Many Children’s Medications Coated With Aluminum

January 30, 2012

Natural News

By S.D. Wells

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.

Also known as tartrazine, FD&C Yellow Aluminum Lake is a chemical concoction derived from coal tar. It is known to be a reproductive toxin. All artificial colors contain Aluminum Lake, so when your child gets to pick between red, blue or green medicine, they’re really choosing which poison they get to consume. Several chemically enhanced food colorings contain ammonia and therefore produce compounds proven to cause various cancers in animal studies, according to CSPI, the Center for Science in the Public Interest.

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Lack Of Sun Exposure Causes Mothers To Birth Babies With Multiple Sclerosis

July, 16 2010

NaturalNews

By: Ethan A. Huff

A recent study out of Australia has found that natural sunlight plays a very important role in the development of unborn children. According to the research, mothers who get little sunlight during the first 90 days of their pregnancies bear children with an increased risk of developing multiple sclerosis later on in their lives.

Once again, the connection between vitamin D and good health is clearly evident in a scientific study. Published in the British Medical Journal, the study revealed that when a pregnant woman fails to get enough sunlight during her pregnancy, the development of her child’s central nervous system and immune system becomes compromised. Consequently, her child will be more susceptible to developing MS as an adult.

Researchers were able to verify the connection between low vitamin D levels and MS by evaluating a series of birth records from between 1920 and 1950. The records revealed that many MS patients born during this time period were born in the months of November and December in the Southern Hemisphere, which would have placed the early days of their development during the winter months when their mothers’ sunlight exposure was likely at a minimum.

On the flip side, experts observed that very few of the MS patients were born between May and June, when their first trimesters would have landed during the warm summer months when sunlight exposure is maximized.

“The risk of multiple sclerosis was around 30 percent higher for those born in the early summer months of November and December compared to the months of May and June,” explained researches in a statement about the study.

Experts derived similar conclusions in studies conducted in the Northern Hemisphere as well. Most MS patients seem to have been in their first trimesters of development during the winter. In fact, cases of MS become increasingly more prevalent the further you travel away from the equator, indicating that sunlight exposure is directly linked to MS susceptibility.

If natural sunlight is unavailable, mothers can always supplement with natural vitamin D3 in order to maintain their own health and to help ensure that their babies experience healthy development. Vitamin D3 supplementation is inexpensive and it is a great, simple way to maximize health and well-being.

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Electro-Accupuncture Relieving Knee Pain

January 22, 2010

Reuters

The study, published in the journal Pain, looked at the effects of electro-acupuncture among 40 adults with knee osteoarthritis — the common “wear-and-tear” form of arthritis in which the cartilage cushioning the joints breaks down.

Electro-acupuncture is similar to traditional acupuncture, where fine needles are inserted into specific points in the skin. What’s different is that the practitioner fits the needles with clips that are attached to a small device that delivers a continuous electrical impulse to stimulate the acupuncture point.

Among the patients in the current study, those who had a daily electro-acupuncture session for 10 consecutive days reported greater improvement in their pain compared with patients who received a “sham” version of the therapy.

Patients in that latter group received acupuncture, but the needles were inserted at random points on the skin rather than traditional acupuncture sites. And while the needles were attached to the electrical device, it was not actually turned on.

The findings suggest that true electro-acupuncture may offer at least short-term pain relief to knee arthritis sufferers, according to the researchers, led by Dr. Sadia Ahsin of the Army Medical College Rawalpindi in Pakistan.

Acupuncture has been used for more than 2,000 years in Chinese medicine to treat a wide variety of ailments. According to traditional medicine, specific acupuncture points on the skin are connected to internal pathways that conduct energy, or qi (“chee”), and stimulating these points with a fine needle promotes the healthy flow of qi.

Modern research has suggested that acupuncture may help ease pain by altering signals among nerve cells or affecting the release of various chemicals of the central nervous system, such as pain-killing endorphins.

In their study, Ahsin and colleagues found that electro-acupuncture appeared to raise patients’ blood levels of endorphins and lower their levels of the hormone cortisol, which tends to rise during physical or mental stress. So it’s possible that these changes explain the greater pain relief, according to the researchers.

Larger, longer-term studies are still needed to see whether electro-acupuncture can have lasting benefits — and to find out how often patients would need treatment to gain those benefits.

For now, Ahsin’s team writes, the current findings suggest that, for people who are interested in trying it, electro-acupuncture can be added to conventional treatment for knee arthritis.

Acupuncture and electro-acupuncture are generally regarded as low-risk therapies. Among patients in this study, there were no major side effects apart from bruising at the needle site in three patients, the researchers note.

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Happy Daze – Antidepressant Drugs Keeping you in”Drug-Induced State’

November 23, 2009

Natural News

By David Gutierrez

Contrary to the impression promoted by the psychiatric and drug industries, psychiatric drugs do not work by correcting a chemical imbalance in the brain, Joanna Moncrieff of University College London wrote recently in an opinion piece for the BBC. Instead, such drugs merely put people into “drug-induced states” that make it harder for them to experience the symptoms of their illness.

