Children whose mothers were exposed to widely-used pesticides such as malathion during pregnancy may be at increased risk of developing an attention disorder by age 5, a new study shows.

Researchers found that the risk of attention disorders rose with increasing levels of metabolites — substances created when pesticides break down — measured in a pregnant woman’s urine. For each tenfold increase in pesticide metabolites in a mom’s system, the risk of an attention disorder rose fivefold in her child, according to the report published in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives.

The study results fall in line with a report published earlier this year by Harvard researchers who found that school-aged children exposed to organophosphates, one of the most common types of pesticides, were more likely than others to develop symptoms of attention deficit disorder.

Pregnant women worried about the findings should lower the risk to their fetuses by carefully washing fresh fruits and vegetables before eating them, suggests Brenda Eskenazi, a study co-author and director of the University of California at Berkeley’s Center for Children’s Environmental Health. Other experts suggest that pregnant women should eat organic fruits and vegetables when possible.

Eskenazi doesn’t advise pregnant women to avoid eating fruits and vegetables, however. “I think the risk created by not eating them is far greater than the risk from the pesticides,” said Eskenazi, a professor of epidemiology.

That advice is echoed by experts not affiliated with the study.

While the new results are “concerning and intriguing,” they need to be put in perspective, said Dr. Hyagriv Simhan, chief of the division of maternal-fetal medicine and vice chair of obstetrical services at MaGee-Womens Hospital of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.

“I think it’s human nature to see something like this and completely freak out,” said Simhan. “But in absolute terms, the risk attributable to pesticide exposure is not that high. So, at this moment, there are no recommendations I’d make to an individual patient. This is something that needs to be looked at the societal policy level.”

Eskenazi and her colleagues were interested in studying organophosphates because these pesticides are designed to kill insects by attacking the nervous system. The researchers suspected that the compounds might also affect a fetus’s developing nervous system.

To measure the impact of the pesticides on the fetus the researchers followed the pregnancies of 348 Mexican-American women and the first five years of the children born to them. Twice during the women’s pregnancies researchers collected urine samples and measured levels of pesticide metabolites.

Younger kids may wrongly get ADHD diagnosis

The researchers evaluated the children at ages 3 1/2 and 5 for symptoms of attention disorders and ADHD using the reports from the mothers on the children’s behaviors, performance of the children on standardized computer tests, and ratings from examiners who spent time observing the children. While the link between pesticides and attention problems wasn’t strong in the 3 year olds, it was pronounced once the children reached age 5.

Whether the results can be generalized to the average American mother isn’t clear. Because the mothers and children in the study were living in an agricultural community — California’s Salinas Valley — they may have been exposed to a higher level of pesticides than the general population. “I’m not sure how it applies to women living in Chicago or Houston,” Simhan said.

When Eskenazi compared the Salinas moms’ metabolite levels to those from national surveys, they came out a bit on the high side. But, not so high as to skew the results, she said. Ultimately the message of the study may simply be: better safe than sorry.

That’s how one Morgan Hill, Calif., mom read it.

Julia King was careful all during her pregnancies to avoid anything that might endanger her growing fetus. “”I think it makes sense to avoid any chemical exposure during pregnancy,” said the 39-year-old biologist and mother of two. “This just shows that’s the best course.”

Aug 2 (Reuters) – Pancreatic tumor cells use fructose to divide and proliferate, U.S. researchers said on Monday in a study that challenges the common wisdom that all sugars are the same.

Tumor cells fed both glucose and fructose used the two sugars in two different ways, the team at the University of California Los Angeles found.

They said their finding, published in the journal Cancer Research, may help explain other studies that have linked fructose intake with pancreatic cancer, one of the deadliest cancer types.

“These findings show that cancer cells can readily metabolize fructose to increase proliferation,” Dr. Anthony Heaney of UCLA’s Jonsson Cancer Center and colleagues wrote.

“They have major significance for cancer patients given dietary refined fructose consumption, and indicate that efforts to reduce refined fructose intake or inhibit fructose-mediated actions may disrupt cancer growth.”

Americans take in large amounts of fructose, mainly in high fructose corn syrup, a mix of fructose and glucose that is used in soft drinks, bread and a range of other foods.

Politicians, regulators, health experts and the industry have debated whether high fructose corn syrup and other ingredients have been helping make Americans fatter and less healthy.

Too much sugar of any kind not only adds pounds, but is also a key culprit in diabetes, heart disease and stroke, according to the American Heart Association.

