If you’re pregnant or thinking of having a baby, you might want to take a look at some new research on the effects of plant estrogens, such as that found in soy, on a developing fetus. According to Medical News Today, a paper published in Biology of Reproduction’s Papers-in-Press suggests that exposure to estrogenic chemicals in the womb or during childhood has the potential to negatively affect a woman’s fertility as an adult.

This coincides with earlier research on neonatal effects of exposure to plant or environmental estrogens. In studies with mice, researchers found that causes of infertility included failure to ovulate, reduced ability of the oviduct to support embryo development before ovulation, and failure of the uterus to support effective implantation of blastocyst-stage embryos.

With the height of the sun season upon us, health officials are telling everybody to pull out their sunscreen and slather it on. But before you do that, it might be best to check the Environmental Working Group’s (EWG) 2012 Sunscreen Guide to see if your sunscreen is one of the 25 percent with potentially harmful ingredients in it.

While there’s disagreement on the actual level of toxicity some of the chemicals on the list have on humans, the list does provide safer alternatives that consumers can choose. And while you’re checking that list, you might want to look at other articles the EWG provides on its website on surprising truths about sunscreen, efficacy questions, and whether or not it actually protects you from cancer.

A historic moment in the era of emotional freedom techniques (EFT) has arrived, with the finding that EFT is closer to meeting the criteria for evidence-based treatments proposed by the American Psychological Association (APA). In a critical review scheduled to appear in the APA’s journal Review of General Psychology, researchers found that EFT “consistently demonstrated strong effect sizes and other positive statistical results that far exceed chance after relatively few treatment sessions.”

It doesn’t mean the AFA has certified EFT or reversed its 12-year ban on continuing education credits for EFT. But it’s exciting in that this is an important step toward EFT’s acceptance by the wider professional community.

EFT is a powerful self-help method based on research showing that emotional trauma contributes greatly to disease. Clinical trials have shown that EFT is able to rapidly reduce the emotional impact of memories and incidents that trigger emotional distress. Once the distress is reduced or removed, the body can often rebalance itself, and accelerate healing.

At some point in their lives everyone suffers from grief, usually from the loss of a loved one. It’s a normal part of living, but now the American Psychiatric Association wants to make grief a certifiable mental illness, thereby treatable by drugs and billable through insurance companies―and most likely something that will stigmatize your health records for the rest of your life.

The proposed classification, which is intended for inclusion in the association’s upcoming new diagnostic manual, DSM-5, will characterize bereavement as a major depressive disorder after only two weeks of grieving. But medicalizing a condition that most people just don’t get over with in two weeks is not the thing to do, according to The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM). In a critical review of the plans to “treat” grief as a major disorder, the NEJM blasted the new code book's grief classification, saying “the medical profession should normalize, not medicalize, grief.”

You’ve heard of mind hacks for being more efficient in the office and tech hacks for keeping your computer humming. So if you’ve been wondering if somebody will ever come up with some tricks for living a longer, happier, healthier life, there’s good news: Best Health Degrees.com has a colorful way of telling it like it is, beginning with chronic inflammation.

Chronic inflammation is the source of many diseases such as cancer, obesity, and heart disease, which essentially makes it the leading cause of death in the U.S. To address that issue, Best Health suggests these key ways to bust out of the aging process.

New research coming out of Johns Hopkins Children’s Center suggests that children of women with high levels of antibodies to gluten have an almost double risk of later developing a psychiatric disorder. As reported by Huffington Post, researchers looked at 764 neonatal blood samples and birth records of people born between 1975 and 1985, and learned that 211 of that number went on to develop schizophrenia or similar disorders.

Researchers also did comparison studies, ruling out substances like milk proteins as a causative factor. They noted that more research is needed to identify the underlying mechanisms that made the gluten-psychiatric disorder association possible, so they could possibly develop preventive strategies in the future.

Mood swings, weight gain, tummy problems―you name the ailment, there’s a pill for it. And you, the American consumer, are helping Big Pharma sell it. You don’t believe it? Well, it’s true, and believe it or not, the U.S. is one of only two countries in the world that allows this to happen.

What we’re talking about is direct-to-consumer (DTC) advertising, that barrage of ads you see on TV and in magazines and newspapers, or on the radio and Internet. They’re ads telling you to run right out and ask your doctor if this or that pill would be right for you. It’s a bonanza that’s turned America into a medicated mass of people who’ve been brain-washed into thinking that taking pills will make everything better―even for ailments you don’t yet have (think pre-diabetes, pre-high blood pressure or pre-cholesterol).

It’s a disgusting, dishonorable way to generate sales, but it works: according to AlterNet, in the U.S. every $1000 that a drug company spends on DTC advertising produces 24 new patients―seven times more customers than the companies would get if they didn’t advertise.

Weeds. Everywhere. Across America, from sea to shining sea, an insidious army of “super weeds” is taking over our farmlands. It’s a plague that even the most famous herbicide of all―Monsanto’s Roundup―can’t stop, mainly because it’s Roundup that’s caused the problem in the first place. Like the old axiom, “life finds a way,” the weeds Roundup targets have found a way to resist Roundup’s powerful poisons, making them stronger and more prolific than ever.

It’s a problem that’s helped some of the worst weeds grow more than 6 feet tall as they’ve attacked and taken over more than 12 million acres of prime U.S. farm ground, primarily afflicting the very crops Roundup was supposed to protect―corn and soybeans. We’ll probably never know whether Monsanto knew in advance that Roundup would only contribute to creating Frankenstein-like super weeds. But now that it’s happened, farmers who once embraced the genetically-modified Roundup Ready seeds and their companion herbicide are begging for relief and a solution to their woes.   

