to enhance neuronal function, suppress inflammation, block or reduce the generation of oxidative stress in the brain, or minimize cognitive damage. Unfortunately, however, it is still unknown as to how to halt the spread of the neurotoxic plaques.
Podoly, 34, a native New Yorker, and his colleagues set out to design a blocker for the neurotoxic effects of the Aβ peptide, using the Butyrylcholinesterase (BChE) protein, which was cloned and engineered in their lab. BChE's brain concentration increases with age, a fact overlooked so far, but which for Podoly and his colleagues seemed highly relevant to the progress of Alzheimer's. The researchers set out in their laboratory to see if they could chemically improve and intensify BChE's effect on the brain fibrils.
The researchers were indeed able to show in the lab that BChE purified from human blood and short synthetic peptides of BChE were able to reduce fibril formation. However, supply limitations and health risks limit the value of blood serum-derived human BChE.
Fortunately, a breakthrough was achieved when PharmAthene Inc., an American company, was able to produce engineered human BChE that was introduced into the milk of transgenic goats. Recently, in collaboration between the Hebrew University, Yissum -- the technology transfer company of the university -- and PharmAthene, Podoly and his colleagues have succeeded in demonstrating by several independent methods that the goat-derived BChE efficiently interacts with and reduces amyloid fibrils formation. They anticipate that recombinant human BChE produced in the milk of transgenic goats and/or synthetic peptides derived from BChE can become novel prophylactic or therapeutic agents for slowing the progression of senile plaque formations in the brain of Alzheimer's patients. Further research, leading to clinical tests on humans, is planned for the future.
Note: This story has been adapted from a news release issued by The Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Source: The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Date: June 13, 2007
A graduate student in biological chemistry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem has, however, developed an approach that holds out promise of providing natural brain protection against the spread of this disease. For his work, Erez Podoly, a joint student of Dean of Science Prof. Hermona Soreq and the head of the Wolfson Center for Applied Structural Biology, Prof. Oded Livnah, has been named one of the winners of this year's Kaye Innovation Awards, which were presented on June 6 during the 70th meeting of the Hebrew University Board of Governors.
Alzheimer's Disease afflicts 12 million people worldwide, and this figure is expected to almost double over the next 25 years, due to prolonged life expectancy. Alzheimer disease patients develop neurotoxic precipitates ("plaques"), composed of the amyloid beta (Aβ) peptide, which spread as fibrils in the brain and destroy nerve cells. (A peptide is short chain of amino acids).
The several drugs that have been developed for Alzheimer's disease serve to enhance neuronal function, suppress inflammation, block or reduce the generation of oxidative stress in the brain, or minimize cognitive damage. Unfortunately, however, it is still unknown as to how to halt the spread of the neurotoxic plaques.
Podoly, 34, a native New Yorker, and his colleagues set out to design a blocker for the neurotoxic effects of the Aβ peptide, using the Butyrylcholinesterase (BChE) protein, which was cloned and engineered in their lab. BChE's brain concentration increases with age, a fact overlooked so far, but which for Podoly and his colleagues seemed highly relevant to the progress of Alzheimer's. The researchers set out in their laboratory to see if they could chemically improve and intensify BChE's effect on the brain fibrils.
The researchers were indeed able to show in the lab that BChE purified from human blood and short synthetic peptides of BChE were able to reduce fibril formation. However, supply limitations and health risks limit the value of blood serum-derived human BChE.
Fortunately, a breakthrough was achieved when PharmAthene Inc., an American company, was able to produce engineered human BChE that was introduced into the milk of transgenic goats. Recently, in collaboration between the Hebrew University, Yissum -- the technology transfer company of the university -- and PharmAthene, Podoly and his colleagues have succeeded in demonstrating by several independent methods that the goat-derived BChE efficiently interacts with and reduces amyloid fibrils formation. They anticipate that recombinant human BChE produced in the milk of transgenic goats and/or synthetic peptides derived from BChE can become novel prophylactic or therapeutic agents for slowing the progression of senile plaque formations in the brain of Alzheimer's patients. Further research, leading to clinical tests on humans, is planned for the future.
Note: This story has been adapted from a news release issued by The Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Source: The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Date: June 13, 2007
domingo, 22 de julho de 2007
The End of the Age of Estrogen
By Geoffrey Cowley and Karen Springen
NEWSWEEK, July, 22-29, 2002
LUCKILY THERE WAS good news for the menopausal woman, “if only she be a clever member of her sex.” Lorand had discovered that extracts from pigs’ ovaries could “put off old age for a score of years,” or at least “mitigate its effects when it has asserted itself with all its terrors.” By the early 1940s, drugmakers were mass-producing estrogen from pregnant mares’ urine (hence the brand name Premarin). And by 1960 the august New England Journal of Medicine was recommending the stuff for “everyone with evidence of an estrogen lack”—which is to say virtually every woman over 50. Last year U.S. pharmacists filled some 45 million prescriptions for Premarin and an additional 22 million for Prempro, which consists of the same drug with a progestin chaser.
Small wonder, then, that news last week about hormone-replacement therapy caused such gasps. This wasn’t just another isolated study contradicting the last one to make headlines. Federal health officials announced last Tuesday that the jury was finally in—and that Prempro does significantly more harm than good when taken for long periods. Women had been told for decades that estrogen taken with progestin would not only ease hot flashes and insomnia but help preserve bone strength, mental acuity and, most important, heart health. There’s no question that HRT can ease the acute symptoms of menopause, and the claim about bone strength has held up to scrutiny. But after observing more than 16,000 women for roughly five years, researchers found conclusively that the hormones in Prempro raise the risk of heart attack, stroke, blood clots and breast cancer. The federally sponsored study was supposed to run for eight years, but the five-year results were so decisive that researchers cut it short and urged the participants to stop taking their pills. Dr. JoAnn Manson, a women’s health expert at Harvard Medical School, calls it “the most dramatic sea change I’ve seen in clinical medicine.”
NOT RULED OUT
She’s not alone in that sentiment. The announcement caused a near panic among the more than 13 million American women now on hormone-replacement therapy. Doctors’ offices were overwhelmed by calls, and Wyeth Pharmaceuticals, the maker of Prempro, saw its stock price plunge by 25 percent overnight. Fortunately, the study didn’t uncover huge, unimagined dangers to patients. “This is not like an urgent medical alert or the withdrawal of a drug from the market,” says Dr. Jacques Rossouw, acting director of the federal Women’s Health Initiative, which organized the trial. The findings don’t rule out Prempro as a short-term remedy for menopausal symptoms. And they don’t apply to women who take estrogen without progestin following hysterectomy. But for millions of women juggling the pros and cons of long-term HRT, the new findings offer something virtually unprecedented, which is clarity. The evidence is in, and an era is ending.
Why has it taken us so long to assess the risks of estrogen? How could a practice that does more harm than good become such a medical mainstay? “The incestuous relationship between the pharmaceutical companies and the medical establishment is part of it,” says Dr. Susan Love, a prominent women’s health specialist and longtime critic of HRT. “A lot of the information doctors get is channeled through the companies. I would bet the average doctor thought this was already proven.”
Does the medical establishment devote adequate resources to studying women's health?
No. Researchers have always focused on men and they always will
No. But women are getting much more attention than they used to
Yes. It seems as if heatlh news these days is all about women
But lazy dupes were not the only ones prescribing Prempro. Until recently, the available research suggested that long-term HRT was a boon to women’s health. When scientists observed large groups of women through their later years, the hormone users always seemed to fare best.
Those on long-term treatment suffered more than their share of breast cancer, but they experienced far fewer heart attacks (a seemingly predictable finding, since estrogen helps modulate cholesterol). Since heart disease dwarfs breast cancer as a health threat, the overall advantages seemed clear. “We thought most postmenopausal women should take HRT unless they were already at high risk of breast cancer,” says Dr. Deborah Grady, the head of a panel that wrote the American College of Physicians’ once authoritative 1992 guidelines. There was just one problem: nobody knew whether hormones made women healthy—or whether healthy women were more likely to take hormones.
ETHICAL QUESTIONS
The study cut short last week was designed specifically to tackle that question. Instead of passively monitoring women who had made their own choices about HRT, researchers at 40 clinics across the country recruited 16,608 healthy volunteers, ages 50 to 79, and randomly assigned them to take either Prempro or an identical dummy pill once a day for eight years. When the study began in 1997, critics questioned the ethics of giving people placebo when HRT had such huge ostensible benefits. But like any large clinical trial, this one had an independent monitoring board that would analyze the data as they accumulated, and halt the study early if decisive risks or benefits emerged. To the dismay of women like Janice Marabella, that’s exactly what happened. Marabella, a 62-year-old office worker in San Jose, Calif., joined the trial five years ago and felt fine until last week, when she followed the directive to stop taking her pills. It turned out she had been on hormones, not placebo, and she found herself teary and volatile within days of quitting the regimen. She now plans to resume treatment as a private patient, if only to wean herself more slowly. “The hot flashes and night sweats I could deal with,” she says. “The mood swings are something else.”
Marcia Stefanick, Ph.D., of Stanford University School of Medicine
Why should she give it up at all? What dangers has this huge clinical trial brought to light? It was clear during the first year of the study that Prempro was creating hazards as well as benefits. And as the researchers reported last week in The Journal of the American Medical Association, the ratio grew less favorable over time. Over the course of the study, women on HRT reduced their hip-fracture rate by a third (compared with women on placebo) and suffered significantly less colon cancer as well. Their chances of suffering a heart attack or pulmonary blood clot were elevated throughout the study, and their stroke risk was high from the second year on. None of those hazards caused a decisive imbalance. But five years into the study, it became clear that women on Prempro were developing invasive breast cancer at a higher rate than the control group. “That alone wouldn’t have stopped the trial,” says Marcia Stefanick of Stanford, who chairs the Women’s Health Initiative’s steering committee. “But when we combined it with the cardiovascular outcomes, it became very clear that the risks of treatment exceeded the benefit.”