“Magazines, newspapers, patients’ organizations and Internet sites have all publicized the idea that conditions like depression, anxiety, schizophrenia and bipolar disorder can be treated by drugs that help to rectify an underlying brain problem … just like a diabetic needs to take insulin,” Moncrieff writes. “The trouble is, there is little justification for this view.”

Moncrieff notes that prior to the 1950s, mental health workers largely saw antidepressants as psychoactive drugs, primarily sedatives, that eased the symptoms of depression without addressing the underlying cause – much as over-the-counter cold drugs may stop a runny nose without affecting the cold virus. This view was eventually replaced by the idea that depression, schizophrenia, anxiety and other mental health conditions result from chemical imbalances in the brain, imbalances that can be corrected by the right “magic bullet.”

“However, this transformation was not based on any compelling evidence,” she says.

Moncrieff holds to the older view, that “drugs used in psychiatry are psychoactive drugs, like alcohol and cannabis. They affect everyone, regardless of whether they have a mental disorder or not.”

Antipsychotics, she notes, mute people’s emotions and thoughts, which can reduce the effects of psychosis as a side effect. Anti-anxiety drugs are central-nervous system depressants, like alcohol.

“If you told people that we have no idea what is going on in their brain, but that they could take a drug that would make them feel different and might help to suppress their thoughts and feelings, then many people might choose to avoid taking drugs if they could,” she writes. “People need to make up their own minds.”

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Insect Repellent DEET is Toxic to Brain Cells

September 6, 2009

Natural News

By S.L. Baker

If you insist on using chemical laden insect repellents containing DEET, you may be getting more than you bargained for — including damage to your central nervous system. In fact, scientists writing in the open access journal BMC Biology don’t just say that more studies should be done to confirm DEET’s potential neurotoxicity to humans. The researchers are calling for more investigations of the chemical to be conducted on an urgent basis. The reason? They suspect that the potential brain cell damaging effects of DEET could be particularly harmful if used in combination with other neurotoxic insecticides. And that’s exactly the way DEET is normally used in products applied to both adults and kids in order to prevent mosquito bites.

French scientists Vincent Corbel from the Institut de Recherche pour le Developement in Montpellier and Bruno Lapied from the University of Angers headed a team of researchers who studied the mode of action and toxicity of DEET, also known by the chemical name N,N-Diethyl-3-methylbenzamide. “We’ve found that DEET is not simply a behavior-modifying chemical but also inhibits the activity of a key central nervous system enzyme, acetycholinesterase, in both insects and mammals,” Corbel said in a statement to the media.

DEET has been in use since its discover in l953 and is now the most common ingredient found in insect repellent preparations. It is primarily hyped as a way to keep mosquitoes at bay and doctors and insect repellant manufacturers promote DEET’s use through scare tactics, suggesting you are likely to get West Nile fever from mosquito bites unless you use the chemical.

Of course, not every mosquito bite spreads any kind of infection and West Nile fever is not always serious. What’s more, a host of natural strategies, from wearing long sleeves and pants in areas plagued by mosquitoes to using a variety of herbal extracts and essential oils topically, can help you avoid bug bites and stings without chemicals. Yet DEET remains promoted by the mainstream media and medical establishment as the ingredient that protects adequately against mosquito bites and disease.

Consider this worrisome statistic: each year approximately one-third of all Americans spray and slather on insect repellents containing central nervous system toxin DEET. And this is in spite of the fact that previous studies have warned of DEET’s dangers. For example, earlier research by Duke University Medical Center pharmacologist Mohamed Abou-Donia, who has spent 30 years studying the effects of pesticides, found that prolonged exposure to DEET can impair functioning in parts of the brain and could result in problems with muscle coordination, muscle weakness, walking or even memory and cognition.

In the new study, Corbel and his colleagues discovered that DEET inhibits the acetylcholinesterase enzyme. This is the exact effect organophosphate and carbamate insecticides have on the body, too. Alarmingly, these insecticides are often combined in products with DEET — and the scientists found that DEET interacts especially well with carbamate insecticides, magnifying their toxicity. “These findings question the safety of DEET, particularly in combination with other chemicals, and they highlight the importance of a multidisciplinary approach to the development of safer insect repellents for use in public health,” Corbel stated.

Another study published earlier this summer in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Chemical Society, showed that a natural substance, cinnamon oil, shows promise as a great-smelling, environmentally friendly pesticide, with the ability to kill mosquito larvae. The researchers also believe that cinnamon oil could be a good mosquito repellant, though they have not yet tested it against adult mosquitoes. Historically, however, cinnamon oil has been used by natural health practitioners and traditional healers to repel mosquitoes and prevent their bites.

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