#Go ahead, Eat the Halloween Candy (Op-Ed) Katherine Tallmadge M. A r. D. is registered a dietitian author of Diet Simple:
Scientists are grappling with understanding the calorie imbalances causing the obesity epidemic which is fueled partly by eating too many sweets.
Research shows that sweets similar to many antidepressants increase levels of the brain chemical serotonin
Physical activity stress management and spending time with loved ones are activities that will also help reduce depression anxiety and stress.
Most People Shouldn't (Op-Ed) Katherine Tallmadge R. D. is registered a dietitian author of Diet Simple:
Originally gluten-free diets were designed to combat celiac disease a serious autoimmune disorder that virtually destroys the intestinal tract.
But the danger of self-diagnosing and taking gluten out of your diet prematurely is that you would never be able to get an accurate diagnosis of your symptoms.
An intestinal biopsy is the only way to detect celiac definitively. People try gluten-free diets in response to feeling tired bloated
if you need a gluten-free diet 1. Have a complete check-up with your family physician. 2. Consult with appropriate specialists such as an allergist for wheat allergy and a gastroenterologist for celiac or another gastrointestinal disease.
If you have a wheat allergy you must avoid wheat but you do not have to avoid gluten from other grains.
If you have celiac disease you must avoid gluten even the tiniest amounts. But remember you must be eating gluten for the diagnosis to be made.
3. If you do not have a wheat allergy or celiac disease visit a registered dietitian to verify that you are eating a balanced diet with plenty of nutrient-dense naturally fiber-rich foods
and that you are getting adequate physical activity. A healthy diet and lifestyle reduce negative gastrointestinal symptoms
and inflammation boost the immune system improve brain function and reduce depression and anxiety. If you are need overweight you to lose weight as body fat can be toxic.
It produces hormones and pro-inflammatory chemicals that regulate metabolism the immune system inflammation and the progression of artery hardening.
When you have less body fat you get many biological benefits and feel better. 4. If symptoms persist (though they will not in most cases you may be one of the rare people who are gluten sensitive though hopefully not as it's a tough life.
To confirm the diagnosis and if a gluten-free diet is absolutely necessary for you
even though a gastroenterologist has verified you do not have celiac disease visit your gastroenterologist or the University of Maryland's Center for Celiac Research.
which may be identified a newly disorder. What is gluten? Gluten is a protein in wheat and some other grains such as rye and barley.
What are wheat allergy celiac disease and gluten sensitivity? Anna Sapone of the Mucosal Biology Research center and Center for Celiac Research and her colleagues at the University of Maryland School of medicine reported on
and defined these diseases in the journal BMC Medicine in 2012. Wheat allergy is an adverse immunologic reaction to wheat proteins a classic food allergy affecting the skin gastrointestinal tract or respiratory tract.
Celiac disease is mediated an immune enteropathy (intestinal disease) triggered in susceptible individuals by the ingestion of gluten.
The onset of symptoms is usually gradual and characterized by a time lag of months or years after gluten introduction.
Doctors diagnose gluten sensitivity when both allergic (wheat allergy) and autoimmune mechanisms (celiac disease) have been ruled out through diagnosis by exclusion criteria;
individuals who experience distress when ingesting gluten may be considered as having gluten sensitivity. It is critical that you be examined by a gastroenterologist before switching to a gluten-free diet.
Once you eliminate gluten it is virtually impossible to diagnose celiac disease and the diagnosis of this extremely serious autoimmune disorder should be your primary concern.
My favorite gluten-free guides are: Gluten-Free Diet: A Comprehensive Resource Guide by Shelley Case R. D. Chase Nutrition Consulting Inc. 2010) Easy Gluten-Free by Tricia Thompson M. S. R. D
Health 2009). Anyone giving gluten-free dietary advice should be registered a dietitian with R. D. listed after his or her name.
For more on the topic listen to the author and three other experts discuss the gluten-free craze on National Public Radio's The Diane Rehm Show andâ watch herâ in an interviewâ on ABCNEWS 7. The views expressed are those of the author
Oh and greening up urban spaces may even improve city dwellers'mental health. 3 . And America's national tree is America has a national tree
#Goat Sacrificed for Chicago cubs Curse Forest Preserve police in Cook County Ill. found a grisly discovery this week:
Curses sometimes work for the same reason that placebos sometimes work: because people believe in them.