Several states, including New York and California, have weighed a tax on sweetened soft drinks to defray the cost of treating obesity-related diseases such as heart disease, diabetes and cancer.

The American Beverage Association, whose members include Coca-Cola (KO.N) and Kraft Foods (KFT.N) have strongly, and successfully, opposed efforts to tax soda. [ID:nN12233126]

The industry has also argued that sugar is sugar.

Heaney said his team found otherwise. They grew pancreatic cancer cells in lab dishes and fed them both glucose and fructose.

Tumor cells thrive on sugar but they used the fructose to proliferate. “Importantly, fructose and glucose metabolism are quite different,” Heaney’s team wrote.

“I think this paper has a lot of public health implications. Hopefully, at the federal level there will be some effort to step back on the amount of high fructose corn syrup in our diets,” Heaney said in a statement.

Now the team hopes to develop a drug that might stop tumor cells from making use of fructose.

U.S. consumption of high fructose corn syrup went up 1,000 percent between 1970 and 1990, researchers reported in 2004 in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

(Reporting by Maggie Fox; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)

Source: Reuters

Source: Dr. Kevin Donka

There are 3 things you will need to “re-form” in your life in order to maximize your ability to “re-form” your body.

RE-FORM Your Focus: Most people focus on what’s wrong in their life and in the world, what’s missing, and what they DON’T want to happen. Re-form your focus onto the opposite three things; What’s RIGHT in your life and the world, what you HAVE to be grateful for, and what you WANT to see happen. This creates positive emotions and HEALING, CONSTRUCTIVE biochemistry to help re-form your cells and therefore your body.

RE-FORM Your Lifestyle: A healthy lifestyle includes two crucial aspects. It both minimizes poisons, and maximizes nutrients and everything else your cells need to function optimally. Re-forming your lifestyle will help you re-form your body, cell by cell, tissue by tissue, and organ by organ.

RE-FORM The Neurological Connections Between Your Brain and Body: In order for the Innate Intelligence that runs your body to be able to properly identify when cells need to be replaced and correctly replace them, you require a clear connection in the nerves between your brain and all the cells of your body. Because of the numerous intricate connections between your nerve system and your spine, maintaining a clear brain-body connection requires an aligned and fully functioning spine! Because your nerve system is the master control system of your body, re-forming and maintaining your spinal function and neural connections is THE MOST IMPORTANT PART of helping your body consistently re-form itself correctly.

You can do the first two of the three things listed above all by yourself, and they will definitely contribute to helping you achieve the third. But, the likelihood of totally re-forming and then maintaining your spinal function and neural connections on your own is not very good. But, you need not worry because that is EXACTLY what regular chiropractic care does for you! And, by re-forming your focus and lifestyle, and seeing your chiropractor every week or two to re-form and maintain your brain-body connection, you can continuously re-form your body without ever worrying again about what the government is doing with healthcare reform!

A black box warning is the most severe warning that the FDA can place on a product without withdrawing it from the market.

The FDA began analyzing the drugs, known as tumor necrosis factor (TNF) blockers, when reports emerged that dozens of children had developed cancer while taking the drugs. TNF blockers are used to treat inflammatory and autoimmune diseases such as Crohn’s disease and rheumatoid arthritis. They include adalimumab (marketed as Humira), certolizumab pegol (marketed as Cimzia), etanercept (marketed as Enbrel), golimumab (marketed as Simponi) and infliximab (marketed as Remicade.

“FDA announced that it has completed its analysis of TNF blockers and has concluded that there is an increased risk of lymphoma and other cancers associated with the use of these drugs in children and adolescents,” spokesperson Crystal Rice said . “This new safety information is now being added to the boxed warning for these products.”

The drugs already carry warnings about the risk of fungal infections and other side effects.

Since people with the inflammatory diseases that TNF blockers treat are already at an increased risk of cancer, those who take the drugs are at particularly high risk.

Source: Natural News

1. Stay away from processed meats like bacon, hot dogs and sausage. Sodium nitrate accounts for their appetizing red hue, but this additive can also cause the formation of nitrosamines in your system, which can lead to cancer.

2. Stick to low-mercury fish like American-farmed tilapia instead of swordfish or tuna. Overexposure can cause memory problems, fatigue and other health issues, and besides, most wild fish stocks are threatened these days. (Looking for an alternative? There’s branzini, the fish you’ve never heard of.)

3. Reduce the amount of canned food you consume. Cans are commonly lined with bisphenol-A, an organic compound that, according to the Lang study, may be associated with diabetes and heart disease.

