Alert Over The March of The ‘Grey Goo’ in Nanotechnology Frankenfoods

Published on Wednesday, January 2, 2008 by The Daily Mail/UK

by Sean Poulter

A breed of Frankenfood is being introduced into human diet and cosmetics with potentially disastrous consequences, experts said last night.

Academics, consumer groups and Government officials are warning that the arrival of nanotechnology threatens dangerous changes to the body and the environment.

The particles it uses are so small - 80,000 times thinner than a human hair - that they can pass through membranes protecting the brain or babies in the womb.

Nano health supplements, such as antioxidants, are already on the market while the first of hundreds of new foods are expected to arrive in the next 12 months.

However, the products are being introdeduced without any regulation or independent assessment to ensure they are safe - mirroring the controversy over the launch of GM foods ten years ago.

Some critics have talked of the threat of the creation of a “grey goo” of tiny particles with hidden harmful properties.

Prince Charles has said it would be “surprising” if the technology did not “offer similar upsets” to thalidomide - the morning sickness drug that caused children to be born with deformed limbs.

Professor Vicki Stone, Professor of Toxicology at Napier University in Edinburgh, is concerned about unforeseen side effects.

“We know very little about the ability of nanoparticles to move around the body, to accumulate or to be excreted, or their potential to cause toxic effects in organs,” she said.

However, nanotech advocates have remarkable claims for the technology. For example, foods are in development that are said to stave off the aging process.

On a more trivial level, they suggest it would be possible to create a fizzy drink that changes flavour according to the number of times the can is shaken.

Scroll down for more…

The consumer group Which? is about to launch a nanotech campaign arguing that consumers need to be consulted on the risks and benefits before it is too late.

The food and farming department Defra has published an independent report which admits there are serious gaps in safety data.

It warns: “There could be very significant implications for business and the wider community if potential risks are not identified and managed before any harm to the environment or human health may be done.”

The report - Characterising the Risks Posed by Engineered Nanoparticles - states there is a shortage of research money.

It says the resulting absence of basic information about the particles means “it will be difficult or impossible to develop any general understanding of nanoparticle toxicology”.

The report adds: “Transfer across biological barriers - e.g. to the brain or foetus - should be studied. Research into how long these tiny particles persist in the body is urgently needed.”

It warns that work assessing human toxicology is being hamstrung by “profound difficulties in accessing relevant funding for these longer term projects”.

Research by Which? found six out of ten people (61 per cent) have never heard of nanotechnology.

Sue Davies of Which? said: “The benefits that nanotechnologies can offer consumers are really exciting.

‘But before the market is flooded with products, it’s crucial the Government addresses the lack of scientific understanding about how some nanoparticles behave.”

The European Food Safety Authority last year held a conference on the future of food.

Dr Donald Bruce, an expert on food and ethics, told delegates that the arrival of nanotech foods has many similarities with GM products.

US corporations attempted to introduce GM before an effective safety regime could be established.

“One of the things to ask is do we need the benefits claimed by the producers?’ he said. ‘Also there is the underlying notion that we are tampering with nature.”

Environment minister Phil Woolas admitted there were gaps in knowledge, but denied the Government was failing to provide enough research cash.

Tiny particles that have generated great hopes and growing concerns

Nanotechnology involves using a substance in particles that are so small that the substance takes on new properties.

The name of the technology comes from the size of the particles - one nanometre in diameter - a millionth of a millimetre. Reduced to this size, materials can suddenly show very different and unexpected properties.

For example, an opaque substance such as copper becomes transparent, or an inert metal such as platinum becomes a catalyst and triggers chemical reactions.

Advocates argue that such particles can be organised to work together to deliver specific effects in a piece of equipment or in the human body.

They can be used to build miniature hard drives that have an immense memory, so allowing further miniaturisation and sophistication of products such as computers and mobile phones.

Washing machines have been developed that release silver nanoparticles that will kill bacteria in dirty washing.

Sun creams have been created so they become transparent rather than chalky white.

In medicine, it is claimed that nanotechnology will allow the creation of drugs that reach and treat a problem quickly.

Manufacturers are working on nanotech foods and supplements that are also designed to deliver specific health benefits.

Similarly, firms are working on developing anti-ageing foods, where nanotech particles associated with renewing the skin from the inside could be included in everyday products such as yoghurt, spreads or breakfast cereals.

The technology promises huge riches for firms which develop winning applications.

One of the first group of nanoparticles being utilised are fullerenes - tiny hollow carbon balls and tubes. They are very heat resistant, strong and conduct electricity.

The football-shaped C60 fullerene is being used in some anti-ageing products. The creams are said to reduce fine lines and firm the skin.