That doesn’t mean HRT poses grave risks to individual women. During the study, the heart-attack rate was 29 percent higher in the treatment group than it was in the control group. The stroke rate was 41 percent higher, and the risk of invasive breast cancer was 26 percent higher. The odds sound alarming when you frame them that way, less so when you consider the rates at which these conditions actually occur. In a typical year, heart attacks struck 37 of every 10,000 Prempro users in the study, versus 30 out of 10,000 placebo users. In other words, taking Prempro boosted a woman’s annual heart-attack risk from 0.3 percent up to 0.37 percent. The annual stroke rate rose from 21 to 29 per 10,000, and the breast-cancer rate increased from 30 to 38 per 10,000.
ASSESSING RISKS
Unfortunately, even a small risk to individuals can have big consequences when applied to a large population. The study suggests that, on balance, a group of 10,000 long-term Prempro users would suffer 31 excess health crises each year (strokes, heart attacks, blood clots, breast cancers), while avoiding only 11 bone fractures and colon cancers. That’s a net increase of 20. If 100,000 people take up long-term HRT, they’ll suffer 200 of these needless events each year. A million long-term Prempro users will experience 2,000 of them annually—which means 20,000 over the course of a decade. This is no way to prevent hip fractures.
NEWSWEEK, July, 22-29, 2002
LUCKILY THERE WAS good news for the menopausal woman, “if only she be a clever member of her sex.” Lorand had discovered that extracts from pigs’ ovaries could “put off old age for a score of years,” or at least “mitigate its effects when it has asserted itself with all its terrors.” By the early 1940s, drugmakers were mass-producing estrogen from pregnant mares’ urine (hence the brand name Premarin). And by 1960 the august New England Journal of Medicine was recommending the stuff for “everyone with evidence of an estrogen lack”—which is to say virtually every woman over 50. Last year U.S. pharmacists filled some 45 million prescriptions for Premarin and an additional 22 million for Prempro, which consists of the same drug with a progestin chaser.
Small wonder, then, that news last week about hormone-replacement therapy caused such gasps. This wasn’t just another isolated study contradicting the last one to make headlines. Federal health officials announced last Tuesday that the jury was finally in—and that Prempro does significantly more harm than good when taken for long periods. Women had been told for decades that estrogen taken with progestin would not only ease hot flashes and insomnia but help preserve bone strength, mental acuity and, most important, heart health. There’s no question that HRT can ease the acute symptoms of menopause, and the claim about bone strength has held up to scrutiny. But after observing more than 16,000 women for roughly five years, researchers found conclusively that the hormones in Prempro raise the risk of heart attack, stroke, blood clots and breast cancer. The federally sponsored study was supposed to run for eight years, but the five-year results were so decisive that researchers cut it short and urged the participants to stop taking their pills. Dr. JoAnn Manson, a women’s health expert at Harvard Medical School, calls it “the most dramatic sea change I’ve seen in clinical medicine.”
NOT RULED OUT
She’s not alone in that sentiment. The announcement caused a near panic among the more than 13 million American women now on hormone-replacement therapy. Doctors’ offices were overwhelmed by calls, and Wyeth Pharmaceuticals, the maker of Prempro, saw its stock price plunge by 25 percent overnight. Fortunately, the study didn’t uncover huge, unimagined dangers to patients. “This is not like an urgent medical alert or the withdrawal of a drug from the market,” says Dr. Jacques Rossouw, acting director of the federal Women’s Health Initiative, which organized the trial. The findings don’t rule out Prempro as a short-term remedy for menopausal symptoms. And they don’t apply to women who take estrogen without progestin following hysterectomy. But for millions of women juggling the pros and cons of long-term HRT, the new findings offer something virtually unprecedented, which is clarity. The evidence is in, and an era is ending.
Why has it taken us so long to assess the risks of estrogen? How could a practice that does more harm than good become such a medical mainstay? “The incestuous relationship between the pharmaceutical companies and the medical establishment is part of it,” says Dr. Susan Love, a prominent women’s health specialist and longtime critic of HRT. “A lot of the information doctors get is channeled through the companies. I would bet the average doctor thought this was already proven.”
Does the medical establishment devote adequate resources to studying women's health?
No. Researchers have always focused on men and they always will
No. But women are getting much more attention than they used to
Yes. It seems as if heatlh news these days is all about women
But lazy dupes were not the only ones prescribing Prempro. Until recently, the available research suggested that long-term HRT was a boon to women’s health. When scientists observed large groups of women through their later years, the hormone users always seemed to fare best.
Those on long-term treatment suffered more than their share of breast cancer, but they experienced far fewer heart attacks (a seemingly predictable finding, since estrogen helps modulate cholesterol). Since heart disease dwarfs breast cancer as a health threat, the overall advantages seemed clear. “We thought most postmenopausal women should take HRT unless they were already at high risk of breast cancer,” says Dr. Deborah Grady, the head of a panel that wrote the American College of Physicians’ once authoritative 1992 guidelines. There was just one problem: nobody knew whether hormones made women healthy—or whether healthy women were more likely to take hormones.
ETHICAL QUESTIONS
The study cut short last week was designed specifically to tackle that question. Instead of passively monitoring women who had made their own choices about HRT, researchers at 40 clinics across the country recruited 16,608 healthy volunteers, ages 50 to 79, and randomly assigned them to take either Prempro or an identical dummy pill once a day for eight years. When the study began in 1997, critics questioned the ethics of giving people placebo when HRT had such huge ostensible benefits. But like any large clinical trial, this one had an independent monitoring board that would analyze the data as they accumulated, and halt the study early if decisive risks or benefits emerged. To the dismay of women like Janice Marabella, that’s exactly what happened. Marabella, a 62-year-old office worker in San Jose, Calif., joined the trial five years ago and felt fine until last week, when she followed the directive to stop taking her pills. It turned out she had been on hormones, not placebo, and she found herself teary and volatile within days of quitting the regimen. She now plans to resume treatment as a private patient, if only to wean herself more slowly. “The hot flashes and night sweats I could deal with,” she says. “The mood swings are something else.”
Marcia Stefanick, Ph.D., of Stanford University School of Medicine
Why should she give it up at all? What dangers has this huge clinical trial brought to light? It was clear during the first year of the study that Prempro was creating hazards as well as benefits. And as the researchers reported last week in The Journal of the American Medical Association, the ratio grew less favorable over time. Over the course of the study, women on HRT reduced their hip-fracture rate by a third (compared with women on placebo) and suffered significantly less colon cancer as well. Their chances of suffering a heart attack or pulmonary blood clot were elevated throughout the study, and their stroke risk was high from the second year on. None of those hazards caused a decisive imbalance. But five years into the study, it became clear that women on Prempro were developing invasive breast cancer at a higher rate than the control group. “That alone wouldn’t have stopped the trial,” says Marcia Stefanick of Stanford, who chairs the Women’s Health Initiative’s steering committee. “But when we combined it with the cardiovascular outcomes, it became very clear that the risks of treatment exceeded the benefit.”
That doesn’t mean HRT poses grave risks to individual women. During the study, the heart-attack rate was 29 percent higher in the treatment group than it was in the control group. The stroke rate was 41 percent higher, and the risk of invasive breast cancer was 26 percent higher. The odds sound alarming when you frame them that way, less so when you consider the rates at which these conditions actually occur. In a typical year, heart attacks struck 37 of every 10,000 Prempro users in the study, versus 30 out of 10,000 placebo users. In other words, taking Prempro boosted a woman’s annual heart-attack risk from 0.3 percent up to 0.37 percent. The annual stroke rate rose from 21 to 29 per 10,000, and the breast-cancer rate increased from 30 to 38 per 10,000.
ASSESSING RISKS
Unfortunately, even a small risk to individuals can have big consequences when applied to a large population. The study suggests that, on balance, a group of 10,000 long-term Prempro users would suffer 31 excess health crises each year (strokes, heart attacks, blood clots, breast cancers), while avoiding only 11 bone fractures and colon cancers. That’s a net increase of 20. If 100,000 people take up long-term HRT, they’ll suffer 200 of these needless events each year. A million long-term Prempro users will experience 2,000 of them annually—which means 20,000 over the course of a decade. This is no way to prevent hip fractures.
Estudo liga homossexualidade ao número de irmãos
Comportamento
Segunda, 26 de junho de 2006
Estudo liga homossexualidade ao número de irmãos
O último filho homem de uma família de muitos meninos é mais propenso à homossexualidade, afirmam cientistas canadenses em um estudo publicado nesta segunda-feira na edição on-line da publicação US Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
O estudo, conduzido por Anthony Bogaert, da Universidade Brock, perto de Toronto, revela que "a mais consistente correlação biodemográfica de orientação sexual dos homens é o número de irmãos mais velhos" e não as influências sociais.
"Só irmãos mais velhos biológicos e não qualquer outra característica entre os irmãos ou irmãs, inclusive de irmãos mais velhos não-biológicos, influencia a orientação sexual dos homens, indiferentemente da quantidade de tempo passada com estes irmãos ou irmãs", alega Bogaert.
Segundo esta teoria, o sistema imunológico da mãe interpreta e registra os fetos masculinos - não os femininos - como estranhos e cria "anticorpos maternais antimasculinos" que afetam a parte do cérebro que determina a sexualidade.
O efeito é cumulativo e por isso é mais provável que venha a causar homossexualismo no último de uma série de filhos nascidos da mesma mãe. Os fetos de meninas não são afetados porque as mães, por serem mulheres, não criam anticorpos durante sua gestação.
Os pesquisadores, que entrevistaram 944 homens canadenses para a realização do estudo, não investigaram o mecanismo em ação, mas os resultados sustentam uma teoria de "efeito de ordem fraternal" sobre a homossexualidade em homens precedidos por outros, acrescenta o estudo. Outras teorias sugerem que a idade da mãe ou o nível de estresse durante a gravidez podem afetar a sexualidade masculina.
