Science
Human Hormones Are Being Eclipsed By Synthetic Chemicals
May 15th
15th May 2012
By Sayer Ji - Wake Up World
A new study published in the Journal of Applied Toxicology has raised some disturbing possibilities regarding the dangers of common hormone-mimicking preservatives found in thousands of consumer products on the market today. [1]
Titled “Parabens detection in different zones of the human breast: consideration of source and implications of findings,” researchers discussed the role that parabens — a class of estrogen-mimicking chemicals widely used in drugs, foods and cosmetics — may have in breast cancer and childhood disease.
The report focused on the findings of The Genesis Breast Cancer Prevention Centre at the University Hospital of South Manchester NHS Foundation Trust published last month (March, 2012), which discovered five paraben esters in human breast tissue samples collected from 40 mastectomies from women with primary breast cancer. [2] The report revealed three things:
1) The ester form of parabens found within the breast tissue samples indicated a dermal route of exposure, as would occur through skin care products and underarm deodorants.
2) The paraben residues were found at concentrations up to 1 million times higher than the estrogen (estradiol) levels naturally found in human breast tissue.
3) Propylparaben was found in the highest concentration in the underarm area (axilla), where underarm deodorants are most used and breast cancer prevalence is at its highest.
Continue Reading – Human Hormones Are Being Eclipsed By Synthetic Chemicals
How Wealth Can Reduce Compassion
May 13th
13th May 2012
By Daisy Grewal - scientificamerican.com
As riches grow, empathy for others seems to decline.
Who is more likely to lie, cheat, and steal—the poor person or the rich one? It’s temping to think that the wealthier you are, the more likely you are to act fairly. After all, if you already have enough for yourself, it’s easier to think about what others may need. But research suggests the opposite is true: as people climb the social ladder, their compassionate feelings towards other people decline.
Berkeley psychologists Paul Piff and Dacher Keltner ran several studies looking at whether social class (as measured by wealth, occupational prestige, and education) influences how much we care about the feelings of others. In one study, Piff and his colleagues discreetly observed the behavior of drivers at a busy four-way intersection. They found that luxury car drivers were more likely to cut off other motorists instead of waiting for their turn at the intersection. This was true for both men and women upper-class drivers, regardless of the time of day or the amount of traffic at the intersection. In a different study they found that luxury car drivers were also more likely to speed past a pedestrian trying to use a crosswalk, even after making eye contact with the pedestrian.
Scientists: Garlic Fights Common Illness Better than Antibiotics
May 7th
7th May 2012
Contributing Writer for Wake Up World
Scientists at Washington State University are now confirming once again what natural health experts have known for years — garlic fights one of the most common food-borne illnesses much more effectively than antibiotics. Garlic has built a strong reputation in fighting infections, a benefit that is but one of many.
Campylobacter bacterium, the name for the common bacteria that often results in intestinal illness, affects around 2.4 million Americans per year and is often treated with illness-linked antibiotics, but maybe not anymore.
Continue Reading – Scientists: Garlic Fights Common Illness Better than Antibiotics
Do Hidden Opiates In Our Food Explain Food Addictions?
May 4th
4th May 2012
By Sayer Ji - Wake Up World
Food addictions are not strictly “psychological” problems, but have a hard-wired, organic component. Many of the most commonly consumed foods in Western culture actually contain narcotic properties associated with the presence of psychoactive chemicals that bind to opioid receptors in the nervous system. These peptides are so powerful that researchers block their action with a drug known as naloxone and which is used to treat addiction among heroin abusers, and can even prevent death from heroin overdose.
These “food opiates” are heavily concentrated in wheat and dairy products, especially cow’s milk. Wheat contains the following opioid peptides, known as gluten exorphins, alongside which are listed their amino acid structure:
Continue Reading – Do Hidden Opiates In Our Food Explain Food Addictions?
