The nation’s first new guidelines in a decade for preventing heart attacks and strokes call for twice as many Americans — one-third of all adults — to consider taking cholesterol-lowering statin drugs.

The guidelines, issued Tuesday by the American Heart Association and American College of Cardiology, are a big change. They offer doctors a new formula for estimating a patient’s risk that includes many factors besides a high cholesterol level, the main focus now. The formula includes age, gender, race and factors such as whether someone smokes.

The guidelines for the first time take aim at strokes, not just heart attacks. Partly because of that, they set a lower threshold for using medicines to reduce risk. Continue reading →

The number of people in America who died from taking prescription pain killers quadrupled between 1999 and 2010, a new report from the Trust for America’s Health says.

These fatalities now outnumber deaths from heroin and cocaine combined, that same report found. More than 12 million people said they abused prescription drugs in 2010. The only other drug people abuse more is marijuana, the White House noted in a 2011 report. Continue reading →

Doctors sounded a warning Tuesday over a rise in ADHD diagnoses, saying some children may be needlessly taking powerful drugs intended to correct a poorly understood disorder.

Writing in the British Medical Journal (BMJ), the researchers noted treatment for attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) had risen massively in recent years, even though its causes are unclear and drugs can have adverse effects.

ADHD is a disorder blamed for severe and frequent bouts of inattention, hyperactivity or impulsivity. Children and young adolescents are those who are most diagnosed with it.

But some experts fear the term ADHD may “medicalise” problems related to a child’s personality or maturity level, the effects of poor parenting or other home problems. Continue reading →

Incomplete Science Can Be Bad For Our Health. Further study of antidepressants is needed now

Many modern scientific accomplishments are truly amazing and have changed our lives dramatically. From NASA landing men on the moon, to wireless radios and home computers combining to become the world-wide internet, the power of the human brain to create is a virtual miracle.

Marie Curie’s discovery of radiation in the early 1900s had effects so far-reaching we’re still just scratching the surface. She was brilliant and is the only person to win Nobel prizes in two different sciences, chemistry and physics. Sadly, Curie died from cancer caused by the radioactive materials she worked with. She saw no danger and carried test tubes full of radioactive materials in her pocket and stored them in her desk drawer marveling at how they glowed in the dark. As smart as Curie was, it’s now obvious further study was needed. Continue reading →

Diet fizzy drinks can raise the risk of diabetes by 60 per cent, startling new research has revealed.

A study of more than 66,000 women found those who drank artificially sweetened drinks were more likely to develop the disease than those who indulged in regular, ‘full fat’ versions.

The findings, published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, fly in the face of conventional thinking that regular versions of fizzy drinks are always worse for our health.

The effect is compounded by the fact that diet drinkers also consume more – on average 2.8 glasses a week compared to 1.6 for regular drinkers.

Regular, full-fat versions of fizzy drinks have previously been linked to an increased risk of diabetes.

But less is known about their artificially sweetened counterparts – often promoted as a healthier substitute.

In the study, more than 66,000 middle-aged French women were quizzed about their dietary habits. Their health was then monitored over 14 years from 1993 to 2007.

The researchers, from the National Institute of Health and Medical Research in France, examined the rates of diabetes among women who drank either regular or diet fizzy drinks and those who drank only unsweetened fruit juice.

Women who drank fizzy drinks had a higher risk of diabetes than those who only consumed juice. Continue reading →

The ill-effects of sugary soft drinks has been well documented but new research continues to show just how bad such beverages can be for you, especially over the long term. Now, according to a just-released Swedish study, drinking even one normal-sized soda per day can boost a man’s chances of developing more aggressive forms of prostate cancer.

“Among the men who drank a lot of soft drinks or other drinks with added sugar, we saw an increased risk of prostate cancer of around 40 percent,” said Isabel Drake, a PhD student at Lund University, according to Agence France Presse.

The study, which will be published in the upcoming edition of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, followed more than 8,000 men aged 45 to 73 for about 15 years on average. Those who drank one 11-fluid-ounce (330 ml) soft drink per day were 40 percent more likely to develop the more serious forms of prostate cancer that ultimately required treatment.

The cancer among the study’s all-male participants was discovered after they showed symptoms of disease, not through a screening process known as Prostate-Specific Antigen (PSA).

Other risk factors exist, but soda is the worst… Continue reading →

Sugary drinks lead to alterations in muscles similar to those in people with obesity problems and type 2 diabetes

Biological scientist Dr Hans-Peter Kubis, who’s just led a study into what soft drinks do to our bodies, has reached some shocking conclusions. When you read what he discovered, you may well choose never to touch the fizzy stuff again.