4. Cut back on meat and dairy products. These animal products may contain trace amounts of harmful contaminants like polybrominated diphenyl ethers, polychlorinated biphenyl and dioxins. Although many of these toxins have been banned, they are still present in the soil. Reducing your intake of animal products is also more friendly to the environment.

5. Skip the diet soda and artificial sweeteners. Prolonged exposure to aspartame, a neurotoxic chemical additive in these products, can lead to nerve cell damage, dizziness and headaches. Besides, anything that gives rats brain tumors is worth avoiding in my book.

6. Choose the farmed fish carefully. Studies show that farm-raised fish contain more polychlorinated biphenyl and over 10 times the amount of dioxin.

7. Opt for organic chicken. The Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy discovered traces of arsenic in non-organic chickens. Exposure to this dangerous chemical can lead to cancer, diabetes and heart disease. Another study also found numerous antibiotic-resistant bacteria in conventional poultry.

8. Only drink milk that says “no rBGH” on the carton because recombinant bovine growth hormone has been linked with breast cancer. Better yet, opt for responsibly-produced, unsweetened soy, nut or rice milk.

9. Avoid manufactured snacks. Hydrogenated oils are used to lengthen the shelf life of products like crackers and cookies, but they are also associated with diabetes and heart disease. Another reason to stay away from the middle aisles: snack foods are generally loaded with salt, corn syrup and other unhealthy ingredients.

10. Stay away from artificially-colored foods like candy, maraschino cherries and gelatin. Mice and rats exposed to blue 1 and 2, red 3 and yellow 6 suffered from brain, adrenal gland, thyroid and kidney tumors.

11. Always buy organic produce. This one’s a no-brainer, but the list wouldn’t be complete without it. Lingering pesticides can lead to nervous and reproductive system damage, not to mention cancer.

12. Use stainless steel or ceramic cookware to prepare your meals. The Teflon used to create nonstick surfaces can release noxious gases when exposed to high temperatures, which puts you at risk for heart disease.

13. Never microwave food in plastic bowls, containers or dishes. Exposure to heat causes the bisphenol-A found in plastics to break down and potentially contaminate your food. Also, make sure to hand wash them.

Source: www.ecosalon.com

Other cancer-promoting genetic abnormalities may be randomly acquired through errors in DNA replication, or are inherited, and thus present in all cells from birth. The heritability of cancers is usually affected by complex interactions between carcinogens and the host’s genome.

Cancer is fundamentally a disease of regulation of tissue growth. In order for a normal cell to transform into a cancer cell, genes which regulate cell growth and differentiation must be altered.[2] Genetic changes can occur at many levels, from gain or loss of entire chromosomes to a mutation affecting a single DNA nucleotide.

Cancer is a devastating disease.  I was first personally touched by cancer at the young age of 13.  My best friend’s father left a church retreat with stomach pain, and two days later it was determined he had pancreatic cancer.  Pancreatic cancer is the most deadly of cancers leaving people battling the disease with a 4% survival rate.  I remember his father returning home and spending his last days in a hospital bed in their living room.

Epidemiological studies have shown that low vitamin D status is correlated to increased cancer risk.[3]  Study shows Vitamin D reduces cancer risk by 60% if you take 3 times the FDA’s recommended dose.

New light is being shed on some areas we often overlook – our own bodies. The health and functioning of the inner environment determines what happens when we are exposed to microbes and germs. When the body is weakened by poor nutrition, environmental toxins, stress and other factors, it is this inner biology that fails to adequately combat outer “potential” instigators of disease.  The function of the human body is a complex array of physiological processes dominated by three main situations: trauma, toxins, and thoughts.  These three lead to the first step of malfunction; dis-ease.

The first is trauma. If you twist or mis-align your spine and physically impede the transmission of the nervous system’s signals, it may result in a distortion of the information being exchanged between the brain and the body’s cells, tissues, and organs.  Obviously the most radical form of impeded signals occurs with major spinal trauma particularly to the brain stem (i.e.broken neck).

The second is toxicity. Toxins and poisons in our system represent inappropriate chemistry that can distort the signal’s information on its path between the nervous system and the targeted cells and tissues. Altered signals, derived from either of these causes, can inhibit or modify normal behaviors and lead to the expression of dis-ease, or the replication of unhealthy cells.