C60 has some antioxidant properties in that it kills the rogue chemicals which damage cells. However, a high dose can itself damage cells.

Some nano particles are known to mimic the harmful effects of asbestos on the lungs. Consequently, they have the potential to trigger lung cancer if inhaled.

© 2007 The Daily Mail

ASBOs vs Nutrition

From The Ecologist by Pat Thomas

ASBOs vs NutritionOver 1,000 juvenile delinquents showed a 44 per cent drop in antisocial behaviour when put on a low sugar diet. So why is the government completely ignoring what we are feeding our children, and yet is happy to spend £2,500 on administering each ASBO?

In October 2003 the UK government launched the latest offensive in its war on crime, the ‘Together Campaign’, across England and Wales – sold to the public as a tough stand against crime in the local community. The campaign manifesto emphasised the ‘wide ranging’ powers that local agencies have to keep the peace: acceptable behaviour contracts (ABCs); anti-social behaviour orders (ASBOs); parenting orders; injunctions; vehicle removal; mediation; diversionary schemes; preventive work; and witness protection programmes.

Like all wars, the war on crime comes with an aggressive moralistic rhetoric that sets up an adversarial dynamic ultimately more effective at preventing insight than it is at preventing crime. Methods of enforcement such as the much publicised ASBOs are appealing weapons because they represent discernable action, at least in the short term. But consider what’s happening over the longer term.

(...)

Eric Schlosser author of Fast Food Nation

Alive & Well TV Host Michelle Harris sits down for an interview with Eric Schlosser, writer of Fast Food Nation. This interview was shot exclusively for Michelle's TV show Alive & Well. This is a sneak peek from the upcoming TV show.

Alive & Well is a healthy lifestyle show that features eco-friendly, green living, vegetarian and vegan foods, organic living and more

Beauty Food

Can Diet Help Stop Depression and Violence?

By Jurriaan Kamp, Ode. Posted August 28, 2007.

New research suggests that certain supplements and foods can help curb prison violence and increase academic performance in troubled students. Yet the effect of nutrition on psychological health and behavior is still controversial.

The best way to curb aggression in prisons? Longer jail terms, maybe, or stricter security measures? How about more sports and exercise? Try fish oil. How can children enhance their learning abilities at school? A well-balanced diet and safe, stimulating classrooms are essential, but fish oil can provide an important extra boost. Is there a simple, natural way to improve mood and ward off depression? Yoga and meditation are great, but -- you guessed it -- fish oil can also help do the trick.

A diet rich in vitamins, minerals and fatty acids like omega-3 is the basis for physical well-being. Everybody knows that. But research increasingly suggests that these same ingredients are crucial to psychological health too. And that's a fact a lot of people seem to find hard to swallow.

The relationship between nutrition and aggression is a case in point. In 2002, Bernard Gesch, a physiologist at Oxford University, investigated the effects of nutritional supplements on inmates in British prisons. Working with 231 detainees for four months, Gesch gave half the group of men, ages 18 to 21, multivitamin, mineral and fatty-acid supplements with meals. The other half received placebos.

During the study, Gesch observed that minor infractions of prison rules fell by 26 percent among men given the supplements, while rule-breaking behaviour in the placebo group barely budged. The research showed more dramatic results for aggressive behaviour. Incidents of violence among the group taking supplements dropped 37 percent, while the behaviour of the other prisoners did not change.

Gesch's findings were recently replicated in the Netherlands, where researchers at Radboud University in Nijmegen conducted a similar study for the Dutch National Agency of Correctional Institutions. Of the 221 inmates, ages 18 to 25, who participated in the Dutch study, 116 were given daily supplements containing vitamins, minerals and omega-3 for one to three months. The other 105 received placebos. Reports of violence and aggression declined by 34 percent among the group given supplements; at the s;ame time, such reports among the placebo group rose 13 percent.

Gesch is quick to emphasize that nutritional supplements are not magic bullets against aggression, and that these studies are just "promising evidence" of the link between nutrition and behaviour. "It is not suggested that nutrition is the only explanation of antisocial behaviour," he says, "only that it might form a significant part."

But Gesch is just as quick to emphasize that there is no down side to better nutrition, and in prisons in particular, the cost of an improved diet would be a fraction of the cost of other ways of addressing the problem of violence among inmates.

Still, the menu in British prisons hasn't changed in the five years since Gesch published his results, even though the former chief inspector of prisons in the UK, Lord Ramsbotham, told the British newspaper The Guardian last year that he is now "absolutely convinced that there is a direct link between diet and antisocial behaviour, both that bad diet causes bad behaviour and that good diet prevents it."