Fizzy drinks appear to increase the risk of heart disease, liver failure and hypertension

Once upon a time, fizzy drinks were an occasional luxury treat.

Now, many of us think nothing of having at least one every day — maybe a lunchtime can of cola or a ‘natural’ lemonade from Pret.

We use them as instant pick-me-ups, and even as ‘healthy’ sports aids bought from vending machines at the gym.

No trip to the cinema is complete without a supersize soft drink, either.

It’s no surprise to learn, then, that our consumption of soft drinks has more than doubled since 1985 — from ten gallons per person a year to more than 25 gallons.

We know this is not entirely good for us — but could sugary soft drinks be so dangerous that they should carry health warnings?

This may sound alarmist, but new medical studies have produced worrying results. Continue reading →

Aluminum Lake food coloring, used to heavily coat liquid medicines for children, contains dangerous amounts of aluminum and harmful synthetic petrochemicals. These “petrochemicals” are carcinogens containing petroleum, antifreeze and ammonia, which cause a long list of adverse reactions. Aluminum poisoning can lead to short and long term central nervous system (CNS) damage, such as memory impairments, autism, epilepsy, mental retardation, and dementia.

Research shows that just 4ppm of aluminum can cause the blood to coagulate. This is what causes Alzheimer’s Disease and has been documented to inhibit learning. Aluminum consumption can also be associated with the development of bone disorders, including stress fractures. Continue reading →

In the event that the public becomes too informed and savvy about toxic additives in our food supply, what’s a multi-billion dollar industry to do? The first step is to create another more toxic version of the additive. The second step is to collude with regulatory authorities such as the FDA to convince the public that the new, more toxic additive is safe. The third and final step is to prevent the toxic additive from being listed on any ingredient labels. From the folks that brought us Aspartame, meet Neotame, a deadly sweetener that – you’ll never see on a label – because…well that’s just the way the FDA wants it.

Neotame is officially marketed as an inexpensive artificial sweetener made by NutraSweet, which is a former division of Monsanto and original manufacturer of aspartame. Continue reading →

If you think you are making a healthier option because you chose to have diet soda over a regular soda drink, its time to think again. Crafty advertising may have given the term “sugar free” an impression of healthy alternative, but the truth of the matter is that chemical sweeteners are far from healthy.

Despite the dismissive stand of aspartame producers that aspartame is safe for human consumption, various studies over the years have shown that aspartame is actually linked to headaches, migraines, dizziness, tumors and even cancer. The U.S. FDA made public 92 symptoms attributed to aspartame from submitted complaints. Despite its questionable effect, aspartame was approved for use in 1981 and still continues to be so today. Ironically, aspartame was never tested in humans before its approval. Its use in over 6,000 products and by 250 million people has made the public its unwitting guinea pig in a grand experiment 40 years in the making. Continue reading →

If you have been drinking diet soda and chewing gum, chances are you have been enjoying aspartame in generous quantities. Aspartame is a popular sugar substitute that can be found in diet soda drinks, chewing gum, fruit spreads and sugar-free products to name a few. It is also known by the brand names, Sweet One, NutraSweet and Spoonful. Despite its popularity in the market, what many do not know is that aspartame accounts for 75 percent of side effect complaints received by the Adverse Reaction Monitoring System (ARMS) of the US Food and Drug Administration.

Can aspartame be addictive? Continue reading →

Anyone that comes to visit America may notice that most of us walk around like a bunch of zombies. Well, the truth is that this is because about half of us are completely doped up on prescription drugs. In America, we don’t just take pills if we are sick. In this day and age, the pharmaceutical companies have come up with a pill for just about everything. If we are feeling a little sad, we are told to just pop a pill. If we are feeling a little bit of pain, we are told to just pop a pill. If our children like to run around and play, we are told that giving them the right pills will settle them down. Every single year, prescription drug use in America increases, and there are dozens of different pharmaceutical companies that are making billions of dollars off of our “legal” addiction to drugs. The funny thing is that many of these “legal” drugs are only just the slightest bit different from many of the “illegal” drugs that are being sold out on the streets. But because they have “government approval”, the big pharmaceutical companies can relentlessly peddle them to the American public. Many of these drugs are very damaging to our health, many of them are very damaging to our ability to think and many of them are extremely addictive. Continue reading →