What You Need to Know The Healthy Geezer answers questions about health and aging in his weekly column.
If you eat a lot of these so-called bad carbs they will increase your risk for disease.
Diets rich in foods that have a high glycemic index have been linked to an increased risk for diabetes heart disease obesity age-related macular degeneration infertility and colorectal cancer.
Foods with a low glycemic index help control diabetes and improve weight loss. However other studies have found that the glycemic index has little effect on health or weight.
As a result more research on the glycemic index is needed. You can't base a diet on the glycemic index alone.
Here are five quick tips about carb consumption from the Harvard School of Public health: 1. Start the day with whole grains.
but can pose a serious threat to people's health. For an egregious example look no further than the recently revealed scheme of Georgia-pacific a subsidiary of Koch Industries.
This June a New york Appeals court ruled unanimously that Georgia pacific must hand over all internal documents pertaining to its alleged efforts to tamper with the scientific understanding about the health effects of asbestos.
The company allegedly had a hand in ghostwriting some 11 articles published in reputable scientific journals such as Inhalation Toxicology The Journal of Occupational & Environmental Hygiene Annals of Occupational Hygiene
Ghostwritten articles compromised science In the Georgia pacific asbestos case the court documents suggest that the company hired experts who had conflicts of interest specifically to write articles downplaying the cancer risk posed by asbestos
and who depend upon the scientific literature to understand the health risks involved. Over the line There's no doubt that a good deal of scientific research especially in today's tight economy is underwritten by corporate funding.
and before that by Big Tobacco to disseminate disinformation about the health effects of smoking.
While scientific and medical journals periodically wring their hands about the problem and the U s. Senate has investigated even the issue the response to date has failed clearly the public and the scientific enterprise.
Part of the challenge of tracking the population's health is figuring out if this slowing is
According to a new federal report presented to the committee this week bear health is linked not to the availability of whitebark pine nuts.
The central habitat of the grizzlies is among the hardest-hit in the beetle epidemic he said.
Habitat trouble Mattson and Logan further criticized the bear report for downplaying the links between pine nuts and grizzly health.
and work experiences to inmates. In the Coffey family garden in Jackson Ky. five generations plant
and water pollution solid waste radiation pesticides and toxic substances to name a few its authority on those matters is not exclusive.
#H7n9 Bird flu Virus Capable of Airborne Transmission One strain of the H7n9 bird flu virus appears to spread easily through the air between ferrets which are a good model for how the virus may spread in humans a new study from China says.
Researchers tested transmission of five strains of H7n9 all taken from people who got sick with the virus. Some ferrets were infected directly with the virus
 All five strains of H7n9 were able to spread through the air between ferrets
but four of the strains did not transmit very well. However one strain was able to spread very well it infected 100 percent of the ferrets who were exposed to it through the air.
So far there have been no reports of sustained human-to-human transmission with H7n9 bird flu.
But the new findings add to growing evidence that the virus likely needs to undergo just a few genetic mutations to gain the ability to spread between people said Dr. Richard Webby a bird flu expert at St jude Children's Research
Hospital in Memphis Tenn. who was involved not in the new study. Webby acknowledged that this is still his best guess.
See New Bird flu Virus: 6 Things You Should Know. H7n9 emerged in China in February
and so far has infected 132 people including 43 who have died. Researchers know that a flu virus that transmits well between humans will transmit well between ferrets Webby said.
But ferrets aren't a perfect model. For example they don't take into account preexisting immunity in the human population Webby said.
The only way we have of reducing human infection and the opportunities of the virus to adapt to humans is to reduce the exposure of people to infected birds.
#H7n9 Flu Study Hints at How It May Spread in People It's likely that the new H7n9 bird flu virus can spread through the air on a limited basis according to a new study that looked at how the virus spreads in animals.
However it's unlikely the virus could cause a pandemic unless it undergoes genetic changes that allow it to spread more efficiently between people experts say.
According to the World health organization as of May 17 health officials knew of 131 people in China who had fallen ill with the H7n9 virus including 36 who died.