Rest assured, one of Monsanto’s competitors, Dow Chemical, has what they say will save the GM farming world: a newly-formulated herbicide built on the deadly 2,4-D compound better known as Agent Orange.

VANDANA SHIVA: Traditional Knowledge, Biodiversity and Sustainable Living (via http://www.occupymonsanto360.org)

An Interview with Dr Vandana Shiva, one of the world’s foremost environmentalist, anti-GM activist and an advocate of ecological farming and sustainable agriculture as a solution to climate change, food security, hunger and peace. The interview was taken on 16th March 2011, during “Grandmonther…

---

 

If you haven’t made up your mind yet about whether genetic engineering is equivalent to crop suicide, then watch this short video, which features a grandma in India who is trying to save the environment, and ultimately the world, with natural seeds and ecological farming. The star of this movement is Dr. Vandana Shiva, who founded the Navdanya Biodiversity Farm in India to help save traditional seeds before it’s too late.

This is vitally important because huge corporations like Monsanto are genetically modifying the world’s seeds and patenting them as their own. These corporations say they’re doing it to make farming more sustainable and better able to feed a growing, hungry world. But as Dr. Shiva points out, that premise is proving to be nothing but a big fat lie. It’s a lie that’s been the source of countless suicides committed by Indian farmers who’ve gone broke from farming GM crops.

It’s a scene that too many emergency rooms are seeing these days: a baby or toddler has swallowed something, and frantic parents want it out, now. Naturally, ER personnel also want to get it out quickly, especially since some objects such as batteries can harm or kill a child in as little as a couple hours.

As reported by Reuters:

“If a child swallows a button battery, the parent might not see it happen and the child might not have symptoms initially―and the clock is ticking,” said Dr. Gary Smith, head of the Center for Injury Research and Policy at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio. “We’ve seen children in less than two hours have severe, severe injuries from button batteries getting caught in the espophagus.”

The number of children seen in ER departments who’ve swallowed batteries in the past 20 years has doubled, Reuters says. But that’s not the only thing they’re swallowing or putting in their ears or up their noses. Other dangerous items include magnets, hair, pills, alcohol, nails, needles, pins, and tacks.

Sometimes even the most benign things can cause a whole lot of harm for children. In the latest list of items that can cause unexpected injuries to little ones younger than 3, sippy cups, baby bottles and pacifers have been found guilty. According to the Center for Injury Research and Policy, 45,000 children younger than 3 years old were treated in emergency rooms between 1991 and 2010 for injuries related to these items.

A majority of the injuries involved 1-year-olds with bottles as the most common culprit. Injuries tended to occur at home, and resulted in cuts to the mouth and face, usually when children were running or walking, The New York Times reports. Other dangerous items are button batteries, which can be swallowed.

It’s a disgusting, dishonorable way to generate sales, but it works: according to AlterNet, in the U.S. every $1000 that a drug company spends on direct-to-consumer (DTC) advertising produces 24 new patients. It’s a bonanza that generates seven times more customers than if the companies didn’t advertise. Vioxx―Merck’s failed drug that caused 140,000 cardiac events and deaths before it was pulled from the market―was sold this way.

Merck admits that Vioxx was never intended for the general public. Yet Merck advertised it, and people saw the ads and started demanding it from their doctors, and Merck sold 20 million prescriptions―and some people died before Merck pulled both the ads and the drug. But Merck isn’t alone in this; direct-to-consumer marketing is a general practice by almost every drug company in America.

The problem is that, like Vioxx, some of the drugs being advertised are not what they appear, meaning if you see it advertised, the old axiom, caveat emptor―let the buyer beware―is something to remember.

For the past 10 years a researcher at Florida International University has been studying a group of children who he believes exhibit social, behavioral and emotional signs of becoming psychopaths as adults. The conduct disorders that can put children in this classification can vary from subtle problems like lying to more serious problems like callousness and lack of emotion, to predatory conduct, aggressive disobedience, and outright dangerous behaviors.  

While some psychologists argue that it’s not ethical to brand a child a psychopath before he has a chance to grow and mature, others argue that ignoring the problems could make it even worse. Some are also hinting that the problems are neurological, like autism or diabetes in that it’s not something that can be “cured,” even with early intervention and treatment.

A whooping cough (pertussis) outbreak in the state of Washington has health officials up in arms and blaming unvaccinated children for what they are calling an epidemic of record proportions. While the numbers aren’t truly accurate since the state’s top medical officer instructed physicians to stop testing for pertussis and simply treat cases on an assumption of pertussis, the age group that seems stricken most is between 8 and 12 years old.

This is the same age group that has had the most cases across the country, and mostly in fully vaccinated children. The nationwide outbreak has led epidemiologists at the CDC to conclude that the whooping cough vaccine wears off a few years after it’s given.

If you thought the federal government was really going to do something about childhood obesity in America, all it takes to change your mind is to follow the corporate money trail to Congress. In a new report by the Sunlight Foundation Reporting Group, researchers found that federal marketing guidelines were stopped in their tracks by money thrown at politicians charged with making the change happen.

According to AlterNet, the lengths to which corporate America will go to protect their profits includes campaign donations, attacking science, asserting constitutional rights, and threatening federal agencies with smear campaigns. The results were that nearly 200 lawmakers buckled on the guidelines and ignored the nationwide health epidemic affecting millions of children and teenagers.

What it proves is just how much of Washington is ingrained in protecting profits, as opposed to standing up for the public interest, AlterNet said.