AFP
Comentário do Editor:
Tal matéria apenas apresenta as inúmeras possibilidades da bioquímica humana ainda não investigadas, o desenvolvimento e evolução humana, como também das espécies, vai de encontro ao ambiente que nos encontramos como também entendemos que tal ambiente é constantemente construído pelos seus elementos, vivos ou inanimados.
Segunda, 26 de junho de 2006
Estudo liga homossexualidade ao número de irmãos
O último filho homem de uma família de muitos meninos é mais propenso à homossexualidade, afirmam cientistas canadenses em um estudo publicado nesta segunda-feira na edição on-line da publicação US Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
O estudo, conduzido por Anthony Bogaert, da Universidade Brock, perto de Toronto, revela que "a mais consistente correlação biodemográfica de orientação sexual dos homens é o número de irmãos mais velhos" e não as influências sociais.
"Só irmãos mais velhos biológicos e não qualquer outra característica entre os irmãos ou irmãs, inclusive de irmãos mais velhos não-biológicos, influencia a orientação sexual dos homens, indiferentemente da quantidade de tempo passada com estes irmãos ou irmãs", alega Bogaert.
Segundo esta teoria, o sistema imunológico da mãe interpreta e registra os fetos masculinos - não os femininos - como estranhos e cria "anticorpos maternais antimasculinos" que afetam a parte do cérebro que determina a sexualidade.
O efeito é cumulativo e por isso é mais provável que venha a causar homossexualismo no último de uma série de filhos nascidos da mesma mãe. Os fetos de meninas não são afetados porque as mães, por serem mulheres, não criam anticorpos durante sua gestação.
Os pesquisadores, que entrevistaram 944 homens canadenses para a realização do estudo, não investigaram o mecanismo em ação, mas os resultados sustentam uma teoria de "efeito de ordem fraternal" sobre a homossexualidade em homens precedidos por outros, acrescenta o estudo. Outras teorias sugerem que a idade da mãe ou o nível de estresse durante a gravidez podem afetar a sexualidade masculina.
AFP
Comentário do Editor:
Tal matéria apenas apresenta as inúmeras possibilidades da bioquímica humana ainda não investigadas, o desenvolvimento e evolução humana, como também das espécies, vai de encontro ao ambiente que nos encontramos como também entendemos que tal ambiente é constantemente construído pelos seus elementos, vivos ou inanimados.
sexta-feira, 20 de julho de 2007
Grapefruit pode aumentar risco de câncer de mama, diz estudo
Da BBC
Comer grapefruit (fruta também conhecida como toranja) todos os dias pode aumentar em mais de 30% o risco de desenvolver câncer de mama, segundo cientistas americanos.
Um estudo com mais de 50 mil mulheres que já tinham passado pela menopausa descobriu que comer apenas um quarto de uma grapefruit por dia aumentou o risco da doença.
Segundo informações publicadas na revista especializada British Journal of Cancer, a fruta aumenta o nível de estrogênio, o hormônio sexual feminino associado ao maior risco de desenvolvimento do câncer de mama.
Os pesquisadores e outros especialistas afirmam, no entanto, que precisam de mais estudos sobre o assunto para reforçar a teoria.
Questionário
As mulheres que participaram da pesquisa tiveram que preencher um questionário em que contavam com qual freqüência consumiam a fruta e o tamanho das porções consumidas.
Os pesquisadores, das universidades do Sul da Califórnia e do Havaí, descobriram que as mulheres que comiam um quarto de uma grapefruit, ou porções maiores, todos os dias tinham um risco maior de desenvolver câncer de mama do que as que não consumiam a fruta.
Estudos anteriores mostraram que uma molécula chamada citocromo P450 3A3 (CYP3A4) está envolvida no metabolismo do hormônio estrogênio.
A grapefruit pode aumentar os níveis de estrogênio no sangue ao inibir esta molécula, permitindo o acúmulo do hormônio.
Os pesquisadores descobriram que em mulheres que comiam pelo menos um quarto de grapefruit diariamente os níveis de estrogênio eram maiores.
"Já foi estabelecido que o estrogênio está associado com o risco de câncer de mama. Então, se o consumo de grapefruit afeta o metabolismo levando a maiores níveis (de estrogênio) circulando, então é biologicamente plausível que o consumo regular de grapefruit aumente o risco de câncer de mama em mulheres", afirmaram os cientistas.
Mais pesquisa
Os cientistas dizem que mais pesquisa é necessária para confirmar as descobertas, que podem ter sido afetadas pelo fato de ter sido levado em consideração o consumo da fruta, e não do suco da fruta.
O câncer de mama corresponde a quase um terço de todos os tipos de câncer em mulheres e outros hábitos já foram ligados à doença como o consumo de álcool e estar acima do peso.
"Esta pesquisa é interessante, mas este estudo é simplesmente uma peça do quebra-cabeça que pode nos ajudar a entender como nossas dietas afetam a saúde", disse Joanne Lunn, cientista do setor de nutrição na Fundação Britânica de Nutrição.
Lunn afirma que alguns padrões de dieta estão associados com um risco reduzido de certos tipos de câncer e uma dieta rica em várias frutas e vegetais pode ajudar a reduzir o risco de doenças do coração e alguns tipos de câncer.
Comer grapefruit (fruta também conhecida como toranja) todos os dias pode aumentar em mais de 30% o risco de desenvolver câncer de mama, segundo cientistas americanos.
Um estudo com mais de 50 mil mulheres que já tinham passado pela menopausa descobriu que comer apenas um quarto de uma grapefruit por dia aumentou o risco da doença.
Segundo informações publicadas na revista especializada British Journal of Cancer, a fruta aumenta o nível de estrogênio, o hormônio sexual feminino associado ao maior risco de desenvolvimento do câncer de mama.
Os pesquisadores e outros especialistas afirmam, no entanto, que precisam de mais estudos sobre o assunto para reforçar a teoria.
Questionário
As mulheres que participaram da pesquisa tiveram que preencher um questionário em que contavam com qual freqüência consumiam a fruta e o tamanho das porções consumidas.
Os pesquisadores, das universidades do Sul da Califórnia e do Havaí, descobriram que as mulheres que comiam um quarto de uma grapefruit, ou porções maiores, todos os dias tinham um risco maior de desenvolver câncer de mama do que as que não consumiam a fruta.
Estudos anteriores mostraram que uma molécula chamada citocromo P450 3A3 (CYP3A4) está envolvida no metabolismo do hormônio estrogênio.
A grapefruit pode aumentar os níveis de estrogênio no sangue ao inibir esta molécula, permitindo o acúmulo do hormônio.
Os pesquisadores descobriram que em mulheres que comiam pelo menos um quarto de grapefruit diariamente os níveis de estrogênio eram maiores.
"Já foi estabelecido que o estrogênio está associado com o risco de câncer de mama. Então, se o consumo de grapefruit afeta o metabolismo levando a maiores níveis (de estrogênio) circulando, então é biologicamente plausível que o consumo regular de grapefruit aumente o risco de câncer de mama em mulheres", afirmaram os cientistas.
Mais pesquisa
Os cientistas dizem que mais pesquisa é necessária para confirmar as descobertas, que podem ter sido afetadas pelo fato de ter sido levado em consideração o consumo da fruta, e não do suco da fruta.
O câncer de mama corresponde a quase um terço de todos os tipos de câncer em mulheres e outros hábitos já foram ligados à doença como o consumo de álcool e estar acima do peso.
"Esta pesquisa é interessante, mas este estudo é simplesmente uma peça do quebra-cabeça que pode nos ajudar a entender como nossas dietas afetam a saúde", disse Joanne Lunn, cientista do setor de nutrição na Fundação Britânica de Nutrição.
Lunn afirma que alguns padrões de dieta estão associados com um risco reduzido de certos tipos de câncer e uma dieta rica em várias frutas e vegetais pode ajudar a reduzir o risco de doenças do coração e alguns tipos de câncer.
quinta-feira, 19 de julho de 2007
How Mercury Damages Your Brain
If you've ever questioned just how dangerous mercury is for your brain, this short film from the University of Calgary will put your suspicions to rest. The film shows, in vivid detail, exactly what happens to your brain cells when they're exposed to mercury, making it easy to understand why mercury has been linked to a host of harmful reactions like autism, heart disease, Parkinson's disease, multiple sclerosis, infertility and many more.
..............
Clique aqui e veja o videosinho:
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2007/07/17/how-mercury-damages-your-brain.aspx
..............
Clique aqui e veja o videosinho:
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2007/07/17/how-mercury-damages-your-brain.aspx
A Dirty World - Air Pollution
Environmental Medicine
A Dirty World - Air Pollution
International Medical Veritas Association
As much as 40 per cent of children from certain heavily polluted areas suffer from asthma. [i]
If you are sick and are living in a city where you can literally see the air when looking from a distance you need not wonder so much about the cause of your illness. It is right there in the air you breathe. It might not be the only source of your disease but it is a cause, part of the etiology. Every human being on the planet is being poisoned but in some places it is like a low intensity gas chamber, slowly forcing poisons into our bodies until we get sick and then die.
As adults we make certain decisions as to where we work and live and that is just a fact of life. It is sad though, tragically so, that our young ones have neither choice nor option in this regard. They are much more vulnerable to environmental threats and the statistics are showing that. Researchers from all over the globe are posting information about the chemical hazard that sits like a background radiation cloud across our once pristine planet. Chemical radioactivity is an appropriate phrase to describe what the situation is with mercury and other chemicals that are causing disease rates and cancer to sore through the stratosphere.
For every 10ug/m3 increase in pollution, the thickness of the lining of the neck artery increased by between 3.9% and 4.3%.