In a few cases people in the same family caught the disease suggesting that the virus spreads between people in close contact.
whether a person falls ill with flu including their overall health researchers like to study flu viruses in animals under controlled conditions to better understand how they spread said study researcher Dr. Richard Webby a bird-flu expert at St jude
Children's Research Hospital in Memphis Tenn. Â Â In the new study researchers infected six ferrets with the H7n9 virus all of whom developed flu symptoms.
Ferrets are considered a good model to study human flu transmission because efficient spread of the flu in ferrets tends to predict efficient spread in people.
Several of the infected ferrets were placed in the same cage as uninfected ferrets. In addition several uninfected ferrets were placed in cages a short distance away from uninfected ferrets to see
if the virus could spread through the air. All of the uninfected ferrets who were in the same cage as the infected ferrets caught the virus suggesting the virus can spread through direct contact.
The flu virus also spread through the air but less efficiently. Just one of three ferrets caged a short distance from infected ferrets caught the virus. The findings mostly mirror
what health officials have seen in people Webby said. For sustained person-to-person transmission to occur the virus would likely have to transmit efficiently by both the airborne and direct contact routes Webby said.
Because H7n9 doesn't transmit very well through the air it doesn't look like it has the capacity to cause a pandemic
H7n9 appears to be more infectious than the H5n1 bird flu virus Webby said. When researchers infect ferrets with H5n1 they usually do not see transmission through airborne
However Webby noted the study tested just one strain of H7n9 and there are other strains out there that may act differently.
The study conducted by researchers at the University of Hong kong and others is published today (May 23) in the journal Science.
when she died balding suffering from diabetes and wearing black and red nail polish. She also had a desire for perfume.
despite her health problems and the postmortem destruction of some of her images history still remembers her as a successful ancient Egyptian ruler. oehatshepsut s image couldn t be erased
Another nefarious threat is white-nose syndrome a disease that is wiping out many bat populations in North america.
A high ratio of omega-6 fatty acids to omega-3 fatty acids in people's diets has been linked to a higher risk of health problemsâ such asâ heart disease.
and legumes promotes cow health as well as improves the fatty acid profile of organic dairy products said study author Charles Benbrook of the Center for Sustaining Agriculture and Natural resources at Washington state University.
Marion Nestle a professor of nutrition and public health at New york University said the results came as no surprise.
or contaminants the researchers said. 5 Key Nutrients Women Need As They Age Such unlisted ingredients may pose health hazards for consumers the researchers said.
The laxative is recommended not for long turn use and can cause serious side effects such as chronic diarrhea and liver damage.
Other products contaminated with walnut leaves wheat soybeans and rice might pose problems for people with allergies
or those seeking gluten-free products said study researcher Steven Newmaster an integrative biology professor and botanical director of the University of Guelph's Biodiversity Institute of Ontario.
DNA barcodes are short gene sequences that are indicative of a particular species.)About 50 percent of the products did contain the main ingredient but around 30 percent of these also contained contaminants or fillers.
and unlike drugs they do need not approval by the Food and Drug Administration before they come to market.
However the FDA can take action to recall a product if it is found to be unsafe after it hits the market.
The study was published today (Oct 11) in the journal BMC Medicine. Follow Rachael Rettner@Rachaelrettner. Follow Livescience@livescience Facebook & Google+.
In fact the study examined the effects of hormonal disruptions on development including disorders such as autism.
The findings are important both for the health of astronauts doing long stints aboard the International Space station and for future spaceflight missions.
and typically participate in other medical studies at the same time all while lying in bed NASA researchers told the Houston Chronicle in September.
After 70 days in bed patients need two weeks of rehab in order to walk safely again. Coburn's report cites the Houston Chronicle article but leaves out any information regarding the rigors of the experiment or the potential benefits to medicine On earth.
Another NASA project under fire is a $125000 grant for intergalactic planetary pizza tasting. The goal of this project is to develop shelf-stable palatable 3d printed foods for a mission to Mars
#High-Fat Dairy May Lower Breast cancer Survival Breast cancer patients who eat a lot of high-fat dairy foods may be increased at an risk of dying according to a new study.
Over the 12-year study nearly 12 percent of women with breast cancer who ate more than one serving daily of high-fat dairy products died from their cancer
whereas about 1 percent of those who ate less than a half-serving daily died from the disease.