Stress Hormones Found To Make Cancer Resistant To Treatment
Apr 26th
26th April 2012
By Sayer Ji - Wake Up World
There are many things that drive cancer. Poor diet, chemical and radiation exposures, and certain infections, figure prominently in the process. Stress, however, is a major contributing factor that is often completely overlooked.
New research, however, sheds light on just how critically important the physiological consequences of stress are on cancer cell progression.
Adrenaline Increases Cancer Malignancy
Published this month in the journal Cancer Genetics and Cytogenetics and entitled “Adrenaline induces chemoresistance in HT-29 colon adenocarcinoma cells,” researchers found that the stress hormone adrenaline induces multidrug resistance in colon cancer cells.1
Continue Reading – Stress Hormones Found To Make Cancer Resistant To Treatment
Antineoplastons: A Cure for Cancer Ignored For 45 Years?
Apr 23rd
23rd April 2012
By Sayer Ji - Wake Up World
Could a cure for advanced, chemotherapy and radiation resistant cancer have already been discovered as far back as 1967? Could this curative substance have been so close to us for all this time, as to be part of our own blood and a constituent of our own urine?
As crazy as it may sound to conventionally-minded folks in both the general public and medical professional spheres, the discovery of powerful anti-cancer peptides secreted by our own bodies only adds to hundreds, if not thousands of already extant natural and/or naturally-derived anti-cancer treatments, some which scientists have known about for over a century, e.g. turmeric has been proven to have therapeutic potential in over 100 cancers, but which threaten the financial and political hegemony of far more toxic and less effective therapies, e.g. chemotherapy and radiation.
Continue Reading – Antineoplastons: A Cure for Cancer Ignored For 45 Years?
Chocolate Gives Statins A $29 Billion Run For Their Money
Apr 20th
20th April 2012
By Sayer Ji - Wake Up World
With the blockbuster cholesterol-lowering class of drugs known as statins being widely promoted for the primary prevention of cardiovascular disease, despite their having over 300 documented adverse health effects (including heart failure!), how does chocolate sound as a viable, heart-friendly alternative?
We already connect amorously with chocolate (to the tune of 6 billion lbs of cocoa consumed annually worldwide), revealing in heart-felt expressions like “I love it,” and “this is to die for!” how comfortable we are with publicly declaring our affection. But did you know that while it makes our emotional hearts sing, it may actually keep our physical hearts happy, alive and ticking longer, as well?
Indeed, back in 2006, researchers found that for elderly men, eating cocoa intake was inversely associated with blood pressure and 15-year cardiovascular and all-cause mortality. When compared with the lowest tertile (lowest 33%) of cocoa intake, the adjusted relative risk for men in the highest tertile was .50 for cardiovascular mortality, or a 50% reduction, and .53 for all-cause mortality, or a 47% reduction. Not bad considering the median cocoa intake among users was 2.11 grams per day, or just one half an ounce a week.
Continue Reading – Chocolate Gives Statins A Billion Run For Their Money
No Hopeless Cases: We Can All Rewire Our Neural Circuits Toward Peace, Balance, Joy
Apr 19th
17th April 2012
By Judy Zehr
Guest Writer for Wake Up World
Isn’t it fascinating how so many of us have a deep desire for lives of balance, joy and kindness and to simply be good people? We’d love to quit our addictions, be nicer to our kids, pets and partners, work with a cheerer attitude, make a difference and be part of the solution? And we might get close at times, but so often snap back into cravings, grouchiness, giving up, blaming–just adding to the mix of angry, anxious, finger-pointing, numbing out people.
Hey, it’s not us. It’s our wiring. Just like old houses can have some pretty funky electrical hodgepodges behind their walls, we humans have some pretty primitive electrical chemical neural circuitry that is not as evolved as we wish. It’s that wiring, called allostatic circuits, that keeps tripping us up. We really don’t need a different job, more money, a new spouse, better acting kids, a hotter body, etc. to experience the joy, balance, peace and well being we desire. We just need updates in our wiring.