Researchers at The University of Southern California have found that for every 10ug/m3 increase in pollution, the thickness of the lining of the neck artery increased by between 3.9% and 4.3%. Professor Nino Kuenzli, author of this study said the public health implications of the findings "could be immense." Scores of new studies each year demonstrate that air pollution can be harmful to human health and that children are the most susceptible. Fine particle pollution cuts the average life expectancy by about the same amount as road accidents reported the U.N. Economic Commission for Europe in 2004 saying, "It is relatively recently that scientific studies have begun to show the extent of the health effects and how these can be linked to the concentrations of fine particles in the air." [ii]
Business has virtually free rein in its use of deadly toxins. US industries manufacture and import about 75,000 chemicals, using 3,000 of them at the rate of more than a million pounds a year.
According to the Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR) about 100 million Americans, more than one-third of the population, suffer from some form of chronic disease like asthma, diabetes, cancer, heart and kidney disease or arthritis.
EPA experts acknowledge that there are tools available today that can measure the toxic dangers in any locality, which can dramatically improve decisions on where people can safely live, work, and go to school or play. What no one has communicated bluntly is that those safe places have become virtually extinct leaving us and our children with no safe place, no haven from a chemical onslaught that will only get worse with each passing year.
The first principle of detoxification and chelation (the removal of heavy metals) is the directive to avoid exposure in the first place. Absolute avoidance of exposure is virtually impossible today but that does not mean we should not try. Eating organic food is the obvious first step but for many moving out of ones city and even country would be required. Utterly reject mercury fillings in the mouth and a pledge to never take mercury preserved vaccines, or any vaccines for that matter, would be logical second steps.
As our knowledge about the etiology of disease progresses, the evidence for environmental contributions to disease grows.
Most of the world's urban dwellers are exposed to intense pollution and entire countries like China and certain parts of the United States are like vast poison fields. Most cities are toxic traps for all who lives within. It's much worse than you can imagine for you are not imagining the mercury problem the entire globe, but especially certain parts, are having. (Survival Medicine will have a two hundred page section called The Rising Tide of Mercury. Everyone needs to understand the mercury issue deeply if they want to survive what is happening just with this issue alone.)
It's not only in the huge cities that citizens are at risk.
Dr. Palmer from the University of Texas informed us a while ago that t here is a significant increase in the rates of special education students and autism rates associated with increases in environmentally released mercury. On average, for each 1,000 lb of environmentally released mercury, there was a 43% increase in the rate of special education services and a 61% increase in the rate of autism.[iii]
And a new study estimated that 1 in 58 children in the UK has autism with similar numbers feared in Ireland.
The Division of Environmental and Occupational Disease Control, California Department of Health Services, explored associations between autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and environmental exposures, by linking the California autism surveillance system to estimated hazardous air pollutant (HAP) concentrations compiled by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The adjusted odds ratios (AORs) were elevated by 50% in the top quartile of chlorinated solvents and heavy metals [95% confidence intervals confirming Dr. Palmer and his alarming assertions.
States that are reporting the highest levels of mercury emissions also have the highest rates of developmental disorders including autism. (Dr. John Palmer)
A two-year study of mercury accumulation in the town of Steubenville, Ohio, by federal EPA researcher Matt Landis and the University of Michigan disputes the basic EPA policy on mercury; showing emissions to be much more concentrated in local areas around power plants than thought before. The EPA contends only about 8% of the mercury from coal-burning plants, incinerators and boilers settles to the ground locally. The Steubenville study contends nearly 70% of the mercury found in the Steubenville area came from local sources [iv]
The astounding array of pollutants in the newborn and unborn should be a wake up call that the existing material frameworks of the world should be changed.
What this means is that it is dangerous to live anywhere near coal-burning plants, incinerators and boilers. If mercury spreads widely, as presumed by the model commonly used by the EPA, communities near coal-fired plants face no greater risk than those elsewhere. If large amounts of mercury from those plants settle within 60 to 120 miles of a plant, then local communities face a much larger risk. You have to decide who or what to trust in this regard.
Actually we lose in either direction for what it means is that if the mercury falls far from the source it means that the high winds are taking it all over the world, to every square inch of the planet, though like with radiation patterns, certain places would be much hotter than others.
It is now accurate, scientific and medically sound to state that we are poisoning every man, woman and child on earth.
To get a birds eye view of the hurricanes of toxicity we face on the parts per billion and million level it is helpful to know that air pollution in major cities is now being seen as dangerous to health as radiation exposure suffered by survivors of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster. A recent study suggests high levels of urban air pollution cut short life expectancy more than the radiation exposure of emergency workers who were sent into the 19-mile exclusion zone around Chernobyl straight after the accident. [v]
Women living in areas of high air pollution were at greater risk of heart disease and death, while children living within 500m of motorways suffered more permanent lung damage and lower life expectancy.
Jim Smith, a scientist at the government's Centre for Ecology and Hydrology in Dorchester, assessed the health risks faced by emergency workers at Chernobyl directly after the explosion and those who unofficially set up home in the exclusion zone afterwards. He compared them with the more familiar risks of air pollution, obesity, and passive and active smoking. "The immediate effects of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombs led to approximately 210,000 deaths in the two cities. However, radiation exposures experienced by the most exposed group of survivors led to an average loss of life expectancy significantly lower than that caused by severe obesity or active smoking," the report states.
This is not to diminish the threat of radiation from medical tests, nuclear reactors and the totally insane use of depleted uranium weapons and the intentional injecting of mercury into children's bodies and teeth. What this is telling us specifically is that we are in huge danger from the air we breathe, and that is only one part of our exposure. The water we drink is compromised as are the foods we eat. We are talking about nightmares of the worst kind, chemical and radioactive ones that are accumulating, building up in intensity everywhere including in our very own bodies.
Mercury is not an ordinary air pollutant nor is it classified as such. Because it is a neurotoxin that causes neurological problems, it is considered a hazardous air pollutant, which gives it a different legal status. This is a very polite way of saying that mercury is a nerve poison, which even at the lowest concentrations imaginable causes problems for the young. We are only in the beginning phases of becoming aware of the tremendous problem with thousands of tons of mercury being poured into the air each year. If one gram of mercury can pollute a 20-acre lake, or anything near that size, or kill a child, imagine what 8 to ten billion grams of it would do. [vi]
Lead and mercury are highly toxic to the brain, nervous system, kidneys, reproductive system, and immune system.
Power plants in the US put 48 tons of mercury a year into the atmosphere through burning coal. [vii] China spews 600 tons of mercury into the air each year, accounting for a great part of the world's non-natural emissions. And the volume is rising quickly with more coal fired energy plants now under construction in China than exists in the entire country of England. China all by itself is bringing on a mercury crisis. By 2020, China will have nearly 1,000 gigawatts of total electricity-generating capacity, more than twice the current amount, according to the State Power Economic Research Center.
We have reached a milestone in human history. Awaiting each and every child born on the planet is a life doomed to being poisoned.
China will this year burn about 1.9 billion tons of coal, a 12% increase from last year, and consumption is expected to keep rising. In fifteen years we can expect China to be pumping 1,400 tons of mercury into the air or approximately 60 additional tons a year as new capacity comes online. [viii] This is a huge number and will join the already enormous amount of mercury bellowing up from China's more than 2,000 coal-fired power plants.
This mercury soars high into the atmosphere and then around the globe on what has become a transcontinental conveyor belt of mercury polluted air. On Mount Bachelor, in Oregon, considered one of the cleanest sites in the Northwest, scientists from the University of Washington have been sampling the air on the 9,065 foot mountain top since 2004.
They are monitoring for pollutants such as mercury as well as gases, including carbon monoxide, ozone and nitrogen oxides. This site is also used by Staci Simonich's lab at OSU to look at long-distance travels of pesticides and other pollutants. "It's sort of ironic that we have to go to one of the cleanest locations to look for pollutants," said Daniel Jaffe, a professor of atmospheric and environmental chemistry at the University of Washington, Bothell. Some of what they are finding comes from China. [ix] The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that on certain days nearly 25 percent of the particulate matter in the skies above Los Angeles can be traced to China. Some experts predict China could one day account for a third of all California's air pollution.
According to the observations made by the internationally recognized medical researcher, Dr. Yoshiaki Omura, all cancer cells have mercury in them. Since mercury is the second most toxic substance on this planet, its presence provides a strong initiating factor for disrupting cell function. Support for this idea comes from Dr. Hans Nolte who states that, "The wave spectrum of mercury contains more than thirteen wavelengths, whereas only one or two frequencies or wavelengths are usually observed for the other heavy or noble metals." It is Dr. Nolte's belief that the many harmful effects of mercury could be explained to some degree on the basis of this great variety of wavelengths. Dr. Omura's clinical observation concludes that one of the primary reasons cancer returns is because residual mercury reignites a pathological environment even after surgery, chemotherapy, radiation, and alternative therapies report a positive effect. [x]
Meanwhile Beijing recently persuaded the World Bank to cut from a report finding that p ollution causes about 750,000 premature deaths in China each year. The Financial Times reported saying that, "The World Bank was told that it could not publish this information. It was too sensitive and could cause social unrest," one unnamed adviser told the Financial Times. [xi] Capitalists on the other hand would use a different rational excuse but clearly governments and corporations on both sides of the great political divide are not concerned that they are the ones who are driving up cancer rates through the stratosphere.
The brains of our children are our most precious economic resource, and we haven't recognized how vulnerable they are. We must make protection of the young brain a paramount goal of public healthprotection. You have only one chance to develop a brain. (Philippe Grandjean - Harvard School of Public Health)
Children's brain development is being impaired by some of the more than 70,000 human-made chemicals on the market, according to the WWF. [i] [xii] The report, which surveyed current research in the field, charges chemicals with such neurological effects as poor memory, reduced visual recognition and motor skills, and lower IQ, and cites other U.S. research that already ties 10 percent of all neurobehavioral disorders to chemical exposure. While it singles out some chemicals by name -- particularly brominated flame-retardants, PCBs, and dioxins -- the report laments that there is little to no safety information available on most chemicals floating about in the environment and in households.