For women with breast cancer If you're consuming a lot of high-fat diary whole milk or full-fat cheese it would be prudent to shift to lower-fat option said study researcher Candyce H. Kroenke a staff scientist at Kaiser permanente in Oakland Calif. Eating more low-fat dairy
whether eating a lot of high-fat dairy products may contribute to women developing breast cancer in the first place Kroenke said.
But if the hypothesis tested in this study that the estrogen in dairy fat fuels cancer is held up in future studies it would suggest that women who eat a lot of high-fat dairy have a higher risk of developing estrogen receptor-positive breast cancer
This type of breast cancer is the most common type. The researchers considered 1900 women in California and Utah who had been diagnosed with early-stage breast cancer between one and four years previously.
At the time of their enrollment in the study the women had completed their treatment and had shown not yet signs of the cancer's recurrence.
The women completed questionnaires detailing what they ate. Some of the high-fat dairy products the researchers tracked were whole milk ice cream
During the study 349 women had their breast cancer recur and 189 died of the disease.
Additionally 189 women died of other causes. When the researchers took into account factors that can affect the women's risk of dying such as the stages of their tumors smoking
and age they concluded that those who ate more than one serving of high-fat dairy daily were 64 percent more likely to die of any cause
and 49 percent more likely to die of breast cancer than women who ate less than a half-serving.
The researchers said their findings show that it was saturated fat from dairy products in particular rather than saturated fat in the diet in general that was linked with breast cancer survival.
and breast cancer has yielded mixed results. But most previous studies didn't separately consider high -and low-fat dairy products and they may have different effects on cancer according to the study.
The study is published online today (March 14) in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. Pass it on:
Dairy products high in fat may prove deadly for breast cancer patients. This story was provided by Myhealthnewsdaily a sister site to Livescience.
Follow Karen Rowanâ@karenjrowan. Follow Myhealthnewsdailyâ@Myhealth mhnd Facebookâ &â Google+e
#Himalayan Adventure Foretells Climate's Effects NEW YORK The distribution of water in Asia's highest mountains
Girls while not trained militarily were expected to train physically. oephysical fitness was considered to be as important for females as it was for males
. when the Athenians who were packed behind their city walls during a Spartan attack suffered a plague that killed many people including their leader Pericles.
and it's already causing great harm to farms like mine. I speak for a lot of American farmers when
#Holiday Season Brings Rise in Decorating Injuries Decking the halls can be dangerous. More than 15000 Americans suffered decoration-related injuries during the 2012 holiday season from ladder spills to back strains according to a new estimate from the U s. Consumer Product Safety Commission.
That figure marks an increase from the previous year the CPSC reportedâ and in fact holiday decorating injuries have climbed steadily
since 2009 when there were about 12000 such incidents. Of those 15000 emergency room visits last year more than a third (34 percent) involved falls
and another 10 percent stemmed from strained backs the agency estimated. 9 Weird Ways Kids Can Get Hurt  CPSC acting chairman Robert Adler had a few key
According to the CPSC these fires resulted in 10 deaths 20 injuries and $16 million in damage.
and bare wires and extension cords should be in good condition CPSC officials said. And when choosing an artificial tree the agency recommended looking for fire resistant labels
Limiting factors in the environment such as availability of food water and shelter evolutionary relationships like predator/prey ratios or presence of pathogens provide natural balances to populations.
Industrialization improved sanitation and medical care caused death rates to decline while birth rates continued to climb in most parts of the world.
Worse some honey much of which is imported from Asia has been found to contain toxins like lead and other heavy metals as well as drugs like chloramphenicol an antibiotic according to a Department of justice news release.
and the charging of five people with selling mislabeled honey that also contained chloramphenicol. Honey Solutions of Baytown Texas and Groeb Farms of Onsted Mich. have agreed to pay millions of dollars in fines
If you haven t heard about the threat oesuperbugs (bacteria that are resistant to antibiotics) pose to our health it s likely you haven t been conscious or on the planet for a couple of years.
There are no new drugs in the pipeline to fix the superbug problem. And when times are tough
and we re faced with life-threatening infections we often turn to alternative sometimes unproven methods.
whether applying medical grade honey to wound sites in patients undergoing dialysis showed advantages over standard antibiotic use.
We are susceptible to bacterial infection whenever our skin is punctured which happens quite a lot during hospital treatment.
The researchers worked with dialysis patients because having a catheter inserted is a regular procedure for the hundreds of thousands of kidney dialysis patients.