Yet the effect of nutrition on psychological health and behaviour is still controversial, at least in part because it is so hard to study. Our moods, emotions and actions are influenced by so many factors: everything from our genes to our communities to our personal relationships. How can the role of diet be isolated among all these competing influences? That's exactly why Gesch conducted his study in prisons. In a prison, there are far fewer variables, since all detainees have the same routine. Do the results of the inmate trials reach beyond the prison walls? Gesch thinks so: "If it works in prisons, it should work in the community and the society at large. If it works in the UK and in the Netherlands, it should work in the rest of the world."

Another place improved nutrition seems to be working is in the city of Durham in northeastern England. There, Alex Richardson, a physiologist at Oxford University, conducted a study at 12 local primary schools. The research examined 117 children ages 5 to 12, all of whom were of average ability but were underachieving.

Instructors suspected dyspraxia, a condition that interferes with co-ordination and motor skills and is thought to affect at least 5 percent of British children. Possible signs of dyspraxia may include having trouble tying shoelaces or maintaining balance, for example. The condition frequently overlaps with dyslexia and attention deficit hyperactive disorder (ADHD), and is part of a range of conditions that include autistic-spectrum disorders.

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Video: Contaminação por mercúrio

A contaminação da fauna marinha por mercúrio produzido pelas atividades humanas, principalmante indústrias e mineração, pode ser uma das responsáveis pelo índice de doenças neurológicas atual.

O que isso causa em você e como você foi intoxicado, você sabia que os peixes tem a maior concentração de mercúrio dentre todos os alimentos?

Clique nessa matéria da CNN aqui.

Effects of Fast Food Branding on Young Children's Taste Preferences

From Organic Connections

A new study in the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine indicates that the annual $10 billion the food and beverage industry is spending on advertising foods to kids is working alarmingly well. The study found that four out of five kids preferred the flavor of foods served in McDonalds packaging as compared to the exact same foods served in packaging without the McDonalds brand.

By the time they are two years old, children may already have beliefs about certain brands, and by the age of six they can recognize brands and specific brand products. Not surprisingly, the study found that kids with more televisions in the home had stronger preferences for brands.
The authors suggested this study strengthened the justification for tighter regulation or banning of advertising and marketing of high calorie, low nutrient food and drink, and perhaps a ban on all marketing that is aimed at young children.

read more (Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine)

Futuro da comida?

Nutrigenomics will underlie food future, Chr Hansen
By Jess Halliday

24/08/2007 - Chr Hansen regards nutrigenomics as technology to underlie the food industry's future away from one-size-fits-all nutrition, and has placed exploration of this area high-up on its R&D agenda.

The Danish company, which is active in cultures and enzymes (for healthy and technical food use), and colours and flavours, unveiled a plan to explore nutrigenomics as part of an announced ten per cent increase in its R&D budget for 2007/8 to around €30m.

This figure relates to spending across the company as a whole, but a firm emphasis will be on how ingredients can contribute to combating the swell of lifestyle-related diseases like obesity, diabetes and heart disease.

Nutrigenomics is described as the study of how food, genes and lifestyle interact.

Chr Hansen does not have its own internal nutrigenomics research programme, executive vice president of R&D Peter Olesen told FoodNavigator.com, since the knowledge base is still at a relatively early stage. Rather, the company is funding projects conducted by partners and building links with other groups exploring the area.

Olesen notes that some companies say they are already active in nutrigenomics on a commercial scale. But he does not view nutrigenomics as a product category in itself, but rather as supporting technology for the development of foods of greater nutritional value, and of functional foods.

The current trend, he said, is away from the mass market and towards products that are more closely matched to nutritional requirements.

In terms of health conditions, Olesen said that a "stronghold" of the company's research is in immune health and how probiotics can reduce infections and counter inflammation involved in metabolic syndrome.

"In this area Chr Hansen will continue to break new ground and pioneer product developments."

The company has also underscored the core of its approach to innovation as finding solutions that address its customer's specific needs.

Olesen said that the company's internal R&D gives it a strong platform in probiotic genomics - that is, genomic variations in lactic acid bacteria. Chr Hansen's customers "require and value" that research as it directly relates to their business areas.

Building on this, he said: "Nutrigenomics is the genomics of you and me."

In June, Chr Hansen announced that it has teamed up with researchers from Denmark and Japan in an effort understand the genetic make-up of bacteria and see whether this knowledge can be used to improve probiotic food products.

The scientists are using bioinformatics, using complicated mathematical models and statistics, to analyse the bacteria.