"In effect, we are all living in a global chemical experiment of which we don't know the outcome," said WWF's Helen McDade. Environmental contaminants are suspected to cause cancer, birth defects, immune system defects, reduced IQ, behavioral abnormalities, decreased fertility, altered sex hormone balance, altered metabolism and specific organ dysfunctions. Every day children are exposed to chemicals that have not been tested for safety.
Exposure (particularly prenatal exposure) to certain endocrine disrupting chemicals (e.g. PCBs) can have adverse effects on neurological development ... and behavior... delays in...cognitive development has been found to be associated with neonatal PCB exposure. (World Health Organization)
Also according to the WWF in 1929 the world was producing 1 million tons of chemicals and pharmaceuticals a year. Today that number has climbed to 400 million tons. That means that we pollute the earth at a rate that until only recently took decades to accomplish. Easily in one year we now do the damage it took from 1930 to 1960 to effect. In the next ten years we will collectively produce 4 billion tons of chemicals, which in one way or another eventually end up as toxic pollutants in the environment.
Mark Sircus Ac., OMDDirector International Medical Veritas Association http://www.imva.infohttp://www.magnesiumforlife.com
.........................
For my readers interested in financial matters:
Our Economy is on an Artificial Life-support System
by Richard C. Cook
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=6239
[i] As much as 40 per cent of children from certain heavily polluted areas suffer from asthma by the time they reach six years of age. Asthma rates among children have increased almost five-fold since the 1970s and more than doubled in the past decade, according to research published in England at the end of 2004. The proportion of under-16s diagnosed with asthma has jumped from 5.5 per cent in 1973 to 12 per cent in 1988, and to 27.3 per cent last year.ABC News. Half Perth six-year-olds suffer asthma Sunday, November 14, 2004.
[ii] Asscociated Press. Nov. 29, 2004
[iii] Palmer RF, Blanchard S, Stein Z, Mandell D, Miller C. University of Texas Health Science Center, San Antonio Department of Family and Community Medicine, 7703 Floyd Curl Drive, San Antonio, Texas 78229-3900, USA. palmer@uthscsa.edu
[iv] http://msnbc.msn.com/id/13140004/
[v] Smith JT. Are passive smoking, air pollution and obesity a greater mortality risk than major radiation incidents? BMC Public Health. 2007 Apr 3;7:49. PMID: 17407581
[vi] The world is 510 million square kilometers and 71 percent of that is ocean. One gram of mercury poured into eighty million liters of water would be cause for concern under federal human health standards for drinking water, enough to contaminate a typical mid-western lake. Thus one gram pollutes a typical 20 acre lake and 20 acres equals .081 square kilometers. One ton of mercury contains 1 million grams which would thus pollute 81,000 square kilometers of lakes. One thousand tons would pollute 81 million square kilometers, so 7,000 tons of mercury would pollute a lake the size of the world. The world is not a lake, so the one gram rule does not quite work, but it offers us a good reference point. The oceans are quite deep and the atmosphere also holds a vast capacity to hold mercury, as does the soil. But over the last five hundred years we have dug up and used approximately 1 million tons of mercury. That is 1,000,000,000,000 grams (a trillion) or enough to blanket each 20 acres on earth with over 149 grams. It is these 149 grams that is responsible for mercury levels increasing by a factor of 20 times over the last 3 centuries.
[vii] DEP Commissioner Bradley Campbell statement about national emission levels. Associated Press. Fri, Nov. 05, 2004
[viii] Wall Street Journal. Invisible Export A Hidden Cost Of China's Growth: Mercury Migration
December 17, 2004
[ix] Scientists can use a computer model to find the wind origins for the last 10 days. If there is a big fire or dust storm across the globe, you can see the pollution crossing the ocean on satellite data. In lesser cases computers trace the path of Northwest winds to find origins. Nine years ago Jaffe's group first detected Chinese pollution on the Washington coast. Other scientists have since confirmed it, by identifying patterns of trace metals that are unique to Chinese pollution, much like a fingerprint, Jaffe said. Pollutants from China hitting Oregon Cascades; Associated Press; 8/27//06; oregonlive.com
[x] The Pathogenic Multi-potency of Mercury, Biological Therapy, Journal of Natural Medicine, Vol. VI, No. 3, June 1988
[xi] http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070703/ap_on_re_as/china_pollution;_ylt=AhO
...
A Dirty World - Air Pollution
International Medical Veritas Association
As much as 40 per cent of children from certain heavily polluted areas suffer from asthma. [i]
If you are sick and are living in a city where you can literally see the air when looking from a distance you need not wonder so much about the cause of your illness. It is right there in the air you breathe. It might not be the only source of your disease but it is a cause, part of the etiology. Every human being on the planet is being poisoned but in some places it is like a low intensity gas chamber, slowly forcing poisons into our bodies until we get sick and then die.
As adults we make certain decisions as to where we work and live and that is just a fact of life. It is sad though, tragically so, that our young ones have neither choice nor option in this regard. They are much more vulnerable to environmental threats and the statistics are showing that. Researchers from all over the globe are posting information about the chemical hazard that sits like a background radiation cloud across our once pristine planet. Chemical radioactivity is an appropriate phrase to describe what the situation is with mercury and other chemicals that are causing disease rates and cancer to sore through the stratosphere.
For every 10ug/m3 increase in pollution, the thickness of the lining of the neck artery increased by between 3.9% and 4.3%.
Researchers at The University of Southern California have found that for every 10ug/m3 increase in pollution, the thickness of the lining of the neck artery increased by between 3.9% and 4.3%. Professor Nino Kuenzli, author of this study said the public health implications of the findings "could be immense." Scores of new studies each year demonstrate that air pollution can be harmful to human health and that children are the most susceptible. Fine particle pollution cuts the average life expectancy by about the same amount as road accidents reported the U.N. Economic Commission for Europe in 2004 saying, "It is relatively recently that scientific studies have begun to show the extent of the health effects and how these can be linked to the concentrations of fine particles in the air." [ii]
Business has virtually free rein in its use of deadly toxins. US industries manufacture and import about 75,000 chemicals, using 3,000 of them at the rate of more than a million pounds a year.
According to the Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR) about 100 million Americans, more than one-third of the population, suffer from some form of chronic disease like asthma, diabetes, cancer, heart and kidney disease or arthritis.
EPA experts acknowledge that there are tools available today that can measure the toxic dangers in any locality, which can dramatically improve decisions on where people can safely live, work, and go to school or play. What no one has communicated bluntly is that those safe places have become virtually extinct leaving us and our children with no safe place, no haven from a chemical onslaught that will only get worse with each passing year.
The first principle of detoxification and chelation (the removal of heavy metals) is the directive to avoid exposure in the first place. Absolute avoidance of exposure is virtually impossible today but that does not mean we should not try. Eating organic food is the obvious first step but for many moving out of ones city and even country would be required. Utterly reject mercury fillings in the mouth and a pledge to never take mercury preserved vaccines, or any vaccines for that matter, would be logical second steps.
As our knowledge about the etiology of disease progresses, the evidence for environmental contributions to disease grows.
Most of the world's urban dwellers are exposed to intense pollution and entire countries like China and certain parts of the United States are like vast poison fields. Most cities are toxic traps for all who lives within. It's much worse than you can imagine for you are not imagining the mercury problem the entire globe, but especially certain parts, are having. (Survival Medicine will have a two hundred page section called The Rising Tide of Mercury. Everyone needs to understand the mercury issue deeply if they want to survive what is happening just with this issue alone.)
It's not only in the huge cities that citizens are at risk.
Dr. Palmer from the University of Texas informed us a while ago that t here is a significant increase in the rates of special education students and autism rates associated with increases in environmentally released mercury. On average, for each 1,000 lb of environmentally released mercury, there was a 43% increase in the rate of special education services and a 61% increase in the rate of autism.[iii]
And a new study estimated that 1 in 58 children in the UK has autism with similar numbers feared in Ireland.
The Division of Environmental and Occupational Disease Control, California Department of Health Services, explored associations between autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and environmental exposures, by linking the California autism surveillance system to estimated hazardous air pollutant (HAP) concentrations compiled by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The adjusted odds ratios (AORs) were elevated by 50% in the top quartile of chlorinated solvents and heavy metals [95% confidence intervals confirming Dr. Palmer and his alarming assertions.
States that are reporting the highest levels of mercury emissions also have the highest rates of developmental disorders including autism. (Dr. John Palmer)
A two-year study of mercury accumulation in the town of Steubenville, Ohio, by federal EPA researcher Matt Landis and the University of Michigan disputes the basic EPA policy on mercury; showing emissions to be much more concentrated in local areas around power plants than thought before. The EPA contends only about 8% of the mercury from coal-burning plants, incinerators and boilers settles to the ground locally. The Steubenville study contends nearly 70% of the mercury found in the Steubenville area came from local sources [iv]
The astounding array of pollutants in the newborn and unborn should be a wake up call that the existing material frameworks of the world should be changed.
What this means is that it is dangerous to live anywhere near coal-burning plants, incinerators and boilers. If mercury spreads widely, as presumed by the model commonly used by the EPA, communities near coal-fired plants face no greater risk than those elsewhere. If large amounts of mercury from those plants settle within 60 to 120 miles of a plant, then local communities face a much larger risk. You have to decide who or what to trust in this regard.
Actually we lose in either direction for what it means is that if the mercury falls far from the source it means that the high winds are taking it all over the world, to every square inch of the planet, though like with radiation patterns, certain places would be much hotter than others.
It is now accurate, scientific and medically sound to state that we are poisoning every man, woman and child on earth.
To get a birds eye view of the hurricanes of toxicity we face on the parts per billion and million level it is helpful to know that air pollution in major cities is now being seen as dangerous to health as radiation exposure suffered by survivors of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster. A recent study suggests high levels of urban air pollution cut short life expectancy more than the radiation exposure of emergency workers who were sent into the 19-mile exclusion zone around Chernobyl straight after the accident. [v]
Women living in areas of high air pollution were at greater risk of heart disease and death, while children living within 500m of motorways suffered more permanent lung damage and lower life expectancy.