Top Scientist: Fluoride Already Shown to Cause 10,000 Cancer Deaths
Apr 16th
Contributing Writer for Wake Up World
Water fluoridation is a highly controversial topic, with many individuals voicing massive concern over the practice. In contrast, some stick to the concept that there isn’t any association between fluoride and any real negative effects. Fluoride, however, is indeed a toxic substance, and has been tied with numerous health complications in well-established research. Fluoride can be found in many water supplies, toothpaste, and even food at alarming levels. While it may sound shocking to many, some research is even drawing a close connection between fluoride and an increased cancer risk.
Continue Reading – Top Scientist: Fluoride Already Shown to Cause 10,000 Cancer Deaths
Ancient Saffron: Magical Healing Powers Confirmed by Science
Apr 16th
By Sayer Ji - Wake Up World
Clearly there is something magical about the Crocus sativus flower, from which the spice saffron is derived. If its striking beauty does not immediately cast a spell on its beholder, often it simply takes experiencing the spice to fall into full enchantment with it. While saffron is exceptionally expensive, because it takes approximately 150 flowers to yield just 1,000 mg (0.035 oz) of dry saffron threads, and costs approximately $1,000 a pound, it does not take much to have an effect. Its uniqueness is also illustrated by the fact that it shuns mechanization, requiring of its would-be possessors that it be painstakingly harvested by hand, as no doubt has been done for tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of years. Because each Crocus sativus flower bears no more than four flowers, each with three vivid crimson stigmas from which the spice is derived, at most only 12 stigma are produced by each, which yields the equivalent of 30 mg (0.011 oz) of fresh saffron or 7 mg (0.00025 oz) dried.
Continue Reading – Ancient Saffron: Magical Healing Powers Confirmed by Science
The Astonishing Geometry Of Nature
Apr 4th
4th April 2012
Guest Writer for Wake Up World
When you know what to look for, it becomes obvious. In the natural world all around us, intricate and beautiful patterns are everywhere: In the way that plants branch out as they grow, in the way clouds form and dissipate, from vast mountain ranges to tiny grains of sand, similar patterns repeat themselves, over and over again.
And yet this uncanny tendency of the universe to form self-similar patterns on every imaginable scale has been ignored by all official “science” for about 300 years since the Renaissance and the Newtonian scientific revolution. All of what we know as “modern science,” has been based on the Newtonian paradigm of the so-called “clockwork universe,” in which the entire cosmos and everything in it are considered to be machines. Machines that have no consciousness, but merely act out their predetermined roles in the world.
It was this dogmatic world view that led to the development of modern medicine and its emphasis on pharmaceutical drugs, or the Industrial Revolution with its emphasis on turning people into the slaves of industry. All this because living beings are considered to be automatons, programmed by their genes and powerless to create real change in themselves.
Scientists Confirm Bacteria is Essential to Proper Immunity
Apr 1st
Contributing Writer for Wake Up World
Scientists are now confirming what many natural health advocates have been saying for years regarding the role bacteria plays in the body. Bacteria, and exposure to bacteria on a daily basis, is essential to a proper immune system. With many parents ensuring that their children are virtually never exposed to enough bacteria through sanitizing everything they touch with triclosan-containing antibacterial wipes and gels, children worldwide are not being exposed to an adequate amount of immune-bolstering bacteria in the environment.
Adults are also being effected, as many individuals feel that virtually all germs or bacteria are bad and make a large effort to scrub them from their daily life. The new research, which simply enforces what has been known for centuries, shows that problems can arise when your exposure to germs is decreased. In fact, it could make you sick. The concept is referred to as the ‘hygiene hypothesis’, which essentially says that diseases affect more individuals in the modern world where hygiene and mobile sanitizers are king.
Continue Reading – Scientists Confirm Bacteria is Essential to Proper Immunity