They found that using honey showed no advantages over standard antibiotic use and was in fact worse for diabetic dialysis patients.
Getting something like honey to the market as a food product is pretty straightforward but for medicines the bar is set higher.
There are many different ways that new medicines are approved for public use. Drugs made by pharmaceutical companies for instance go through many years of expensive highly-controlled clinical trials comparing the effects of the new drug against a placebo control.
And later they are compared against competitor compounds already on the market. But alternative or oenatural medicines can be put straight to market provided they don t do any harm
and their makers don t make outrageous claims about their health effects. One such natural alternative is bee honey
which has long been known to have antibacterial activity. A commercial version of oeantibiotic honey Medihoney has actually been evaluated clinically for the treatment of ulcers.
Honey is cheap and widely available and while it cannot be used for systemic infections (for pneumonia for instance
or bacteremia) it has been used for open wounds. It can kill many types of bacteria and is thought also to provide a barrier to moisture.
The Lancet paper looked closely at how a naturally-derived honey preparation compares against a clinically-approved antibiotic a drug called Bactroban that s used to kill bacteria found in and around wounds.
The main culprit Staph aureus lives on our skin and can cause infection around catheters used during treatment of dialysis-related infections.
A total of 371 trial participants undergoing dialysis received either standard antibiotic therapy to prevent infection
or a daily application of medical grade honey to the site of catheter insertion. The study found no significant differences in infection rates
or deaths from infection between most people given the antibiotic or people given honey. But for people with diabetes which is associated often with kidney disease the honey actually increased the risk of infection.
This is important because diabetes is the leading cause of kidney failure so any therapy should work with normal and diabetic kidney dialysis patients.
The reasons for the diabetes-kidney failure link are understood not completely but diabetics often have both high blood glucose levels and high blood pressure both
of which can cause kidney damage. There s also a hormone system called the renin-angiotensin system that regulates blood pressure
and fluid balance involving the kidney which is unbalanced in diabetics. While honey therapy was worse than antibiotics for diabetics the authors found the most important factor for preventing infection in all patients was how well the catheter was inserted and fixed.
There was no placebo control possible in the trial (where no treatment is given) as these infections are sometimes fatal.
We can conclude that honey therapy instead of antibiotics at least does no harm for many dialysis patients but also that it s not good for diabetics.
And because diabetes and kidney disease are linked commonly and 9%of the patients treated with either therapy still died the bottom line is still that we need better therapies for bacterial infection whether natural or man-made.
Matthew Cooper receives NHMRC funding for research into new antibiotics and methods to diagnose superbug infections.
This article was published originally at The Conversation. Read the original article. The views expressed are those of the author
and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher. This version of the article was published originally on Livescience
#Honeybee Collapse May have Complex Cause (Op-Ed) Jeff Nesbit was the director of public affairs for two prominent federal science agencies.
This article was adapted from one that first appeared in U s. News & World Report. Nesbit contributed the article to Livescience's Expert Voices:
Op-Ed & Insights. Scientists have been trying to discover why millions of beehives have collapsed and died during the past six years.
According to a new study the reason for the phenomenon known as colony collapse disorder (CCD) may be much more complex and disconcerting than researchers originally realized.
CCD has killed off more than 10 million beehives in North america since 2007 alone. Scientists have tried repeatedly to identify the root cause for the beehive collapses with possibilities ranging from certain classes of pesticides to parasites
or nutrition though the search is complicated by the dozens of different chemical types that may be combining to contaminate the pollen bees collect for their hives.
So academic researchers from the University of Maryland and federal scientists from the Department of agriculture decided to collect pollen from seven major types of crops along the East Coast where CCD has been especially destructive where bees had been in serious decline
and fed the pollen to healthy bees. The collected pollen contained an average of nine types of pesticides
While the researchers were careful not to directly link the complex web of pesticides found in the pollen samples directly to colony collapse disorder the inference is hard to ignore.
and increasing evidence that pesticide blends harm bees the authors wrote there is a pressing need for further research on the mechanisms underlying pesticide-pesticide and pesticide-disease synergistic effects on honey
bee health. A version of this column appeared as Bee Colony Collapses Are More Complex Than We Thought on the blog At the Edge by Jeff Nesbit on U s. News & World Report.
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