Jim Smith, a scientist at the government's Centre for Ecology and Hydrology in Dorchester, assessed the health risks faced by emergency workers at Chernobyl directly after the explosion and those who unofficially set up home in the exclusion zone afterwards. He compared them with the more familiar risks of air pollution, obesity, and passive and active smoking. "The immediate effects of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombs led to approximately 210,000 deaths in the two cities. However, radiation exposures experienced by the most exposed group of survivors led to an average loss of life expectancy significantly lower than that caused by severe obesity or active smoking," the report states.
This is not to diminish the threat of radiation from medical tests, nuclear reactors and the totally insane use of depleted uranium weapons and the intentional injecting of mercury into children's bodies and teeth. What this is telling us specifically is that we are in huge danger from the air we breathe, and that is only one part of our exposure. The water we drink is compromised as are the foods we eat. We are talking about nightmares of the worst kind, chemical and radioactive ones that are accumulating, building up in intensity everywhere including in our very own bodies.
Mercury is not an ordinary air pollutant nor is it classified as such. Because it is a neurotoxin that causes neurological problems, it is considered a hazardous air pollutant, which gives it a different legal status. This is a very polite way of saying that mercury is a nerve poison, which even at the lowest concentrations imaginable causes problems for the young. We are only in the beginning phases of becoming aware of the tremendous problem with thousands of tons of mercury being poured into the air each year. If one gram of mercury can pollute a 20-acre lake, or anything near that size, or kill a child, imagine what 8 to ten billion grams of it would do. [vi]
Lead and mercury are highly toxic to the brain, nervous system, kidneys, reproductive system, and immune system.
Power plants in the US put 48 tons of mercury a year into the atmosphere through burning coal. [vii] China spews 600 tons of mercury into the air each year, accounting for a great part of the world's non-natural emissions. And the volume is rising quickly with more coal fired energy plants now under construction in China than exists in the entire country of England. China all by itself is bringing on a mercury crisis. By 2020, China will have nearly 1,000 gigawatts of total electricity-generating capacity, more than twice the current amount, according to the State Power Economic Research Center.
We have reached a milestone in human history. Awaiting each and every child born on the planet is a life doomed to being poisoned.
China will this year burn about 1.9 billion tons of coal, a 12% increase from last year, and consumption is expected to keep rising. In fifteen years we can expect China to be pumping 1,400 tons of mercury into the air or approximately 60 additional tons a year as new capacity comes online. [viii] This is a huge number and will join the already enormous amount of mercury bellowing up from China's more than 2,000 coal-fired power plants.
This mercury soars high into the atmosphere and then around the globe on what has become a transcontinental conveyor belt of mercury polluted air. On Mount Bachelor, in Oregon, considered one of the cleanest sites in the Northwest, scientists from the University of Washington have been sampling the air on the 9,065 foot mountain top since 2004.
They are monitoring for pollutants such as mercury as well as gases, including carbon monoxide, ozone and nitrogen oxides. This site is also used by Staci Simonich's lab at OSU to look at long-distance travels of pesticides and other pollutants. "It's sort of ironic that we have to go to one of the cleanest locations to look for pollutants," said Daniel Jaffe, a professor of atmospheric and environmental chemistry at the University of Washington, Bothell. Some of what they are finding comes from China. [ix] The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that on certain days nearly 25 percent of the particulate matter in the skies above Los Angeles can be traced to China. Some experts predict China could one day account for a third of all California's air pollution.
According to the observations made by the internationally recognized medical researcher, Dr. Yoshiaki Omura, all cancer cells have mercury in them. Since mercury is the second most toxic substance on this planet, its presence provides a strong initiating factor for disrupting cell function. Support for this idea comes from Dr. Hans Nolte who states that, "The wave spectrum of mercury contains more than thirteen wavelengths, whereas only one or two frequencies or wavelengths are usually observed for the other heavy or noble metals." It is Dr. Nolte's belief that the many harmful effects of mercury could be explained to some degree on the basis of this great variety of wavelengths. Dr. Omura's clinical observation concludes that one of the primary reasons cancer returns is because residual mercury reignites a pathological environment even after surgery, chemotherapy, radiation, and alternative therapies report a positive effect. [x]
Meanwhile Beijing recently persuaded the World Bank to cut from a report finding that p ollution causes about 750,000 premature deaths in China each year. The Financial Times reported saying that, "The World Bank was told that it could not publish this information. It was too sensitive and could cause social unrest," one unnamed adviser told the Financial Times. [xi] Capitalists on the other hand would use a different rational excuse but clearly governments and corporations on both sides of the great political divide are not concerned that they are the ones who are driving up cancer rates through the stratosphere.
The brains of our children are our most precious economic resource, and we haven't recognized how vulnerable they are. We must make protection of the young brain a paramount goal of public healthprotection. You have only one chance to develop a brain. (Philippe Grandjean - Harvard School of Public Health)
Children's brain development is being impaired by some of the more than 70,000 human-made chemicals on the market, according to the WWF. [i] [xii] The report, which surveyed current research in the field, charges chemicals with such neurological effects as poor memory, reduced visual recognition and motor skills, and lower IQ, and cites other U.S. research that already ties 10 percent of all neurobehavioral disorders to chemical exposure. While it singles out some chemicals by name -- particularly brominated flame-retardants, PCBs, and dioxins -- the report laments that there is little to no safety information available on most chemicals floating about in the environment and in households.
"In effect, we are all living in a global chemical experiment of which we don't know the outcome," said WWF's Helen McDade. Environmental contaminants are suspected to cause cancer, birth defects, immune system defects, reduced IQ, behavioral abnormalities, decreased fertility, altered sex hormone balance, altered metabolism and specific organ dysfunctions. Every day children are exposed to chemicals that have not been tested for safety.
Exposure (particularly prenatal exposure) to certain endocrine disrupting chemicals (e.g. PCBs) can have adverse effects on neurological development ... and behavior... delays in...cognitive development has been found to be associated with neonatal PCB exposure. (World Health Organization)
Also according to the WWF in 1929 the world was producing 1 million tons of chemicals and pharmaceuticals a year. Today that number has climbed to 400 million tons. That means that we pollute the earth at a rate that until only recently took decades to accomplish. Easily in one year we now do the damage it took from 1930 to 1960 to effect. In the next ten years we will collectively produce 4 billion tons of chemicals, which in one way or another eventually end up as toxic pollutants in the environment.
Mark Sircus Ac., OMDDirector International Medical Veritas Association http://www.imva.infohttp://www.magnesiumforlife.com
.........................
Getting Serious with Survival Issues
Last night an old friend and one of the very first subscribers to my online communications (nine years ago) sent me this picture he had found on the Internet, which is a land – river – waterfall for sale in the interior of Brazil. I happened to recognize the place right away for it is right next to the place that brought me to Brazil 17 years ago. And it happens to be for sale but it is a huge land (meaning quite expensive) quite a distance from town. There are several large places for sale in the region some with structures built already to support a community.
Though my wife is much more comfortable here on the coast in a modern city (with clear air because the wind blows strongly from the relatively clean ocean air) I am anxious to bring my family to the kind of environment you see above. Fortunately I am building a cancer clinic there so I have something very practical and necessary driving me back to the interior.
I was just reading about the most recent CODEX meeting and this organization wants to make sure we cannot get the nutrition to defend ourselves from the poisons on earth. Meaning they are going to make it harder and harder to live healthy lives inside of society. There are many forces at work that are moving in ways that will hinder us, hurt our chances for living good lives.
Survival through the next ten years is not a sure thing for many of us but survival as health happy human beings is the subject of Survival Medicine, which advises us to get serious in a hurry about some important concerns. I am basically shouting out to people in this chapter; but it is as if most of the people I am addressing were in the middle of a street about to be hit by a passing truck but they cannot hear me because the noise is so loud. It seems like humanity is in God's hands now, is meeting a self created destiny that mirrors the worst tragic flaws in us.
Certainly the government and media are not going to help with anything since they are at the heart of the problem. Governments are much more prepared than the public and have been training police all over the world for years to take control using the most modern methods of crowd control. As many governments probably see it, the move toward fascism is a necessity, otherwise in their eyes it will be total anarchy.
Last night an old friend and one of the very first subscribers to my online communications (nine years ago) sent me this picture he had found on the Internet, which is a land – river – waterfall for sale in the interior of Brazil. I happened to recognize the place right away for it is right next to the place that brought me to Brazil 17 years ago. And it happens to be for sale but it is a huge land (meaning quite expensive) quite a distance from town. There are several large places for sale in the region some with structures built already to support a community.
Though my wife is much more comfortable here on the coast in a modern city (with clear air because the wind blows strongly from the relatively clean ocean air) I am anxious to bring my family to the kind of environment you see above. Fortunately I am building a cancer clinic there so I have something very practical and necessary driving me back to the interior.
I was just reading about the most recent CODEX meeting and this organization wants to make sure we cannot get the nutrition to defend ourselves from the poisons on earth. Meaning they are going to make it harder and harder to live healthy lives inside of society. There are many forces at work that are moving in ways that will hinder us, hurt our chances for living good lives.
Survival through the next ten years is not a sure thing for many of us but survival as health happy human beings is the subject of Survival Medicine, which advises us to get serious in a hurry about some important concerns. I am basically shouting out to people in this chapter; but it is as if most of the people I am addressing were in the middle of a street about to be hit by a passing truck but they cannot hear me because the noise is so loud. It seems like humanity is in God's hands now, is meeting a self created destiny that mirrors the worst tragic flaws in us.
Certainly the government and media are not going to help with anything since they are at the heart of the problem. Governments are much more prepared than the public and have been training police all over the world for years to take control using the most modern methods of crowd control. As many governments probably see it, the move toward fascism is a necessity, otherwise in their eyes it will be total anarchy.
In the end survival entails action and the consequences of inaction become intolerable.