The third and most important influence of signals on the disease process is thought, the action of the mind. Mind-related illnesses do not require that there be anything physically wrong with the body at the outset of the disease. Health is predicated upon the nervous system’s ability to accurately perceive environmental information and selectively engage appropriate, life-sustaining behaviors. If a mind misinterprets environmental signals and generates an inappropriate response, survival is threatened because the body’s behaviors become out of sync with the environment. We may not think that a thought could be enough to undermine an entire system, but, in fact, misperceptions can be lethal.

Doctors do not heal patients; they help remove barriers to the body own healing mechanisms.

Since 1971 the United States has invested over $200 billion on cancer research; that total includes money invested by public and private sectors and foundations.Despite this substantial investment, the country has seen only a five percent decrease in the cancer death rate between 1950 and 2005.[4]

The following are my major recommendations:

1. Control your insulin levels: Make certain that you limit your intake of processed foods and sugars as much as possible.  Elevated insulin destroys the body’s systems.

2. Get appropriate amounts of omega-3 fats found in fish, nuts and flax seed.

3. Get appropriate exercise. One of the primary reasons exercise works is that it drives your insulin levels down. Controlling insulin levels is one of the most powerful ways to reduce your cancer risks.

4.  Normalize your vitamin D levels with safe amounts of sun exposure.  Vitamin D is naturally produced by the human body when exposed to direct sunlight. Season, geographic latitude, time of day, cloud cover, smog, and sunscreen affect UV ray exposure and vitamin D synthesis in the skin, and it is important for individuals with limited sun exposure to include good sources of vitamin D in their diet. Extra vitamin D is also recommended for older adults and people with dark skin. Individuals having a high risk of deficiency should consume 25 μg (1000 IU) of vitamin D daily to maintain adequate blood concentrations

5. Only 25 percent of people eat enough vegetables, try to shoot for 50% of your diet to include raw food, mainly vegetables and fruit.

6.  Make sure you are not in the two-thirds of the population who are overweight and maintain an ideal body weight.

7.  Get enough sleep, roughly 6-8 hours regularly.

8. Reduce your exposure to environmental toxins like pesticides, household chemical cleaners, synthetic air fresheners and air pollution.

[1] Kinzler, Kenneth W.; Vogelstein, Bert (2002). “Introduction”. The genetic basis of human cancer (2nd, illustrated, revised ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill, Medical Pub. Division. p. 5. ISBN 978-0-07-137050-9.

[2] Croce CM (January 2008). “Oncogenes and cancer”. The New England journal of medicine 358 (5): 502-11. doi:10.1056/NEJMra072367. PMID 18234754.

[3] http://www.creighton.edu/publicrelations/newscenter/news/2007/june2007/june82007/vitamind_cancer_nr060807/index.php

[4] ^ Kolata, Gina (April 23, 2009). “Advances Elusive in the Drive to Cure Cancer”. The New York Times.

More than half of the cookware on the market today is made from aluminum. This is because aluminum is a good conductor of heat and is used frequently with non-stick pots and pans. The makers of aluminum cookware warn against storing highly acidic or salty foods in aluminum cookware. Foods such as tomato sauce or citrus fruits that are in contact with cookware for a long period of time will absorb aluminum. Aluminum foil has the same effect and should be avoided for storing acidic or salty foods

Aluminum is abundant in our environment. It is the third most abundant element in the earth’s crust; oxygen is #1, silicon is #2.  Aluminum is in our air, water and soil, and therefore in the plants and animals we eat. Because every time we breathe, eat or drink we take small quantities of aluminum into our bodies, our bodies have highly effective natural functions to remove the amount of aluminum we are exposed to in the natural environment.  The problem is we are being over exposed to aluminum.

The biggest source of aluminum actually comes from our municipal water supplies. Many municipal water supplies are treated with both aluminum sulfate and aluminum fluoride. And if your water is fluoridated, the situation is even worse. The National Institutes of Environmental Heath Sciences NIEHS acknowledged that fluoride has been observed to have synergistic effects on the toxicity of aluminum. They found boiling fluoridated tap water in an aluminum pan leached almost 200 parts per million ppm of aluminum into the water in 10 minutes and leaching of up to 600 PPM occurred with prolonged boiling. Using non-fluoridated water showed almost no leaching from aluminum pans.

The top sources of Aluminum are:

Other sources of aluminum exposure include

As our population continues to age the number of people with Alzheimer’s disease is expected to increase by 70 percent, says Dr. Mercola who correctly points out that “Alzheimer’s disease is NOT a normal part of aging, and there are ways to reduce your chances of getting the disease.”