Martin Pedersen, group leader of the genomics team for the company, said that involvement in this project gives the company access to state-of-the-art bioinformatics methods, and it is hoped that even more advanced methods will be developed within the four-year duration of the project.

30 percent of diseases in children result from environment, says WHO

GENEVA, July 27 (KUNA) -- The World Health Organization (WHO) said Friday that over 30 percent of the global burden of diseases in children can be attributed to environmental factors and that 13 million deaths could be prevented annually by improving the environment. In addition, WHO said 4 million children die annually because of the bad quality of the air, water and exposure to chemicals and other factors. WHO released this data from a report, the first ever report which highlights children's special susceptibility to harmful chemical exposures at different periods of their growth. According to WHO expert Jenny Pronczuc 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. Pronczuc said that the report 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. 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. According to WHO, 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. One in five children, said the report, in the poorest parts of the world will not live longer than their fifth birthday -- mainly because of environment-related diseases.

The Toxic Chemistry of Everyday Products

By Vanja Petrovic, AlterNet. Posted August 15, 2007.

Investigative journalist Mark Schapiro discusses why companies that manufacture hazard-free products for the European Union often produce toxin-filled versions of the same items for America and developing countries.

American industry would have you believe that taking potentially hazardous and toxic chemicals out of everyday consumer products -- removing phthalates from children's toys and cancer-causing coal tar from hair dye -- would damage our economy and result in a loss of American jobs. In his latest book, Exposed: The Toxic Chemistry of Everyday Products, Mark Schapiro busts this myth and reveals the grim fact that some companies, whether American or international, often have two production lines: one that manufactures hazard-free products for the European Union and another that produces toxin-filled versions of the same items for America and developing countries.

Schapiro examines how America, once a leader in environmental protection, came to allow potentially toxic and mutagenic chemicals, banned by the EU, into everyday products. He also looks at how the EU's economy -- almost identical to that of America -- continued to thrive even after these chemicals were banned, essentially "calling the bluff" of the American industry.

Schapiro, an investigative journalist for more than two decades, has built an award-winning track record with a focus on environmental and international affairs. His work has appeared in Harper's, the Nation, Mother Jones, and the Atlantic Monthly. He has also been a correspondent on NOW with Bill Moyers, Frontline/World, and Marketplace.

AlterNet spoke with Schapiro in Berkeley at the Center for Investigative Reporting, where he is currently the editorial director.

Vanja Petrovic: Why did you choose to write this book now?

Mark Schapiro: I've been following the evolution of the European Union for some time now, just because I spent a lot of time working in Europe. I've been both a reporter and an editor in Western Europe as well as Eastern Europe after 1989. And I spent quite a bit of time reporting in and out of the European Union. So, I watched as this entity, called the European Union, evolved into a functioning, powerful political and economic body.

What I think most Americans have missed is that, in the interim, this very powerful political force has emerged within Europe. It has enforced laws from Brussels that are applied now in 27 different countries.

Traditionally, the United States has been the single most powerful economic force in the world -- that's what we've seen until now. Suddenly, the EU has a bigger economy than the United States of America. The EU exports more goods to the rest of the world than the United States of America. The EU has a higher GNP than the United States of America.

Now, I think, we are in a historic period. There's an enormous historic shift that's going on right now. And that shift, when historians look back on this time period, they're going to look at this enormous tectonic shift in international influence and international power. What they're going to see is a kind of dramatically dwindling American influence, and that's partly a result of the foreign policy of the current administration, and it's also partly a result of the sheer, cold economic numbers, in which the United States is no longer the only dominant economic force in the world. That shift has enormous implications, and I think it's one of the biggest untold stories of the 21st century. What I wanted to look at is what the environmental implications of that shift are.

Petrovic: What is the message behind this book?

Schapiro: The environmental battles in the United States have been kind of repeated over 20 years, and it's the same battle over and over with different ingredients. The environmental community says, "Take this chemical out of this because it's dangerous," and the industry says, "One, it's not dangerous, and two, it's not economical, and we'll fall out of business, and Americans are going to lose their jobs." And this goes back and forth over and over again -- it's like Kabuki theater.

So, for the first time what you have is an economic power that's the equivalent of the United States -- it's the equivalent in terms of affluence, in terms of education, in terms of overall sophistication and overall development -- which is saying, "No, we can actually take these particular toxic chemicals out of these products, out of our computers, out of our pajamas, out of our cosmetics, and still be successful as an economy."

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You tube: Quantum Mechanics for Dummies

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?

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.

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

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."

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.

This article was first published in Biophile issue 9 - www.biophile.co.za

'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

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.

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

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.