Survival Medicine puts serious survival tools in ones medicine cabinet and even advises us finally to purchase survival foods like spirulina that can do double duty; used as a nutritional medicine it is without equal and used as a survival nutritional resource it is the same. There are certain basic medicines we have to have on hand, and we need enough of them to last us a while. In fact the core of Survival Medicine is built upon medicinal substances that the FDA and CODEX will have a harder time controlling.
Hardly a soul alive at this exact moment in time does not need to remove lead and mercury from their systems. Hardly anyone alive is not going to need some emergency medicines, secure clean water supplies and food. Survival Medicine's protocol for survival is almost the same as its protocol for illness and disease so there is no paranoia in stocking up on what we and our loved ones need anyway. Believe me it is more than comforting to have essential items like iodine, magnesium chloride, calcium bentonite clay, sodium bicarbonate, natural chelators and spirulina, among other things, safely stocked in the house.
Conclusion
In this three part series The Cruel Winds of Change we have talked about the poisons that threaten us, the climate/food and the mental-spiritual insanities we are facing. I did not pick the title of this chapter or the title of this book lightly. We the generations who have had it easiest in the history of humankind are going to have to face difficulties we are not prepared for. It's a harsh reality, a cruel one for the multitudes. Actually we know it has already been that way for billions who live on less than ten dollars a day. They say a billion or more live on less than a dollar a day.
In this book I do not talk much about the deeper issues behind survival and all that I propose to do about it. My deepest design in withstanding the cruel winds of change is the formation of a new form of human consciousness called group consciousness. United we stand divided we fall is a truth we need to pay attention to if we are interested in surviving with grace during the troubled times ahead. Modern man has been beaten like a dog into living with the feeling of separation. Even husbands and wives experience the feelings of separation (lack of pure or perfect love) all the time even without getting separated or divorced.
The trip back to Oneness is a long one and a difficult one. For most it's too difficult and the journey is never started and that is sad. I am of course talking about love and I do have some unusual definitions for love. Love is listening and love is communication to me. Intimacy is love and is something I love as my friends know. So are devotion and dedication and commitment. Truth is another principle ray of love as is responsibility and trust. Honesty I think we are going to need all of these qualities in our attempt to survive and certainly if we ever stand a chance of building something new upon the ashes of what we have done wrong.
If the above qualities are envisioned as great pillars we can see that they have crumbled in modern man to a great extent. Like the ancient pillars in the Acropolis turning to dust there is no support for the continued expansion of civilization based on industrialization. But that is exactly what is happening in China, India and Brazil, billions simultaneously reaching for things that have are having a great impact on everyone. Whatever we have done to harm ourselves and our earth is in higher gear at this exact moment of time than at any moment before, especially the poisoning and destruction of the earth and everyone on it. Could I have not picked a more appropriate concept and name than Sanctuary?
Survival Medicine puts serious survival tools in ones medicine cabinet and even advises us finally to purchase survival foods like spirulina that can do double duty; used as a nutritional medicine it is without equal and used as a survival nutritional resource it is the same. There are certain basic medicines we have to have on hand, and we need enough of them to last us a while. In fact the core of Survival Medicine is built upon medicinal substances that the FDA and CODEX will have a harder time controlling.
Hardly a soul alive at this exact moment in time does not need to remove lead and mercury from their systems. Hardly anyone alive is not going to need some emergency medicines, secure clean water supplies and food. Survival Medicine's protocol for survival is almost the same as its protocol for illness and disease so there is no paranoia in stocking up on what we and our loved ones need anyway. Believe me it is more than comforting to have essential items like iodine, magnesium chloride, calcium bentonite clay, sodium bicarbonate, natural chelators and spirulina, among other things, safely stocked in the house.
Conclusion
In this three part series The Cruel Winds of Change we have talked about the poisons that threaten us, the climate/food and the mental-spiritual insanities we are facing. I did not pick the title of this chapter or the title of this book lightly. We the generations who have had it easiest in the history of humankind are going to have to face difficulties we are not prepared for. It's a harsh reality, a cruel one for the multitudes. Actually we know it has already been that way for billions who live on less than ten dollars a day. They say a billion or more live on less than a dollar a day.
In this book I do not talk much about the deeper issues behind survival and all that I propose to do about it. My deepest design in withstanding the cruel winds of change is the formation of a new form of human consciousness called group consciousness. United we stand divided we fall is a truth we need to pay attention to if we are interested in surviving with grace during the troubled times ahead. Modern man has been beaten like a dog into living with the feeling of separation. Even husbands and wives experience the feelings of separation (lack of pure or perfect love) all the time even without getting separated or divorced.
The trip back to Oneness is a long one and a difficult one. For most it's too difficult and the journey is never started and that is sad. I am of course talking about love and I do have some unusual definitions for love. Love is listening and love is communication to me. Intimacy is love and is something I love as my friends know. So are devotion and dedication and commitment. Truth is another principle ray of love as is responsibility and trust. Honesty I think we are going to need all of these qualities in our attempt to survive and certainly if we ever stand a chance of building something new upon the ashes of what we have done wrong.
If the above qualities are envisioned as great pillars we can see that they have crumbled in modern man to a great extent. Like the ancient pillars in the Acropolis turning to dust there is no support for the continued expansion of civilization based on industrialization. But that is exactly what is happening in China, India and Brazil, billions simultaneously reaching for things that have are having a great impact on everyone. Whatever we have done to harm ourselves and our earth is in higher gear at this exact moment of time than at any moment before, especially the poisoning and destruction of the earth and everyone on it. Could I have not picked a more appropriate concept and name than Sanctuary?
...............
For my readers interested in financial matters:
Our Economy is on an Artificial Life-support System
by Richard C. Cook
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=6239
[i] As much as 40 per cent of children from certain heavily polluted areas suffer from asthma by the time they reach six years of age. Asthma rates among children have increased almost five-fold since the 1970s and more than doubled in the past decade, according to research published in England at the end of 2004. The proportion of under-16s diagnosed with asthma has jumped from 5.5 per cent in 1973 to 12 per cent in 1988, and to 27.3 per cent last year.ABC News. Half Perth six-year-olds suffer asthma Sunday, November 14, 2004.
[ii] Asscociated Press. Nov. 29, 2004
[iii] Palmer RF, Blanchard S, Stein Z, Mandell D, Miller C. University of Texas Health Science Center, San Antonio Department of Family and Community Medicine, 7703 Floyd Curl Drive, San Antonio, Texas 78229-3900, USA. palmer@uthscsa.edu
[iv] http://msnbc.msn.com/id/13140004/
[v] Smith JT. Are passive smoking, air pollution and obesity a greater mortality risk than major radiation incidents? BMC Public Health. 2007 Apr 3;7:49. PMID: 17407581
[vi] The world is 510 million square kilometers and 71 percent of that is ocean. One gram of mercury poured into eighty million liters of water would be cause for concern under federal human health standards for drinking water, enough to contaminate a typical mid-western lake. Thus one gram pollutes a typical 20 acre lake and 20 acres equals .081 square kilometers. One ton of mercury contains 1 million grams which would thus pollute 81,000 square kilometers of lakes. One thousand tons would pollute 81 million square kilometers, so 7,000 tons of mercury would pollute a lake the size of the world. The world is not a lake, so the one gram rule does not quite work, but it offers us a good reference point. The oceans are quite deep and the atmosphere also holds a vast capacity to hold mercury, as does the soil. But over the last five hundred years we have dug up and used approximately 1 million tons of mercury. That is 1,000,000,000,000 grams (a trillion) or enough to blanket each 20 acres on earth with over 149 grams. It is these 149 grams that is responsible for mercury levels increasing by a factor of 20 times over the last 3 centuries.
[vii] DEP Commissioner Bradley Campbell statement about national emission levels. Associated Press. Fri, Nov. 05, 2004
[viii] Wall Street Journal. Invisible Export A Hidden Cost Of China's Growth: Mercury Migration
December 17, 2004
[ix] Scientists can use a computer model to find the wind origins for the last 10 days. If there is a big fire or dust storm across the globe, you can see the pollution crossing the ocean on satellite data. In lesser cases computers trace the path of Northwest winds to find origins. Nine years ago Jaffe's group first detected Chinese pollution on the Washington coast. Other scientists have since confirmed it, by identifying patterns of trace metals that are unique to Chinese pollution, much like a fingerprint, Jaffe said. Pollutants from China hitting Oregon Cascades; Associated Press; 8/27//06; oregonlive.com
[x] The Pathogenic Multi-potency of Mercury, Biological Therapy, Journal of Natural Medicine, Vol. VI, No. 3, June 1988
[xi] http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070703/ap_on_re_as/china_pollution;_ylt=AhO
...
segunda-feira, 16 de julho de 2007
Hypochondria Resurrected
Thomas Deichmann
Kolner Stadt-Anzeiger, July 10 2007
A brouhaha like this over food is nearly unprecedented. Seldom have so many emotional and financial resources been squandered, in order to repeatedly reach the same conclusion: MON863 corn is safe. But for many, this message is obviously so hard to swallow that they aren't even willing to hear it.
MON863 was developed in the genetic engineering laboratories of the US multinational Monsanto. It is equipped with the ability to defend against corn rootworm, it is grown on millions of acres - and eaten by countless humans and animals. And why not? It is exactly as safe as the yellow cobs we grow domestically. This was confirmed all over again last Thursday by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA).
The reason why the authority had to clarify matters once more is an announcement by the environmental group Greenpeace in March 2007. Its Hamburg office had reported a new "study by independent French scientists" who claimed that "gene-corn" carries "potential health risks." In rat feeding studies, the animals allegedly showed "symptoms of poisoning and damage to the liver and kidneys." And supposedly, for the first time, "a health risk for approved gene-plants has been proven."
In reality, however, there were no new sensational bioassays. Greenpeace had only reinterpreted old feeding studies, which were sufficiently examined already some years ago and verified. All smoke and mirrors, a finding immediately reached by several scientific institutions.