He recommends eating a nutritious diet with lots of fresh vegetables and few grains and sugars, regular exercise, avoiding mercury, and avoiding aluminum. Researchers have also found that continued mental stimulation is associated with a decreased risk of Alzheimer’s. All these recommendations are part of good overall health maintenance.

A person using un-coated aluminum pans for all cooking and food storage every day would take in an estimated 3.5 milligrams of aluminum daily.” By contrast, “one antacid tablet can contain 50 milligrams of aluminum or more, and it is not unusual for a person with an upset stomach to consume more than 1,000 milligrams, or 1 gram, of aluminum per day. A buffered aspirin tablet may contain about 10 to 20 milligrams of aluminum.” If you use these products, look for aluminum-free antacids and plain, non-buffered aspirin.

Here are the advantages to the cookware we use at our home:
* Made of lightweight ceramic 100% inorganic materials — this innovative non-reactive material is the key element in cookware longevity
* You can’t scratch the cooking surface — even when cooking with metal utensils and cleaning with industrial steel wool
* You don’t have to be concerned about damage due to meltdown of the cookware — helps reduce risk of stove damage and fire
* Cookware can withstand very high temperatures (2700° F) — steel melts at 2200° F
* Cookware surface will never flake off into your food
* Cleanup is a breeze — keeping your cookware in top shape is a key factor in having it potentially last a lifetime

Interested in living a little healthier?  Ready for a new set of cookware?  If you use the promo code included in this article Xtrema Cookware will give you 10% off of your purchase.
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: Xtrema Cookware

If you’re in the beef business, what do you do with all the extra cow parts and trimmings that have traditionally been sold off for use in pet food? You scrape them together into a pink mass, inject them with a chemical to kill the e.coli, and sell them to fast food restaurants to make into hamburgers.

That’s what’s been happening all across the USA with beef sold to McDonald’s, Burger King, school lunches and other fast food restaurants, according to a New York Times article. The beef is injected with ammonia, a chemical commonly used in glass cleaning and window cleaning products.

This is all fine with the USDA, which endorses the procedure as a way to make the hamburger beef “safe” enough to eat. Ammonia kills e.coli, you see, and the USDA doesn’t seem to be concerned with the fact that people are eating ammonia in their hamburgers.

This ammonia-injected beef comes from a company called Beef Products, Inc. As NYT reports, the federal school lunch program used a whopping 5.5 million pounds of ammonia-injected beef trimmings from this company in 2008. This company reportedly developed the idea of using ammonia to sterilize beef before selling it for human consumption.

Aside from the fact that there’s ammonia in the hamburger meat, there’s another problem with this company’s products: The ammonia doesn’t always kill the pathogens. Both e.coli and salmonella have been found contaminating the cow-derived products sold by this company.

This came as a shock to the USDA, which had actually exempted the company’s products from pathogen testing and product recalls. Why was it exempted? Because the ammonia injection process was deemed so effective that the meat products were thought to be safe beyond any question.

What else is in there?
As the NYT reports, “The company says its processed beef, a mashlike substance frozen into blocks or chips, is used in a majority of the hamburger sold nationwide. But it has remained little known outside industry and government circles. Federal officials agreed to the company’s request that the ammonia be classified as a ‘processing agent’ and not an ingredient that would be listed on labels.”

Fascinating. So you can inject a beef product with a chemical found in glass cleaning products and simply call it a “processing agent” — with the full permission and approval of the USDA, no less! Does anyone doubt any longer how deeply embedded the USDA is with the beef industry?

Apparently, this practice of injecting fast food beef with ammonia has been a well-kept secret for years. I never knew this was going on, and this news appears to be new information to virtually everyone. The real shocker is that “a majority” of fast food restaurants use this ammonia-injected cow-derived product in their hamburger meat. It sort of makes you wonder: What else is in there that we don’t know about?

“School lunch officials and other customers complained about the taste and smell of the beef,” says the NYT. No wonder. It’s been pumped full of chemicals.

There are already a thousand reasons not to eat fast food. Make this reason number 1,001. Ammonia. It’s not supposed to be there.

You can get the same effect by opening a can of dog food made with beef byproducts, spraying it with ammonia, and swallowing it. That is essentially what you’re eating when you order a fast food burger.

It’s almost enough to make you want to puke. If you do so, please aim it at your windows, because ammonia cuts through grease like nothing else, leaving your windows squeaky clean!

Source: NY Times
Natural News