At the end of March, the Federal Institute for Risk Evaluation (Bundesinstitut für Risikobewertung) stated that the "renewed statistical analysis of the data does not provide any reason" to question the earlier findings. One month later, the same thing was notified by France's Sood Safety Authority (AFSSA). In the mean time, the EFSA experts had also begun to evaluate the new Greenpeace interpretations of the bioassays. From it "no new safety concerns" emerged, according to the latest announcement.
The nation has once again trembled because of a statement by the "German fear industry". For the anti-genetic-engineering-front, however, the accomplishment is trivial. The rat story of 2004 is simply resurrected. Just like the fairy tale of the collapse of Monarch butterflies, which drop from corn-stalks; the story about allergens released from transgenic Brazil nuts and the legends about "killer-potatoes." By the middle of June Greenpeace was already working on the next "scandal": This time it concerns the transgenic corn line NK603, which they claim is "possibly injurious to health". Rat feeding studies supposedly demonstrated "effects on the functions of the kidneys, brain, heart and liver." We'll see how much money and anxiety will be wasted this time around in examining Greenpeace's hypochondria.
Kolner Stadt-Anzeiger, July 10 2007
A brouhaha like this over food is nearly unprecedented. Seldom have so many emotional and financial resources been squandered, in order to repeatedly reach the same conclusion: MON863 corn is safe. But for many, this message is obviously so hard to swallow that they aren't even willing to hear it.
MON863 was developed in the genetic engineering laboratories of the US multinational Monsanto. It is equipped with the ability to defend against corn rootworm, it is grown on millions of acres - and eaten by countless humans and animals. And why not? It is exactly as safe as the yellow cobs we grow domestically. This was confirmed all over again last Thursday by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA).
The reason why the authority had to clarify matters once more is an announcement by the environmental group Greenpeace in March 2007. Its Hamburg office had reported a new "study by independent French scientists" who claimed that "gene-corn" carries "potential health risks." In rat feeding studies, the animals allegedly showed "symptoms of poisoning and damage to the liver and kidneys." And supposedly, for the first time, "a health risk for approved gene-plants has been proven."
In reality, however, there were no new sensational bioassays. Greenpeace had only reinterpreted old feeding studies, which were sufficiently examined already some years ago and verified. All smoke and mirrors, a finding immediately reached by several scientific institutions.
At the end of March, the Federal Institute for Risk Evaluation (Bundesinstitut für Risikobewertung) stated that the "renewed statistical analysis of the data does not provide any reason" to question the earlier findings. One month later, the same thing was notified by France's Sood Safety Authority (AFSSA). In the mean time, the EFSA experts had also begun to evaluate the new Greenpeace interpretations of the bioassays. From it "no new safety concerns" emerged, according to the latest announcement.
The nation has once again trembled because of a statement by the "German fear industry". For the anti-genetic-engineering-front, however, the accomplishment is trivial. The rat story of 2004 is simply resurrected. Just like the fairy tale of the collapse of Monarch butterflies, which drop from corn-stalks; the story about allergens released from transgenic Brazil nuts and the legends about "killer-potatoes." By the middle of June Greenpeace was already working on the next "scandal": This time it concerns the transgenic corn line NK603, which they claim is "possibly injurious to health". Rat feeding studies supposedly demonstrated "effects on the functions of the kidneys, brain, heart and liver." We'll see how much money and anxiety will be wasted this time around in examining Greenpeace's hypochondria.
quinta-feira, 12 de julho de 2007
Longevity & Health
by: Mark Sircus Ac., OMD
Medical News - December 23, 2003
Longevity and health are related subjects. In fact they are inseparable. Both are crucial subjects if one wishes at all to avoid the horrors of disease and untimely miserable death. Disease obviously involves a great deal of pain and suffering and does the utmost to shorten our natural life spans. In an age where disease is on the rise one does well to invest oneself in a reasonable study of basic subjects like health and longevity. What is the point of living longer if we are going to spend the ending part of our life suffering from diseases? As everyone knows, cancer is not a good way to go.
There are four 'basic' legs to longevity, and thus to health. Today there is a group of scientists, philosophers, and futurists who advocate a strategy known as calorie restriction, or C.R. Food purists have always held the basic monopoly on longevity in health circles but they are standing on a chair with only one leg, though obviously an important one. The second leg is appropriate exercise. There is great common sense to eating right and getting plenty of exercise no matter how old one is. The third leg is more obscure and difficult to deal with even among the many who follow the first two paths. Emotional intelligence is a great factor in health and a lack of it an important issue in the formation of disease. A vast subject it can be represented by the example that a person prone to chronic anger will not last as long in life as a more peaceful and harmonious person. The fourth leg of our chair might be the most surprising one for it is sex and the quality of our sexuality is very much related to our emotional intelligence. Nothing lifts our boats over the waters of life with greater ease than a great sex life with someone we really love.
Each of these subjects is worthy of book length discussion and there are fine books that cover each separately. The challenge though for health enthusiasts is to put them together in a plan that is balanced and works right for them. When people, the press and health care officials take the subjects separately you get all kinds of distorted ideas. For example there's no shortage of skepticism about calorie restriction in the scientific community. An article in this month's issue of The American Journal of Preventive Medicine, the leading journal on obesity research, concluded that caloric intake was not as important in staving off death by cardiovascular disease as other factors, like physical activity. Others warn that extreme dieting like an ultra low-calorie regimen can lead to mental health problems. Clearly people who fixate too much on food have some kind of mild to severe obsessive-compulsive disorder with eating, which is most of us after all.
Calorie restriction is simple, the less we eat, to a point, the more efficiently our body works. Researchers have known about the powers of eating less since the 1930's, when a Cornell University nutrition professor unexpectedly discovered that dieting rats tend to live 30 percent longer. And in full view of the world, on the Japanese island of Okinawa, where residents have traditionally followed a diet similar to that of C.R., an unusually high number of people have lived a century or more. There is a lot of sense to slim and trim. Part of the point though is to eat clean organic substances that do not clog the body with pesticides, food preservatives and additives, or hormones that are pumped like crazy into milk, dairy and meat products. Getting a hold of ones eating life in a non-compulsive way is a great challenge for westerners for food is our great passion and number one compulsion. Within this category comes clean air and water and a minimum dependence on drugs that have side effects due to their toxicity. Clean and slim says it all here.
Exercise is the easiest of the four legs to deal with except for lazy people who cannot go down the block without their car. Though people can make a compulsion out of exercise it is perhaps the healthiest addiction anyone can have. Though there are people who literally run themselves into the ground, or who cannot listen to their body's feedback messages when they are overdoing it, it's the exception and not the rule. There is no reason to avoid exercise and there is always one well suited for one's age and lifestyle.
Perhaps before dealing with the complexity of emotional intelligence in health it would be simpler to talk about sex. A healthy sexual life is one of the most balancing aspects in our life and affects our physiological and psychological selves positively in all respects. The ancient Chinese were known to have said that a man or woman who can relax into sex could live for a thousand years. Though obviously prose with poetic meaning it was pointing to a truth which most westerners overlook. Modern sexologists are well aware of the health promoting effect of orgasm on the endocrine system of women and this is a crucial factor in how a woman enters mid life biological changes. For a man, as he ages, if his sexual strength is maintained his basic life vitality remains and this is very dependent on the number of orgasms he is having. As a man ages he needs to conserve his energy by restraining from physical ejaculations, which in youth seemed unlimited, but in doing so he has no need to restrain from making love. For the older man, the more he restrains from physical ejaculation the more he wants to and is capable of making love. In this subject the truth is exactly opposite to what most men think. There are levels of ecstasy and orgasm that transcend the quick release so common to western man but unfortunately few men and women discipline themselves to such things.
Emotional intelligence brings us to what I call Heart Intelligence or HeartHealth, which is the title and subject of a book (freely downloadable - see below). This is perhaps the most crucial leg we stand on for when this one crumbles all the others fall with it. Simply put, we are born with a vulnerability of being, and when we lose this we lose something enormously important to our health and happiness. Few people have been able to explain why one person falls ill and others do not. Why some people can chain smoke for decades and not get cancer and others do. Deep inside of us is our being, our feeling as opposed to our thinking center. How we are in our beings has more to do with what happens in our lives then any doctor will ever admit or know. Disease starts when we separate from our own feelings, from the heart center that just feels. Thus denial or repression of feelings in anyway gets mirrored almost immediately in the immune system. The immune system is really a reflection of the entire body plus the mind and our emotional health. That is why you can have, in the middle of an epidemic, those individuals who remain healthy because their immune system is very strong for the reason that their beings are centered in a power place.
A Dr. Reinhold Voll said, "For each pain, there is a reason in the depths of consciousness." And a Dr. Ryke Geerd Hamer discovered that deeply traumatic physical events combined with internal emotional reactions create what he called a 'biological conflict shock' that will manifest themselves as a visible physical transformation in the brain as well as measurable changes in physical-nervous parameters. Dr. Hamer traced most cancers back to such conflict shocks and insisted, "The main task in every case of cancer is to find the original emotional shock experience and make sure that it has been healed or is being healed." What both of these doctors are referring to are places and states of consciousness that only make sense when one understands what is or what is not happening on a being level. States of being, or states of consciousness, are beyond the understanding of the modern doctor who is trained obsessively on the physical level only.
Within this leg of emotional intelligence is also social intelligence, which includes important things like our listening and communication skills. What is happening or not happening in our most significant relationships is as crucial to our happiness and health as human beings as almost anything else in life. It is easy to knock someone off a chair with three legs and it's a miracle when we get by standing on only one. Health and medicine are not simple subjects especially when information is badly fragmented. In today's world it is difficult to get good information that defragments our inner programs and strangely there are people who would not like us to piece together any kind of story that would lead to a long life of good health since there is no money in it for them or their industries. Life is not easy in our fast paced world and the stress levels all around are increasing. We could sum this all up by just saying that it's safest and smartest to sit in a four-legged chair.
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